Sialkot

Sialkot is a city in Pakistan’s Punjab, close to the Indian border. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism says Guru Nanak visited it more than once. By the Janam Sakhi account, he sat under a ber tree south-east of the town when he learnt that the Sufi faqir Hamza Ghaus had cursed the town with destruction. The Guru sent Bhai Mardana to buy a farthing’s worth of truth and a farthing’s worth of falsehood. A shopkeeper, Mula, wrote on the slips that life is false and death is true; the faqir was softened, and Mula became the Guru’s disciple.

Key moments

• 1913 to 1920: after the mahant of Gurdwara Babe di Ber died in 1913, the government recognised a minor as his successor and named an apostate as manager. Sikhs formed the Khalsa Sevak Jatha, lost their suit, and began an agitation of meetings and processions. On 5 October 1920 the government withdrew its cases against Sikh leaders and recognised the nine-member committee that had already occupied the gurdwara. The Encyclopaedia counts this as the first episode in the campaign to reform the management of Sikh shrines in the Punjab.
• 1947: the city’s two historic gurdwaras, Babe di Ber and Baoli Sahib, the house of Bhai Mula, were abandoned in the exodus.
• December 1992: Babe di Ber was sealed after attacks on Pakistan’s minorities that followed the attack on the Babri Mosque in India. It stayed closed until 2013, when it was repaired and reopened (Arab News).
• June 2019: Punjab’s provincial government announced that pilgrims from India could visit it, given its nearness to the Kartarpur corridor.

What it means today. Arab News reported in 2019 that the gurdwara is a small building around the old ber tree in a crowded lane. Of the 205 kanals it holds on paper, only six remained, the rest taken by shops and houses. Its caretaker said that when he arrived in 2012 a mob had turned it into the shrine of a Muslim saint, and that police helped hand it back to Sikhs. The shrine is where the Guru’s story and the Sikh-Sufi meeting meet, and where the fight over who runs Sikh shrines began.