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Where is Tarn Taran district?

Tarn Taran is a border district in the Majha region of Punjab, India, with its headquarters at Tarn Taran Sahib, the town Guru Arjan Dev Ji founded around a great sarovar. Formed from Amritsar district on 16 June 2006, it counted 1,119,627 people in the 2011 Census.

The district lies south of Amritsar, which adjoins it to the north, with Kapurthala district to the east, Ferozepur district to the south and Pakistan to the west. Its long western edge is the international border, put at about 240 kilometres in the district profile published by the Krishi Vigyan Kendra. The Beas runs along its south eastern side, and at the southern tip the Beas meets the Sutlej at Harike. Most of the district is a flat, fertile plain between the Beas and the Ravi, given over to farming villages.

For administration the Census of 2011 recorded three tehsils, Tarn Taran, Patti and Khadur Sahib, with eight development blocks, 489 villages, of which ten were uninhabited, and four towns. The headquarters town, Tarn Taran Sahib, stands about 24 kilometres south of Amritsar on the old Delhi to Lahore road.

A young district on old sacred ground

The district is young, but the town at its heart is not. Guru Arjan Dev Ji, the fifth Guru, began the digging of the great sarovar at Tarn Taran in 1590, on a natural pond beside the Delhi to Lahore highway, while the district administration dates the laying of the town foundation to 1596. The name Tarn Taran belonged first to the sarovar itself and means, in the usual rendering, the boat that takes one across the ocean of existence. Tradition holds that the water was found to help people suffering from leprosy, and Guru Arjan made care for them part of the founding of the place, a tradition of healing and service that a leprosy home set up in 1885 later carried on.

After the Guru period the town and its shrine passed under the Bhangi Misl, ruled by a Dhillon family, from 1716 to 1810, and then into Maharaja Ranjit Singh's empire, whose court paid for gold work and a enclosing wall at the sarovar. In 1947, at Partition, Tarn Taran was one of the few tehsils in Punjab with a Sikh majority. The district itself was only created on 16 June 2006, carved out of Amritsar district, when the then Chief Minister declared it during the celebrations marking the 400th martyrdom day of Guru Arjan Dev Ji. It became the 19th district of Punjab.

The border has shaped modern memory too. In the war of 1965 Pakistani forces captured the border town of Khem Karan in early September, and from 8 to 10 September the Battle of Asal Uttar was fought nearby, described in district histories as the largest tank battle since the Second World War. Captured tanks were displayed for a time near Bhikhiwind at a spot remembered as Patton Nagar, and Khem Karan stayed under occupation for about six months, until the Tashkent agreement of 10 January 1966.

The district of the Gurus

No district in Punjab holds so much early Sikh history in so small a compass. At Tarn Taran Sahib itself, Gurdwara Sri Tarn Taran Sahib stands at the south eastern corner of the sarovar, which is described as the largest sacred pool of any gurdwara. Pilgrims gather in especially large numbers on Amavasya, the night of the new moon, and the town holds a ring of historic shrines around the tank, among them Gurdwara Guru Ka Khuh, Gurdwara Bibi Bhani Da Khuh and Gurdwara Lakeer Sahib, where Baba Deep Singh Ji is remembered to have drawn his line in 1757.

East of the headquarters, on the bank of the Beas and about 23 kilometres from Tarn Taran Sahib, lies Goindwal Sahib. Guru Amar Das Ji, the third Guru, made Goindwal the first formal centre of the Sikh community in the sixteenth century and had the Baoli Sahib dug there, a stepwell of 84 steps. Sikh tradition holds that a devotee who bathes and recites Japji Sahib on each step is freed from the cycle of births and deaths. Guru Arjan Dev Ji was born at Goindwal in 1563, before he went on to found Tarn Taran and Amritsar's Harmandir Sahib.

A short distance north of Goindwal is Khadur Sahib, the home of Guru Angad Dev Ji, the second Guru, who spent about thirteen years there with his wife Mata Khivi Ji, remembered for her service in the langar. At Khadur Sahib the Guru formalised the Gurmukhi script, opened a school to teach it to children and gathered Guru Nanak Dev Ji's hymns, work that gave the young community its own written voice. District tradition also counts visits by eight of the ten Gurus to Khadur Sahib, which is why the Tarn Taran, Goindwal and Khadur Sahib circuit is travelled by pilgrims as a single journey.

People, language and faith

The 2011 Census counted 1,119,627 people in the district over an area of 2,414 square kilometres, a density of 464 people per square kilometre. It is an overwhelmingly rural district: 977,832 people, or 87.34 percent, lived in villages, and 141,795, or 12.66 percent, in its four towns. The sex ratio stood at 900 females for every 1,000 males, and the average literacy rate was 67.81 percent, with male literacy at 73.24 percent and female literacy at 61.85 percent.

By faith the district is the most heavily Sikh in Punjab. The Census counted Sikhs at 93.33 percent, Hindus at 5.40 percent and Christians at 0.54 percent, with Scheduled Castes making up 33.71 percent. Punjabi is the language of daily life, returned by about 99 percent of residents in 2011, and of the district's schools, markets and gurdwaras. That farming countryside and intense Sikh religious life give Tarn Taran a character quite different from commercial Amritsar next door.

Farming and the border economy

The district administration sums up the local economy plainly: the main occupation is agriculture and agro industry, with very few other industries. The Krishi Vigyan Kendra profile records a rice and wheat cropping system across almost all of the net sown area of about 2.17 lakh hectares, nearly all of it double cropped, with tubewells as the main source of irrigation. Wheat dominates the winter season and paddy the summer, while vegetables, especially peas in winter, and summer moong are growing parts of the rotation, and dairy animals, above all buffaloes, are kept in large numbers across the villages.

The border is an economic fact as well as a line on the map. The district profile records about 4,192 hectares of land lying beyond the border fence, of which about 3,597 hectares remain cultivable, farmed by local families under the arrangements that govern that strip. Average rainfall is put at 482.9 millimetres a year. Grain markets in Tarn Taran, Patti and Bhikhiwind collect the harvest, and work, trade and family life all look naturally toward Amritsar, the nearest large city and market.

Harike and places to see

At the district's southern tip lies its great natural treasure. Harike Wetland, also called Hari-ke-Pattan, formed after headworks were built across the Sutlej in 1953, just below the confluence of the Beas and the Sutlej. The Ramsar Sites Information Service lists Harike Lake as site number 462, designated on 23 March 1990, covering 4,100 hectares, a shallow reservoir with thirteen islands that supports over 200,000 ducks, geese and swans during migration. The wetland was declared a bird sanctuary in 1982, and winter brings large numbers of migratory birds to its waters, making it one of northern India's best known birding places.

For most visitors the district is travelled as a pilgrim circuit first: the great sarovar at Tarn Taran Sahib, the 84 steps of the Baoli at Goindwal Sahib, and the Guru's town at Khadur Sahib. Patti, the old second town, adds a different layer, with its historic fort, built in 1755 and now housing the town police station, a reminder of the misl period. Harike is best combined with that circuit in winter, when the birds are in and the fields are green with wheat.

Getting to Tarn Taran district

There is no commercial airport in the district, and the nearest is Sri Guru Ram Dass Ji International Airport at Amritsar, about an hour's drive from Tarn Taran Sahib town. By rail, the Amritsar to Khem Karan line and the Beas to Tarn Taran line both pass through the district, and Tarn Taran Junction connects the two, with trains toward Amritsar, Beas and the border towns. By road the district is crossed by national highways including NH 54 and NH 354, and buses link Tarn Taran Sahib, Patti, Bhikhiwind and Khadur Sahib with Amritsar and with each other through the day.