Gurdwara Uchch Da Pir, Machhiwaraਗੁਰਦੁਆਰਾ ਉੱਚ ਦਾ ਪੀਰ, ਮਾਛੀਵਾੜਾ

Gurdwara Uchch Da Pir at Machhiwara, in Ludhiana district, Punjab, also known as Gurdwara Ghani Khan Nabi Khan Sahib, marks the house of two Pathan horse dealers who carried Guru Gobind Singh Ji out of the town in a palanquin in December 1704, dressed in blue and announced to every patrol as the Pir of Uchch, a holy man of Uchch. Their house, turned into a gurdwara after 1947, keeps the small room and the upper cell where the Guru stayed, and a copy of the hukamnama he gave the brothers in thanks.

Who were Ghani Khan and Nabi Khan?

Ghani Khan and Nabi Khan were Pathan brothers of Machhiwara who traded in horses. Their connection with the Guru was old and practical: they had visited him at Anandpur Sahib and sold him many good horses, the trade on which a hill court at war depended. When they heard that the Guru had reached Machhiwara alone, travelling on foot after the fighting at Chamkaur, they went to him at once and offered their service. They knew the price of being caught helping him, and offered anyway. Sikh memory has kept the two Muslim brothers among its most honoured helpers, and their Machhiwara house is the reason this page exists.

Why did the Guru travel as Uchch Da Pir?

Open travel was impossible. Mughal patrols were searching the roads and the villages for the Guru, and informers were watching for strangers. The brothers' answer was a disguise with a story built into it: the Guru would travel as a Muslim pir, a holy man, carried in a palanquin as holy men were, and announced as the Pir of Uchch, from Uchch in south west Punjab, an old seat of Muslim saints whose name alone commanded respect and discouraged questions. The blue clothing of the disguise was prepared at Gurdwara Chubara Sahib, where the dye pot is still kept: blue was the colour of the holy man's dress, and the Guru and his Sikhs wore it for the road. A pir is expected to travel veiled, attended and unhurried, and that expectation was the cover.

The palanquin journey

The party lifted the palanquin and walked out of Machhiwara with the Guru inside it, the brothers declaring him to all who asked as the Pir of Uchch. They carried him as far as Hehrari, a village near Raikot, where a party of Sikhs took over the palanquin and the brothers were free to turn back. Before they parted, the Guru blessed them and gave them a hukamnama, a written order of commendation recording their service, which their descendants preserved with reverence for generations. The road beyond Hehrari led on to Rai Kalha at Raikot and, in the telling of the route, toward Alamgir, where Jugti's Gurdwara Manji Sahib at Alamgir keeps the place the palanquin was set down.

What does the shrine preserve today?

The brothers' family home in Machhiwara became a gurdwara after 1947, when the family migrated to Pakistan, and it is run today under both names: Gurdwara Uchch Da Pir, for the disguise, and Gurdwara Ghani Khan Nabi Khan Sahib, for the men. It is a house shrine, not a monumental one. The Guru Granth Sahib Ji is seated in a small rectangular room, and a double storeyed cell in the house is maintained in the Guru's memory, marking the short stay he made here after moving from Gulaba's house; the shrine's tradition speaks of two days and two nights under this roof. A copy of the brothers' hukamnama is kept at the gurdwara, the original having stayed with the family's descendants.

Machhiwara's shrines together

Uchch Da Pir stands about 500 yards from Chubara Sahib, and the garden shrine of Charan Kamal Sahib is close by in the same small town, so Machhiwara holds the whole escape in three houses and a garden: the garden where the Guru slept on bare ground, the upper room where Gulaba hid him, this house where the disguise was made, and the road out of town where the palanquin turned a fugitive into a passing holy man. Read together, the three shrines also hold a rarer lesson the sangat has never forgotten: on the worst night of the Guru's life, the hands that carried him to safety belonged to devotees of three different worlds, Sikh hosts, a Sikh masand's household, and two Muslim horse dealers.

How do you reach Uchch Da Pir?

Machhiwara is reached by road from Samrala on the Ludhiana to Chandigarh highway, about 42 kilometres away, and from Ropar, about 46 kilometres, by the Guru Gobind Singh Marg. In the old town, the shrine is signed as Gurdwara Ghani Khan Nabi Khan Sahib and stands a short walk from Chubara Sahib: visit the garden at Charan Kamal first, then Gulaba's house, then this one, and you walk the stay in the order it happened. Pilgrims come in the greatest numbers in December, around the 9th and 10th of Poh, the days of the Guru's time at Machhiwara. All of the town's shrines appear in Jugti's guide to Gurdwaras in India.