Nabhaਨਾਭਾ

History

Nabha is a princely capital. In 1763 Hamir Singh — of the Phulkian line that also founded Patiala and Jind — established Nabha as the capital of his new state, one of the three great Phulkian kingdoms of Malwa. The Nabha rulers built their capital deliberately: the Hira Mahal, the royal residences, the administrative offices and the planned streets of the old city all date to the century and a half of princely rule. The state survived the British settlement of the cis-Sutlej, the 1857 uprising (in which Nabha sided with the British), and the twentieth century's politics — its rulers, including the reform-minded Ripudaman Singh, played roles in the wider Sikh world.

In 1948 Nabha State acceded to India and merged into PEPSU, and the capital became a district town of the new Punjab. But the princely imprint — the palaces, the wide streets, the institutional buildings — never left. The town's colleges and its district-level offices still occupy the buildings the rajas built, and the old city's grid remains one of the best-preserved princely town plans in Malwa.

Geography & people

Nabha lies in Patiala district, about 25 kilometres west of Patiala city, on the roads linking Patiala, Sangrur and Malerkotla. The 2011 census counted 67,972 residents in the municipal council. Punjabi is the everyday language. The economy is famously industrial for a town its size: Nabha's workshops were among the first in India to build combine harvesters, and the machines made here still work the wheat fields of the whole northwest. The grain market serves the surrounding farmland.

Places of interest

The Hira Mahal — the 'Diamond Palace' — is Nabha's landmark, set in its grounds on the town's edge. The old royal core, with its palaces, administrative buildings and planned streets, preserves the princely capital's character. The town's gurdwaras and temples serve its population, and the industrial estates on its outskirts — where the combine harvesters are built — are a working attraction for the agriculturally curious. At harvest time the roads out of Nabha carry new machines to the wheat belt, a modern echo of the princely capital's old commercial life.

Notable people

Hamir Singh, who founded Nabha State and its capital in 1763, is the town's founding figure. Raja Bharpur Singh and the later Nabha rulers shaped its nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Bhai Kahn Singh Nabha — the scholar whose Mahan Kosh (1930) remains the great dictionary of Sikh literature — took his name from this town, and his work is Nabha's gift to Punjabi letters.