July 20, 2006

“ Jo to prem khelan ka chao, sir dhar tali gali meri aao,” (Love if you wish to play out, then carry your heads on your palms and come to my alley), wrote Baba Guru Nanak (1469-1539 AD) in the Sikh holy book, the Guru Granth Sahib.

It was Sardar Lachman Singh who, following in the footsteps of the early gurus, responded to the challenge of the faith on February 20, 1921. The occupying Hindu mahants led by Mahant Narayan Das brutally massacred the Sardar and his 200 followers who had heeded his, and the Guru’s call. Nankana Sahib, the birthplace of Baba Nanak, the founder of the Sikh faith, has since acquired additional meaning for the community worldwide.

Even though a direct international bus service now links Nankana Sahib, the district headquarters of the new Punjab district Nankana, with the Sikh holy city of Amritsar across the Wagah border, the town itself remains a picture of neglect frozen in time.

Located less than 40 kilometres from Lahore across the Ravi, as the crow flies, the existing detour via the city of Sheikhupura and a zigzagging local trail through the countryside takes the visitor nearly three hours to get to Nankana Sahib.

The shrine erected to mark the auspicious birthplace of the Guru stands in all its regal grandeur amidst a cluster of haphazardly laid out bazaar and the surrounding, ungainly commercial and residential quarters.

Managed under the strict control of the Evacuee Property Trust Board (EPTB), the Gurdwara Janamasthan has a rubber-stamp managing committee comprising the local Sikh community members, who settled here from the Frontier years after the upheaval of independence when Punjab’s Sikh community was forced to leave for India. But the former have little say in correcting the way the shrine has been relegated to the back-burner by the over-bureaucratised and utterly disinterested EPTB.

Even the free dispensary located inside the gurdwara compound has been shut down as an austerity measure by the EPTB. The hostels constructed to lodge the thousands of Sikh pilgrims who come to visit Nankana Sahib from the US, UK, Canada, India and other countries across the world, are also not made available to the pilgrims unless an intervention is sought from the EPTB officials.

A sarkari officer, however, can avail the facility of staying in these hostels at the behest of the department. Ordinary pilgrims spend their nights on the open premises inside the compound, under the corridors, etc., surviving on the bare-minimum vegetarian langar provided by the EPTB from cash donations made at the shrine.

One needs to ask the government why the Gurdwara Janamasthan and other Sikh monuments in Pakistan continue to be run by the EPTB, when there is a sizable resident Sikh community in the country who should be the logical custodians of their own holy places.

The wealthy global Sikh community has expressed the desire to help the local community manage their holy places, but such requests have fallen on deaf ears.


The shrine at Nankana Sahib also has historical value besides being a centre of pilgrimage since the massacre of 1921. Following the tragedy, the then colonial government was forced to restore Sikh monuments to the community.

Many visiting Sikhs who, unlike their Pakistani counterparts can afford to speak up, liken the role of the ETPB with that of the infamous mahants.

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window)