ਜਲੰਧਰਜਲੰਧਰ

Jalandhar is a major city in the Doaba region of Punjab, India, and the headquarters of Jalandhar district. The 2011 census counted 868,929 people in the city. It is known across India as the Sports City for its sports goods industry, and for the ancient Devi Talab Mandir and its hockey village, Sansarpur.

Where is Jalandhar?

Jalandhar is in the Doaba, the land between the Beas and the Sutlej, in northern Punjab. It is the headquarters of Jalandhar district, the largest city of the Doaba and the third most populous city in Punjab at the 2011 census. The historic Grand Trunk Road passes through it, and the city and its cantonment sit side by side on the main road and rail line from Delhi to Amritsar.

The municipal city covered about 101 square kilometres in the census frame and stands at about 228 metres above sea level, with a density of 8,567 people per square kilometre. Around it lie the Doaba towns for which it is the market, hospital and college centre: Kartarpur, Nakodar, Phagwara and Kapurthala are all a short drive away, and each has its own page in this guide.

ਇਤਿਹਾਸ

Tradition links the name to Jalandhara, a figure of legend, while another reading takes it simply as land inside the water, the tract between two rivers. In early accounts the area was the Trigarta kingdom, also remembered as Prasthala. The city was a mint town under the Mughals, striking copper coins in the reign of Akbar, and it was known for brass and copper utensils made in its old quarters.

The eighteenth century brought repeated changes of master. The Faizullahpuria Misl captured Jalandhar in 1766, and in 1811 Maharaja Ranjit Singh incorporated it into the Sikh Empire. After the First Anglo-Sikh War the British established Jalandhar Cantonment in 1848, one of the oldest cantonments in India, and in 1849 the city became the headquarters of the division and district of the same name.

Partition transformed the city and district. Muslims had been a plurality in the district in 1941, at 45.2 percent of the population; by 1951 they were 0.2 percent, as families crossed in both directions and refugees arrived to rebuild the city. In the years after 1947 Jalandhar served as the capital of Indian Punjab, until Chandigarh took over that role, and it remade itself as an industrial and trading centre.

Geography and people

The 2011 census counted 868,929 people in the city: 460,811 men and 408,118 women. Effective literacy was 86.20 percent, at 88.81 percent for men and 83.26 percent for women. Scheduled Castes made up 27.26 percent of residents, and children aged 0 to 6 numbered 90,044, or 10.36 percent of the city.

Hindus were 74.90 percent of the city in 2011 and Sikhs 21.39 percent, with small Muslim, Christian, Jain and Buddhist communities. Punjabi was the first language of 81.48 percent of residents and Hindi of 15.63 percent. The climate is hot in summer and cold in winter, and most of the roughly 700 millimetres of annual rain falls in the July and August monsoon.

The old city remains a dense maze of mohallas, remembered for its twelve kots, twelve gates and twelve bastis, the bastis founded by Pathan settlers. Against it stand the open avenues of the cantonment, founded in 1848 with a population of 47,845 at the 2011 census, and the newer colonies spreading along the highways.

The Sports City of India

Jalandhar's best known title comes from its factories. The sports goods industry employs an estimated 60,000 to 70,000 people and has been estimated at about 1,700 crore rupees, with about 400 crore rupees of exports. Footballs, cricket equipment, hockey sticks and inflatable balls made here are sold across India and abroad. Leather goods form a second large industry, with turnover estimated at 1,200 to 1,500 crore rupees, alongside hand tools, surgical instruments and auto parts.

The playing half of the story belongs to Sansarpur, a village on the city's edge near the cantonment. Its boys first took up hockey around the British soldiers stationed there, in the early days using mulberry branches as sticks and balls woven from cotton thread. The village has produced 14 Olympians, counted as winners of 27 medals for India, beginning with Gurmit Singh at the Los Angeles Games of 1932. Seven players from Sansarpur went to the Mexico Olympics of 1968, five for India and two for Kenya, and Ajit Pal Singh from the village captained India to its first hockey World Cup title in 1975.

That pipeline still runs through the city's stadiums and sports colleges, and Jalandhar born India cricketer Harbhajan Singh is its best known modern sportsman. The Surjit Hockey Academy in the city continues to train young players from Sansarpur and the villages around it.

Places of interest

Devi Talab Mandir stands around a large sacred tank in the old city and is counted among the 51 Shakti Peethas of the Hindu tradition. Its main shrine is dedicated to Mata Tripurmalini, and the complex also holds a Kali shrine and a model of the Amarnath cave. Devotees visit through the year, and the tank and causeways are the city's best known sacred landscape.

Each December the temple grounds host the Harballabh Sangeet Sammelan, first held in 1875 by Baba Harballabh at the Devi Talab seat of his guru, Swami Tuljagiri. It is described as the oldest festival of Hindustani classical music in the world, runs in the last days of December, and was declared a national festival by the Department of Tourism. Entry is free, and the Incredible India account of the festival notes that the young singer K. L. Saigal found early inspiration in this Jalandhar circle.

Elsewhere in the city, St Mary's Cathedral serves the cantonment area and the Guru Ravidass Dham at Bootan Mandi draws devotees of the Ravidassia tradition. A short drive away at Kartarpur, the Jang e Azadi Memorial tells the story of Punjab's freedom struggle, and Pushpa Gujral Science City, on the road towards Kapurthala, is the region's big family day out.

Education and the diaspora city

Jalandhar educates the Doaba. Its institutions include Dr B. R. Ambedkar National Institute of Technology, DAV University, the DAV Institute of Engineering and Technology, Doaba College, Kanya Maha Vidyalaya and the Punjab Institute of Medical Sciences. Students come from across the region, and the colleges anchor whole neighbourhoods of hostels, bookshops and coaching centres.

The city is also the commercial heart of the Punjab region that emigrates the most. Doaba families settled in Canada, Britain, the United States and Australia send money home, and it shows in the wedding palaces, private hospitals and colleges their remittances have built. The outward link is old: in the later nineteenth century the British administration treated this crowded, fully farmed district as a chief recruiting ground for settlers in the new canal colonies of western Punjab.

Getting there and Jalandhar today

Jalandhar City station is a major stop on the Delhi to Amritsar railway, with Shatabdi services and long distance trains towards Mumbai, Howrah, Chennai and Jammu. By road, the Grand Trunk Road crosses the city: Amritsar is 89 kilometres away and Delhi 371 kilometres. The nearest airfield is at Adampur, about 19 kilometres from the cantonment, while most travellers use the international airport at Amritsar.

Selected in the second phase of the national Smart City project, Jalandhar today holds three identities together: an old trading city of mohallas, temples and music, a factory city that equips India's players, and the service capital of the Doaba diaspora.