ਸੁਰ ਸਿੰਘਸੁਰ ਸਿੰਘ

Sur Singh is a large village in Patti tehsil of Tarn Taran district, in the Majha region of Punjab, counted in the Bhikhiwind block. The 2011 Census recorded 12,555 residents in 2,314 households across two gram panchayats, Sur Singh and Aulakh. It stands in the border belt west of Tarn Taran Sahib, 7 km from Bhikhiwind and 22 km from Patti, its tehsil town. Most of its farmland drinks canal water, and its fields run towards the Pakistan border country of the Khem Karan side. But Sur Singh's real claim on memory is older than any canal: Sikh tradition remembers it as the village of Baba Hardas Singh, the scribe and warrior who was the grandfather of Jassa Singh Ramgarhia.

Baba Hardas Singh and the Ramgarhia connection

Baba Hardas Singh (1670 to 1716) is remembered in Sikh sources as a resident of Sur Singh. He took pahul, the Khalsa initiation, from Guru Gobind Singh and became an attendant of the Guru. His gift was the pen as much as the sword: he worked as a scribe alongside Bhai Mani Singh, and handwritten pothis of the Adi Granth prepared in that circle, including a Das Granthi manuscript, are credited to his hand. After the Guru's death in 1708 he joined the Khalsa campaigns of Banda Singh Bahadur, and he died in a skirmish in 1716. His line carried the village's name into Sikh history: his grandson was Jassa Singh Ramgarhia, the great misl leader who built the Ramgarhia Misl into one of the powers of eighteenth century Punjab and raised the Ramgarhia Bunga by the Golden Temple. Jassa Singh himself was born at Ichhogil near Lahore, so Sur Singh is his ancestral village rather than his birthplace, the home his grandfather's family came from. Histories of the Sikh misals place the village nineteen miles east of Khem Karan, in the same border country it occupies today. The family's own roots were in this same countryside: misl histories trace Jassa Singh's ancestors from Saidpur, in the Patti pargana, to Ichhogil near Lahore, so the Ramgarhia rise began with families of the Majha borderland moving between its villages.

An old Dhillon village of the Chabal country

The village's Sikh roots run deeper than one family. Village histories of the Chabal country record that in the time of Guru Arjan Dev, the fifth Guru, the Dhillon Jatts of a ring of villages, Dhand, Kasel, Chabal, Panjwar, Gaggobua, Thathi, Khara, Jeobala, Kairon and Sur Singh among them, adopted the Sikh faith. Their landlord and leader, Chaudhri Langah Dhillon of Chabal Kalan, was made a preacher of the faith by the Guru and carried it across this countryside. Sur Singh thus belongs to one of the oldest Sikh landscapes in Majha, settled and converted in the Gurus' own era, long before the misls fought over it. No opened source for this page names a separately documented historic shrine in the village: its place in Sikh memory runs through its people, above all Baba Hardas Singh, rather than through a famous building.

Schools, health and daily services

The Census Village Directory records a government primary school, middle school, secondary school and senior secondary school in Sur Singh. Health care in the village rests on a primary health centre and a dispensary, with a veterinary hospital for livestock; there is no community health centre or sub-centre in the village itself, so bigger treatment means the road to Bhikhiwind, Patti or Tarn Taran. The village has both a post office and a sub post office, a public distribution ration shop, an anganwadi centre and ASHA workers. Commercial and cooperative banks both operate in the village, though the directory records no ATM, and the Common Service Centre is 5 to 10 km away. Public and private buses both serve the village. Treated tap water was available in the village in 2011, and mobile phone coverage had reached it. Power supply is recorded at 12 hours a day for homes and 8 hours for agriculture.

Land, water and work

Sur Singh covers 3,360 hectares. Of 2,962.75 hectares of net sown area, a striking 2,122.28 hectares are irrigated by canal and 840.47 hectares by wells and tube-wells, which makes this a canal village first: the border belt channels, not groundwater, carry its paddy. Non-agricultural land takes 397.16 hectares. The census counted 3,914 workers, 31.18% of the population. Cultivators number 1,362 and agricultural labourers 856, with 70 people in household industry and 1,118 other workers in transport, trade, services and the public sector, a larger non-farm slice than most villages of its size, helped by the Bhikhiwind and Khem Karan road economy nearby. With a literacy rate of 65.27% and a farming base watered by canal, Sur Singh is a prosperous working village whose fame, unusually, rests on a man of the pen from three centuries ago.

Which famous Sikh figure came from Sur Singh?

Baba Hardas Singh (1670 to 1716), remembered as a resident of Sur Singh, was a scribe in the circle of Guru Gobind Singh and Bhai Mani Singh and a soldier in Banda Singh Bahadur's campaigns. He was the grandfather of Jassa Singh Ramgarhia, founder of the Ramgarhia Misl, for whom Sur Singh is the ancestral village.

How far is Sur Singh from Patti and Bhikhiwind?

Sur Singh is 22 km from Patti, its tehsil town and the nearest town in the census record, and about 7 km from Bhikhiwind, its block town. Tarn Taran Sahib, the district headquarters, is about 22 km to the east.