ਫ਼ਤਹਿਗੜ੍ਹ ਸਾਹਿਬਫਤਿਹਗੜ੍ਹ ਸਾਹਿਬ

Fatehgarh Sahib is a city in the Malwa region of Punjab, India, and the headquarters of Fatehgarh Sahib district. It stands about 5 kilometres north of its twin town ਸਰਹਿੰਦ and takes its name from Sahibzada Fateh Singh, the youngest son of Guru Gobind Singh Ji, who was martyred here with his elder brother in December 1704. The joint Sirhind-Fatehgarh Sahib Municipal Council counted 58,097 residents in the 2011 census.

Where is Fatehgarh Sahib?

Fatehgarh Sahib stands in eastern Punjab at 30.647 N and 76.393 E, just north of Sirhind on the old Grand Trunk Road corridor between Ambala and Ludhiana, the route now numbered National Highway 44. It is about 40 kilometres north of Patiala, and Chandigarh lies a short drive to the east. The city and Sirhind work as one urban unit: a single municipal council, seated at Sirhind, administers both towns together as Sirhind-Fatehgarh Sahib. Beyond the built-up streets, the wheat and paddy fields of the district begin.

A town named for a martyred child

The settlement grew around the ground where, in December 1704, the two younger sons of Guru Gobind Singh Ji were put to death on the orders of Wazir Khan, the Mughal governor of Sirhind. Zorawar Singh, aged nine, and Fateh Singh, aged seven, had been captured after the family's escape from Anandpur Sahib and were bricked alive for refusing to give up their faith. Their grandmother, Mata Gujri, died in captivity in the Thanda Burj, the cold tower, on hearing the news.

In May 1710, Sikh forces under Banda Singh Bahadur captured Sirhind and killed Wazir Khan, and the place took the name Fatehgarh, the fort of victory, in honour of the younger boy. Control of the town changed hands again and again until the Khalsa retook it for good in 1764. A shrine rose over the martyrdom site, and the present Gurdwara Fatehgarh Sahib was built in 1843 to 1844 under Maharaja Karam Singh of Patiala. Around the shrine there grew the town that today carries the name Fatehgarh Sahib.

The district headquarters

Fatehgarh Sahib became a headquarters town on 13 April 1992, when the district was created on Baisakhi day and named for Sahibzada Fateh Singh. The district has four tehsils, Fatehgarh Sahib, ਬੱਸੀ ਪਠਾਣਾ, Amloh and Khamanon, and counted 600,163 people in 2011. The town holds the district administrative complex, the courts and the offices serving all four tehsils. Fatehgarh Sahib was given formal town status in December 1996, when a nagar panchayat was formed for it, and in April 1998 that body was merged with the Sirhind municipal council. The joint council has run both towns since, across 17 wards. The 2011 census counted 58,097 people in the joint municipal area with a literacy rate of 83.49 percent; a little over half the residents were Sikh and a little under half were Hindu.

The town's work follows its twin roles. It is the market and service centre for the villages of Fatehgarh Sahib tehsil, and its district administrative complex, planned over 12 acres, gathers the district offices in one place. Pilgrims through the year and students through the academic term add a floating population on top of the resident count.

Gurdwara Fatehgarh Sahib and the Shaheedi Jor Mela

The heart of the city is Gurdwara Fatehgarh Sahib, which marks the spot of the martyrdom. Inside the complex, the underground Bhora Sahib preserves the wall in which the boys were bricked, and Gurdwara Jyoti Sarup, about 1.5 kilometres southeast on the Sirhind to Chandigarh road, marks the place where Mata Gujri and the two boys were cremated. Every year, from the 11th to the 14th of the month of Poh, usually falling between 25 and 27 December, the Shaheedi Jor Mela brings hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to the city for days of prayer and remembrance, and 26 December is observed across India as Veer Bal Diwas. The shrine's full story is told on our religion page for Fatehgarh Sahib.

An education town

District status also turned Fatehgarh Sahib into one of Punjab's education hubs. The SGPC-run Sri Guru Granth Sahib World University stands in the town, alongside Baba Banda Singh Bahadur Engineering College and its polytechnic, and the older Mata Gujri College. The state town planning report notes that education takes an unusually large share of the town's land because of these campuses, and students from across Punjab live here through the academic year, giving the pilgrim city a second, younger population.

Getting there

Fatehgarh Sahib sits just off National Highway 44, the Ambala to Ludhiana highway, about 28 kilometres from Rajpura and 65 kilometres from Ludhiana. The town has its own railway station on the Sirhind to Nangal line, and Sirhind Junction, about 5 kilometres south on the Delhi to Amritsar main line, links it to the wider rail network. From the town, the Sirhind to Chandigarh road passes Gurdwara Jyoti Sarup, and the district road network runs out to the tehsil towns listed on our Fatehgarh Sahib District page.