Beas is a town on the river of the same name on the Amritsar to Jalandhar road, and it is the seat of the Radha Soami Satsang Beas, founded in 1891, whose colony there houses a very large permanent population and holds satsangs attended by hundreds of thousands.
Rayya nearby is a market town on the same road. Mehta Chowk is where the Damdami Taksal is based.
Within about thirty kilometres of each other on one road are the headquarters of one of the largest spiritual organisations in the world and the seminary that produced the central figure of the Punjab conflict of the 1980s.
The road is the Grand Trunk Road and it carries everything, which is the point that keeps returning on this site.
The Radha Soami hospital at Beas is one of the larger charitable hospitals in Punjab.
The Radha Soami Satsang Beas has its centre here, and the campus, the hospital and the satsang grounds together are larger than the town. Its gatherings draw people from across India and abroad.
Mehta Chowk is where Damdami Taksal has its headquarters, and it is the institution Bhindranwale headed from 1977.
The three sit within a short drive of each other on one road, and each draws a different constituency out of the same countryside.