Gurdwara Singh Sabha, Rawalpindiਗੁਰਦੁਆਰਾ ਸਿੰਘ ਸਭਾ, ਰਾਵਲਪਿੰਡੀ

Gurdwara Singh Sabha is the great double storey gurdwara of Raja Bazaar in Rawalpindi, Punjab, Pakistan, once the centre of the Akali Sikhs of the city. Heritage surveys describe a very big and beautiful building, its rooms for pilgrims, its langar hall and its prakash asthan, the room where the Guru Granth Sahib Ji was installed, all counted elegant. The building still stands in the bazaar, but it no longer holds worship: a government high school works inside it, and this is a heritage entry for one of the largest Sikh shrines left in Rawalpindi.

What is Gurdwara Singh Sabha, Rawalpindi?

Gurdwara Singh Sabha is a historic gurdwara in Raja Bazaar, the famous old market at the heart of Rawalpindi. Before Partition it was the headquarters shrine of the city's Akali Sikhs, the reform minded movement that had taken the management of historic gurdwaras into the community's own hands. SikhiWiki's list of the gurdwaras of Pakistan counts it among the five named gurdwaras of Rawalpindi, alongside Gurdwara Nirankari, Gurdwara Bhai Mani Singh and the two Chhevin Patshahi shrines at Narali and Damhial, and a 2025 conservation study of the city's Sikh heritage, based on the Evacuee Trust Property Board's own district archives, likewise records Gurdwara Singh Sabha in use as a school.

The centre of Rawalpindi's Akali Sikhs

The fullest description of the gurdwara comes from the standard survey of Pakistan's historic Sikh shrines, kept by the Gateway to Sikhism and the Green Pakistan tourism guides. The gurdwara stood in the famous Raja Bazaar and was the centre of the Akali Sikhs. Its building was double storeyed, very big and beautiful, with elegant rooms for pilgrims, an elegant langar hall and an elegant prakash asthan. Like the great urban gurdwaras of its time it was not kept by offerings alone: agricultural land and shops inside the city were endowed to it, and their income carried the cost of the shrine, its kitchen and its guests.

A city of gurdwaras

Rawalpindi before 1947 was a largely Sikh and Hindu trading city, and its bazaars were full of Sikh shrines. The 2025 conservation inventory identifies ten gurdwaras across the old city, among them the Nirankari gurdwara in the same bazaar quarter, Gurdwara Bhai Mani Singh in Sarrafa Bazaar, and the two gurdwaras of the Bagh Sardaran complex, built in 1895 by a family descended from Guru Nanak Dev Ji's line. Almost none of them still functions as a gurdwara. The inventory records the pattern plainly: Singh Sabha a school, Nirankari a school, Bhai Mani Singh a government school, others homes, shops and a depot. Singh Sabha, the largest of them, is the clearest example of what became of Rawalpindi's Sikh heritage.

What happened after Partition in 1947?

In 1947 Punjab was divided between India and Pakistan, and almost the whole Sikh population of Rawalpindi left for India. The city's gurdwaras passed into the keeping of the state, under what is now the Evacuee Trust Property Board, and one by one they were given new uses. Gurdwara Singh Sabha became a school, and it is a school still: the building in Raja Bazaar houses the Government Ziaul Uloom High School for Boys. The rooms built for pilgrims became classrooms, and the bazaar outside, once the commercial heart of Sikh Rawalpindi, carried on around it.

The school years and the heritage row

The building's double life has twice made the news. In 2017 the students of Ziaul Uloom School protested in Raja Bazaar over delayed repairs to damaged classrooms. Their teachers told reporters that the institution, over a century old and standing on land worth billions of rupees in the middle of the city, was in a shambles, and that they feared administrators might declare the building unsafe and demolish it for a commercial plaza. In the same period the Express Tribune reported a graver charge: part of the gurdwara had been demolished and a mosque established inside its premises by the school's own principal, and the paper condemned the act as a breach of the Evacuee Trust Property Board's own laws protecting houses of worship. The Board summoned the Rawalpindi divisional commissioner to deal with the matter. The building, by every recent account, still stands.

Can you visit Gurdwara Singh Sabha today?

There is no regular Sikh worship at Gurdwara Singh Sabha, and visitors cannot treat it as a working shrine. What can be done is to see the great double storey building from Raja Bazaar itself, Rawalpindi's busiest old market, and, on a school day, to ask at the office whether a look inside is possible. It pairs with the Bagh Sardaran complex across the old city and with the Faisalabad Singh Sabha, another great Singh Sabha gurdwara of Pakistani Punjab that has also spent its post Partition life as a school. Both stand in the Pakistan hub's list of the country's gurdwaras.

How do you reach Raja Bazaar?

Raja Bazaar is the old commercial centre of Rawalpindi, reached from anywhere in the twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad, and the gurdwara stands within the bazaar itself. Come early in the day, before the market reaches its full press, and allow time for the old city's other Sikh remains: the Nirankari gurdwara in the Namak Mandi quarter and the Bagh Sardaran complex, neither far away. The wider list of the province's shrines is in the Pakistani Punjab hub, and the national picture in the Pakistan guide.