ਸਰਹਿੰਦਸਰਹਿੰਦ

Sirhind is a historic town in Punjab's Fatehgarh Sahib district, the twin city of Fatehgarh Sahib on the Grand Trunk Road between Ludhiana and Ambala. Once the Mughals' 'frontier of Hind' and a provincial capital, it is remembered above all for December 1704, when Guru Gobind Singh's two younger sons were martyred here on Wazir Khan's orders.

Where is Sirhind?

Sirhind stands on the Grand Trunk Road in eastern Punjab, between Ludhiana and Ambala, at 30.617 degrees north and 76.383 degrees east. It is the twin city of Fatehgarh Sahib, which lies about five kilometres to its north and serves as the district headquarters. The combined Sirhind-Fatehgarh urban area counted 60,852 people in the 2011 census. It is a municipal council town, and the local speech is Puadhi, the Punjabi of the region between the Sutlej and the Ghaggar.

From ancient frontier to Mughal capital

Sirhind's name is popularly traced to 'Sar-i Hind', the frontier of Hind, because the Mughals saw it as the gateway to Hindustan. The town is far older than the Mughals. The astronomer Varahamihira named it 'Satudar Desh' in his Sanskrit treatise, the Brihat Samhita, written between 505 and 587 CE. The Chinese traveller Hiuen Tsang, who crossed India in the seventh century, described it as the capital of the district of Shitotulo, the land of the Shatadru, the present Sutlej. Another account links the name to the Sairindhas, an Aryan tribe that once lived here.

In the twelfth century Sirhind passed to the Chauhan Rajputs of Delhi, and under Prithvi Raj Chauhan, who ruled from 1168 to 1192, it served as his military outpost. The city withstood a siege by Jasrat Khokhar in 1421, though Jasrat and the Lahore governor Sikander Tohfa took it a decade later.

Sirhind reached its height under the Mughals, when it became a provincial capital controlling the Lahore-Delhi highway. In the Mughal era the name Sirhind stood for the whole of Malwa, of which it was the capital city, and it served as the headquarters of Mughal administration in eastern Punjab. European travellers of the period wrote of its splendour, and the city grew into a centre of culture and learning. In its heyday it is said to have held 360 mosques, gardens, tombs, caravanserais and wells, and dozens of saints, scholars, poets, historians, calligraphers and scribes lived here.

One of those figures still draws pilgrims: Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi, who lived from 1564 to 1624, the Naqshbandi Sufi known as Imam-e-Rabbani, whose mausoleum, Rauza Sharif, stands on the Sirhind-Bassi Pathana road.

The town's reach once stretched far to the south-west. In Akbar's Ain-i-Akbari, the city of ਅਬੋਹਰ appears as a pargana of the Sarkar of Sirhind, a fiscal district of the Delhi Subah with defined boundaries and assessed land revenue.

Why is Sirhind remembered: December 1704

The name Sirhind is fixed in Sikh memory by the events of December 1704. After the evacuation of Anandpur Sahib on the night of 20-21 December and the battle on the banks of the Sarsa, Guru Gobind Singh's mother Mata Gujri and his two younger sons, Baba Zorawar Singh, aged nine, and Baba Fateh Singh, aged about five, took shelter with Gangu, a former servant of the Guru's household, at his village Saheri. Gangu betrayed them to the officials at Morinda, and the three were brought to Sirhind, the headquarters of Wazir Khan, the Mughal governor. They were locked in the Thanda Burj, the cold tower, a summer retreat that was bitter in the December cold.

On 24 December the two boys were brought before Wazir Khan's court, ringed by hundreds of armed soldiers. They were told that their father, their elder brothers and all the Sikhs were dead, and offered a comfortable life if they would accept Islam. They refused, reminding the court that their grandfather, Guru Tegh Bahadur, had also refused to convert and had been martyred for his faith. A courtier, Suchanand Khatri, mocked them. On 25 December they were brought again, and even Nawab Sher Muhammad Khan of Malerkotla, who had fought the Guru in battle, refused to take part in harming the children.

Wazir Khan, whose full name was Mirza Askari, had served as the Mughal faujdar, dewan and sarkar, the deputy governor, of the Sirhind region of the Delhi Subah. He ordered the boys to be bricked alive. As the wall rose around them they stood firm, and the soldiers pushed the wall down in fury. On 27 December 1704 the two princes were beheaded and their bodies discarded. Mata Gujri, who saw their bodies, could not bear it and died.

A banker of Sirhind, Todar Mal, bought a piece of land for their cremation by laying gold coins on the ground as payment. The spot where their bodies had lain is now Gurdwara Fatehgarh Sahib; the cremation ground is marked by Gurdwara Jyoti Sarup. Baba Moti Ram Mehra, who had served the prisoners milk and water, was crushed to death with his family in an oil press on Wazir Khan's orders. Every December, the Shaheedi Jor Mela gathers lakhs of pilgrims at Fatehgarh Sahib to remember the sacrifice, observed on 24 to 26 December.

1710 and after

The Sikhs did not let Sirhind stand. On 12 May 1710, at the Battle of Chappar Chiri, the Khalsa army of Banda Singh Bahadur defeated Wazir Khan, who was beheaded on the field by the warrior Fateh Singh. Sirhind was sacked and its Mughal administration broken. In 1764 the Dal Khalsa defeated the Mughal governor Zain Khan and occupied the city. The settlement that grew around the gurdwara took the name Fatehgarh Sahib, and it is the district headquarters today.

What to see in Sirhind

Gurdwara Fatehgarh Sahib stands on the Sirhind-Morinda route. Its complex includes Gurdwara Bhora Sahib, Burj Mata Gujri, Gurdwara Sahib Ganj, the Todar Mal Jain Hall and a sarovar, and the Shaheedi Jor Mela fills it every December. Gurdwara Jyoti Sarup marks the cremation site of Mata Gujri and the Sahibzadas.

Aam Khas Bagh is the Mughal highway sarai. Shah Jahan renovated it as a royal rest house on the road to Lahore. The Daulat Khana-i-Khas, also called the Sheesh Mahal, has domes, tanks, minarets and fountains, and the Sarad Khana was built as a cooled chamber. Around the Shaheedi Jor Mela a light-and-sound show, called Sirhind Di Deewar, retells the Sikh sacrifice.

Rauza Sharif is the shrine of Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi, with the tombs of Ustad and Shagird and of Mir-i-Miran nearby; the Afghan king Shah Zaman and his wife are also buried close by. The Jahaji Haveli was the mansion of Diwan Todar Mal. About 18 kilometres away, Sanghol's archaeological museum holds Harappan finds and the remains of a Buddhist stupa.

Getting there and the town today

Sirhind is a railway junction on the Delhi-Amritsar line and sits on the Grand Trunk Road, so it is an easy stop between Ludhiana and Ambala. Pilgrims come through the year, with the great rush in December for the Shaheedi Jor Mela. The town is also an education centre: Sri Guru Granth Sahib World University and Mata Gujri College stand at Fatehgarh Sahib. Between the gurdwaras, the Mughal ruins and the university, Sirhind is a town where layers of Punjab's history sit side by side.