Rode village

Rode is a village in Bagha Purana tehsil of Moga district, Punjab; Wikipedia gives its 2011 population as 9,270. Moga district was cut from Faridkot and Firozpur on 24 November 1995 (Wikipedia); the Encyclopaedia of Sikhism places Rode in Faridkot district when it records that Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale was born there in 1947, the son of Baba Joginder Singh, a Brar Jatt farmer of moderate means, and Mata Nihal Kaur. ThePrint describes the gurdwara at Rode as built at the site where Bhindranwale was born, and Amritpal Singh himself called the village Bhindranwale's birthplace.

Key moments

• 1947: Bhindranwale is born at Rode (Encyclopaedia of Sikhism).
• October 1987: World Sikh News reported that the Punjab police chief, J. F. Ribeiro, met Baba Joginder Singh, then 76 and a senior leader of the United Akali Dal, at his son Harjit Singh's home in Rode. The Baba told him he had been under house arrest since 18 May, and Ribeiro promised cataract surgery on his left eye.
• 29 September 2022: a dastarbandi at Rode made Amritpal Singh head of a faction of Waris Punjab De, on the first anniversary of the organisation's founding. ThePrint says Rode was chosen because it is the ancestral home of Bhindranwale, and that Bhindranwale's family and the gurdwara's sevadars distanced themselves from the event; one sevadar said they were only asked to prepare langar.
• 23 April 2023: after 34 days on the run, Amritpal Singh was taken at the Rode gurdwara. The Punjab Police spokesman, IG Sukhchain Singh Gill, said he was arrested at 6:45 a.m. after police surrounded the gurdwara and did not enter it out of respect for the place. Jasbir Singh Rode, a former Jathedar of the Akal Takht, said Amritpal addressed the sangat and then surrendered. In a video Amritpal called it the birthplace of Bhindranwale and the place where his dastarbandi was held.

What it means today. Rode is remembered in the Panth as Bhindranwale's village. In 2022 and 2023 it was also where Amritpal Singh, a living political figure whom his supporters and the state see very differently, was made head of a Waris Punjab De faction and where he was taken into custody. The sources opened do not say who manages the gurdwara.