| Voice of Taran Taran
: Surendra Singh
We have good schools and colleges in Taran Taran.
The quality of education has improved tremendously.
The only sad part is we do not get descent jobs. Educated youths
are frustrated due to unemployment.
We face frequent load shedding and shortage of water.
The drainage system needs to be upgraded.
Roads are poorly maintained. It’s hardly accessible.
Taran Taran District
Area, Population & Sex Ratio
This district was formed post 2001 and the statistics for
the districts as of census 2011 will be available by End 2011
Population in Tarn-Taran (Census 2011)
Total Population
Total : 11,20,070
Male : 5,90,239
Female : 5,29,831
Rank ( VoiceOfBharat.org Analysis
)
Backwardness : Does not figure in list of 447 backward
districts
Disability : NA
HIV : Does not figure in A & B Category districts
Minority : Does not figure in MCD
Literacy Ratio : NA
Brief About Taran Taran District
24 kilometers south, is a town founded by Sri Guru
Arjan Dev in 1590. The Gurdwara got constructed by the Guru stands
on the side of a large tank. Fairs are held here on every ´Amavas´
dark night of the month, birth anniversaries of the Gurus, Baisakhi
and Diwali.
TARN TARAN
(31°27'N, 74°56'E), important centre of Sikh pilgrimage
24 km south of Amritsar, was founded by Guru Arjan in 1596. Six
years earlier, on 13 April 1590, he had inaugurated the conversion
of a natural pond lying along the DelhiLahore highway into a quadrangular
tank. Digging operations on full scale commenced on the last day
of the dark half of the month, Bhadon, falling on 19 August 1590.
With the completion of digging, on Chet vaA'Amavas 1653 Bk/19 March
1596, began the construction of the main shrine, the Darbar Sahib,
and ancillary buildings. Meanwhile, a local official, Nur udDin,
ordered under imperial authority the construction of a new caravan
serai along the royal highway and confiscated to this end all the
bricks and the kilns in which they were burnt for the holy shrine
at Tarn Taran. He deputed his son, Amir udDin, to have the bricks
carried to the serai site where, besides the inn, a complete habitation
named Nur Din sprang up. This was about 6 km to the northwest of
the Guru's tank.
Further development of Tarn Taran remained suspended
until 1768, when Sardar Budh Singh of Faizullapuria misi occupied
the entire parganah ofPatti, uprooted the village of Nur Din and
the serai, and brought their bricks back to the site of this sarovar.
Sardar Budh Singh and Sardar Jassa Singh Ramgarhia joined hands
to have the building of the Darbar Sahib constructed. Some bungas
or dwelling houses were also built on the periphery of the holy
tank. Maharaja Ranjit Singh visited the shrine in 1802. It was here
that he exchanged turbans with Sardar Fateh Singh Ahluvalia as a
token of lasting friendship. Ranjit Singh had the steps on the two
sides of the sarovar, left unfinished by Budh Singh and Jassa Singh,
completed and its circumambulatory passage paved. The Darbar Sahib
was also reconstructed. Maharaja Ranjit Singh and his grandson Kanvar
Nau Nihal Singh, donated large quantities of gold to have the exterior
plated with the metal, but the work made little progress in the
troubled times that followed Ranjit Singh's death. It was in the
last quarter of the nineteenth century that part of the exterior
was covered with goldleaf by Sant Sham Singh, of Amritsar. Only
one of the four towers planned by Kanvar Nau Nihal Singh for the
four corners of the tank was erected during this time.
Under Maharaja Ranjit Singh's orders, the town
of Tarn Taran was enclosed by a wall. A few other shrines such as
the Mahji Sahib, the Akal Bunga and the Guru ka Khuh were developed
and several bungas added. After the annexation of the Punjab to
the British dominions, the management of the shrines at Tarn Taran,
along with those at Amritsar, was entrusted to a Sarbarah or manager
appointed by the deputy commissioner ofAmritsar. The role of the
manager was, however, confined to general supervision, the priests
being autonomous in the conduct of religious affairs. They divided
the offerings among themselves and gradually appropriated most of
the lands endowed to the Darbar Sahib during Sikh rule. They neglected
their religious duties and cared little for the sanctity of the
holy shnnes and the sarovar.
The traditional monthly congregation on every
amavasya day, the last day of the dark half of the month, was reduced
to a gay carnival. Reforms introduced by the Siugh Sabha, Tarn Taran,
established in 1885, were disapproved and resisted by the clergy.
Efforts of the Khalsa Diwan Majha and the Central Majha Khalsa Diwan
to cleanse the administration met with only partial success. As
the Gurdwara reform movement got under way, the control of the sacred
shrines passed to a representative body of the Sikhs, the Shiromam
Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, on 27 January 1921. A leper asylum
established by Guru Arjan, but completely ignored by the clergy
after the abrogation of Sikh sovereignty was taken over in 1858
by Christian missionaries.
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