ਖਡੂਰ ਸਾਹਿਬਖਡੂਰ ਸਾਹਿਬ

Khadur Sahib Tehsil is a tehsil of Tarn Taran district in the Majha region of Punjab, India, headquartered in the historic town of Khadur Sahib. The Census of 2011 counted 187,812 people, all of them rural, across 96 villages on the plain east of the Beas, including Goindwal Sahib.

Where is Khadur Sahib Tehsil?

Khadur Sahib Tehsil is in the eastern part of Tarn Taran district in the Majha region of Punjab, India, with its headquarters in Khadur Sahib town, about 22 kilometres from Tarn Taran city, the district headquarters. The district administration names it as one of the district's three tehsils, alongside Tarn Taran and Patti, and Goindwal Sahib works as a sub tehsil within its area. At about 370 square kilometres it is the smallest tehsil of the district, and the Census of 2011 counted 187,812 people in it, a density of 508 people per square kilometre.

The tehsil is entirely rural: the Census of 2011 recorded 96 villages and no statutory town, with 94 of the villages inhabited and 34,742 households between them. Rural development runs through three community development blocks whose villages fall inside the tehsil, Khadur Sahib, Chohla Sahib and Naushera Pannuan, and village affairs are handled by 95 gram panchayats. The headquarters town itself was counted in that census as a large village, even though it also has a nagar panchayat, and it holds the tehsil offices and services its villages use.

The Beas gives the tehsil its eastern edge. Goindwal Sahib, its second sacred centre, stands where the old east to west highway crossed the river, a ferry point that became an important transit stop after Sher Shah Suri renovated the highway in the 1540s. At district level, Amritsar district lies to the north of Tarn Taran district, Kapurthala district to the east across the Beas, and Ferozepur district to the south.

Khadur Sahib town and Guru Angad Dev Ji

Khadur Sahib town, also spelled Khadoor Sahib, is the headquarters and the largest settlement of the tehsil. The Census of 2011 counted 11,054 people in 2,027 households there, on 16.13 square kilometres, with a literacy rate of 73.45 percent and a sex ratio of 908 women per 1,000 men. The town is described as a place visited by eight of the ten Sikh Gurus, and its gurdwaras draw pilgrims through the year. Shri Guru Angad Dev College, affiliated to Guru Nanak Dev University in Amritsar and established in 1970, serves students from the town and the surrounding villages.

The town's fame rests on the second Sikh Guru. Guru Angad Dev Ji, born Lehna in 1504, made Khadur his home after his family settled there by the Beas, and when Guru Nanak Dev Ji chose him as his successor in 1539 he moved the centre of the early Sikh community from Kartarpur to Khadur. Khadur remained his base until his passing on 29 March 1552. Sikh tradition credits Guru Angad Dev Ji with standardising the Gurmukhi script, with systematising langar, the shared kitchen where all visitors eat together, and with starting mall akhara wrestling grounds where young people trained and learned healthy habits. Gurdwara Sri Khadur Sahib, also called Gurdwara Sri Darbar Sahib, marks his seat in the town, and other historic gurdwaras here are linked with Guru Amar Das Ji, among them Thara Sahib and Killa Sahib.

It was at Khadur that Amar Das served Guru Angad Dev Ji, carrying water daily from the Beas near Goindval for the Guru's bath. Sikh accounts tell how, one dark night, he stumbled into a weaver's pit while carrying the water and still kept the pitcher safe, an episode remembered at Gurdwara Khaddi Sahib in the town. In 1552 Guru Angad Dev Ji chose Amar Das, rather than his own sons, as his successor, and Guru Amar Das Ji then moved the community's headquarters to Goindval.

Goindwal Sahib and the Baoli

Goindwal Sahib, counted in the census as the village of Goindwal with 9,095 people in 2011, is the tehsil's other great Sikh centre, near the western bank of the Beas where the old highway crossed the river. A trader named Goinda planned a settlement at the ferry, and when his early efforts failed he came to Khadur to seek Guru Angad Dev Ji's blessing. The Guru sent Amar Das, who knew the track well from his daily water carrying, and the village that rose there took Goinda's name.

After becoming Guru in 1552, Guru Amar Das Ji made Goindval his seat and began the digging of its baoli, a large open well about 8 metres across whose water is reached by a covered flight of 84 steps. SikhiWiki describes Goindval as the first place of Sikh pilgrimage, so designated by its founder, and the baoli still draws devotees who descend the steps to the water. The shrine complex around it includes the Darbar Sahib, the langar hall of Guru Amar Das Ji, Thara Sahib, where the Guru supervised the digging, and Chubara Sahib, the rooms where his family lived. Goindval also became the centre of an annual Baisakhi fair in his time, and a largely attended three day fair in September marks his Joti Jot Divas.

Villages, land and farming

Beyond its two sacred centres the tehsil is a farming countryside of Majha villages. The largest after the headquarters are Fatehabad, counted at 8,860 people in 2011, Nagoke at 6,685, Vain Poin at 6,087 and Kallah at 5,341, and the largest village by area is Munda Pind at 1,671 hectares. Village records drawn from the District Census Handbook show a primary school and domestic power supply in 94 villages at the 2011 Census, with all weather roads and mobile coverage each recorded in 84 villages.

The land is the flat alluvial plain between Tarn Taran city and the Beas, and farming is the main work of the tehsil. In the headquarters village, the Census of 2011 counted 4,186 workers, and among those in main work the largest group were cultivators, with agricultural labourers next. Markets, banks and everyday services cluster in Khadur Sahib town and at Goindwal, and the Jugti tehsil directory currently lists 94 place pages under Khadur Sahib, 93 of them villages, checked in October 2026.

People of the tehsil

The Census of 2011 counted 187,812 people in the tehsil: 98,009 men and 89,803 women, a sex ratio of 916 women per 1,000 men, ahead of the Punjab average of 895. Children aged under seven numbered 22,445, about 11.95 percent of the total. Literacy stood at 62.42 percent, with male literacy at 66.56 percent and female literacy at 57.91 percent, below the state level of that census, while the headquarters town itself recorded a higher 73.45 percent.

The tehsil is one of the most strongly Sikh areas of Punjab: the census counted Sikhs at 95.88 percent of its people and Hindus at 3.07 percent, with small Muslim and Christian communities, and Scheduled Castes made up 38.05 percent of the population. Punjabi is the language of daily life and of official work: across Tarn Taran district the 2011 Census recorded Punjabi as the first language of about 99 percent of people. The area votes in the Khadur Sahib assembly constituency of the Punjab assembly.

Getting to Khadur Sahib Tehsil

The headquarters town stands about 22 kilometres by road from Tarn Taran city, the district headquarters, and buses link it with Tarn Taran, Goindwal Sahib and the villages of the tehsil. The district's national highways, NH 54, NH 354, NH 703B and NH 703A, frame the road network around the tehsil.

The tehsil has its own railway stations. The Tarn Taran to Beas branch of the Amritsar to Khem Karan line, 49 kilometres long, runs through it, with stations at Goindwal Sahib, 21 kilometres from Tarn Taran, and Khadur Sahib, 28 kilometres from Tarn Taran, before the line reaches Beas Junction on the Ambala to Attari line. The branch was built in stages: Beas to Goindwal opened in 1997 and Tarn Taran to Goindwal in 2000. There is no airport in the district; the nearest is the international airport at Amritsar.