ਨਕੋਦਰਨਕੋਦਰ

Nakodar is a municipal council town and tehsil headquarters in Jalandhar district of Punjab, India, about 25 kilometres south of Jalandhar city. It counted 36,973 residents in the 2011 census. Across Punjab it is best known for the Dera Baba Murad Shah, a Sufi shrine that draws devotees of every faith.

Where is Nakodar?

Nakodar is in the central Doaba, the land between the Beas and the Sutlej, at about 223 metres above sea level. It stands on the Moga to Jalandhar section of National Highway 703, about 25 kilometres from Jalandhar, 49 kilometres from Ludhiana and about 101 kilometres from Amritsar. The town covers 12.50 square kilometres and is both a municipal council, divided into 15 wards, and the headquarters of Nakodar tehsil, whose 208,157 people in 2011 were mostly villagers: the town itself held 36,973 of them. Farming villages ring it on every side, among them Shankar, Sarih, Uggi and Malhian Kalan, and their grain, fodder and shopping all flow through its bazaars.

History: an old town on the Mughal highway

Gazetteer accounts describe Nakodar as a town of considerable antiquity. One account of its name derives it from a Persian phrase, Neki ka dar, meaning the gate of goodness; another links it to a Mongol legion, the Nikudari. Both are traditions about the name rather than proven facts, and they are best read that way. The gazetteers say the town was founded by the Hindu Kamboh, whose settlements lay west of the present town, where extensive ruins and two old tombs, nicknamed the Black Dome and the Red Dome from the colour of their materials, still marked the site. Tradition holds that the Kamboh were expelled by Nawab Kutb Khan, who came with an army from Indor near Nuh in 1570, after which the town passed to the Khanzadas.

Within two generations, the gazetteer account continues, Muslim Rajputs received the town in jagir from the emperor Jahangir. In the Sikh period the Rajputs were displaced by Sardar Tara Singh Ghaiba, who built a fort here and held the surroundings, until Maharaja Ranjit Singh took Nakodar from him in 1816. Through these changes the town kept its practical importance: it stood on the old Agra to Lahore highway, one of the great Mughal roads, and the sarais and tombs that rose along that road are still its oldest monuments. Under the British and after independence it settled into its modern role as a tehsil town and market for the central Doaba.

Geography and people

The 2011 census counted 36,973 people in the municipal council, up from 31,422 in 2001: 19,360 men and 17,613 women, a sex ratio of 910 women for every 1,000 men, in 7,814 households. Children under six numbered 3,843, about a tenth of the town, and the child sex ratio was 925. Effective literacy stood at 84.02 percent, at 87.43 percent for men and 80.27 percent for women, well above the Punjab average of the time. Scheduled Castes formed 36.49 percent of residents, and workers numbered 12,857, most of them in main work through the year. By religion, Hindus formed 77.04 percent of the town and Sikhs 19.44 percent, with small Muslim, Buddhist, Jain and Christian communities. Punjabi is the language of daily life. The town sits in flat, intensively farmed country, and its week is shaped as much by the agricultural calendar of its villages as by its own offices and schools.

What is Nakodar known for?

Above all, for the Dera Baba Murad Shah. The dera's own tradition tells that Baba Sher Shah settled here when the spot was still jungle, that his disciple Baba Murad Shah took to the Sufi path at 24 and died young, at 28, and that when Sher Shah moved to Pakistan at Partition he blessed Murad Shah to carry the darbar forward. After Murad Shah came Sai Ghulam Shah, known to everyone as Sai Laddi Shah, who led the shrine until his death in 2008, built much of the present complex and started the annual urs mela in Murad Shah's memory, with qawwali at its heart. Devotees of every faith come, Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims and Christians together, with the largest crowds on Thursdays. Visitors remember the langar, the tea and prasad served through the day, and the elaichi, cardamom, prasad the shrine is famous for. The shrine's best known devotee is the singer Gurdas Maan, a disciple of Sai Laddi Shah, and Punjabi singers have performed at its melas for decades.

Places of interest

The Dera Baba Murad Shah is the first stop: the tombs, the langar hall, the park and the broad parking grounds, all kept by the shrine's trust, and the Thursday gathering with its qawwali. The town's second treasure is far older. The Tombs of Ustad and Shagird, teacher and disciple, stand in what was once the Hadironwala Bagh, the garden of the tombs. The Ustad's tomb holds Muhammad Mumin Hussaini, a musician and nobleman of Jahangir's time, and its inscription dates it to 1612 to 1613. Facing it, the Shagird's tomb holds his pupil Haji Jamal and dates to 1657, in Shah Jahan's reign; the matching inscriptions suggest the same calligrapher wrote both. A gateway west of the tombs is said to date to 1667, and beyond the tank to the north stands a baradari with the shrine of Bahadur Khan.

A short drive north west, on the outskirts of Malhian Kalan village, stands the Dakhni Sarai, a great Mughal caravanserai on the old Agra to Lahore road, listed as a monument of national importance. Built around 1640 and attributed in some accounts to Ali Mardan Khan, it is a walled quadrangle about 180 by 172 metres, with large gateways east and west, rows of travellers' rooms around its courtyard and a domed mosque in its south west corner. Together, the dera, the tombs and the sarai give this small town three very different centuries to walk through in a single visit.

Notable people

Nakodar's defining figures are its saints: Baba Sher Shah, the founder around whom the dera grew; Baba Murad Shah, whose name it carries; and Sai Laddi Shah, who led it into the modern era and whose memory still draws the mela crowds. The town's Mughal tombs remember two more: Muhammad Mumin Hussaini, the court musician, and his pupil Haji Jamal. In the modern lists of people connected with the town, Wikipedia names the bhangra singer Malkit Singh among its notables, and the dera adds one name of its own: Gurdas Maan, not a son of the town but its most famous devotee, who has led the melas since Sai Laddi Shah's death.

Getting there, and Nakodar today

By rail, Nakodar Junction is a junction station where lines meet for Jalandhar City, Phillaur and Lohian Khas, so the town is an easy train ride from across the Doaba. By road it stands on National Highway 703 between Moga and Jalandhar, with buses through the day and autos from the bus stand to the dera. Its PIN code is 144040 and its vehicle registration is PB 33. Today Nakodar is a working tehsil town: courts and government offices, a grain market, schools and bazaars serving its villages, and, layered over all of it, the weekly rhythm of the dera, quiet on ordinary days and full to overflowing on Thursdays and at mela time. Few Punjab towns of its size hold both a living Sufi pilgrimage and Mughal monuments of national importance, and that pairing is Nakodar's real distinction.