The Annual Uras Mela at Dera Baba Murad Shah Ji, Nakodar, is today one of the largest religious gatherings in North India, drawing hundreds of thousands of devotees from across the country and the world. But like all great living traditions, it has a history — a story of modest beginnings, steady growth, and the cumulative power of devotion across generations.
The Foundation — Hazrat Baba Murad Shah Ji's Legacy
The mela's origins lie in the life and legacy of Hazrat Baba Murad Shah Ji himself. During his earthly life, the darbaar at Nakodar was already a significant centre of spiritual life in the Doaba region — a place where devotees gathered regularly for darshan, for prayers, and for the devotional music sessions that were a central feature of the saint's spiritual practice. When Hazrat Baba Murad Shah Ji passed from this world, his devotees did not disperse; rather, their devotion intensified, concentrated now at the mazaar where they believed his spiritual presence continued to reside.
The earliest uras gatherings were intimate by comparison to today's scale — a gathering of the saint's closest disciples, their families, and the surrounding community. The traditions established at these early uras — the chadar offering, the communal langar, the all-night qawwali mehfil — have remained constant through all the decades of growth that followed.
Growth Through the 20th Century
Through the middle decades of the 20th century, the Nakodar uras grew steadily in both size and reach. The Partition of Punjab in 1947 brought enormous disruption to religious life across the region, but the Nakodar darbaar — located in Indian Punjab — continued its traditions and in fact became an increasingly important spiritual anchor for communities navigating the upheavals of the period. The mela in the decades immediately following Partition drew larger numbers year upon year, as Punjabis both displaced and rooted found in the darbaar a source of continuity and consolation.
By the 1970s and 1980s, the uras mela had grown into one of the significant annual religious events of Doaba. The involvement of Punjabi cultural figures — musicians, poets, and public personalities who were also genuine devotees — helped spread awareness of the darbaar beyond the immediate region. The darbaar's inclusive ethos, which welcomed devotees of all faiths at a time when communal tensions were sometimes high, gave it a distinctive moral authority that attracted people precisely because it demonstrated that things did not have to be the way they sometimes were.
The Role of Music in the Mela's Growth
The qawwali tradition at the Nakodar uras has been a primary engine of the mela's growth and fame. The all-night qawwali mehfil with Karamat Ali & Party became, through the latter decades of the 20th century, the event for which the mela was most widely known. Word spread through Punjabi communities across India and eventually abroad: if you want to experience the most extraordinary devotional music event in Punjab, you go to Nakodar in August. This reputation drew new devotees who came first for the music and then discovered the full depth of the darbaar's spiritual tradition.
The Digital Age — A Global Gathering
The advent of the internet, and then of smartphones and social media, transformed the reach of the Nakodar uras. Video recordings of the qawwali mehfil circulated on YouTube from the early 2010s, reaching Punjabi diaspora communities in the UK, Canada, the United States, and the Gulf. For many second and third generation Punjabis abroad, the Nakodar mela videos became a connection to a spiritual heritage they had not personally experienced but felt profoundly as their own.
Live streaming of the uras, introduced in more recent years, has made the mela accessible in real time to a global audience. On the night of the main qawwali mehfil, viewers from dozens of countries watch the proceedings from their living rooms, their hearts present in Nakodar even as their bodies remain thousands of kilometres away.
The Mela Today
The Annual Uras Mela is now a three-day event of national significance, drawing an estimated 4–5 lakh devotees over the course of its duration. The Dera Baba Murad Shah Ji Trust manages the event with thousands of volunteers, maintaining the langar, managing the crowd, providing medical support, and ensuring that the spiritual character of the gathering is preserved even as the scale has become extraordinary. The mela stands today as one of Punjab's greatest living cultural institutions — not merely a religious event but a demonstration of what the region, at its best, is capable of.