FORT WORTH, Texas — North Texas's Sikh community is opening a new spiritual home this weekend on the Fort Worth side of the metroplex. Sri Akhand Path Sahib — the continuous reading of Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji with which a new gurdwara is traditionally inaugurated — began at 10 a.m. on Friday, October 30, at Gurudwara Nanak Sikh Mission, 10260 Blue Mound Road, Fort Worth, TX 76131, and the opening ceremonies conclude with the Bhog on Sunday, November 1, at 10 a.m.
Source: Vasda Rahe Punjab
In two special programmes ahead of the opening, host Amarjit Dhillon of Vasda Rahe Punjab spoke with the gurdwara's board members about the journey behind the new building. The board described the Gurudwara Sahib as far more than a building: a home for seva (selfless service), simran (devotional remembrance) and Sarbat Da Bhala — the Sikh prayer for the welfare of all — built for generations to come.
What an Akhand Path opening means
An Akhand Path is the uninterrupted reading of the entire Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji, the Sikh holy scripture and eternal Guru, usually completed over roughly 48 hours by a relay of readers, day and night. The Bhog is the completion ceremony that closes the reading, followed by kirtan (devotional singing), ardas (the concluding prayer) and langar — the free community meal served to everyone who comes, regardless of faith or background. Opening a new gurdwara with an Akhand Path is the community's way of saying the building becomes a home only once the Guru's word fills it.
The mission is independently listed in UNITED SIKHS' national directory of gurdwara partners at the same Blue Mound Road address in Fort Worth, which places the new sangat formally on the map of organized Sikh institutions in the United States — alongside the metroplex's longer-established gurdwaras.
A growing Sikh map across Dallas–Fort Worth
Sikhs have been part of the Dallas–Fort Worth community for more than five decades, and the metroplex's gurdwara map has grown with the population: Gurudwara Singh Sabha in Richardson is among the largest Sikh centres in North Texas; Gurdwara Nishkam Seva in Irving — run by the Sikh Study Circle, active in DFW since 1989 — was inaugurated in April 2013; and gurdwaras in Garland, Grand Prairie and Plano serve the eastern and northern suburbs. Until now, families on the Fort Worth and Tarrant County side have crossed the metroplex for major diwans. A gurdwara of their own on Blue Mound Road, in the city's fast-growing northern corridor, changes that weekly geography.
Bhog and grand opening: Sunday, November 1, 10 a.m., Gurudwara Nanak Sikh Mission, 10260 Blue Mound Road, Fort Worth, TX 76131. As at any gurdwara, visitors of every faith are welcome; guests cover their heads and remove their shoes inside, and langar is served to all.
The timing adds to a full weekend for Punjabi families across the region: the opening falls in the days before Gurpurab season gatherings across Texas gurdwaras, and the Fort Worth sangat joins a state whose Punjabi community — truckers running the I-35W and I-20 corridors, families across Tarrant and Denton counties, students and small-business owners — has been one of the fastest-growing in the American South.
What happens next is the ordinary, durable work of a new gurdwara: regular diwans, kirtan, Punjabi and Gurbani classes for children, and langar seva, week after week. The board's invitation for the weekend, as they put it to Vasda Rahe Punjab, is open to the whole neighbourhood — the doors at 10260 Blue Mound Road open on Sunday morning for everyone.