ਬਰਾ ਪਿੰਡਬਰਾ ਪਿੰਡ

Where is Bara Pind?

Bara Pind is a large village in Phillaur tehsil of Jalandhar district, Punjab, India, in the Doaba region, standing on the Goraya to Apra road. Its name means big village in Punjabi, and it lives up to it: the 2011 census counted 6,327 people in 1,323 households on 1,382 hectares, with schools up to Class 12, a community health centre, banks and its own post office. Bara Pind is the postal and service centre for a ring of smaller villages around it.

In the census record the village is Bara Pind (206), village code 030196. It sits in the Phillaur community development block and is served by the joint gram panchayat named Bara Pind, Patti Masandpur and Patti Kamalpur, a name that preserves the village's old patti, or ward, system. It votes in the Phillaur assembly constituency and the Jalandhar Lok Sabha constituency. Its PIN code is 144418, its telephone code is 01826, and its mapped position is about 31.1166 degrees north and 75.8072 degrees east, at an elevation of about 246 metres. The Sutlej river runs about 9 kilometres to the south, on the far side of Goraya.

How did Bara Pind get its name?

A detailed village history recorded on the OneFiveNine village page tells the founding story as the village itself keeps it. About 500 years ago, it says, a wrestler and landlord of the Sahota clan named Kaul founded the settlement, and his younger brother Dhaul founded Dhuleta, the village now recorded as Dholeta, about 2 miles to the south east. The first name of the village was Kuletta, after its founder. As the settlement grew bigger than its neighbours, people began calling it Bara Pind, the big village, and that is the name that stayed.

The same account names Kaul's four sons, Hari, Bail, Menn and Chand, and says three of them left and founded the village of Barian in the hilly country near Mahilpur. In Bara Pind itself, the founder's descendants built their own pattis, wards named after their own lines, among them Patti Dhuni Ke, Patti Tangar Ke, Patti Maane Ke, Patti Lallu Ke, Patti Nihalu Ke, Patti Lamkhir Ke, Patti Baagh Mall Ke and Patti Nath Mall Ke. Sahota families also settled Muslim Arain market gardeners in the village, and the account records that the Arains left for Pakistan in 1947.

The history then turns to the Guru period. Bhai Naurang Singh Sahota of Patti Manna Ke, it says, was the first man of the village to go to Anandpur Sahib and take Khande di Pahul, the Khalsa initiation, from Guru Gobind Singh, and he died fighting in one of the Guru's battles. His family was afterwards called Marda Ke, the family of brave and true men, a suffix the account says their descendants still carry, in the village and in Fresno, California, where some of them settled. In the late 18th century, the account continues, the village chief Sardar Gulab Singh Sahota joined the Sikh misls while keeping Bara Pind and its neighbouring villages independent, until the family gave way first to Sardar Fateh Singh Ahluwalia and then, in 1807, to Maharaja Ranjit Singh, who brought Bara Pind under his rule. This is a recorded village tradition from a single source, and it is presented here as that tradition, not as a documented chronicle.

Population and households

The 2011 census counted 6,327 people in Bara Pind: 3,316 men and 3,011 women, living in 1,323 households, an average of about 4.8 people per household. Spread over its 1,382 hectares, the population density works out to about 458 people per square kilometre. The sex ratio was 908 women for every 1,000 men. Children up to the age of six numbered 624, about 10 per cent of the village. Scheduled Castes made up 2,741 people, about 43 per cent of the population, and no Scheduled Tribe population was recorded.

Literacy in 2011 stood at 80.61 per cent among residents aged seven and above, with men at 83.59 per cent and women at 77.31 per cent. The census recorded 2,151 workers, about 34 per cent of the village. Of the 1,842 main workers, the largest group, 1,115, were other workers in trade, transport and services, ahead of 287 cultivators on their own land and an unusually large group of 252 household industry workers, a pattern that fits a village sitting beside the engineering and manufacturing town of Goraya. A further 309 people were marginal workers, employed for only part of the year.

Land and farming

Farming covers most of Bara Pind's land. Of the village's 1,382 hectares, 1,278 hectares were net sown area in the 2011 record, and every sown hectare was irrigated: 1,266 hectares from wells and tube-wells and 12 hectares from canals. About 104 hectares were under non-agricultural uses such as the village settlement, roads and ponds. Farm power supply was recorded at 12 hours a day, and domestic supply at 18 hours a day, among the better supply figures recorded for a village in that census.

Counting main and marginal workers together, the census recorded 298 cultivators and 276 agricultural labourers, so, as in most large Doaba villages, the land is worked mainly by the families that own it. The rotation is the Doaba one of paddy and wheat with fodder, sugarcane and vegetables, and the village sells into the Goraya market, which the village listings name as its commodities mandi. Farming is only half the economy now: the census worker figures show more people in services, trade and household industry than in cultivation, which is why Bara Pind reads as a small town in village form.

Gurdwaras, mandirs and mosques

Bara Pind's religious life matches its size. The village page on Wikipedia counts 9 gurdwaras, 4 mandirs and 2 mosques in the village and describes its gurdwaras as historical. Village listings name a Shiv Mandir and a Shani Dev Mandir on Bara Pind Road among its temples, and a Radha Soami Satsang Ghar serves its followers on the Dhuleta side. A village of three faiths worshipping in their own buildings, in a settlement organised for centuries into family pattis, is the social fact underneath the counts: each patti and each community has built and kept its own place of worship.

The same village page counts 4 schools and 2 stadiums in Bara Pind, and names Bhai Kulveer Singh Khalsa as a person from the village. No independent source for that name was found during this research, so it is recorded here only as the page's claim, and the stadiums are likewise carried as the page's count rather than as a verified facility list.

Schools, health and services

The Census 2011 Village Directory gives Bara Pind the fullest service list of any village in this part of Phillaur tehsil. Education in 2011 ran through one government primary school, 2 government middle schools, 2 government secondary schools and 2 government senior secondary schools, so children can study in the village up to Class 12. Village listings name separate government senior secondary schools for boys and for girls, along with private schools including Punjab Academy and the 5-H Punjab Rural Academy. Health facilities recorded inside the village included a community health centre, an allopathic hospital, a dispensary and a veterinary hospital, with an anganwadi centre and an ASHA worker.

Drinking water in 2011 came from untreated tap water supplies. The village had its own post office and sub post office, and that post office is the head office for surrounding villages: Kang Jagir, for example, about 5 kilometres away, uses the Bara Pind post office. Banking was available in the village itself, with a commercial bank branch, a cooperative bank branch and an ATM, along with a ration shop, mobile phone coverage and an internet common service centre. Taken together, the 2011 directory recorded 25 of its 32 selected facility fields as available in Bara Pind, which is why smaller villages around it treat it as their town.

Getting there

Bara Pind stands on the Goraya to Apra road and is well linked by road with Phagwara, Phillaur, Goraya and the villages around it. It is reached by pucca, all-weather roads, and the 2011 directory recorded a private bus service in the village itself. The census recorded Goraya, about 4 kilometres away, as the nearest town, and the nearest railway station within 5 kilometres: Goraya railway station, about 5 kilometres away, serves the area, Bhattian station is also nearby, and the nearest airport is at Ludhiana, at Sahnewal. Neighbouring villages include Rurka Khurd, about 2 kilometres away, Gurah, Mansurpur, Rajpura and Atti, with Bir Shersingh, Atta and Dholeta also adjoining. Phillaur, the tehsil headquarters, and Jalandhar city, the district headquarters, are the hubs for administration and onward travel.