ਬੁਂਡਲਾਬੁਂਡਲਾ

Bundala, also spelt Bandala, is a large village in Phillaur tehsil of Jalandhar district, in the Doaba region of Punjab, India. Nicknamed Inqalabian Pind, the village of revolutionaries, it was founded around 1516, gave India the communist leader Harkishan Singh Surjeet and poet Gurdas Ram Alam, and counted 6,884 people in 2011.

Where is Bundala?

Bundala is a village in Phillaur tehsil of Jalandhar district, Punjab, India, in the centre of the Doaba region, the land between the Sutlej and Beas rivers. It stands in the Manjki tract, and is sometimes called Bundala Manjki. The village lies on the Jandiala to Goraya road, north of the river Sutlej. Village listings place it about 20 kilometres from Phillaur, the tehsil headquarters, and about 28 kilometres by road from Jalandhar city, the district headquarters.

Bundala falls in the Rurka Kalan community development block and has its own gram panchayat, headed by an elected sarpanch. Its census village code is 030238 and its PIN code is 144034. The Census 2011 record gives its area as 1,047.36 hectares and names Nurmahal, about 12 kilometres away, as the nearest statutory town. For elections it falls in the Phillaur assembly constituency and the Jalandhar Lok Sabha constituency. Jandiala Manjki lies to the north, Goraya to the east, Rurka Kalan to the south and Nurmahal to the west. The closest villages include Bhardwaji, Pasli, Dhesian Kahna, Pandori Musharkati, Adekali, Dhani Pind and Sunar Kalan.

History: founding and the five pattis

Local tradition, recorded in published village histories, dates the founding of Bundala to around 1516, when two Bassi Jatt brothers, Bahhar and Chahar, settled here and raised a small pind. The settlement was divided into five pattis, or quarters, named Badal, Niyewal, Jodha, Sarja and Surjia for the founding family. The patti names still organise how villagers describe where a family lives, five centuries on. The Bassi name runs through the village story: its most famous son was born into a Bassi Jat family here.

In the eighteenth century, in the Sikh Misl era, Bundala formed part of the Dallewalia Misl. Its leader, Sardar Tara Singh Ghaiba, held the whole Manjki tract along with Dhak, Rakkar and Sirowal, with influence reaching into Malwa and up to the Kandi foothills. It placed this Doaba village inside one of the Sikh confederacies of the era before Maharaja Ranjit Singh.

Why is Bundala called Inqalabian Pind?

Bundala is called Inqalabian Pind, Punjabi for village of revolutionaries, because of one act of defiance by its teenage son Harkishan Singh Surjeet in March 1932. Bhagat Singh had been executed on 23 March 1931. On the first anniversary of his martyrdom, Surjeet, who had joined Bhagat Singh's Naujawan Bharat Sabha in 1930, went to the court at Hoshiarpur where the Union Jack flew. Published accounts of the village say the others who had planned to pull the flag down did not appear, so the 16 year old climbed up himself, hauled the British flag down and hoisted the Indian tricolour.

Arrested and brought before a British magistrate, he was asked his name and answered London Tod Singh, the Singh who breaks London. He was sent to a reformatory school for juvenile offenders in Delhi. The name stuck to the boy, and the title Inqalabian Pind stuck to his village. Bundala later produced many communist leaders, and its sports ground carries the name Shaheed Bhagat Singh Stadium.

ਪ੍ਰਸਿੱਧ ਸ਼ਖ਼ਸੀਅਤਾਂ

Harkishan Singh Surjeet (23 March 1916 to 1 August 2008) is Bundala's most famous son. Born here to a Bassi Jat family, he studied at the village government school up to Class 4 before the freedom struggle took him away. He joined the Communist Party of India in the 1930s, co-founded the Kisan Sabha in Punjab and edited the journals Dukhi Duniya and Chingari. He was jailed repeatedly under British rule and forced underground for four years just after independence.

When the Communist Party split in 1964, Surjeet was one of the nine founding members of the CPI(M) Polit Bureau. He served as general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) from 1992 to 2005, and in the coalition era he became known across India as a coalition builder who assembled broad alliances. After his death on 1 August 2008, aged 92, thousands travelled to Bundala for the memorial meeting of 10 August 2008 at Shaheed Bhagat Singh Stadium, addressed by leaders from across the political spectrum.

The poet Gurdas Ram Alam (1912 to 1989) was also born in Bundala, a friend of Surjeet from the same village. Alam worked as a brick kiln labourer, never went to school and learned his Gurmukhi letters from friends, yet he became known as the first Punjabi Dalit poet, writing on inequality, labour and social change. His collection Alam Kav appeared in 1965. Two sons of one village, one a national party leader and one a labourer poet, explain much of Bundala's self image.

Population and daily life

The 2011 census counted 6,884 people in Bundala: 3,597 men and 3,287 women in 1,448 households, making it one of the largest villages of Phillaur tehsil and of Jalandhar district. The sex ratio was 914 women for every 1,000 men, above the Punjab average of 895, and the child sex ratio of 898 was also above the state average of 846. Children up to six numbered 706, about 10 per cent of the village. Scheduled Castes numbered 2,747, about 40 per cent of the population, and no Scheduled Tribe population was recorded.

Literacy stood at 80.41 per cent, above the Punjab average of 75.84 per cent, with men at 83.60 per cent and women at 76.94 per cent. The census counted 2,297 workers. Of the 2,225 main workers, only 358 were cultivators and 10 were agricultural labourers: the great majority worked in other occupations such as trade, transport, services and industry, a pattern that sets Bundala apart from purely farming villages. A further 72 people were marginal workers, employed for only part of the year.

The village is largely Sikh, with Hindu and Muslim residents as well, and published accounts count 12 gurdwaras, a Hindu temple and a mosque in the village. The Census 2011 directory recorded a full set of services for a village: government schools at every level from primary to senior secondary, a community health centre, a primary health centre, an allopathic hospital and a veterinary hospital, a post office, commercial and cooperative bank branches and an ATM. Many families have relatives settled abroad, notably in the United Kingdom.

Village industry and farming

Farming still covers most of Bundala's land. Of its 1,047 hectares, about 916 hectares were net sown area in 2011, and every sown hectare was irrigated, about 766 hectares by wells and tube wells and about 150 hectares by canals. About 132 hectares were under non agricultural uses such as the settlement, roads and ponds. Farm power supply was recorded at 8 hours a day.

What changed Bundala's economy was industry. Guru Nanak Auto Enterprises, the auto components firm known today as GNA, entered the village in 1947, the year of independence, according to the village's published history. From those village beginnings the company grew over seven decades into a maker of precision axle shafts and transmission components, with its corporate office now on GT Road at Phagwara and a global customer base. That industry helps explain why so few of the village's main workers were recorded as farm labourers in 2011.

Getting there

Bundala is reached by pucca, all weather roads, and the 2011 directory recorded a private bus service in the village, with public buses available within 5 to 10 kilometres. The village sits on the Jandiala to Goraya road: Goraya, on National Highway 1, is the gateway town to the east, Nurmahal lies to the west, and Phagwara and Nakodar serve as bus hubs for onward connections.

There is no railway station in the village itself. Village listings name Nurmahal as the nearest station, while the Census directory placed the nearest station more than 10 kilometres away, so check locally before travel. Jalandhar City station, about 28 kilometres away, is the main railhead for long distance trains, with Phagwara and Ludhiana also used for routes to Delhi and beyond. For flights, village listings put Adampur airport about 29 kilometres away, and the nearest international airport is Sri Guru Ram Dass Jee International Airport at Amritsar.