Rupnagarਰੂਪਨਗਰ

History

Rupnagar — still widely called Ropar — is said to have been founded in the eleventh century by a Raja called Rokeshar, who named it after his son Rup Sen. But the town is far older than its medieval name: excavations by the Archaeological Survey of India under Y.D. Sharma in the 1950s, at the mound called Nalagarh Tibbi near the government college, uncovered a Harappan settlement with the classic Indus Valley sequence — making Ropar one of the oldest towns in Punjab and one of the civilisation's easternmost sites.

The town entered modern history on 26 October 1831, when Maharaja Ranjit Singh met the British Governor-General Lord William Bentinck at the Ropar headworks on the Sutlej and signed the Treaty of Ropar, fixing the river as the boundary of their spheres. From the headworks two great canals — the Sirhind Canal and the Bist Doab Canal — were taken out, watering large tracts of Malwa and Doaba. In 2008 the town gained the Indian Institute of Technology Ropar, and it is now a divisional headquarters of Punjab.

Geography & people

The city stands on the left bank of the Sutlej at the point where the river leaves the Shivalik hills, about 47 kilometres northwest of Chandigarh. The 2011 census counted 56,038 residents in the municipal council. Sikhs and Hindus form the two large communities, and the Puadhi dialect is widely spoken. The Ropar Wetland, a Ramsar site on the river, draws migratory birds each winter.

Places of interest

The archaeological mound at Nalagarh Tibbi, with its on-site finds, is the town's deepest attraction. The Ropar headworks and the treaty site on the Sutlej recall 1831. Gurdwaras Bhatha Sahib and Tibbi Sahib, associated with the Sikh Gurus, line the riverbank, alongside the Shiv Mandir of Lehri Shah and the dargah of Shah Khalid. The Ropar Wetland and the nearby Nangal dam country offer the district's best birdwatching.

Notable people

Raja Rokeshar, the town's legendary eleventh-century founder, gave it his son Rup Sen's name. Y.D. Sharma, the ASI archaeologist whose excavations in the 1950s revealed Ropar's Harappan past, put the town on the archaeological map of India. Maharaja Ranjit Singh's 1831 meeting with Lord William Bentinck here fixed the Sutlej as the famous 'red line' of nineteenth-century Punjab politics.