Nankana Sahibਨਨਕਾਣਾ ਸਾਹਿਬ

Why is this town called the birthplace of the Guru?

Nankana Sahib is where the Sikh story begins. In 1469, in a town then called Rai Bhoi di Talwandi, a child was born to Mehta Kalu and Mata Tripta who would become Guru Nanak Dev Ji, the founder of Sikhism. The town was later renamed in his honour, and it holds the most sacred of the Sikh shrines in Pakistan — Gurdwara Janam Asthan, the Birthplace Shrine.

The birth of Guru Nanak Dev Ji

The town was founded by Rai Bhoi, a wealthy landlord, and was known as his Talwandi — Rai Bhoi di Talwandi. His grandson Rai Bular Bhatti later renamed it Nankana Sahib in honour of the Guru. Guru Nanak was born here in 1469, and his childhood home is the ground on which Gurdwara Janam Asthan now stands. The present shrine was built by Maharaja Ranjit Singh, who visited Nankana Sahib in 1818–19 on his way back from the Battle of Multan.

Every year the Janam Asthan hosts the great Gurpurab festivities that commemorate the Guru's birth, when pilgrims gather at the town for the full moon of Katak in October–November.

The gurdwaras of his childhood

Nankana Sahib is not one shrine but a whole landscape of the Guru's early life. Gurdwara Bal Lila stands where the young Nanak played with his friends. Gurdwara Kiara Sahib marks the pasture where his cattle strayed into a farmer's crops while he sat in meditation. Gurdwara Mal Ji Sahib, one of the smallest of the town's shrines, stands on the ground of two more childhood episodes — the shade of the Jal tree and his encounter with a cobra — and its walls are decorated with ancient ceramic tiles, each painted with a cobra. Gurdwara Patti Sahib and Gurdwara Tambu Sahib remember further episodes of those early years, and the town also holds shrines linked to the fifth and sixth Gurus: Guru Hargobind Ji is believed to have paid homage here in 1621–22.

Saka Nankana Sahib: the massacre of 1921

On 20 February 1921 Nankana Sahib became the scene of one of the darkest episodes in Sikh history. The Janam Asthan was then in the hands of a hereditary custodian, Mahant Narayan Das, accused by the reformist Akalis of corruption and of defiling the shrine. In the early hours of the morning a peaceful shaheedi jatha of about two hundred Sikhs, led by Bhai Lachhman Singh Dharowali and Jathedar Tehal Singh, entered the gurdwara to pray and to press for reform. The Mahant's hired mercenaries opened fire without warning and slaughtered the unarmed pilgrims inside the very prayer hall; the dead and dying were then piled onto logs and set alight to destroy the evidence.

Between 140 and 260 Sikhs were killed — the official figure was 86 — including children. Bhai Lachhman Singh, wounded by a gunshot, was tied to a Jand tree and burnt alive. Bullets pierced Sri Guru Granth Sahib itself; the bloodstained saroop is still brought out for the sangat's darshan each 20 February.

The aftermath: the Gurdwara Reform Movement

The outrage that followed shook all of Punjab. The next day Bhai Kartar Singh Jhabbar marched on Nankana Sahib with 2,200 Sikhs, and the British commissioner at Lahore handed the keys of the Janam Asthan to the Shiromani Committee and arrested the Mahant. In political weight the massacre is ranked next only to Jallianwala Bagh; it became the core of the Gurdwara Reform Movement, which ended with the Sikh Gurdwaras Act of 1925 — the law that took the shrines out of the mahants' hands and placed them under elected Sikh management.

The martyrs of Nankana are remembered every day in the Sikh Ardas, and the Shaheedi Asthan at the Janam Asthan — with the martyrs' Jand tree — remains a place of pilgrimage.

Nankana Sahib today

Nankana Sahib is now the headquarters of its own district in Pakistani Punjab, a city of some eighty thousand people about seventy-five kilometres west of Lahore, and the best-known of the gurdwaras in Pakistan. Until Partition its people were Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus in roughly equal numbers; today the town is predominantly Muslim, and its Sikh heritage is tended by the small local community and by pilgrims who arrive in large numbers for Gurpurab.

Visiting Nankana Sahib

The shrines are looked after by Pakistan's Evacuee Trust Property Board, and Sikh pilgrims — including jathas from India — visit throughout the year, with the largest crowds at Guru Nanak Gurpurab. Most visitors combine Nankana Sahib with Kartarpur Sahib, where the Guru spent his final years, and with the other historic gurdwaras of Pakistani Punjab. The town is an easy day's journey from Lahore.