Jalandhar

Jalandhar is a city and district in the Doaba, the region of Jalandhar, Hoshiarpur, Nawanshahr and Kapurthala districts (IANS). Wikipedia, citing the 2011 census, puts Scheduled Castes at 38.95 percent of the district, and The Tribune calls the city’s Lok Sabha seat a reserved constituency. At Kartarpur, near the city, Guru Arjan founded a town in 1594; the Encyclopaedia of Sikhism says Guru Hargobind lived there and that the original recension of the Guru Granth Sahib stayed there with the Sodhi family after he left for Kiratpur in 1635.

Key moments

• 24 May 2009: armed men attacked Sant Niranjan Dass and Sant Ramanand of Dera Sachkhand Ballan in Vienna. Ramanand, 57, was killed. Three days of unrest followed in Punjab, with the army and paramilitary forces called out and at least 58 policemen injured (The Tribune).
• Late January 2010: Sant Niranjan Dass, head of Dera Sachkhand Ballan, declared Ravidass Dharm a separate religion for his community at Seer Govardhanpur in Banaras, not at Ballan. His followers returned to Jalandhar by the Begampura Express, and police were deployed after tension between the Samaj Bachao Morcha and the Ambedkar Sena (The Tribune).
• January 2023: The Tribune reported that churches, a rarity a decade earlier, now dot Doaba villages. The Church of Signs and Wonders at Khambra, started in 2008, had 12 branches and 1.34 million YouTube subscribers. Other leading ministries were the Open Door Church at Khojewal and Bajinder Singh’s Church of Glory and Wisdom at Tajpur.
• May 2023: ahead of the Jalandhar by-election politicians of every party visited Dera Ballan, which The Tribune says influences 19 of the 23 Doaba constituencies, and the pastors. Albert Dua of the United Christian Party claimed 900 pastors and 3 lakh believers in the district; that is his figure.
• 1 February 2026: Prime Minister Narendra Modi was due to visit the dera, on the outskirts of Jalandhar, on Ravidass Jayanti and spend about 45 minutes with its head, Sant Niranjan Das (IANS).

What it means today. Jalandhar is where two developments that concern the Panth sit side by side: a dera that has declared its own religion, and fast-growing churches that, The Tribune says, draw followers from every faith. The sources opened do not measure how many Sikhs have joined either.