ਜਗਰਾਉਂਜਗਰਾਉਂ

Jagraon is a historic city in Ludhiana district of Punjab, India, founded in 1688 by Rai Kamaluddin of Raikot, close to the geographical centre of the state. The 2011 census counted 65,240 residents. It is known for the Roshni Mela, Gurdwara Nanaksar and its link with Lala Lajpat Rai.

Where is Jagraon?

Jagraon is at almost the geographical centre of Punjab, at 30.78 degrees north and 75.48 degrees east, about 234 metres above sea level and 16 kilometres from the Sutlej river. It is 37 kilometres west of its district headquarters Ludhiana, 29 kilometres from Moga and 31 kilometres from Nakodar. Jagraon is a subdivision headquarters, a rural police district and a municipal council of 19 wards, with PIN code 142026 and vehicle registration PB-25. Its position, where the roads to Ludhiana, Moga, Raikot and Nakodar meet, has made it a market town for a wide circle of Malwa villages for centuries.

History: the Rai chiefs' town

The name is explained locally in two parts: the original Jagar aon meant a place of great flooding, for the low land here once flooded regularly, and the ending graon comes from the Sanskrit grama, a village. Sikh history reached the area before the town itself: Guru Hargobind passed through this part of Malwa in 1631 and 1632, and Gurdwara Guru Sar at Kaunke, about 7 kilometres south west of the city, marks his visit. The town was founded in 1688 by Rai Kamaluddin of Raikot, of the Rai chiefs who ruled this belt and whom later accounts describe as Chandravanshi Rajputs. Their old walled town, entered by four gates and holding the Anarkali bazaar, still gives Jagraon its historic core.

The Rai chiefs stayed in the story for two and a half centuries. In 1790 Rai Ahmad of Jagraon was arrested by the Maratha general Ranee Khan after Patiala's diwan Nanu Mal failed to pay a promised sum, and escaped by scheming at Panipat. The last chief, Rai Inayat Khan, was still a figure of trust at Partition in 1947, when he held custody of the Ganga Sagar, a relic associated with Guru Gobind Singh. By then the town's fame had already shifted from its chiefs to two very different sons of its soil, a freedom movement leader raised in its streets and a soldier from a village in its tehsil.

Geography and people

The 2011 census counted 65,240 people in the municipal council: 34,387 men and 30,853 women, a sex ratio of 897 women for every 1,000 men. Children aged 0 to 6 numbered 7,049, about 10.8 per cent of the city. The town covers about 14 square kilometres, a density of about 4,660 people per square kilometre. Literacy stood at 81.69 per cent, with male literacy at 84.80 per cent and female literacy at 78.25 per cent. Scheduled Castes made up 26.47 per cent of residents, and 25,066 people were recorded as workers. By faith the city is closely divided: Sikhs numbered 34,828, about 53.38 per cent, and Hindus 28,501, about 43.69 per cent, with small Muslim and Jain communities. The wider tehsil counted 341,234 people in 2011. Punjabi is the everyday language.

Places of interest and the Roshni Mela

Gurdwara Nanaksar, a few kilometres from the town centre, is Jagraon's best known shrine: a gurdwara raised in memory of Sant Baba Nand Singh, with a sarovar that draws pilgrims from far beyond the tehsil, on a site the Master Plan traces back about a century to a humble hut in the jungle. Near the town, Gurdwara Mehdiana Sahib is known for its life size sculpted scenes from Sikh history. The Jain temple in the town draws pilgrims for the annual Diksha Mahotsav in the third week of March, and Gurdwara Hargobind Sahib at Kaunke Kalan keeps the memory of Guru Hargobind's visit. The house of Lala Lajpat Rai, kept as a municipal library and museum, is the town's civic landmark.

The Roshni Mela, the festival of lights, is the town's great gathering: a three day fair held in the third week of February, drawing thousands of visitors from Punjab and the neighbouring states of Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh. Town accounts place the fair at the mazar of Peer Baba Mohkumdeen, while the official Master Plan describes the fair at the Khangah and the mausoleum of Mai Jeena; both accounts point to the same old Muslim shrine quarter of the town, a survival from the centuries when Jagraon had a large Muslim presence before 1947.

Notable people

Lala Lajpat Rai is Jagraon's defining name, but the detail matters: he was born on 28 January 1865 at Dhudike village, in what is now Moga district, and spent much of his youth in Jagraon, where his father taught and where his house still stands. The Punjab Kesari, one of the Lal Bal Pal trio of the freedom movement, led the protest against the Simon Commission at Lahore on 30 October 1928, was badly hurt in the police lathi charge, and died on 17 November 1928; his death helped fire the generation of Bhagat Singh. The trust his family founded still runs institutions in his name in the town, including the college that became Lajpat Rai DAV College and R.K. High School. Havildar Ishar Singh, who led the 21 men of the 36th Sikhs at the Battle of Saragarhi on 12 September 1897, was born in 1858 at Jhorran village near Jagraon, in this tehsil; all 21 died holding the post, and each was awarded the Indian Order of Merit. Sant Baba Nand Singh of Nanaksar is the third name the town keeps, remembered at the gurdwara that bears his tradition's name.

Jagraon today

Jagraon's working fame is its markets. The Master Plan describes its vegetable and grain market as the second largest grain market in Asia after Khanna, and the town's rice industry runs to more than 100 shelling units; the same plan calls its animal market the second largest in Punjab after Vallah, near Amritsar. Those are the plan's own claims from 2008, and the markets remain the town's economic engine in kind if not in exact rank: farmers from across the tehsil bring paddy, wheat and vegetables here, and the bazaars, schools and colleges of a subdivision headquarters serve the villages around. The old gates and bazaar, the Nanaksar sarovar and the February fair give the market town a character its newer suburbs have not replaced.

Getting there

Jagraon stands on the Ludhiana to Ferozepur railway line, with its own station, and at the junction of the highways the Master Plan lists as NH 95 and NH 71, the Ludhiana to Ferozepur road and the road towards Moga. Buses link it through the day with Ludhiana, about 37 kilometres east, with Moga, Raikot, Nakodar and Sidhwan Bet. Most visitors come from Ludhiana by road or train and combine the town with Kaunke and Mehdiana Sahib nearby, or with Dhudike, the birthplace village of Lala Lajpat Rai, a short drive away in Moga district.