ਡੇਰਾ ਬਾਬਾ ਨਾਨਕਡੇਰਾ ਬਾਬਾ ਨਾਨਕ

ਇਤਿਹਾਸ

Dera Baba Nanak stands on the left bank of the Ravi, about 35 kilometres west of Gurdaspur and a short distance from the international border. It is one of the most sacred places in Sikhism because of its intimate connection with Guru Nanak Dev Ji. The Guru came here in December 1515, after his first udasi, to meet his wife Mata Sulakhni and his sons Sri Chand and Lakhmi Das, who were staying with her parents at nearby Pakho-ke-Randhawa, where his father-in-law Lala Mool Raj worked as a patwari.

Guru Nanak Dev Ji later settled across the river at Kartarpur, where he spent the last years of his life and where he died in 1539. His Bedi descendants, the Khatri family line that traces itself to the Guru, built a new town on this bank and named it Dera Baba Nanak, 'the camp of Baba Nanak', after their ancestor. Much of the town's land is still owned by Bedi families. The town later became the headquarters of a new tehsil, and in November 2019 the Kartarpur Corridor opened here, giving pilgrims visa-free passage to Gurdwara Kartarpur Sahib across the border.

Geography & people

The town sits on the Ravi's bank in the western part of Gurdaspur district, in a flat, intensively farmed plain. The 2011 census counted 6,394 residents, 3,331 men and 3,063 women. Hindus form a narrow majority at 55.5 percent, Sikhs 41.1 percent, and Christians under 3 percent, a mixed community that makes the town's Gurpurab crowds especially diverse. The town's literacy rate of 87.4 percent stands well above Punjab's average of 75.8 percent. Punjabi is the common language, and the town fills with pilgrims on Gurpurabs, especially the Guru's birth anniversary.

Places of interest

Three historic gurdwaras anchor the town. Gurdwara Sri Darbar Sahib commemorates Guru Nanak Dev Ji's visit and stands at the heart of the pilgrim circuit. Gurdwara Sri Chola Sahib preserves a robe, the chola, believed to have been worn by Guru Nanak Dev Ji on his travels to Mecca and Medina, bearing Quranic inscriptions; it was examined in 1895 by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. Gurdwara Tahli Sahib is associated with Baba Sri Chand, the Guru's elder son.

The Kartarpur Corridor terminal, opened in 2019, is the town's modern landmark, from it pilgrims walk the visa-free passage to Kartarpur Sahib, the site of Guru Nanak Dev Ji's final years, visible across the fields.

The Chola of Guru Nanak

The town's most remarkable relic is the robe kept at Gurdwara Sri Chola Sahib. The chola, embroidered with Quranic inscriptions, is believed to have been worn by ਗੁਰੂ ਨਾਨਕ ਦੇਵ ਜੀ on his travels to Mecca and Medina in Arabia. It passed down through four generations of his descendants before being preserved as a sacred relic. In 1895 Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the founder of the Ahmadiyya movement, examined the robe, an episode Sikh historians record as his attempt to argue that Guru Nanak was a Muslim.

The Kartarpur Corridor

In November 2019 a visa-free corridor opened from Dera Baba Nanak across the international border to Gurdwara Kartarpur Sahib, the shrine at Kartarpur where Guru Nanak spent his final years and died in 1539. Pilgrims now walk from the corridor terminal here, on the Ravi's left bank, straight to the darbar across the fields that the Guru's own descendants once farmed. It is the Indian end of the passage to the ਪਾਕਿਸਤਾਨ ਦੇ ਗੁਰਦੁਆਰੇ. For families divided by Partition, and for Sikhs who had only ever seen Kartarpur Sahib's white dome from the border viewing platform, the opening was a homecoming seventy-two years late.

Visiting Dera Baba Nanak

The town lies about 35 kilometres west of Gurdaspur city, a short drive from the district headquarters. The three historic gurdwaras sit close together, making a walking pilgrimage easy; the Kartarpur Corridor terminal is the modern landmark on the town's edge. The busiest time is Guru Nanak's birth anniversary (Gurpurab, October–November), when the town's mixed community, Hindu, Sikh, Christian, joins the celebrations together.

Notable people

Guru Nanak Dev Ji is the town's reason for being, his family ties here, through his in-laws at Pakho-ke-Randhawa, drew him to this bank of the Ravi. Baba Sri Chand, his elder son and founder of the Udasi tradition, is commemorated at Tahli Sahib. The Bedi families of the town, who trace their lineage directly to the Guru, remain its most prominent residents and custodians of its shrines.