Place
Gujarat
State on India's western coast where Guru Nanak is remembered at Lakhpat and where Punjabi Sikh farmers settled in Kutch after 1965, later fighting a land freeze in the courts.
Gujarat is a state on India's western coast. Its place in the Sikh record is a gurdwara at the edge of Kutch and a community of Sikh farmers who were invited there.
Lakhpat. Gurdwara Lakhpat Sahib, also called Gurdwara Pehli Patshahi, stands at Lakhpat in Kutch. Sikh tradition, as Wikipedia records it, says Guru Nanak stayed in the town on his way to Mecca. The shrine was repaired after the earthquake of 2001, and in 2004 UNESCO gave the work an Asia-Pacific Heritage Award of Distinction, praising its care over the building and its “emphasis on involving and empowering the community”.
Key moments
- 1965 to 1984: Gujarat allots Kutch land to 550 farmers from Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan, 390 of them Sikhs. Down To Earth says they were invited after the 1965 war to secure the border and farm barren land.
- 22 October 2010: the Kutch collector issues a notice to 784 farmers, calling them “outsiders of Gujarat state” and stopping the transfer of their land under the Bombay Tenancy and Agricultural Lands Act, 1948. Without mutation they could not sell land or get bank loans.
- 2011 and 2012: the Gujarat High Court rules for the farmers (Down To Earth dates this to 2011, The Tribune to July 2012). The state appeals to the Supreme Court, where the case was still pending in April 2014.
- 5 August 2013: Chief Minister Narendra Modi tells Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal that no attempt will be made to evict the farmers, and says nearly 50,000 Sikhs live in Kutch and elsewhere in Gujarat.
- August 2023: Lawrence Bishnoi, whom Delhi Police named in June 2022 as the planner of Sidhu Moosewala's killing at Mansa on 29 May 2022, is lodged in Sabarmati Central Prison, Ahmedabad. On 16 March 2026 Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann accuses the Centre of giving him “VIP facility” there. Canada listed the Bishnoi gang as a “terrorist entity” on 29 September 2025.
What it means today. For the Panth, Gujarat appears in two ways: as the state where Punjabi farmers, most of them Sikh, saw their title to land frozen for years, and as the jail where, Punjab's chief minister says, a gang leader gets special treatment.
Sources
- Lakhpat Gurdwara Sahib, Wikipedia (Guru Nanak's stay; used because no better source loaded). en.wikipedia.org
- Media Release: UNESCO Heritage Award Winners 2004 (1 Sep 2004), UNESCO Bangkok (web archive). webarchive.unesco.org
- Outsiders in their own land (Soma Basu, 29 Apr 2014), Down To Earth. downtoearth.org.in
- Kutch Sikh farmers: Badal to take up the matter with Modi (2 Aug 2013), The Tribune. tribuneindia.com
- Modi assures Badal that Sikh farmers in Kutch will not be evicted (6 Aug 2013), The Tribune. tribuneindia.com
- Video purportedly shows jailed Bishnoi wishing Pak gangster on Eid, govt orders probe (18 Jun 2024), The Week (PTI). theweek.in
- Mann questions 'double standards' on gangsters, Lawrence Bishnoi's 'VIP' treatment in Gujarat jail (16 Mar 2026), DT Next. dtnext.in
- Government of Canada lists the Bishnoi Gang as a terrorist entity (29 Sep 2025), Public Safety Canada. canada.ca
- Sidhu Moosewala murder: close aide of main shooter arrested, Lawrence Bishnoi mastermind behind killing, say Delhi Police (8 Jun 2022), The Tribune (PTI). tribuneindia.com