Kalanaurਕਲਾਨੌਰ

Where is Kalanaur?

Kalanaur is a large village in Kalanaur tehsil of Gurdaspur district, Punjab, in the Majha region of the state, with a small historic town of the same name at its heart. The village lands cover 2,694 hectares on the banks of the Kiran, a rivulet that winds its way to the Ravi river, and the settlement stands about 25 kilometres west of Gurdaspur city, only a few kilometres from the Pakistan border. In the census record the village carries code 027986 and PIN code 143512, and it has its own gram panchayat. Few villages in India can match its place in history: this is where Akbar, the greatest of the Mughal emperors, was crowned in 1556.

The platform where Akbar became emperor

In January 1556 the emperor Humayun died in Delhi after a fall on the stairs of his library. His son Akbar, just thirteen years old, was far away in Punjab, campaigning with his guardian Bairam Khan against the Afghan rebel Sikandar Shah Suri. With Delhi unsettled and enemies still strong, Bairam Khan decided the boy had to be proclaimed emperor at once, where the army stood. A masonry platform was raised in a garden at Kalanaur, and on 14 February 1556 Akbar was enthroned on it.

That platform, remembered as the Takht-i-Akbari, still stands about two kilometres outside the town, deep among the wheat fields of the village. It is a broad, plain masonry terrace with steps at the corners and a small raised seat, protected by the Archaeological Survey of India as a monument of national importance. Travellers who make the walk out through the fields find a curious detail: a small tank at its centre once overflowed with water that spread across the surface and drained away through pipes, a simple cooling system for the new emperor. An old mosque of the period stands by the road nearby, its painted walls now fading.

Jarral rajas, sultans and misl sardars

Kalanaur is far older than its Mughal moment. Tradition gives it several founders: the Imperial Gazetteer of India recorded that it was founded by two Muslim brothers named Kala and Noor, the historian Mohammad Latif traced it to a Noor tribe of Rajputs who had migrated from the south, and others derive the name from the Kaleshwar temple of Shiva that stood in a local fort. Its early rulers, the Jarral Rajputs, traced their line to Prince Nakhashena, a brother of King Janamejaya, and held Kalanaur as a principality for some 350 years before the armies of the Ghorid empire took the town in the twelfth century.

Between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries Kalanaur was a major urban centre of the region. Firuz Shah Tughluq raised a palace on the banks of the Kiran, and in the fifteenth century the Khokhar chief Raja Jasrat held the town. In the eighteenth century the Kanhaiya Misl of Sardar Haqiqat Singh occupied it; his son Jaimal Singh shifted his residence to Fatehgarh Churian, and Jaimal's daughter Chand Kaur married Kharak Singh, the eldest son and heir of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, in 1812. The territory later passed as a fief to Diwan Dina Nath, and on his death in 1857 it was annexed into British India. Old residents still quote the saying that sums up its former standing: Jinne nahi vekheya Lahore, oh vekhe Kalanaur: whoever has not seen Lahore should see Kalanaur.

Gurdwara Banda Bahadur and the sacred geography of Kalanaur

The settlement's sacred map matches its layered past. On one side of the road stands the Gurdwara Banda Bahadur, built at the site of a well that was excavated by the order of Banda Singh Bahadur, the great Sikh commander of the early eighteenth century. Across from it is the Kaleshwar Mahadev Temple, dedicated to Shiva, the deity from whom many say Kalanaur takes its name. Local tradition also remembers Bawa Lal Dayal, the saint who is said to have meditated for ninety-two years on the bank of the Kiran to the north-west of the town. Together with the mosque of Akbar's reign and the coronation platform in the fields, these places make the village a small archive of Punjab's Hindu, Muslim and Sikh centuries.

Population and households

The 2011 census counted 13,642 people in Kalanaur: 7,157 men and 6,485 women, in 2,540 households, an average of about 5.4 people per household. Spread over its 2,694 hectares, that is a density of about 506 people per square kilometre, low beside Punjab's crowded plains because so much of the village is farmland. The sex ratio was 906 women for every 1,000 men. Children up to six numbered 1,468, about 11 per cent of the village, and Scheduled Castes made up 1,557 people, also about 11 per cent.

Work, land and water

Literacy is Kalanaur's quiet strength: 83.97 per cent of residents aged seven and above could read and write in 2011, men at 87.35 per cent and women at 80.28 per cent, all well above the Punjab average of 75.84 per cent. The census recorded 4,552 workers. Of the 3,593 main workers, the largest group, 2,261 people, worked in trade, transport and services, the economy of the small town at the village's heart, ahead of 797 cultivators and 296 agricultural labourers, with 959 more people in marginal, part-year work. Of the village's 2,694 hectares, 2,209 hectares were net sown, and 1,902 of those were irrigated, mostly by wells and tube-wells (1,817 hectares) with a small canal share (85 hectares). About 479 hectares were under the settlement, roads and ponds.

Schools, banks and everyday facilities

For a village, Kalanaur is unusually well provided. The 2011 Village Directory recorded two government primary schools, two middle schools, two secondary schools and a government senior secondary school, so children can study up to Class 12 without leaving, along with an anganwadi centre and an ASHA health worker. There was no health facility inside the village in that record, so hospital care means a trip to Dera Baba Nanak or Gurdaspur. The village has its own post office and PDS ration shop, and banking is available in the village itself, with a commercial bank branch, a cooperative bank branch and an ATM. Domestic electricity was recorded at ten hours a day and farm power at eight.

Getting there

Kalanaur stands on National Highway 354 and is reached by pucca, all-weather roads; a private bus service runs in the village itself. Gurdaspur, the district headquarters, is about 25 kilometres east. Dera Baba Nanak, recorded as the nearest town at about 8 kilometres, is the border town from which the Kartarpur Corridor crosses to Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Pakistan, and its road passes through Kalanaur. The nearest railway stations are more than ten kilometres away, so most journeys begin by road. Neighbouring villages include Ruliana, Saleh Chak, Barila Khurd and Chhohan.

What is Kalanaur famous for?

Kalanaur is famous as the place where Akbar was crowned Mughal emperor on 14 February 1556. The masonry platform of his coronation, the Takht-i-Akbari, still stands in the fields outside the town, protected by the Archaeological Survey of India.

What is the population of Kalanaur?

Kalanaur had 13,642 people at the 2011 census, living in 2,540 households in Kalanaur tehsil of Gurdaspur district.