Sarai Raja Todar Mal

The sarai stands in the centre of Rajpura town, on the old royal road from Agra to Lahore, between Shambhu and Sirhind. It is a walled brick rectangle with an eight-sided tower at each corner. Each tower has a dome on top, and the top of the outer wall has battlements. The sarai is also called Raja Sarai and Sarai Hajjam Todar Mal. It is linked to Raja Todar Mal, who became diwan of the Sirhind sarkar in 1639, the thirteenth year of Shah Jahan’s reign, and died in 1665. This is a different man from Akbar’s minister of the same name. If he was the patron, the sarai was built between 1639 and 1665. Nothing at the site records a builder or a date, but its cusped arches, corner bastions and rooms fit Shah Jahan’s time. Two gateways face each other on the east and west sides. The west gateway, called the Lahori Darwaza, is the main one. It is two storeys high, with a cusped central arch, large wooden doors, recessed niches in panels on each side, engaged domed turrets, a vaulted interior and a triple-arched window above. The east gateway is bricked up. Around the courtyard are rows of single-storey square rooms with a deep verandah in front. The larger rooms at the centre of the north and south rows have domed vaults, and the rest have flat ceilings. The brick walls are left unplastered, apart from some ornate plaster at the gateway ceiling. The building has changed over time. The British added a brick structure along the west wall. Some rooms became living quarters, one room entrance is now blocked, and a domed cell at the north-east corner is occupied by a tenant. Today the sarai is used as the tehsil court and is known locally as the Kachehri. It is in fair condition, with much of the original brickwork intact, though creepers cover parts of the turrets, arches and south wall. It is one of the sarais on the Grand Trunk Road whose full structure or gateways still stand. The Sayfabad gateway inside Bahadurgarh fort, about 20 km to the south, follows the same style as the gateways of sarais like this one.