The birthplace
The town, formerly Rai Bhoi di Talwandi, is where Nanak was born in 1469. Gurdwara Janam Asthan stands at the site of the house, and several further gurdwaras in the town mark episodes of his early life. The present buildings owe much to the patronage of Ranjit Singh in the early nineteenth century.
The 1921 massacre
By the early twentieth century many historic gurdwaras had passed into the control of hereditary custodians, mahants, who treated the endowments as personal property and in some cases had abandoned Sikh practice. A reform movement, the Akali movement, campaigned to bring them under community management.
In February 1921 a body of reformers entered Nankana Sahib peacefully and was attacked by the mahant's armed retainers; some 130 or more were killed and bodies were burned. The scale of the killing at the birthplace of the founder produced an enormous reaction and accelerated the passage of the Sikh Gurdwaras Act of 1925, which placed the historic gurdwaras under the elected Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee.
After Partition
Partition in 1947 left Nankana Sahib in Pakistan and the great majority of Sikhs in India. The gurdwaras are maintained by the Pakistan Evacuee Trust Property Board, and Indian pilgrims travel there under agreed quotas, chiefly for the anniversary of Nanak's birth. Access has fluctuated with relations between the two states.
Further reading
- Fenech, Louis E. The Sikh Zafar-namah of Guru Gobind Singh. Oxford University Press, 2013
- Grewal, J. S. The Sikhs of the Punjab. Cambridge University Press, 1998
- Grewal, J. S. Guru Nanak in History. Panjab University, 1969
- Oberoi, Harjot. The Construction of Religious Boundaries. University of Chicago Press, 1994
- Singh, Khushwant. A History of the Sikhs. Oxford University Press, 2004
See also
This entry was last revised on 1 August 2026.