The rocky hillock, still bearing the burden of the ruinous ramparts of the old Nirmal Fort on its top, can be seen looming menacingly over Pinjarigutta locality in Nirmal District headquarters town as one climbs the steep narrow road to the congested place.
The hillock stands a mute witness not only to the disintegration of the magnificent 17th century fort but to the devastation of the much smaller 18th century Udasi Mutt located at its foot. This, curiously, is the town’s link to the founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak, whose 550th birth anniversary is being celebrated this year.
An ascetic patron
“The Udasi mutt in Nirmal town is among those built around 1822 in the Deccan by Dewan Chandulal, who was the Prime Minister for Nizam, Asaf Jah III, a follower of the Udasi sect of ascetics which was based on the teachings of Guru Nanak’s elder son Sri Chand,” explained S. Sajjan Singh, convenor, Sikh Heritage Foundation, Hyderabad Deccan.
“Followers of Sri Chand established mutts at all the places visited by Guru Nanak, in this instance during his second Udasi between 1511 CE and 1513 CE,” he added.
Udasis were the missionary travels of Guru Nanak, the second one covering Sri Lanka and the Deccan, including Vijayawada and Guntur in Andhra Pradesh, and Hyderabad and Nirmal in Telangana. This sojourn of the first Sikh Guru also saw establishment of the famous Nanak Jhira gurudwara in Bidar, now in Karnataka.
A glorious past
“There were eight or nine muttadhipathis, or heads of the mutt since its founding according to what our elders told us, the last one being Baba Jwaladas, who died in 1969,” recalled retired Mandal Educational Officer Chinthapandu Poshetti, whose family has lived close to the Udasi mutt since long. “During its heydays, the mutt comprised a hall and two rooms on both sides. The hall was the prayer room consisting of a Shiva lingam and an idol of Goddess Durga,” he said.
The mutt now has only three large and an equal number of minor indistinguishable samadhis or tombs on its flattened ruins under the shadow of an old banyan tree. The piece of land it owned came under the control of the Endowments Department in the 1980s. “We have filed cases against encroachers. There is a two-acre-plus land parcel in Priyadarshininagar which we could protect though,” pointed out Adilabad Assistant Commissioner (Endowments), Vijay Rama Rao as he talked about Udasi Mutt’s condition which has had no baba for long.
Endowments Minister A. Indrakaran Reddy happens to be the local MLA. He has put into action a plan to construct a kalyana mandapam in the place belonging to the Udasi Mutt.
“I urge the Minister and the government to shelve the plan. The link between Udasi Mutt, Sikhism and the Deccan needs further research,” observed Mr. Sajjan Singh, a researcher of history of the Sikhs in the Deccan and member of the Heritage Conservation Sub Committee of the Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee, Amritsar.
