A historical gurdwara ‘Lal Khoi’ in Lahore has been turned into a Muslim shrine. Gurdwara ‘Lal Khoohi’ (well of blood), built at the spot where Guru Arjan Dev was kept in confinement, has now become ‘Haq Char Yaar’.
Khalid, known for documenting the historical and cultural heritage of Pakistan, said this was yet another instance of a place of worship belonging to a minority community being appropriated by the dominant Muslim population.
According to Sikh tradition, it was at this site that Guru Arjan, the fifth Guru of Sikhism, was tortured. The story goes that this site also hosted the haveli, or mansion, of Chandu Shah, the diwan of the Mughal Emperor, who had developed a hatred for the Guru after he rejected a marriage proposal of the emperor’s daughter with the Guru’s son, Hargobind.
Sikhs believe that it was at the behest of Shah, who was in connivance with Guru Arjan’s disgruntled elder brother Prithi Chand, that Mughal Emperor Jahangir, ordered the Guru’s assassination.
The Guru is believed to have spent his last days at this spot, occasionally washing and drinking from a well here – that’s how it came to be called Lal Khoi, the well of blood.
Prof JS Grewal, a chronicler of Sikh history and former director of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, confirmed that the reference to the fifth Guru’s confinement at Chandu Shah’s haveli was found in Sikh texts.
Lahore-based Majid Sheikh, a journalist and a writer who has extensively written on Lahore’s history and is now doing PhD on ‘Ancient history of Punjab’ at Cambridge University, said,
This place has nothing to do with Islam. There seems to be no limit to our ignorance.
The gurdwara was initially very small, but Sikhs purchased the adjoining houses and built a bigger building. In 1927, the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) took charge of it.
Today there is no sign of the well or the Gurdwara. However, there is a small building on the spot with the words ‘Haq Char Yaar’ painted on one of the walls. At one time a malang ( a holy beggar ) sat inside this. The locals of the area consider it to be a sacred place, even if not in its original context.