I SPENT a part of my boyhood school days in Islamabad. During my stay there, I made memorable visits mostly to the northern regions of Pakistan. I also visited the cosmopolitan cities of Karachi and Lahore. I was particularly enamoured of Lahore, once a fabled city of the grand Mughals, Sikhs and later on of the British Raj where Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims and other ethnic minorities once coexisted amidst great harmony and amity.

Lahore in the British colonial days had rightly earned the enviable sobriquet as, “Paris of the Orient”. Even in the late 1960s, it exuded a charm of its own with its Mughal monuments and gardens. However, besides the “Ajaib Ghar” (Lahore museum) and “Kim’s Gun” (Zamzama) made famous by Rudyard Kipling, the old Lahore fort along with its Sikh era exhibits which included the priceless collection of the last Sikh Maharaja Dalip Singh’s daughter, Princess Bamba Sutherland, attracted me the most.

On my very first visit to the Lahore fort, I was drawn to remnants of some interesting, fading Sikh murals on a wall in an inner courtyard. It looked somewhat incongruous in its setting and thus attracted my attention. Leaving the fort, I went to see the adjacent, elegant samadhi of the Sikh Maharaja Ranjit Singh (1780-1839), the “one-eyed lion” of the Punjab. My abiding interest in the magnificent, yet short-lived Sikh kingdom (1799-1849), and the history of the brave, hardy and industrious Sikhs of the Punjab had begun.

Ranjit Singh was a born ruler. He united the various Sikh tribes and built a powerful empire in the Punjab, with Lahore as his capital. At its zenith the whole of Punjab, Peshawar up to Khyber Pass, Kashmir, western Tibet and Sindh were under his sway. In the context of his time, Ranjit arguably possessed the most formidable modern army in South Asia, trained and commanded by some legendary foreign mercenaries — Neapolitan and French officers — some of whom had once served in Napolean’s army.

However, the Sikh court politics and culture remained in a modern era, essentially medieval in character, with its penchant for intrigue, assassination, and dissension and reckless adventurism — initiating the disastrous wars with the East India Company. As a result, the once powerful Sikh kingdom was eventually annexed by the Company in 1849, following the Anglo-Sikh wars, only ten years after Ranjit Singh’s death in 1839.

In Bangladesh there are approximately seven Sikh gurdwaras in Dhaka, Mymensingh, Chittagong and Sylhet. There are 10-12 million adherents to the Sikh faith worldwide.

In May 2016, Bangladesh Forum for Heritage Studies, an organisation dedicated to the promotion of cultural heritage, handed over four rare photographs taken in 1950 of the Gurdwara Nanak Shahi at Nilkhet, Dhaka, to the Gurdwara Manage­ment Committee in a simple ceremony.

The photographs of the gurdwara of 1950, taken soon after the partition of British India in 1947, documents the main gurdwara built in 1830, during the East India Company era. The adjacent auxiliary or support buildings, which then housed the langarkhana and musafirkhana, were probably also built during the same time as the gurdwara, as evident from the same architectural pattern. The gurdwara and the adjacent buildings as seen in these pictures of 1950, appear to have been in a fairly pristine condition then.

The pictures show the main gurdwara, a Company-era building, with its distinctive Indo-Mughal architectural features (especially the interior). In one of the photos it is interesting to note the presence of Sikh samadhis on the compound at the rear end of the gurdwara. Also, in the pictures can be seen a few male Sikhs. One such photo probably show the then lone Granthi (priest), the brave and dedicated, Bhai Swaran Singh, sitting on an ornate wicker chair with his long, loose hair after a bath. Bhai Swaran Singh stayed back after the partition of 1947, to look after the gurdwara, when everyone had left for India. Sadly, he along with his Bengali Muslim friend were brutally killed in 1971.

Known today as the Gurdwara Nanak Shahi located in Nilkhet, on the Dhaka University Campus, the original gurdwara was erected on this spot much earlier as it was deemed a sacred place by the Sikhs. Legend has it that Guru Nanak (1469-1539) on his visit to Dhaka, had stayed at this place to preach Sikhism. And, so did the sixth Guru Teg Bahadur (1621-1675) after him, who also lived in Dhaka for two years. The place was then a Mughal mohallah and fell under the Sujatpur mouza.

A humble gurdwara was first constructed here by a Sikh devotee, Bhai Natha, during the time of the sixth Guru. The gurdwara in the photographs date from 1830, when the earlier old gurdwara buildings were rebuilt along with additional ancillary edifices. Thus, this gurdwara in Dhaka, is considered by the Sikhs as one of the oldest and holiest in the subcontinent.

From 1947 until 1964, the gurdwara somehow managed to stay functional with financial help from local devotees and Sikh pilgrims from India. Monetary donations, however paltry, also came from Sikh personnel working for UN agencies in Dhaka and the Indian Consulate and overseas Sikhs.

However, such funds were insufficient for the overall physical upkeep of the gurdwara buildings and premises. Consequently, the gurdwara complex soon started to show signs of neglect and suffered from lack of repair.

But the real downturn in the fortune of the gurdwara started with communal riots in the then East Pakistan in 1964, followed by the Indo-Pak war of 1965, after which hostilities stopped all Sikh pilgrims coming from India. Therefore, regular funds were seriously affected. Within a very short time the gurdwara complex bore a dilapidated, forlorn and abandoned look. Invasive vegetation and adverse climatic conditions made things worse. Through all this Bhai Swaran Singh prevailed until he was killed in 1971.

During 1972 some funds were made available, and rudimentary efforts at restoration and cleaning up were conducted. In 1973 some labourers started to demolish a ruined portion of the gurdwara adjacent to the Arts faculty of Dhaka University. But it was stopped before any major damage was done to the remnants of the gurdwara.

Finally, through the initiative of Sardar Harban Singh, the then chairman, International Jute Organisation in Dhaka, a major restoration project of the gurdwara was undertaken in 1988 and completed in 1989. Thus, the gurdwara was made fully functional as a place of visitation and worship. Funds for this major restoration project were procured by the relentless efforts of Harban Singh, from overseas Sikh donations.

However, while the exterior façade of the gurdwara has undergone major structural changes, care was taken to preserve the attractive original interior with some changes made in the layout, like the added Parkarma verandah around the holy inner sanctum to provide overall protection to the Sri Darbar Sahib, where the Guru Granth Sahib is kept on a new, beautifully carved, high marble kiosk.

The Daily Star / Bangladesh

Published in Dawn, April 12th, 2017