Guru Nanak Jhira Sahibਗੁਰੂ ਨਾਨਕ ਝੀਰਾ ਸਾਹਿਬ

Guru Nanak Jhira Sahib is a Sikh shrine in a valley at Bidar, in north Karnataka, built beside a freshwater spring that tradition links to Guru Nanak Dev Ji's visit during his second udasi. In a town where well water was often unfit to drink, the spring, gathered in a pool called the Amrit Kund, made this one of the most visited Sikh pilgrimage centres in South India.

What is Guru Nanak Jhira Sahib?

Guru Nanak Jhira Sahib is the gurdwara at Shiva Nagar, Bidar, Karnataka, honouring Guru Nanak Dev Ji's halt here in the early sixteenth century. Jhira means a stream, and the name records what the place is known for: a clear spring that still flows from the rock beside the shrine. The complex includes the Darbar Sahib, a Diwan Hall and a Langar Hall, rooms for pilgrims, a hospital and a museum, set in a valley ringed by laterite hills on three sides.

Guru Nanak Dev Ji in Bidar

Guru Nanak Dev Ji reached Bidar during his second udasi, his missionary journey through southern India between about 1510 and 1514. The accounts trace his route through Nagpur and Khandwa, past the Omkareshwar temple on the Narmada, to Nanded, and then towards Hyderabad and Golconda before Bidar. At that time Bidar was the capital of the Bahmani kingdom, and since Mahmud Gawan founded his great madrasa here in 1471 to 1472 it had also been a noted centre of Arabic learning in the Deccan.

The Guru stayed on the outskirts of the town, next to a monastery of Muslim ascetics, with his companion Bhai Mardana Ji. The faqirs, led by Pir Jalaluddin, came to hear the hymns sung to Mardana's rebeck, and word of the visitor from the north spread quickly through the town. People began arriving in numbers to hear him and seek his blessing, and it was their most practical problem, water, that they laid before him.

How did the spring at Nanak Jhira appear?

Bidar stands high on a plateau, and drinking water was its old difficulty. Wells were dug, but they often failed, or produced water unfit to drink, and the monastery by the rock had no water near it at all. Tradition says that, at Pir Jalaluddin's request, Guru Nanak Dev Ji lifted a stone, in some tellings shifting rubble with his wooden sandal while uttering Sat Kartar, and clear, sweet water came out from beneath it. The spring has been known ever since as the Amrit Kund, the pool of nectar.

There is also a plainer layer beneath the tradition. Bidar's plateau is red laterite rock over an impervious trap base, and springs form naturally where the two layers meet: similar springs feed other old sites in the town. That geology does not settle what happened five centuries ago, but it does explain why a spring here, once found, could keep flowing. Devotees record that it has never dried up, and visitors still carry its water home in bottles and cans.

The shrine today

For centuries the site was looked after by Muslim custodians, a fact the Sikh accounts themselves preserve. Mai Bhago Ji, who had followed Guru Gobind Singh Ji to the Deccan, is remembered visiting it often from nearby Jinvara. The place became a major pilgrimage centre only after control passed to the Sikhs in 1948, a transfer confirmed by a court verdict in 1950. Building began under a committee headed by Sardar Bishan Singh of Hyderabad.

The main building, called Sri Harimandir Sahib, was completed in 1966, and the Guru Granth Sahib was installed in it at Hola Mohalla. It is a three storeyed structure mixing modern and older styles: a ground floor of rooms forms the base for the main diwan hall above, arranged around a sanctum of about 10 metres square, with a large refectory alongside for big gatherings. The Amrit Kund is now a canopied, square pool, and it supplies the bathing tank about 50 metres away. Later additions include a 101 room pilgrim residence, the Guru Nanak Bishram Ghar, a charity hospital, a primary school and a museum of Sikh history, which Karnataka Tourism describes as dedicated to the memory of Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji. The langar is served day and night.

Why do so many pilgrims come to Bidar?

Estimates kept by the shrine put annual visitors at about four to five lakh, a remarkable figure for a Sikh shrine this far south, and the crowds peak at Guru Nanak Gurpurab and Hola Mohalla. Bidar also has a second, later link with Sikh history: it was the home town of Bhai Sahib Singh Ji, one of the Panj Pyare who offered their heads to Guru Gobind Singh Ji in 1699. Some devotees call Nanak Jhira a second Panja Sahib, after the shrine in present day Pakistan where another spring is linked to Guru Nanak Dev Ji: the comparison is a measure of how central the flowing water is to both places.

That dependence is also the shrine's worry. Reporting cited on the site notes that the hill slopes which recharge the spring are being built over, and that roads, paving and soak pits can both starve and foul the water below. Protecting a five century old spring, in a growing town, is now part of the gurdwara's work, alongside the prayers and the langar.

How to reach Guru Nanak Jhira Sahib?

The gurdwara stands at Shiva Nagar in Bidar, at about 17.93 degrees north, 77.51 degrees east. Karnataka Tourism puts both Bidar airport and Bidar railway station about 4 kilometres away, with Hyderabad, about 150 kilometres by that source's reckoning, as the larger airport option, and Bengaluru roughly 700 kilometres by road. Bidar is also connected by road with Nanded, about 65 kilometres or so by road in most accounts, which lets pilgrims pair Jhira Sahib with Hazur Sahib on one journey. Cover your head, remove footwear, and expect the langar hall to be feeding people whatever hour you arrive.