As farm stir simmers, Shambhu turns from toll point to dateline

As farm stir simmers, Shambhu turns from toll point to dateline

Shambhu, a mere toll point on the Ambala-Amritsar stretch of NH-44, is suddenly famous. First, cops blocked the border here to stop farmers from marching on to Delhi. Then, the clash between farmers and police happened and a place thousands whizz past daily without a thought became a dateline.

But Shambhu has watched travellers come and go for at least 500 years. It lay on Sher Shah Suri’s highway five centuries ago. About 400 years ago – the exact date isn’t known — emperor Jahangir built a Mughal serai here, and it’s still standing. If you are driving from Ambala towards Amritsar, look out for a fort-like building on your right shortly after paying the toll at Shambhu and crossing the Ghaggar.

Oddly, there’s no inscription on the serai to fix its date of construction, but art historian Subhash Parihar dates it to Jahangir’s reign – “first quarter of the 17th century” – based on certain design similarities between it and the more famous Nurmahal serai near Jalandhar.

It’s a large serai, 121m long and 101m wide, with gateways that rise to a height of 11.2m. There are dozens of cells for travellers, and a mosque in the middle of the lawns. From the long roof over the cells, you can see and hear the traffic on the highway.

Shambhu is a curious name for a Mughal outpost, but in his paper, “Mughal Sarai at Shambhu”, Parihar points out that this name does not appear in “any medieval chronicle or account of travel”.

What did the Mughals call it then? Parihar mentions a “sarai nun” 4 kos (10km) from Ambala. Shambhu serai is 11km from Ambala, so they must be the same one. But why would it be called ‘nun’, which means fish?

“The river Ghaggar flows nearby. Perhaps, an ample supply of fish was available here,” says Parihar.

The name “Shambhu” is also an old one. Parihar says that in the mid-1700s, French missionary Tieffenthaler mentioned a serai “built by Nilkanth” as the next stage on the road after Ambala. As Nilkanth is another name for Shiv/Shambhu, Parihar thinks an old Shiv temple might have stood nearby, lending its name to the area.

So, the Shambhu serai is not just a pile of stones and bricks. Emperors, traders, soldiers, invaders and other travellers stayed in it as they moved between Delhi/Agra and Lahore or Kashmir. It was a permanent village with a changing population.

Sometimes, battles were fought around it, as happened in 1794 when a large Maratha army demanded Patiala’s submission.

The Sikhs led by Bibi Sahib Kaur were outnumbered, but they made a surprise night attack at the Maratha camp in Mardan Pur, South of Shambhu, and forced them to clear out.

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