Jassar-Narowal

"""A Very Beautiful Village"""

JASSAR

The meaning of Jassar is Bridge. It has a history in it.The village has a total population of 13,000. Jassar was inhabited by the Jassar (Tank Kshatriya Tribe) of Sikhs. Mostly People Of JASSAR Belong To PADDA JUTT And Gujjar Otherwise Arayin And Rajput Live There.

The Chairman Of UNION COUNCIL Belongs To PADDA FAMILY. PADDA Is The Sub-Cast Of JUTT. The Current Vice Chairman Of UC Jameel Ahmad Padda Also Belongs To This Village. Near The Village JASSAR, The Doom Of "Baba Guru Nanak Sahib" Is A Famous Place As It Is The "Death Place Of Baba Guru Nanak Sahib" The Founder Of "Sikhism".

In this Pind there is a Gurdwara called sri guru Theer Sahib. This Gurdwara was named after and event that occurred. Sri Guru Gobind Singh Ji shot an arrow ad killed a Mongal king spy and the gurus arrow and bow are preserved there today.

KARTARPUR

Kartarpur (meaning: The City of God), (near the main town Jassar) is a small village. It is located on the West bank of the Ravi river, some 15 km Narowal city. Guru Nanak spent his last years of life and died in Kartarpur. It is one of the holiest places in Sikhism located in the Majha region.

Naik Abdul Aziz No. 1307522 -07 Engineers Battalion, Pakistan Army. He demolished the“Drumman Wala” Bridge between India and Pakistan border. The Bridge was on the River Ravi near Jassar, Narowal then District Sialkot. Now District Narowal, Punjab with the help of a conventional bomb. He did it to prevent the land invasion by the Indian Land Forces towards Pakistan. Between the night of 7 & 8 September, 1965 War.

This helped, because there was no alternative land way available towards Pakistan. Other than the bed of the river Ravi which could not be used. This bridge is also known by the name “Dera Baba Guru Nanak Bridge”.

REMAINDER OF JASSAR BRIDGE 

It was famous by the name of “Drumman Wala” Bridge. Because in the beginning, the drums were installed on the bridge for demarcation of border. It is an excellent place to visit in the Jassar area.

An 1856 report on the imperative of laying the railway in Punjab dealt at length with the importance of Amritsar as a commercial entrepot. It highlighted the trade that passed through this city to Europe and Central Asia. Here were wholesalers dealing in Tibetan wool, Kashmiri shawls, Afghan fruit, both dried and fresh, carpets from Turkey and furs and skins from Turkestan, besides European finished goods.

At that time, the great knot of mountains that we know as the Karakoram-Himalayan system was not fully explored. Map makers and explorers were however venturing into towns like Gilgit and Ladakh and spurred by the fast developing railway system in the subcontinent there grew a fantasy. It was as eccentric and far-fetched as any dream could be. This was the dream to take the railway from the plains, through the defiles of the Pir Panjal Range in Kashmir and across the Indus gorge to Gilgit. Thence, so the dreamers envisioned, it would strike northward into the grim and tortured chasm of the Hunza River to reach Chinese Turkestan.

Twenty years later, with the topography of the Karakoram-Himalayan system better understood, the dream of Gilgit becoming the great railway junction to Central Asia quietly died on its dreamers. But even if that was not to be, it would serve good purpose to take the railway as far into the mountains as possible. And so it was that in 1890, Jammu was connected with Suchetgarh (northeast of Sialkot).

A few years later, the line running north from Amritsar crossed the Ravi River at the village of Jassar by an impressive steel bridge to Narowal and Sialkot. The horse caravans that plodded across the steaming foothills from Srinagar to Amritsar now halted at Jammu. There the goods were loaded into waiting railway wagons for the journey down country.

Come partition and the great network of the North Western Railway was cut by the new border. Jassar was one among four other places where the line stopped, the east end of its magnificent bridge barely a couple of hundred metres from India. It was, in effect, a bridge in Pakistan that went nowhere.

In the 1965 war with India, one of the great tank battles was fought for this crossing. Legend has it that as Indian tanks roared onto the bridge, a soldier strapped on a large amount of explosive to his body and lay in their way. The first unsuspecting tank drove over the hero and went up in a huge blast taking out a chunk of the bridge. The span collapsed and fell into the river.

The reality may be that the bridge was prepared for demolition in anticipation of an Indian putsch. Whatever the case, whether a hero who gave up his life to save the country an invasion or a smart demolitions expert who did his job well, the bridge was blown up for its central spans lay smashed in the languid brown eddies of the Ravi until the late 1970s. At some point after that the steel was removed and all that is now left of Jassar Bridge on the Ravi are four tub piers of excellent brick work.

The bridge holds yet another tale. On a rainy August evening in 1947, a train bearing Sikhs and Hindus from Sialkot was on its way to Dera Nanak when the driver stopped short of the bridge. Being a Muslim, he feared for his life were he to take the train across into India. Outside, stood a crowd of armed men. Two brothers, Sikh landlords of nearby Klasswala, stepped out of the train and called out. ‘We on this train are unarmed. Do us no harm. Permit us to pass on into India.’

There was no response. The terrified refugees waited a while and then began to disembark. Fearfully they walked across the bridge as the armed men kept their ground just fifty metres away. This train, whose number no one remembers, became one of the few to escape a massacre. No one remembers too what kept the Muslims from attacking the helpless refugees.

JASSAR FIELDS BORDER AREA

In the pind (village) of Jassar the people are farmers who are called Jatts (Swaggg). In village jassar one family of bhagats is very famous also known by shellar wale. Because shellar was started on 1983 the only industry around area up to sahnewal. A famous singer is from this pind his name is Inderjeet Nikku. It is an excellent place to visit Jassar.