Sultanpur Lodhiਸੁਲਤਾਨਪੁਰ ਲੋਧੀ

Sultanpur Lodhi is a historic town in Kapurthala district of Punjab, on the south bank of the Kali Bein rivulet, where Guru Nanak Dev Ji lived for more than fourteen years, worked in a grain store, raised his family, and, by Sikh tradition, attained enlightenment in the waters of the Bein in 1499 before setting out on his great journeys, the Udasis.

Why is Sultanpur Lodhi sacred to Sikhs?

After Nankana Sahib, Guru Nanak Dev Ji's birthplace in Pakistan, Sultanpur Lodhi is the town most closely tied to the founder of Sikhism. Almost everything in his settled early life happened here: his arrival as a young man in 1483, his marriage, the birth of his two sons, his years of honest work in the Nawab's store, and the disappearance in the Kali Bein after which he spoke the words that announced his mission: there is no Hindu, there is no Muslim. The town's gurdwaras mark each of those moments, which is why pilgrims come here through the year and in their tens of thousands at Guru Nanak Gurpurab.

From Sarwmanpur to the Lodhi town

The site is far older than its present name. From the 1st to the 6th century it was known as Sarwmanpur, a noted centre of Hindu and Buddhist learning. Mahmud of Ghazni's forces burnt the city in about 1020 to 1030, and in the 12th century Sultan Khan re-established it as Sultanpur. The name it carries today was completed in 1443, when Bahlol Lodi, then governor of Punjab and later Sultan of Delhi, added Lodi to it.

On the old Delhi to Lahore trade route, Sultanpur Lodhi grew into a major commercial town of markets and shops, and the Ain-i-Akbari, the administrative record of the Mughal emperor Akbar, names it as a place of standing. Its madrasas drew students from far away: tradition holds that the Mughal princes Dara Shikoh and Aurangzeb both studied in one of its schools, and the town was called Perran Puri, the city of saints, for the holy men who lived here. The Hadera, a royal rest house from those centuries, still stands, though neglected.

The town's fortunes broke in the 18th century. Nader Shah sacked and burnt it in 1739 on his march to Delhi, and Ahmad Shah Abdali destroyed it again soon after. Sardar Jassa Singh Ahluwalia rebuilt it and took its historic shrines under his protection, but it never regained its old scale, in part because the Amritsar to Jalandhar Grand Trunk Road became the main route to Delhi and passed it by.

Guru Nanak Dev Ji's fourteen years

Guru Nanak Dev Ji's connection began through family. His elder sister Bebe Nanaki was married in 1475 to Jai Ram, an official of Sultanpur Lodhi, and in 1483 his father sent the young Nanak to live with them. Through Jai Ram he was employed as the modi, the keeper of the modi khana, the civil supplies store of Nawab Daulat Khan Lodi, weighing out grain and goods to the town.

In June 1488 he married Bibi Sulakhni here, and Sultanpur Lodhi became his family home: his sons Sri Chand, born in July 1494, and Lakhmi Das, born in February 1497, were both born in the town. Sikh tradition remembers the store years for two sakhis. At the scales, the Guru is said to have weighed out thirteen measures for the price of twelve, saying tera tera, I am yours, I am yours, giving generously to every customer. When rivals reported that he was cheating the store, he was briefly held in the cell now marked by Gurdwara Kothri Sahib; the accounts were checked, found correct, and the Nawab apologised and offered him promotion, which he declined.

What happened at the Kali Bein?

Each morning the Guru bathed in the Kali Bein and sat in meditation under a ber, or jujube, tree on its bank. In 1499, by the traditional dating, he entered the rivulet and did not come out. For three days he was given up for lost. When he reappeared, at the spot now marked by Gurdwara Sant Ghat Sahib about two kilometres upstream, the Janam Sakhis record his first words as: no one is Hindu, no one is Muslim. Sikhs understand the three days as his direct communion with the Divine, from which he brought the Mool Mantar and the message he would spend the rest of his life teaching. He gave up his post at the store and set out on the Udasis, the long journeys that carried his teaching across Asia.

The gurdwaras of Sultanpur Lodhi

Gurdwara Ber Sahib is the town's principal shrine, standing on the Bein bank beside the ber tree under which the Guru meditated. The present three-storey building, raised by Maharaja Jagatjit Singh of Kapurthala, was begun on 25 February 1937 and dedicated on 26 January 1941: a marble sanctum on a high plinth, entered through a portico on slender octagonal pillars.

Around it stands a complete circuit of the Guru's life here. Gurdwara Hatt Sahib marks the store itself and preserves the thirteen weights he used to measure out provisions. Gurdwara Sant Ghat Sahib marks where he emerged from the Bein. Gurdwara Guru Ka Bagh stands on his family home, where his sons were born and where a well of the time survives, its water once used for the langar Bebe Nanaki prepared. Gurdwara Sehra Sahib recalls a later visit, Guru Arjan Dev Ji's halt here during a wedding journey, and Gurdwara Bebe Nanaki honours the sister who first recognised her brother's light. The town guide, Gurdwaras in Sultanpur Lodhi, walks through each shrine.

The Kali Bein and its revival

The Kali Bein runs about 160 kilometres from Hoshiarpur district to its meeting with the Beas and Sutlej, and by the late 20th century it was dying: choked with water hyacinth and silt, and fouled by sewage and industrial waste from the towns on its banks. In July 2000 Sant Balbir Singh Seechewal stepped into the water with a handful of volunteers and began a kar sewa, a voluntary community clean-up, that became a movement. Volunteers cleared the full 160-kilometre course, raised and planted its banks, and built bathing ghats at Sultanpur Lodhi and six other places. The work restored flow and groundwater across Doaba, earned Sant Seechewal the Padma Shri in 2017 and a place on TIME magazine's Heroes of the Environment list, and he now sits in the Rajya Sabha. His nurseries at Seechewal and Sultanpur Lodhi still give away about a lakh of saplings free every year.

How do you visit Sultanpur Lodhi?

Sultanpur Lodhi is a sub-division and tehsil town of Kapurthala district, about 27 kilometres from Kapurthala city and 42 kilometres from Jalandhar, with its own railway station on the Ferozepur division of Northern Railway and regular buses from both cities. Most visitors walk the gurdwara circuit in a day, starting at Ber Sahib on the Bein and taking choola, a sip of the holy water, as pilgrims do. The town fills completely for Guru Nanak Gurpurab: for the 550th birth anniversary in November 2019, tens of thousands of devotees arrived every day, a tented city for 35,000 people was raised, a Rs 271-crore heritage town proposal was approved, and the Prime Minister paid obeisance at Ber Sahib before opening the Kartarpur Corridor. A Pind Babe Nanak Da museum is planned on more than 65 acres.