Gurdwara Tuti Gandi Sahibਗੁਰਦੁਆਰਾ ਟੁੱਟੀ ਗੰਢੀ ਸਾਹਿਬ

Gurdwara Tuti Gandi Sahib is the principal shrine of Sri Muktsar Sahib, the Malwa city in Punjab whose very name means the Pool of Liberation. It stands on the western bank of the city's large sacred sarovar and honours the Forty Muktas, the forty Sikhs who had once left Guru Gobind Singh Ji at Anandpur Sahib, returned under the lead of Mai Bhago, and died fighting a pursuing Mughal army at the pool of Khidrana on 29 December 1705. The Guru forgave them, tore up their letter of renunciation, and retied the bond between Guru and Sikh. That act gives this gurdwara its name, and it is retold in the Sikh Ardas every day.

What does the name Tuti Gandi mean?

Tuti Gandi means, in plain words, the broken knot retied. When the forty signed a written renunciation, called a bedava, at Anandpur Sahib, the tie between them and their Guru was formally broken. At Khidrana they asked, with their last strength, for that tie to be restored. Guru Gobind Singh Ji tore the document, blessed the fallen as the Forty Muktas, the Forty Liberated Ones, and renamed the pool itself Muktsar. The gurdwara that rose by the pool keeps the older, more personal name: before it is a place of victory, it is a place of forgiveness asked for and given.

The bedava: how the forty broke with the Guru

In 1704 Anandpur Sahib was held under a long siege by Mughal forces and the hill chiefs, and food inside the fort ran out. A group of forty Sikhs from the Majha country, led by Bhai Mahan Singh, told the Guru they could go no further. He asked them to put it in writing: a bedava declaring that they were no longer his Sikhs and he was no longer their Guru. They signed, and went home. The Guru kept the document with him. What the forty found at home was not rest but shame. Their families, and above all their womenfolk, refused to honour men who had left their Guru in his hardest hour. The renunciation that had felt like survival began to feel like a stain that only one act could wash out.

Mai Bhago leads them back

The turning came from Jhabal, where Mai Bhago, also remembered as Mata Bhag Kaur, heard the men's story and shamed and inspired them into returning. She did not merely send them: she armed herself and rode with them. Meanwhile the Guru, having left Anandpur in December 1704 and lost his mother and sons in the weeks that followed, was moving through the Malwa with a Mughal force under Wazir Khan, the governor of Sirhind, in pursuit. Guided by a Brar chief's man, he reached Khidrane Di Dhab, a rain-fed pool that was the only water for miles in a semi-desert tract, and chose to make his stand around it. The forty, searching for him to beg forgiveness, arrived at the same ground at almost the same hour as the pursuit.

The battle at Khidrana, 29 December 1705

The forty and Mai Bhago took position in a thicket by the pool, while the Guru watched and shot arrows in support from a sandy mound, the tibbi, about a kilometre and a half away. The fighting was close and desperate. The Mughal column, far from its own water, could not reach the pool, and thirst in that dry country did what Sikh resistance had begun: the imperial force withdrew. Every one of the forty was killed or dying. When the Guru came down and moved among them, he found Bhai Mahan Singh still alive. Held in the Guru's lap, Mahan Singh asked for one thing only: that the bedava be destroyed. The Guru took it out and tore it up, and Mahan Singh died at peace. Mai Bhago, gravely wounded, recovered and remained in the Guru's service. Sources differ on the exact strengths and losses, and some local tradition gives a different day in 1705 for the battle, but the Bhatt Vahis date of 29 December 1705 is the one most accounts follow.

The shrine, the sarovar and the old van tree

The present complex grew slowly. The district's own history records Sri Darbar Sahib, as this shrine is also called, as the earliest Muktsar shrine, established by the first Sikh families who settled here around 1743. The chiefs of Kaithal, Bhai Desu Singh and Bhai Lal Singh, added to it, as did Sardar Hari Singh Nalva, a general of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. In the 1930s Sant Gurmukh Singh and Sant Sadhu Singh marble-panelled its walls and added domes, and in the 1980s the building was pulled down and rebuilt, as were several of the neighbouring shrines. Control of the shrines passed to the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee in February 1923. An old van tree, believed to predate the battle, still stands between the Divan Asthan and the Nishan Sahib, and the sarovar, roughly a hundred metres square, anchors the whole group of shrines: Tambu Sahib at its south-eastern corner and Shahidganj Sahib, where the martyrs were cremated, close by.

Mela Maghi and the daily Ardas

The Forty Muktas are not remembered once a year only. Their story is written into the Ardas, the prayer Sikhs recite daily, so the link between this pool and ordinary devotion is constant. The great gathering is Mela Maghi, held each mid-January, around 13 January, when vast numbers of pilgrims come to bathe in the sarovar and attend the divans in memory of the martyrs. The shrine also marks the birthdays of Guru Nanak Dev Ji and Guru Gobind Singh Ji and the martyrdom day of Guru Arjan Dev Ji, and it is lit up at Diwali. For a full list of shrines like this one across the country, see the guide to Gurdwaras in India.

How do I reach Gurdwara Tuti Gandi Sahib?

The gurdwara stands in the heart of Sri Muktsar Sahib city, on the western side of the sarovar, and pilgrims walk between it and the neighbouring Tambu Sahib and Shahidganj Sahib shrines in minutes. Tibbi Sahib, marking the mound from which the Guru covered the battle, lies about two kilometres away in the north-west of the city. Sri Muktsar Sahib is a district headquarters with its own railway station and bus services, roughly 53 kilometres north-west of Bathinda, 52 kilometres south of Ferozepur and 50 kilometres south-west of Faridkot. Devotees can stay at Sri Kalgidhar Niwas, which has forty rooms, a number that suits the shrine it serves. Sixteen kilometres east, at Sarai Naga on the Kotkapura road, is the birthplace of Guru Angad Dev Ji, an easy addition to the same visit. This shrine is one of the Muktsar group listed in Jugti's guide to Gurdwaras in India.