Saka Nankana: SGPC begins research to identify massacred Sikhs

GS Paul

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, February 28

Like Jallianwala Bagh, the exact number of people killed a century ago during the Nankana Sahib massacre, popularly known as ‘Saka Nankana Sahib’, is not known.

The SGPC has initiated steps to do a thorough research on this and has entrusted the task to Shaheed Sikh Missionary College team in Amritsar. The college was opened in 1927 as a memorial to the martyrs. A wall-mounted board here has a reference to 86 martyrs.

The Saka Nankana Sahib was a murderous assault on Sikh jathas at Janam Asthan, Sri Nankana Sahib, by goons of Mahant Narain Das on February 20, 1921.

SGPC president Bibi Jagir Kaur said a century after the grim episode, it was hard to identify the martyrs, yet the research team was earnestly trying to locate their kin.

Recently, the SGPC had honoured around 35 families of the martyrs at a programme held at Godharpur village in Gurdaspur district, where the kin of Shaheed Bhai Lachchman Singh Dharowali lived. He had led a jatha consisting of around 150 Sikhs to Nankana Sahib, but was brutally murdered along with others.

Well versed in Sikh religious studies, Prof Manjit Kaur, principal of Sikh Missionary College, said an FIR was registered by the then inspector Charan Singh, in which credentials of 156 Sikhs who were martyred or wounded, were mentioned.

Though some history notes quote the martyrs’ count at 260, some estimates say it is between 86 and 150, but the figure could be somewhere near 450, she added.

“At present, we have a list of around 90 martyrs, of which 40 belonged to Majha, 12-13 to Doaba, whereas some had shifted to UP and Haryana. Some were settled in UK and US too,” she