ਹੁਸ਼ਿਆਰਪੁਰਹੁਸ਼ਿਆਰਪੁਰ

Hoshiarpur is a city in the Doaba region of Punjab, India, the headquarters of Hoshiarpur district where the plains meet the Shivalik foothills, about 40 kilometres north east of Jalandhar. It is known for its centuries-old wood inlay craft, its orchards, its colleges, and the Bhrigu Samhita manuscripts kept here.

Where is Hoshiarpur?

Hoshiarpur stands on upland ground just south west of the Siwalik Range, at 296 metres above sea level, in the north east of Punjab with the hills of Himachal Pradesh close beyond the district border. It lies in the Bist Doaba, the country between the Beas and the Sutlej, in the belt called the Kandi, where seasonal streams known as choes cut down from the foothills. Jalandhar is about 40 kilometres to the south west. The city's PIN code is 146001, and it is the administrative headquarters of Hoshiarpur district.

History: a Katoch town between empires

Hoshiarpur is one of the older towns of the Doaba: the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica records the tradition that it was founded in the early fourteenth century. The country around it formed part of the old Katoch kingdom centred on Jalandhar, and in later centuries it was divided between the rajas of Datarpur and Jaswan. The district's own official history recounts older associations with Rajput ruling houses, drawn from travellers' accounts and inscriptions, as tradition rather than settled record.

In 1809 Maharaja Ranjit Singh occupied the town. His forces kept a cantonment a mile to the south east, he absorbed the Jaswan territories in 1815 and Datarpur in 1818, and by the end of 1818 the whole country between the Sutlej and the Beas was under the Lahore government. After the First Anglo-Sikh War the Jalandhar Doab passed to the British in 1846, with John Lawrence as its first Commissioner; the British kept the cantonment up for several years, and in 1848 the revolt of the Jaswan, Datarpur and Kangra rajas ended with their estates confiscated. Under British rule Hoshiarpur became a district headquarters and a centre of education and reform movements. At Partition in 1947, the district history records, large-scale migration took place on both sides of the new border.

Geography and people

The municipal council is divided into 31 wards and administers 36,627 houses. The 2011 census counted 168,653 residents: 88,304 men and 80,349 women, a sex ratio of 910 women per 1,000 men. Children under seven numbered 17,337, about a tenth of the city. Scheduled Castes formed 26.85 per cent of the population. Hindus were 75.67 per cent of residents and Sikhs 21.45 per cent, with small Jain, Muslim and Christian communities. Literacy stood at 88.14 per cent, 90.54 per cent for men and 85.52 per cent for women, among the highest rates in Punjab, and 60,882 people were recorded as workers.

Punjabi is the language of daily life. The country around the city is fruit country: Britannica lists kinnow, mangoes, guavas and lychees among its produce, and a Punjab Agricultural University study recorded 430 hectares of litchi in Hoshiarpur district in 2018-19, 14.90 per cent of the state's litchi area, producing 6,883 tonnes. Proximity to the hills gives the city a cooler, more humid climate than the central Punjab plains, and the forested Kandi belt begins at its edge.

What is Hoshiarpur known for?

Above all, Hoshiarpur is known for its wood inlay work, a craft practised here for around 300 years. Artisans inlay shisham wood with fine patterns, originally in ivory; after ivory was banned they turned to acrylic, and bone, shell and metal are also used. The bazaars and workshops turn out inlaid tables, chairs, screens, chess boards, jewellery boxes and trays, and the craft is still practised in localities such as Bassi Gulam Hussain and Boothgarh. A government count reported only 100 to 150 practising artisans in recent years, with the scarcity of shisham threatening the trade, so each surviving workshop carries an old tradition. The 1911 Britannica already listed Hoshiarpur's manufactures as inlaid woodwork and lacquered ware, alongside cotton goods, shoes and copper vessels.

The city is also known, in a very different way, for the Bhrigu Samhita. Local tradition holds that manuscripts of this astrological treatise, attributed to the sage Bhrigu and said to record the lives of millions of people, are kept in Hoshiarpur, and visitors come from across India and abroad seeking readings. No complete manuscript is known to exist; the Hoshiarpur leaves are kept in bundles by astrologer families, among them the family of the late Pandit Des Raj, known for the Prashna method of reading. A documented visit in 1978, recorded in the Encyclopedia.com entry on the Bhrigu Samhita, describes two astrologers in a back street of the city finding a visitor's leaf by the time of his arrival. Whether read as belief or as folklore, the tradition is part of the city's identity.

Places of interest

The Sheesh Mahal, built in 1911 by Lala Hans Raj Jain, is the city's own palace of glass: its interior walls and ceilings are worked in glass, paintings on the first floor depict the coronation of King George V, and statues of gods and goddesses stand on the ground floor. At Bajwara, now part of the city's edge, the Bajwara Fort spreads over six to seven acres. Its builder is unknown, the Ain-i-Akbari lists Bajwara among its mahals, local tradition links its name to the singer Baiju Bawra, Maharaja Ranjit Singh captured it in 1825, and the British imprisoned mutineers there in 1857; today it stands largely in ruins. The old city's bazaars, where the inlay workshops still trade, and the Vishveshvaranand Vedic Research Institute, noted by Britannica, complete a walk through the town.

Beyond the city, the Takhni-Rehmapur Wildlife Sanctuary protects 382 hectares of Shivalik forest about 20 kilometres away, declared a sanctuary in 1999 and home to leopards, deer, wild boar, jackals and pangolins; visitors need prior Forest Department permission. The Kamahi Devi temple at Beh Nangal, about 40 kilometres away, is dedicated to the goddess Kamakshi, and tradition says the Pandavas built it. Gurdwara Garna Sahib at Bodal village, about 39 kilometres away, remembers the visit of Guru Hargobind, who is said to have rested under a garna tree there.

Notable people

The poet Habib Jalib was born on 24 March 1928 in a village near Hoshiarpur. He migrated to Pakistan at Partition and became one of Urdu's best loved people's poets, dying in Lahore on 13 March 1993. The actress Monica Bedi was born in Chabbewal village in Hoshiarpur district, before her family moved to Norway. Hoshiarpur's most famous student was Dr Manmohan Singh, the future prime minister, who studied economics and worked as a research scholar here when Government College Hoshiarpur served as Panjab University's University College. Beyond individuals, the city's name is carried by its teachers, its inlay artisans and the soldiers the district has long sent to the armed forces.

Getting there, and Hoshiarpur today

Hoshiarpur railway station (code HSX), built in 1905, is the terminus of the branch line from Jalandhar. The city is also a major road junction: National Highway 503A runs from Amritsar through Sri Hargobindpur and Tanda to Hoshiarpur and on to Una, and NH 344B links it with Phagwara, 38 kilometres of highway. Buses leave from the Bhagwan Valmiki Interstate Bus Terminal. The closest airport is Adampur, about 25 kilometres to the south west, and the nearest major international airport is at Amritsar, about 125 kilometres away.

Education is the city's second industry. DAV College Hoshiarpur was established in 1926 and marks its centenary in 2026. Government College Hoshiarpur began in 1927 as an intermediate college and became a degree college in 1943; in 1949 its building was placed at the disposal of the post-Partition Panjab University as its University College, and parts of the university worked from Hoshiarpur until the move to Chandigarh began in 1958. With its colleges, its silk weaving and oilseed pressing, its orchards and its workshops, Hoshiarpur today is a busy foothill city that still runs at the pace of a district town.