Rupnagar Districtਰੂਪਨਗਰ

Rupnagar district, long known as Ropar, is a district in the Puadh region of eastern Punjab, India, where the Sutlej leaves the Shivalik hills for the plains. It holds Harappan Ropar, among the oldest excavated towns in India, and Anandpur Sahib, where Guru Gobind Singh founded the Khalsa in 1699, and its headquarters is Rupnagar town.

Where is Rupnagar district?

Rupnagar district is in the east of Punjab, in the Puadh region, and its headquarters is Rupnagar town, about 42 kilometres by road from Chandigarh, the state capital. Himachal Pradesh lies to its north and north east, Hoshiarpur, Shahid Bhagat Singh Nagar and Ludhiana districts to the west, Fatehgarh Sahib to the south and Mohali to the south east. The district sits where the Sutlej comes down from the hills, so its northern belt is Shivalik foothill country and its south is flat alluvial plain.

The Census of 2011 counted 684,627 people in the district, across 1,356 square kilometres, a density of 505 people per square kilometre. The sex ratio was 915 females for every 1,000 males, and literacy was 82.19 percent, with Punjabi the mother tongue of 92.6 percent of residents. Sikhs made up 52.74 percent of the population and Hindus 44.47 percent. For administration the district has four tehsils, Rupnagar, Sri Anandpur Sahib, Sri Chamkaur Sahib and Nangal, five development blocks and 617 villages, alongside towns that include Rupnagar, Anandpur Sahib, Nangal, Morinda, Chamkaur Sahib and Kiratpur Sahib.

From Harappan Ropar to the Ropar state

The ancient mound at Ropar rises about 21 metres on the left bank of the Sutlej, where the river enters the plains. Excavations led by Y. D. Sharma of the Archaeological Survey of India uncovered six cultural periods running, with some breaks, from Harappan times to the present day, and the district administration calls Ropar the first Harappan site excavated in independent India. The Harappans are thought to have reached the upper Sutlej towards the close of the third millennium BC. Finds from the mound include a steatite seal, Painted Grey Ware pottery, and material of the Saka, Kushana and Gupta ages, among them gold coins of Chandragupta.

The Archaeological Museum at Rupnagar, opened to the public in 1998, displays these finds in sequence, from Harappan antiquities to a Vina Vadini figure and a yakshi image. The town itself is said to have been founded in the 11th century by a Raja called Rokeshar, who named it after his son Rup Sen. The tract later passed under Mauryan and Gupta rule, then under the dynasties of Delhi and the Mughals. In 1763 the Sikh chief Hari Singh of Sialba conquered Ropar, and the later Ropar state of Raja Bhup Singh was confiscated by the British after the Anglo-Sikh wars of the 1840s. In October 1831 Maharaja Ranjit Singh met Lord William Bentinck, the Governor General, on the bank of the Sutlej at Rupnagar, a meeting that fixed relations between the two powers.

The modern district was carved out on 1 November 1966, when Punjab was reorganised. It shrank on 14 April 2006, when the Kharar and Majri blocks were moved into the new district of S.A.S. Nagar (Mohali).

Anandpur Sahib, Kiratpur Sahib and the Khalsa

The district holds some of the most sacred ground in Sikh history. Kiratpur Sahib, on the bank of the Sutlej, was established by Guru Hargobind, who bought the land from Raja Tara Chand of Kehloor through Baba Gurditta. Guru Har Rai and Guru Harkrishan were born at Kiratpur, and at its Gurdwara Patalpuri Sahib the ashes of the dead are immersed by Sikhs from across the world. Anandpur Sahib was founded by Guru Tegh Bahadur on land he bought at the village of Makhowal. It was from Anandpur that the Guru set out for Delhi after the Kashmiri Pandits appealed to him for protection, a journey that ended in his martyrdom, and the young Guru Gobind Singh spent his early years in its forts, including Kila Anandgarh.

On Vaisakhi of 1699, at the place now marked by Takht Sri Kesgarh Sahib, Guru Gobind Singh created the Khalsa, initiating the first five Sikhs and giving the community the names Singh and Kaur. Kesgarh Sahib is one of the five takhts, the seats of Sikh authority, and the tercentenary of the Khalsa was celebrated at Anandpur Sahib in April 1999 before crowds from around the world. The district also carries the memory of December 1704, when the Guru's family was separated during the crossing of the Sarsa river, remembered at Gurdwara Pariwar Vichora Sahib near the village of Nangal Sirsa, and the Guru went on to Chamkaur Sahib, where his two elder sons, Sahibzada Ajit Singh and Sahibzada Jujhar Singh, died fighting.

The Sutlej, the Shivaliks and the Ropar wetland

Four landforms run side by side across the district: the Siwalik hills, the intermontane valley of the Sutlej, the Kandi and Sirowal formations at the foot of the hills, and the alluvial plains in the south. The Sutlej enters the district near Nangal in the north, flows south east, then bends south and south west through the outermost Siwalik hills into the plains. Smaller hill streams, the Budki and Siswa among them, drain the south eastern part and join the Sutlej. The climate is dry apart from the monsoon: average annual rainfall is 775.6 mm, about 78 percent of it falling between June and September, and temperatures range from about 4 degrees Celsius in winter to 45 degrees in summer.

Where the Sutlej is held by the barrage built at Ropar in 1952 to divert water for drinking and irrigation, the river spreads into the Ropar wetland, a lake and river site of 1,365 hectares listed under the Ramsar Convention on 22 January 2002. The Ramsar listing records the wetland as a breeding place for the smooth Indian otter, hog deer and sambar, with the endangered Indian pangolin thought to be present, about 35 species of fish and around 150 species of local and migratory birds. Birdwatchers, swimmers and boaters visit through the year, and the Sadabarat forest patch on its edge keeps a piece of the old Shivalik foothill habitat alive.

Towns, work and study: Nangal, IIT Ropar and the farms

Farming remains the base of the district economy. The Central Ground Water Board puts the net sown area at 780 square kilometres, with rice and maize the main kharif crops and wheat the main rabi crop. Irrigation comes from tubewells and from canals fed by the Sutlej system, among them the Sirhind Canal, the Nangal Hydel Canal and the Anandpur Sahib Hydel Canal, though the Board also flags groundwater overuse in the Chamkaur Sahib, Nurpur Bedi and Morinda blocks.

Industry is anchored at Nangal, a town built on land acquired from 1948 for the Bhakra project on the Sutlej. The Bhakra Dam itself stands upstream in Himachal Pradesh, about 10 kilometres from Nangal, and the town grew in three parts: Nangal, Nangal Township and Naya Nangal. Naya Nangal is the planned colony of the fertiliser complex of National Fertilizers Limited, whose plant made the town a byword for fertiliser production in Punjab. Morinda, on the Chandigarh to Ludhiana road, is known as Baghwala, the city of gardens.

The district's best known modern institution is the Indian Institute of Technology Ropar. Established in 2008 as one of the new IITs, it held its first classes at IIT Delhi, moved to a transit campus in Rupnagar in August 2009, and shifted to its permanent 525 acre campus on the bank of the Sutlej in June 2018. The campus entrance carries stone pillars inspired by the Indus Valley civilisation, a deliberate nod to ancient Ropar a short distance away.

Hola Mohalla, visiting and getting there

The district's great festival is Hola Mohalla at Anandpur Sahib, instituted by Guru Gobind Singh in 1701, two years after the founding of the Khalsa. Held in March, a day after Holi, it replaces colour play with martial display: Nihang Sikhs in blue robes and tall turbans perform gatka, tent pegging, bareback riding and mock battles, processions led by the Panj Pyare move through the town, and langar is served to all. Hundreds of thousands of devotees gather at Anandpur Sahib, and the festival is the best single occasion to see the district's Sikh heritage in full public life.

Getting there is straightforward. Rupnagar town is about 42 kilometres from Chandigarh by road, the district headquarters has its own railway station, and most towns in the district, Chamkaur Sahib excepted, stand on the railway line. The nearest airport is at Chandigarh, about 56 kilometres from the district headquarters. Roads run west to Ludhiana through Morinda, and north through Anandpur Sahib and Nangal towards Himachal Pradesh, making the district an easy first stop on the way from the plains to the hills.