The historical Gurdwara Rori Sahib in the village Jahman, the last village of Pakistan near the Pak-India border on the Bedian Road, had stood the test of time for centuries before it collapsed in the recent heavy rains.

The gurdwara, most likely built during the Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s era, was connected to Baba Nanak as he came to this place thrice.

The negligence of the authorities’ concerned and illegal occupation of the land left behind by the Sikhs after their exodus in 1947 were most likely the main factors in furthering its fall before the recent heavy rains proved the last nail in its coffin.

The gurdwara was once surrounded by about 100 bigha (about 500 kanal) dedicated land in the Sikh majority village of Jahman. It had a pond on its front, which still exists – in fact, the only piece of land not occupied by influential land-grabbers. It had a two-storey structure, built in red Nanak Shahi bricks, with a big golden dome on its top. Now only the back wall and a small portion of a side wall survive while the dome, the central part and the whole front have completely collapsed.

“The gurdwara collapsed in the first big rain about 20 days back,” says Muhammad Sadiq, who was herding his buffaloes on the dirt road near the collapsed structure. He complains against the powerful land-grabber who has not only occupied the land of the gurdwara but also stopped the way to it by digging a four feet wide ditch along the road to block the passage to the structure. He does not know much about the man but only that he belongs to the village Lidhar.

The historical gurdwara was stated to be related to Baba Guru Nanak

Iqbal Qaiser, the Punjabi writer and researcher of Sikh and Jain holy sites in Pakistan and author of two books on the subject, says the gurdwara is related to Baba Guru Nanak and he had visited it many times.

“The visits are mentioned in the Janam Sakhis (biographies) of Baba Nanak. Baba Ji’s maternal parents lived in the nearby village of Dera Chahal where his elder sister Nanki was born. It was the village of Malik Meraj Khalid (former caretaker prime minister) that’s why the gurdwara there was repaired by the government but nobody took care of the main gurdwara of village Jahman,” says Qaiser while talking to Dawn.

In his book, the Historical Sikh Shrines in Pakistan, he writes: “the holy place is about 25km from Lahore and a metalled road leads to this village. The sacred shrine of Guru Dev Ji is located about half a kilometer outside the village. The place where Guru Dev JI had stayed came to be known as Rori Sahib.

He came to this place thrice because the maternal grandparents of Guru Dev Ji were settled in the nearby village called Dera Chahal. There was a small pool at that time which was later expanded into a tank by one of his followers, Naria, a dweller of this village. It was through his preaching and devotion that a large number of Bhabray (Jains) were converted to Sikhism.“

Qaiser further mentions that the construction of the shrine was started by Bhai Wadhawa Singh and a beautiful darbar was built. “Fairs used to be held on Vaisakhi and 20th of Jaith at the site. There is an endowment of 100 bigha land in the name of the gurdwara. The tank has since again depleted into a small pool and sky scraping dome of Rori Sahib is in need of repairs. In case no repairs are carried out within a short time it will become a heap of dust.”

The book was published in 1998 and it took only two decades for the magnificent structure to collapse since the prediction of Iqbal Qaiser. He further tells Dawn that Baba Nanak had got a Sarangi made for Bhai Mardana from a tree from the same village during his stay.

He adds that Jahman had a majority of Sikh population while the Muslims there belonged to landless artisans and scheduled castes.

After the exodus of the Sikhs from the village in 1947, the gurdwara was occupied by the Pakistan Rangers that used it as a frontier post to keep an eye on the border area.

“When I visited the gurdwara in 1994 for my book, the military men did not allow me to take pictures of it and I took pictures from a distance from behind the trees (nowhere to be seen now). They kept using the gurdwara until 1995 and left it when it developed cracks and it got risky to use it further,” informs Qaiser.

Abdul Sattar, an old resident of Jahman, has seen the gurdwara in its magnificence, saying it was a proper complete structure until about decade-and-a-half back, wondering how huge building decayed so quickly.

His question is pertinent as the remaining wall is three to four feet wide, built in small bricks and it can still hold the weight but what happened to the front side of the structure begs many questions.

Pointing out an outhouse near the gurdwara, Sattar says the powerful man has constructed that house and he has occupied the land surrounding the gurdwara.

All land around the gurdwara has paddy crop cultivated on it while some land is without cultivation but it has also been leveled by tractors, ready to be cultivated. Only the land holding the structure of the building and the pond has been left unoccupied.

Talking about the Rangers, Sattar says the village people were not happy with them as they were needlessly suppressive and would peep into villagers’ homes, mounted on top of the gurdwara. The villagers complained to a kind major who shifted the post to a place nearer to the border.

However, it seems that the move gave a freehand to the land-grabbers to grab the property and quickened the decay of the site.

Iqbal Qaiser says Jahman was not just a Sikh village but it suffered suppression for resisting against the British.

“It was a centre of the Naujwan Bharat Sabha of Bhagat Singh. Many young men of the village were also languishing in the Central Jail of Lahore when Bhagat Singh was executed there. The British rulers had arrested these young men as well to suppress his movement. It was at Jahman that the bhog (Chehlum) of Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, Rajguru and other martyrs was held. According to official intelligence reports of that time, about five to seven thousand people had gathered there,” he informs.

However, now it seems that the last citadel of Sikhism has also collapsed in the village, reducing the last sign of the Sikh religion to rubble.

Published in Dawn, July 18th, 2023