Gurdwara Shahidganj Sahibਗੁਰਦੁਆਰਾ ਸ਼ਹੀਦਗੰਜ ਸਾਹਿਬ

Gurdwara Shahidganj Sahib stands about fifty metres west of the great sarovar of Sri Muktsar Sahib, in the Malwa country of Punjab, and it is the most solemn ground in the city. Also called Angitha Sahib, the Shrine of the Pyre, it marks the exact spot where Guru Gobind Singh Ji himself performed the last rites of the Forty Muktas, the forty Sikhs who had died fighting a pursuing Mughal army at the pool of Khidrana on 29 December 1705. Every other Muktsar shrine tells of the battle. This one tells of what the Guru did when the fighting was over: he gathered his dead, honoured them one by one, and gave them fire with his own hands.

Why is it called Angitha Sahib?

Shahidganj means the place of the martyrs, and ganj in this usage is a resting place or store of something precious. The older name says more. An angitha is a funeral pyre, and this ground is remembered above all as a cremation ground: the place where the bodies of the forty were cremated by the Guru after the battle. Sikh tradition, recorded in accounts of the day, holds that the Guru had the martyrs bathed, laid them on a pyre, recited the Sohila, the night prayer, stood for the Ardas, and lit the fire himself. He also asked that the ground be kept undisturbed and honoured, promising that a shrine would one day rise here. The name Angitha Sahib has never been replaced by the grander Shahidganj, and local people still use both.

The battle, and the morning after

The story is told in full at Gurdwara Tuti Gandi Sahib, the principal shrine across the sarovar. In brief: forty Majha Sikhs who had signed a bedava, a written renunciation, during the siege of Anandpur Sahib in 1704 came back under the lead of Mai Bhago to beg the Guru's forgiveness, and placed themselves between him and the pursuing column of Wazir Khan, the governor of Sirhind, at the pool of Khidrana. They fought from a thicket by the water and fell to the last man, but the imperial force, unable to reach the pool in that dry tract, withdrew. The Guru came down from his mound, blessed the dead, found Bhai Mahan Singh still alive, tore up the bedava at his dying request, and named the forty the Forty Muktas, the Liberated Ones. What followed belonged to this ground: the cremation of the forty, carried out by the Guru himself on the spot Shahidganj now marks. Sources differ on the battle's exact day, the Bhatt Vahis giving 29 December 1705 while local tradition favours a spring date, but no account separates the cremation from the battle it closed.

The building: a Faridkot shrine rebuilt by kar seva

For more than a century and a half the cremation ground was marked simply, as the Guru is said to have asked. The first building here was raised in 1870 by Raja Wazir Singh of Faridkot, the Sikh princely state whose rulers supported several of the Muktsar shrines. That structure served until the 1980s, when it was replaced through kar seva, voluntary service, by the building visitors see today: a rectangular domed hall standing beside a water tank, a short walk west of the sarovar. Inside, the walls carry paintings of the Sikh Gurus and scenes from their lives, so that the hall teaches the wider story as well as marking this one. Control of the Muktsar shrines, Shahidganj among them, passed from hereditary custodians to the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee in February 1923, and the shrine is administered with the rest of the sarovar group.

Shahidganj among the Muktsar shrines

Pilgrims rarely visit Shahidganj alone. It is one station in a walk around the sarovar that the faithful have made for generations. Across the water on the western bank stands Tuti Gandi Sahib, the principal shrine, named for the broken bond retied. At the south-eastern corner is Tambu Sahib, where the forty draped bushes with cloth to look like tents. About two kilometres north-west is Tibbi Sahib, the mound from which the Guru directed the battle, and close to Tibbi stands Rakabsar Sahib, where his horse's stirrup is said to have snapped as he came down. The Sikh Encyclopedia counts five gurdwaras at Muktsar commemorating the events of that single day, and Shahidganj is the quietest of them: the place of endings, and of honour paid to the dead. All of them appear in Jugti's guide to Gurdwaras in India.

Mela Maghi at Shahidganj Sahib

The shrine's great day is the same as the whole city's: Mela Maghi, the mid-January fair held in memory of the Forty Muktas. Pilgrims bathe in the sarovar, attend divans at the main shrine, and move from gurdwara to gurdwara around the pool; Shahidganj, as the martyrs' own ground, draws crowds on the first of Magh, around 12 and 13 January, when the fair is at its height. The tradition that the month of Magh is the martyrs' memorial season is credited to Bhai Larigar Singh, an eighteenth-century Nirmala saint who first marked out the battle sites at Muktsar. Outside the fair the shrine keeps the daily rhythm of a working gurdwara, and its painted hall rewards a slow visit at any season.

How do I reach Gurdwara Shahidganj Sahib?

Shahidganj Sahib is inside Sri Muktsar Sahib city, about fifty metres west of the sarovar in the main shrine complex, so any pilgrim who reaches the Darbar Sahib is already a few minutes from it on foot. The city is a district headquarters in south-western Punjab with its own railway station and bus stand, roughly 53 kilometres north-west of Bathinda, 52 kilometres south of Ferozepur and 50 kilometres south-west of Faridkot. Pilgrims staying overnight use the accommodation at the main shrine, including Sri Kalgidhar Niwas with its forty rooms. Many combine the visit with Sarai Naga, about sixteen kilometres east on the Kotkapura road, the birthplace of Guru Angad Dev Ji.