ਬਠਿੰਡਾਬਠਿੰਡਾ

Bathinda is a city and district headquarters in the Malwa region of Punjab, India, grown around Qila Mubarak, a fort counted among the oldest surviving in India. The 2011 census counted 285,788 residents, making it one of Punjab's largest cities. Railways, a refinery, fertiliser and power plants and AIIMS anchor its modern economy.

Where is Bathinda?

Bathinda is in the Malwa region of south western Punjab, at about 30.20 degrees north and 74.95 degrees east on the Indo-Gangetic alluvial plain, roughly 227 kilometres west of Chandigarh. It is the headquarters of Bathinda district, governed by a municipal corporation of 50 wards, and was counted in 2011 among the largest cities of Punjab. The climate is semi-arid: rainfall is low, between about 20 and 40 centimetres a year, summers are fiercely hot and winter nights can fall close to freezing.

History: the gateway fort

Old names carry the story. Bathinda was known in early medieval writing as Tabar-i-Hind, roughly the Gateway to India, a name recorded around 1211, and also as Gobindgarh. Tradition credits an early fort here to Raja Dab in the first centuries of the common era and links its bricks with the Kushana age of Kanishka; excavation at the fort has shown early medieval pottery and mud-brick walling, which still makes it one of the oldest fort sites in the country. In 1004 Mahmud of Ghazni besieged and took the fort on his road towards the Ganges valley. In 1190 Muhammad of Ghor occupied it; Prithviraj Chauhan won it back thirteen months later, after the First Battle of Tarain in 1191, only for it to pass to the Ghorids again after the second battle of Tarain.

Under the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughals the town grew into a trade and commercial centre on the road between Delhi and Lahore. The Ain-i-Akbari lists Bathinda in the sarkar of Sirhind, and the emperors Akbar and Aurangzeb both had work done to strengthen its fort. In 1634 the district saw the Battle of Lahira, fought between Guru Hargobind and Mughal forces. Around 1754 Maharaja Ala Singh of Patiala conquered the town, and from then on Bathinda followed the fortunes of Patiala State until independence, when it became a full district headquarters in PEPSU.

Why is Qila Mubarak famous?

Qila Mubarak is famous above all for 1240, when Razia Sultan, the first woman to rule from the throne of Delhi, was held prisoner inside it. Overthrown by her nobles, she was captured by Altunia, the governor of Bathinda, and kept at the fort; she married him, marched with him to recover her throne, and was killed after their defeat. The Imperial Gazetteer described the fort with thirty six bastions rising about 118 feet, visible for miles across the plain. The fort is a protected monument of national importance, maintained by the Archaeological Survey of India. On its ramparts stands Gurdwara Qila Mubarak Sahib, marking the stay of Guru Gobind Singh at the fort, and the district administration notes that the Bathinda fort is bigger than its competitors at Lahore, Phillaur and Hanumangarh.

Geography and people

The 2011 census counted 285,788 people in Bathinda city, up from 217,256 in 2001 and 159,114 in 1991: 151,524 men and 134,264 women, a sex ratio of 886 women for every 1,000 men. The municipal area covers about 68.5 square kilometres, a density of about 4,172 people per square kilometre. Of residents aged seven and above, 207,197 were literate, an effective literacy rate of 81.66 per cent, with male literacy at 86.59 per cent and female literacy at 76.12 per cent. By faith the city is Hindu majority at 62.61 per cent, with Sikhs at 35.04 per cent and Muslims at 1.12 per cent, a pattern almost reversed in the district as a whole, where Sikhs form about 70.89 per cent. Punjabi is the language of the city.

Places of interest

The fort is the visit: Qila Mubarak's gate, bastions and the gurdwara on its walls, with the Rani Mahal, a later palace addition from the Patiala period, above the entrance. The city also keeps a zoo at Bir Talab on its edge. The essential day trip runs about 28 kilometres south east to Talwandi Sabo, where Takht Sri Damdama Sahib, one of the five Takhts of Sikhism, marks the place where Guru Gobind Singh stayed in 1705 and 1706 and prepared the full version of the Guru Granth Sahib, adding the hymns of Guru Tegh Bahadur. Talwandi Sabo is remembered for that work as Guru Ki Kashi, the Kashi of the Guru, a seat of learning.

Industry, medicine and the modern city

Modern Bathinda runs on heavy plant and big institutions. The city has a National Fertilizers plant and cement plants, and thermal power became part of its identity through the Guru Nanak Dev Thermal Plant in the city and the Guru Hargobind Thermal Plant at Lehra Mohabbat in the district. At Phulokheri village outside the city, the Guru Gobind Singh Refinery of HPCL Mittal Energy, a nine million tonne a year plant commissioned in March 2012, made Bathinda a refining and petrochemical centre. A large army cantonment and the air force station at Bhisiana give the city a military weight unusual for its size. In education and health, AIIMS Bathinda became operational in 2019, with its first batch of medical students and an outpatient department opened that December, on a 177 acre campus planned around a 750 bed hospital; the city is also home to the Maharaja Ranjit Singh Punjab Technical University, and the Central University of Punjab, established in 2009, works from its main campus at Ghudda village nearby. The wider belt has also carried a long reported public concern about cancer cases and water quality, which researchers and governments have studied for years.

Getting there

Bathinda Junction is one of the great railway crossroads of northern India, with trains to most major cities, and the district site lists it as the railhead for the fort itself. Four national highways, NH 7, NH 54, NH 148B and NH 754, pass through or near the city, and Bathinda airport at Bhisiana, about 26 kilometres from the fort, works out of the air force base with civil flights. Rampura Phul lies about 30 kilometres to the north east and Maur about 36 kilometres away, so the fort city doubles as the natural base for the whole Malwa cotton belt around it.