Guru Ram Das and the Founding of Amritsar

Guru Ram Das, born Jetha, came into the world on 24 September 1534 at Chuna Mandi in Lahore, a city then a thriving centre of trade and learning in the Punjab. Orphaned by the age of seven, he was raised by his grandmother in the village of Basarke, where for several years he earned his living selling boiled grams — a childhood of real hardship that later shaped his reputation for humility and quiet service. At twelve he met Guru Amar Das, the third Sikh Guru, and from that meeting on gave himself over entirely to service and devotion at his feet, carrying water and performing the most humble tasks of the Guru's household without complaint or expectation of reward.

Guru Amar Das gave his younger daughter, Bibi Bhani, in marriage to the devoted young Jetha, who would go on to father three sons, including Arjan, his eventual successor. On 1 September 1574, Guru Amar Das installed him as the fourth Nanak: Guru Ram Das. It was a decision made in recognition of his humility and years of service, valued above even that of Guru Amar Das's own sons — placing merit and devotion above blood succession, just as Guru Amar Das's own installation once had.

As Guru, Ram Das set about establishing a new settlement on land his father-in-law had earlier acquired — a quiet, wooded site with no city built upon it yet. He named it Chak Ramdas, later Ramdaspur, and had a great tank excavated at its centre, to be filled with water believed to carry healing and spiritual power: the Amrit Sarovar, the "Pool of Nectar." He personally invited traders and craftsmen from the surrounding region to settle there, granting them land and encouraging commerce. His vision from the very start was for a town that would flourish as more than a place of worship alone. It would be a living, self-sustaining community built up around a sacred centre, where faith and daily livelihood could grow together rather than stand apart.

Guru Ram Das was among the most prolific of the Guru-poets: 638 of his hymns, composed across thirty ragas — including 246 padas, 138 shabads, and 31 ashtapadis (hymn forms distinguished mainly by length and structure) — are preserved in the Guru Granth Sahib Ji. Among them are the four Lavan hymns, which he composed specifically to solemnise Sikh marriage. They are recited at every Anand Karaj wedding ceremony to this day, his bani still spoken at the very moment two lives are joined, centuries after he wrote it. It is a rare case of a scripture's own author shaping, in his own lifetime, a rite still performed word for word today.

Guru Ram Das did not live to see the Sarovar or any temple completed at its centre. He passed from this world on 16 September 1581, in the same room at Goindwal where his own father-in-law and predecessor had died exactly seven years earlier. His son and successor, Guru Arjan Dev, carried the work forward. He completed the excavation of the Sarovar and built the Harmandir Sahib — the Golden Temple — on an island at its very centre, transforming his father's vision into the holiest site in Sikhism. That completion stands, in Sikh memory, as much a testament to a son's devotion as to the Guru who first broke ground there. The surrounding city took its permanent name from the pool at its heart: Amritsar, "the Pool of Nectar."

The Amrit Sarovar remains exactly where Guru Ram Das had it dug, ringed today by the marble parikrama that circles the Golden Temple. Thousands of pilgrims still bathe in its waters and offer prayers there every day of the year, regardless of season. Many arrive before dawn, wishing to be among the first to enter, and the recitation of scripture there continues without pause from before sunrise until well after nightfall. What began as one Guru's decision, taken on quiet, wooded ground with no city yet around it, to raise a single tank of water, has become one of the most visited and most sacred places on earth — a reminder that Guru Ram Das, remembered in his own lifetime chiefly for his humility and his years of quiet service, left behind a city whose gates remain open to devotees of every background.