Gurdwara Bhai Lalu di Khoi, Eminabadਗੁਰਦੁਆਰਾ ਭਾਈ ਲਾਲੂ ਦੀ ਖੋਈ, ਈਮਨਾਬਾਦ

Gurdwara Bhai Lalu di Khoi, also called Gurdwara Khuhi Bhai Lalo Ji, is a small historic gurdwara inside Eminabad in Gujranwala district, Pakistan. It marks the house and the narrow well, khuhi in Punjabi, of Bhai Lalo, the carpenter who hosted Guru Nanak Dev Ji. Sikh tradition remembers the house for the Guru's teaching on honest labour: Bhai Lalo's plain bread dripped milk, while the rich feast of the official Malik Bhago dripped blood. It is one of the Eminabad shrines in our guide to Gurdwaras in Pakistan.

What is Gurdwara Bhai Lalu di Khoi?

It is the gurdwara that grew out of Bhai Lalo's house in Eminabad, the town called Saidpur in Guru Nanak Dev Ji's time. The name comes from the khuhi, the narrow well in front of the shrine, which outlasted the house itself. The Sikh Encyclopedia records that the well was still intact and giving drinking water long after the old house had crumbled, and that the gurdwara takes its name from it. Of Eminabad's three historic gurdwaras, this is the one tied to daily work and honest earning rather than to a battle, a prison or a miracle of power.

Bhai Lalo, the carpenter of Saidpur

Bhai Lalo was a carpenter of the Ghataura clan who lived at Saidpur, now Eminabad. Sikh sources give his birth year as 1452 and his father's name as Bhai Jagat Ram. According to the Janam Sakhi tradition, Guru Nanak Dev Ji, travelling with Bhai Mardana, first came to Eminabad after leaving Sultanpur Lodhi and stayed at Bhai Lalo's house, and he stayed there again on later visits. SikhiWiki records the tradition that the Guru composed bani in Tilang raag at this house. The humble home became a dharamsala, a place where the Guru's early followers in the town gathered to hear him, long before it was a formal gurdwara.

That a Guru chose a working carpenter's house over the homes of the town's notables was itself the teaching. Bhai Lalo earned his living with his hands, in a trade that ranked low in the caste order of the time, and Guru Nanak Dev Ji treated his table as the honourable one in Saidpur. The Ramgarhia community, whose craft roots lie in carpentry, later claimed Bhai Lalo as their progenitor.

Why did Guru Nanak Dev Ji choose Bhai Lalo's bread over Malik Bhago's feast?

The sakhi told at this shrine runs as follows. Malik Bhago, a minor official of the ruler of Eminabad, held a great feast, a braham bhoj, for the Brahmins and holy men of the town, and invited Guru Nanak Dev Ji. The Guru declined, preferring Bhai Lalo's simple food. Angered, Malik Bhago had the Guru summoned by official command. The Guru came, bringing Bhai Lalo with him, and took Malik Bhago's buttered bread in one hand and Bhai Lalo's plain bread in the other. When he squeezed, blood trickled from the rich man's bread and milk oozed from the carpenter's. His income, the Guru explained, was squeezed from the blood of the poor, while Bhai Lalo's food carried the milk of hard, honest labour. Malik Bhago had no answer.

Few stories in the Sikh tradition are retold as often, because it states a whole ethic in one image. Honest work, kirat, is worshipful; wealth gathered by exploiting others is polluted, however fine the food it buys. The shrine at Bhai Lalo's house is where that ethic has a street address.

The house, the well and the shrine

The original house did not survive. What survived was the khuhi in front of it, and the later gurdwara was built around that memory and named after the well. Descriptions of the shrine show a small, modest building rather than a pilgrim complex: this was always a neighbourhood dharamsala first. When the writer Haroon Khalid visited Eminabad for Dawn and found his way here, a few streets away from Gurdwara Chaki Sahib, he found the metal door of Bhai Lalo di Khoi locked, with the town's ordinary life going on around it. That quietness is part of its character. It is a working town's shrine, not a monument.

One of Eminabad's three Guru Nanak shrines

Eminabad holds three historic gurdwaras, all bound to Guru Nanak Dev Ji's visits and to Babur's sack of Saidpur in 1521. Gurdwara Rohri Sahib, on the town's edge, marks the bed of pebbles where the Guru sat when he was arrested. Gurdwara Chaki Sahib, inside the town, kept the millstone of his captivity. Bhai Lalu di Khoi is the third, and the earliest in the story: the house where the Guru was a guest before he was a prisoner. His Babur Bani hymns, addressed again and again to "O Lalo", were spoken to the carpenter of this house, which gives the little shrine a place in the Guru's own poetry. The town's shrines were administered by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee from 28 February 1922 until Partition in 1947.

How do you reach Gurdwara Bhai Lalu di Khoi?

The gurdwara stands inside Eminabad town, a few streets from Gurdwara Chaki Sahib. Eminabad is about 55 kilometres north of Lahore and 15 kilometres south of Gujranwala, and the town is reached from the Grand Trunk Road and Eminabad railway station by a short metalled road. Pilgrim jathas visiting Pakistan usually take Eminabad's three shrines together in a single stop. Because this is a small town shrine rather than a staffed pilgrim centre, visitors can find it locked outside organised visits, so it is best seen as part of an arranged yatri group.