01Talwandi of Rai Bular
Guru Nanak was born in 1469 to Mehta Kalu, the village accountant, and Mata Tripta, in Talwandi, a village held by Rai Bular Bhatti. The Janamsakhis tell of the child who questioned the pandit at his lessons, who refused the sacred thread unless it were woven of compassion, who spent the money for a bargain on feeding hungry sadhus, the sacha sauda, and over whose sleeping head a cobra spread its hood in the field. Rai Bular came to revere him and gave land that the gurdwaras still hold. The town took the Guru’s name, Nankana. Gurdwara Janam Asthan, Patti Sahib, Bal Lila, Kiara Sahib and Tambu Sahib each mark a place in that story.
021921 and 1947
By the early twentieth century the shrines were in the hands of hereditary mahants. On 20 February 1921 a jatha of Akali Sikhs led by Bhai Lachhman Singh entered Gurdwara Janam Asthan to take it back, and the mahant Narain Das’s hired men shut the gates and killed well over a hundred of them; some were burned alive. The massacre roused the whole Punjab and led to the Sikh Gurdwaras Act of 1925. In 1947 Nankana fell in Pakistan and its Sikhs left. Each year, at Guru Nanak’s gurpurab and on Vaisakhi, jathas of pilgrims cross from India to keep the festivals at the Janam Asthan.
The life of this place
- 1469Guru Nanak Dev is born at Talwandi.
- 20 February 1921The Nankana massacre: Akali reformers are killed inside Gurdwara Janam Asthan.
- 1925The Sikh Gurdwaras Act places the shrines under elected Sikh management.
- 1947Partition leaves Nankana Sahib in Pakistan.
Indian pilgrims go with the SGPC jathas at Guru Nanak’s gurpurab and Vaisakhi on Pakistani pilgrim visas.
