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Historical geography
Places
ਸਥਾਨ
Eleven places across a Punjab that the 1947 border later divided — a canal-colony chak, a village school, three shrines, two campaign sites, and the city where he died. Historical and present-day geography are recorded separately for each.
11 placesschematic map, no tracking, no tilestextual index below
PlaceShrineContested place of custody* contested — see the entry belowA numbered ring marks places lying within about four kilometres of one
another, too close to draw separately at this scale; the numbered key beneath the plot names each
one. A name joined to its marker by a plain line has simply been moved clear of a neighbour. Schematic — no basemap — coordinates approximate — modern borders not drawn.
Every name here links to its entry below, where each place is also listed as a full-width
link.
Tarn Taran tahsil, Amritsar district, Punjab, British India
Now
Tarn Taran district, Punjab, India
Approx.
31.45° N, 74.93° E
His birthplace. In 1882 the village lay in the Tarn Taran tahsil of Amritsar district; Tarn Taran became a district of its own only in 2006, so a visitor searching by the modern district will find it under a name the 1882 record did not use. The village name is standardised here as “Rai ka Burj” — one 2024 press report uses “Rai Buri Ka”, which is noted and not adopted.
Chak 140 GB, Samundri tahsil, Lyallpur district ਸਮੁੰਦਰੀ#
Role
Family home from the 1890s
Then
Sandal Bar canal colony, Lyallpur district, Punjab, British India
Now
Faisalabad district, Punjab, Pakistan
Approx.
31.08° N, 72.97° E
The family relocated here after Deva Singh was assigned land in the Sandal Bar colonisation — one of the largest engineered resettlements in the British Empire, which moved Punjabi families, heavily Sikh and heavily ex-military, onto newly irrigated land in numbered chaks. “GB” denotes the Gugera Branch canal. The toponym “Samundri”, the origin of his name, comes from this tahsil and not from a family surname. It was from this base, rather than ancestral Amritsar district, that his reform organising began. Lyallpur was renamed Faisalabad in 1977.
Sri Guru Gobind Singh Khalsa High School, Sarhali ਸਰਹਾਲੀ#
Role
Institution · Education work, c. 1917
Then
Amritsar district, Punjab, British India
Now
Tarn Taran district, Punjab, India
Approx.
31.42° N, 74.90° E
One of the two Khalsa schools he founded — the other a Khalsa Middle School in his own village. One centenary account states the Sarhali school survives and is functioning today; this archive has not verified it, and lists it as an open research item. If confirmed, it is a living institution he founded, and the fastest real win available to the research programme.
Sri Harmandir Sahib complex, Amritsar ਸ੍ਰੀ ਹਰਿਮੰਦਰ ਸਾਹਿਬ, ਅੰਮ੍ਰਿਤਸਰ#
Role
Shrine · Centre of the movement, 1920–1925; site of the Hall named for him
Then
Amritsar, Punjab, British India
Now
Amritsar, Punjab, India
Approx.
31.62° N, 74.88° E
The centre of the Gurdwara Reform Movement and the seat of the SGPC. Site of the Keys Morcha over the treasury keys (1921–22), and — according to one account, unverified — of the 1923 Kar Sewa of the sarovar in which he is said to have served among the Panj Pyare. Teja Singh Samundri Hall, within the complex, houses the SGPC’s headquarters and is named in his memory; the 2026 centenary Gurmat Samagam was held there.
Birthplace of Guru Nanak and site of the February 1921 massacre, in which the mahant’s hired men killed a peaceful jatha inside the shrine. Samundri was nominated a member of the committee appointed to administer the gurdwara afterward — at the movement’s most raw moment, one of the men trusted to hold the shrine at the centre of it.
Gurdwara Rakab Ganj Sahib ਗੁਰਦੁਆਰਾ ਰਕਾਬ ਗੰਜ ਸਾਹਿਬ#
Role
Shrine · 1920; centenary 2026
Then
Delhi, British India
Now
New Delhi, India
Approx.
28.62° N, 77.21° E
The government demolished a boundary wall of this gurdwara to suit New Delhi construction plans. Samundri organised public meetings in protest and was one of the hundred Sikhs who volunteered to lay down their lives to have the wall restored — an early episode connecting Delhi to the wider reform movement. A century later, the Delhi commemoration of his death was held at this shrine.
Site of the 1922 morcha in which unarmed Akali volunteers submitted to police lathis without raising a hand. He was among the campaign’s guiding voices; a press-only account names him Chairman of the SGPC’s Council of Action, which this archive has not verified. The discipline shown here drew national and international attention. Coordinates are approximate.
Site of the morcha mounted in support of Maharaja Ripudaman Singh of Nabha, whom the British had forced to abdicate in July 1923. Samundri was arrested on 13 October 1923 in connection with it; the SGPC and the Shiromani Akali Dal were declared unlawful and fifty-nine leaders charged with waging war against the King. Jaito is where the movement and the Indian National Congress most visibly converged.
Custody · The Akali launched here, 1920; died in custody here, 1926
Then
Capital of the Punjab Province, British India
Now
Punjab, Pakistan
Approx.
31.55° N, 74.34° E
The provincial capital, where the Akali daily was launched on 21 May 1920 and where he died in custody on 17 July 1926. This archive writes “died in custody in Lahore” — the city is established; the precise site within it is contested and listed separately below.
Custody · Trial venue from 1923; also named as the custody-at-death site — contested
Then
Lahore, Punjab, British India — used by the administration as a detention and interrogation site
Now
Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan
Approx.
31.59° N, 74.32° E
He was shifted here for trial after the 1923 arrest — that much is well supported. Whether he was still held here at his death in 1926 is contested: it is one of two named locations, and this archive does not adjudicate between Lahore Fort and Lahore Central Jail. Both are shown; both are marked contested.
Lahore Central Jail contested locationਲਾਹੌਰ ਕੇਂਦਰੀ ਜੇਲ੍ਹ#
Role
Custody · Named as the custody-at-death site — contested
Then
Lahore, Punjab, British India
Now
Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan
Approx.
31.57° N, 74.31° E
The second of two named locations for his custody at the time of his death, roughly four kilometres from Lahore Fort. One account has him transferred here on 25 January 1925; that transfer, if it happened, is exactly what a jail admission register would record. Contested — see Open Research Question OQ-2.
The map is a plain latitude–longitude grid with plotted points. It is not to scale, has no basemap, draws no modern
borders, and loads nothing from any third party. Coordinates are approximate and are given only to place the sites in
relation to one another; they are not a claim about the exact location of any historical building. Every marker has an
equivalent entry in the textual index above.
Cite this page
Permanent URL
https://tejasinghsamundri.org/places/
Chicago
“Places.” Teja Singh Samundri Digital Heritage Archive. Reviewed September 10, 2026. https://tejasinghsamundri.org/places/.
MLA
“Places.” Teja Singh Samundri Digital Heritage Archive, September 10, 2026, https://tejasinghsamundri.org/places/.
Plain text
Places — Teja Singh Samundri Digital Heritage Archive — https://tejasinghsamundri.org/places/ (page last reviewed 2026-09-10)
BibTeX
@misc{tssplaces2026,
title = {Places},
howpublished = {Teja Singh Samundri Digital Heritage Archive},
year = {2026},
month = {sep},
url = {https://tejasinghsamundri.org/places/},
note = {Page last reviewed 2026-09-10}
}
Last reviewed
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