Gurdwara Khara Sahib, Mattu Bhaikeਗੁਰਦੁਆਰਾ ਖਾਰਾ ਸਾਹਿਬ, ਮੱਟੂ ਭੈਕੇ

Gurdwara Khara Sahib, also known as Gurdwara Mattu Bhaike and Gurdwara Chhevin Patshahi, is a historic gurdwara at the village of Mattu Bhaike in Nowshera Virkan tehsil, Gujranwala district, Pakistan. It commemorates the 1620 visit of Guru Hargobind Ji, who taught here against tobacco. Its domed building, raised by local Sikhs in the 1930s, was protected for decades by the village's Muslim families after Partition and handed back to the Sikh community in July 2019. It is one of the Gujranwala district shrines in our guide to Gurdwaras in Pakistan.

What is Gurdwara Khara Sahib?

It is the gurdwara of Mattu Bhaike village, standing just before the entrance to the village, about two kilometres south east of the Nowshera Virkan police station. The name Chhevin Patshahi, the Sixth Sovereign, marks its link with Guru Hargobind Ji, the sixth Guru. For most of the years since 1947 it had no Sikh congregation of its own: the village that guarded it was the Mattu clan, whose families are today Muslim and Sikh on the two sides of the border. Since the 2019 handover and the start of restoration work, it has been returning to use as a living gurdwara.

Guru Hargobind Ji at Mattu Bhaike in 1620

Sikh tradition holds that Guru Hargobind Ji halted at Mattu Bhaike in 1620, on his return journey from Kashmir. He preached here, in the same missionary spirit as his grandfather Guru Nanak Dev Ji's travels through this countryside two generations earlier, and he spoke plainly against tobacco, urging his hearers to give it up. The halt was brief, but the village kept its memory for three centuries, first in story and later in brick, tile and fresco.

Why is the story of the other Hargobind remembered here?

The sakhi at the heart of this shrine is told on SikhiWiki as follows. While Guru Hargobind Ji was staying here, a man came, bowed before him and sat close by. His moustache had yellowed from smoking. The Guru asked his name. "Hargobind is my name," he replied. The Guru answered: "You carry this name, yet you commit the offence of smoking." The man gave up tobacco on the spot, asked forgiveness and became a disciple. Dawn's account of the shrine notes that the Guru's words here were later remembered as a standing rule of the faith against tobacco, falsehood and intoxicants. The story turns on the weight of a name: to carry the Guru's name, the villager is told, is to live up to it.

Architecture: Corinthian columns, tiles and frescoes

The main building is a handsome domed structure quite unlike a village shrine of earlier centuries. Inscriptions and plaques on it record that it was built in Samvat 1990, about 1933 to 1934, by local Sikhs; some accounts give the years 1940 to 1945 instead, and Dawn's writers described it as raised by prosperous local Sikhs after 1940. A smaller building beside it is older, from the early 1900s, and may have served as a Sukhasan room for the Guru Granth Sahib. The complex is built of marble, stone, glass, engraved wood and stucco, with classical Greek touches: Corinthian style columns and cement ornament on the facade, four entrances and eight windows. Inside, SikhiWiki describes black and white tiled floors and walls and ceilings covered in floral painting. Frescoes in the complex tell sakhis from Guru Nanak Dev Ji's life, and its samadh carries frescoes of its own, one faded painting of the Guru seated under a tree among them. A fair was once held here on the 7th of Saawan.

Partition, protection and the 2019 handover

The gurdwara was managed by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee until Partition in 1947, when the Sikh families of Mattu Bhaike and the villages around it left for India. What happened next is the reason this shrine is written about far beyond Punjab. Reporting for Dawn in 2019, Saif Tahir and Zahida Rehman Jatt found the building intact and cared for by its Muslim neighbours. Ijaz Mattu told them his ancestors were Sikhs, that his family helped their Sikh cousins cross the border in 1947 and kept their houses and lands in trust, and that in 1992, when some men came to destroy the gurdwara after the Babri Masjid demolition, the whole village turned out to protect it. Sikh pilgrims who first returned in the 1960s were welcomed the same way. "This is the land of Waris Shah," Ijaz recalled his grandfather saying. "It yields nothing but love." In July 2019, control of the gurdwara was formally handed over to the Sikh community, and restoration began under the Punjab Sikh Sangat; reports in 2024 said the Guru Granth Sahib was expected to be installed by November that year.

How do you reach Gurdwara Khara Sahib?

Mattu Bhaike lies in Nowshera Virkan tehsil of Gujranwala district, and the gurdwara stands just before the entrance to the village, about two kilometres south east of the Nowshera Virkan police station. It is a rural shrine rather than a town pilgrim centre, and visits are usually made by organised yatri groups travelling the Gujranwala district circuit, the same countryside that holds the Guru Nanak shrines of Eminabad. Travellers should expect a quiet village welcome rather than facilities, and should check the shrine's current opening arrangements through the Pakistan Sikh Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee before going.