01The Guru at the plough
After his long udasis, the travels that took him east to Kamrup and west to Mecca and Baghdad by the Sikh accounts, Guru Nanak settled on the right bank of the Ravi and called the place Kartarpur, the Creator’s town. Here he lived as a householder with Mata Sulakhni and his sons, worked his own fields, and ran a langar where everyone sat in one line to eat. The morning and evening singing of his bani began here. In 1539 he set Bhai Lehna in his place and named him Angad, part of his own body, and left the body soon after.
02Across the border
The Sikh accounts say that when the Guru left the body, his Hindu and Muslim followers each wished to perform the last rites, and found only flowers beneath the sheet. A samadhi and a grave both stand in the gurdwara compound. The Ravi’s floods washed away older buildings; the present gurdwara was raised in 1925 with a grant from Maharaja Bhupinder Singh of Patiala. In 1947 the Radcliffe line left it on the Pakistani side, about four and a half kilometres from the border, and for seventy years Sikhs at Dera Baba Nanak looked at its white dome through binoculars. The Kartarpur corridor, opened on 9 November 2019, lets Indian pilgrims cross for the day without a visa.
The life of this place
- Early 16th centuryGuru Nanak founds Kartarpur on the Ravi.
- 1539Guru Nanak installs Guru Angad and leaves the body here.
- 1925The present gurdwara is built with Patiala’s grant after floods damaged the old one.
- 1947Partition leaves the shrine in Pakistan.
- 9 November 2019The Kartarpur corridor opens for Indian pilgrims.
Indian pilgrims register online and cross by the corridor from Dera Baba Nanak in Gurdaspur district; the visit is for the day only.
