Long before the Sikhs started frequenting Sri
Hemkunt Sahib,the
local inhabitants of that area held the lake there with great awe and
reverence and called the area around it lokpal, i.e. sustainer of people. In spite of the fact that
Hemkunt was
mentioned in the autobiography of Guru Gobind Singh, its site remained in
oblivion for well over two centuries. This happened in spite of indication of
its location having been provided been provided in the guru's own account. It
was the Sikh historian-poet Bhai Santokh Singh(1787-1843) who set his
imagination to describe and elaborate the story of the Dusht daman, the name the
chose for the guru (literally' vanquisher of the evil').
He also provided the
description of his tapasthan or the place where he mediated. In the late
nineteenth century , a Nirmala scholar, Pandit Tara Singh Narotam , prepared a
compendium of the various Sikh pilgrim spots along with their description . That
included Sri Hemkunt Sahib. On the basis of the indication provided in the
Mahabharata (1:199) about the site where the pandu king had mediated. Narotam
trekked up to the spot and was able to verify the site of Sri Hemkunt Sahib.
More recently, the well-known
poet-historian-the ologian, Bhai Vir Singh (AD 1872-1957), carefully examined
Narotam's evidence relating to the discovery of Sri Hemkunt Sahib and accepted
it to be authentic .He provided an elaborated description of spot in his
biography of the tenth guru, Kalghidhar Chamatkar, employing more
scientific information about the flora
and fauna seen at such an attitude. However, the first person to get
attracted towards the task of discovering the actual location of the tapasthan
was Sant Sohan Singh (of Tehri, Garhwal ) a retired granthi from the army.
He had been inspired by the description of the spot in the work of Bhai Vir
Singh. He trekked up the holy spot a number of times. In 1934 , he visited the
spot in the company of Baba Kartar Singh Bedi, and came back determined to set up
a gurdwara there. He met Bhai Vir Singh, who also sensed that the spot that the
sant with the necessary material support and furnished him with the
wherewithal required for setting up a gurudwara.
The sant, along with Havaldar
Baba Modan Singh, engaged a contractor and had a ten-foot square room for the
gurudwara constructed there. By installing the scared volume of Sri Guru Granth
Sahib in the room they had built, they established a gurudwara. In 1960, the
havaldar established a seven-member trust-gurdwara Hemkunt Sahib Management
Trust. The founder members of the trust were Havaldar Modan Singh ,
Colonel Joginder Singh Mann, S.Shamsher Singh, S.Raghubir Singh Kabaria,
Baba Gurmukh Singh, S.Gurbaksh Singh Bindra and Colonel Amar Singh. This Trust
not only took over the management of Sri Hemkunt Sahib but also established
gurudwaras all along the path to it -in Haridwar, Rishikesh, Srinagar , Joshimath, Gobind Ghat and Gobind Dham. In all these places, the Trust steadily
upgraded the facilities for the increasing number of pilgrim.
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