Sikh pil­grims pay obei­sance at the ren­o­vated Gur­d­wara Sacha Sauda in Pak­istan, and on this side of the Rad­cliff line, some  make a bee­line to the pseudo-cen­tre in Sirsa.

Hun­dreds of Sikh pil­grims vis­ited the re­cently ren­o­vated and en­larged precincts of Gur­d­wara Sacha Sauda, built to com­mem­o­rate the Sacha Sauda -the real bar­gain of the First Mas­ter, Guru Nanak. The youth Nanak told to go to do a bar­gain with Rs. 20 by his fa­ther Mehta Kalu, sim­ply spent the en­tire money feed­ing men­di­cants, sick and the poor, re­turn­ing home and say­ing that he had the “real bar­gain.” In this way, he ex­em­pli­fied the doc­trine of Vandh Chakko -shar­ing at the same time giv­ing a spir­i­tual twist to spend­ing money for busi­ness.

The Gur­d­wara Sacha Sauda in Pak­istan ren­o­vated by the Evac­uee Trust Prop­erty Board of Pak­istan saw the pil­grims be­ing af­forded fa­cil­i­ties of trans­port, ac­com­mo­da­tion and food. Sit­u­ated nearly 40 kilo­me­tres from La­hore, in Chuhrkhana of Sheikhupura dis­trict, the main­te­nance, up­keep and ren­o­va­tion has been made pos­si­ble by the ef­forts of the Pak­istan gov­ern­ment and con­tri­bu­tions from Sikhs from across the world since the last nearly two decades. 

Ad­di­tional Sec­re­tary Shrines Tariq Khan Wazir, Deputy Sec­re­tary Im­ran Gondal and Sheikh­pura Ad­min­is­tra­tor Muham­mad Ishaq per­son­ally su­per­vised the hos­pi­tal­ity arrange­ments, which were much ap­pre­ci­ated by fe­male pil­grims as well.

It is im­por­tant to men­tion that this Gur­d­wara in Pak­istan is the real Sacha Sauda cen­tre and not the pseudo-cen­tre which has again re-opened af­ter a brief gap in Sirsa by the fam­ily and fol­low­ers of the pseud-saint rapist Gurmeet Ram Rahim, now be­hind bars for 20 years.

It is time that some­one from the Sikh com­mu­nity chal­lenges the pseudo-cen­tre from mis­us­ing the nomen­cla­ture Sacha Sauda, just as the Sikhs were up in arms against the use of his at­tire mim­ic­k­ing the Tenth Mas­ter Guru Gob­ind Singh.