Khannaਖੰਨਾ

History

Khanna is about five hundred years old. Its name comes from the Punjabi word khanna — 'one quarter' — because the settlement was once just a quarter the size of a proper city. The town's antiquity is written into its stones: a Mughal-era serai, the Purani Sarai, still stands here, one of the inns built along the Delhi–Lahore road in the sixteenth century. The District Census Handbook records an imperial serai of Aurangzeb's time, an old Sikh fort, and a baoli (stepwell) built by Mai Daya Kaur.

Local tradition tells that after the Mughal decline the area passed to Banda Bahadur and then to a Jathedar of Dahedu, whose daughter Daya Kaur married into Nabha's royal family; on a family dispute she returned, and her father granted her a kann — a small portion — of land between Dahedu and Nabha, which became Khanna. The census history is plainer: Khanna was founded by a Khanna Rajput, Mai Daya Kaur was its last ruler, and on her death the jagir lapsed to the British in 1850. Under the British it became a tehsil town of Ludhiana district, and the railway and the GT Road kept it commercially relevant through the twentieth century.

Geography & people

Khanna stands on the Grand Trunk Road (NH-1), 40 kilometres from Ludhiana, at a junction of state highways serving dozens of villages. The 2011 census counted 128,137 residents, with a literacy rate of 84.43 per cent. It is also an industrial town — oil pressing, cotton mills and agro-processing grew up around the mandi.

Places of interest

The grain market is the sight: one of the biggest in Asia, spread west of the town between the GT Road and Samrala Road, with over two hundred shops and shop-cum-flats. At wheat harvest in April–May and the groundnut arrivals after kharif, it handles enormous volumes. The Purani Sarai, the old Sikh fort remains and Mai Daya Kaur's baoli are the heritage stops. The town's colleges, including A.S. College affiliated to Panjab University, anchor its educational life, drawing students from the surrounding villages of Khanna tehsil.

Notable people

Mai Daya Kaur, the last ruler of the Khanna jagir, is the town's historical figure — her baoli and the story of the 'kann' grant are woven into Khanna's identity. In the modern era Khanna's prominence has come from its traders and commission agents, the arthiyas whose names are known across Punjab's grain economy rather than in history books.