When Guru Nanak visited Haridwar

Haridwar is one of the Hindu pilgrimage centres situated on the banks of River Ganges. As the sun comes out in the morning, people get down into the river and start throwing the water towards the Sun with their hands.

When Guru Nanak Dev Ji, the founder of Sikhism, visited Haridwar, he asked the people as to what they were doing.

A priest replied, “We are offering water to our dead ancestors in the region of Sun to quench their thirst.”

Upon this, the Guru started throwing water towards the west. The Hindu pilgrims were astonished and asked Guru Nanak about what he was doing. The Guru replied, “I am watering my fields in Punjab.”

The priest asked, “How can your water reach such a distance?”

The Guru retorted, “How far are your ancestors from here?”

One of them replied, “In the other world.”

Guru Nanak Dev Ji asked them, “If this water cannot reach my fields, which are about four hundred miles away from here, how can your water reach your ancestors who are not even on this earth?”

More at https://www.speakingtree.in/allslides/stories-about-guru-nanak-dev-ji/63474

Guru Nanak (1469-1539) was the founder of Sikhism and the first of the ten Sikh Gurus. His birth is celebrated worldwide as Guru Nanak Gurpurab on the full-moon day in the month of Kartika (October-November).

Nanak travelled far and wide with the message of one God who dwells in every one of His creations and constitutes the eternal Truth. He set up a unique spiritual, social and political platform based on equality, fraternal love, goodness, and virtue.

Nanak’s words are preserved in the form of 974 poetic hymns in the holy text of Sikhism, the Guru Granth Sahib. It is part of Sikh religious belief that the spirit of Nanak’s sanctity, divinity and religious authority descended upon each of the nine subsequent Gurus when the Guruship was devolved on to them.

There is a Gurdwara called Nanakwara in Haridwar on the bank of the Ganges where Guru Nanak Dev Ji stayed on his visit to Haridwar.

India Post on Nov. 9, 2019, issued a set of 5 commemorative postage stamps and a miniature sheet portraying five sacred Gurudwaras on the historic occasion of the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak. Image courtesy: postagestamps.gov.in/