ਕਪੂਰਥਲਾਕਪੂਰਥਲਾ

Kapurthala is a city in the Doaba region of Punjab, India, and the headquarters of Kapurthala district, about 21 kilometres from Jalandhar. Once the capital of the Ahluwalia princely state, it is known as the Paris of Punjab for its French-inspired palaces and Moorish Mosque, and for the Rail Coach Factory.

Where is Kapurthala?

Kapurthala stands in the Bist Doaba, the land between the Beas and the Sutlej, at 225 metres above sea level. Jalandhar, the largest city of the Doaba, is about 21 kilometres to the east, and the Beas flows past the west of the district. National Highway 703A runs through the city, linking Jalandhar with Sultanpur Lodhi and Makhu, and the railway station (code KXH) sits on the Jalandhar to Firozpur line. The PIN code is 144601, and the nearest major airport is at Amritsar, about 67 kilometres away.

History: a village becomes a misl capital

Tradition credits the founding of Kapurthala to Rana Kapur, a Bhatti Rajput of the Jaisalmer royal line, in the early eleventh century, and the Ahluwalia family later claimed descent from him. For centuries it remained a modest settlement under larger powers. Its rise began with Jassa Singh Ahluwalia, the great misl chief of the eighteenth century. After campaigns in the 1770s against Rai Ibrahim Bhatti, and a decisive occupation in December 1779, Jassa Singh made Kapurthala the headquarters of the Ahluwalia misl. One account says he named the town for his mentor, Nawab Kapur Singh.

His descendants ruled Kapurthala State through the nineteenth century. When the British took the Sikh territories in 1846, the family continued as rulers of a princely state under the British Raj, later part of the Punjab States Agency. The state acceded to India in 1947 and joined the Patiala and East Punjab States Union (PEPSU) in 1948, with Maharaja Jagatjit Singh serving as its lieutenant governor until his death in 1949. Kapurthala has been a district headquarters ever since.

The Paris of Punjab: Maharaja Jagatjit Singh's city

Jagatjit Singh was born in Kapurthala on 24 November 1872 and ascended the throne as a small child in 1877, taking full ruling powers in 1890 and the title Maharaja in 1911. A celebrated traveller with a deep love of French culture, he reigned until 1947 and remade his capital in a European idiom, which is why Kapurthala is still called the Paris of Punjab and the City of Palaces.

The Jagatjit Palace, completed in 1908 and modelled on the palaces of Versailles and Fontainebleau, is his grandest work. Since July 1961 it has housed the Sainik School, which prepares cadets for the National Defence Academy, so the palace is admired from the street rather than toured. The Moorish Mosque, built between 1927 and 1930 for Rs 6 lakh and modelled on the Koutoubia Mosque of Marrakesh, was inaugurated by the Nawab of Bahawalpur and remains a protected monument. The Elysee Palace, the Jagatjit Club and the Shalimar Gardens, where the memorials of the royal family stand, complete the princely streetscape.

Geography and people

The municipal council covers 27 wards and administers about 20,484 houses. The 2011 census counted 98,916 people in the municipal council area: 53,801 men and 45,115 women, a sex ratio of 839 women per 1,000 men. Children under seven numbered 9,991, about a tenth of the city. Scheduled Castes formed 21.07 per cent of residents. Hindus were 62.74 per cent of the population and Sikhs 34.79 per cent, with small Muslim, Christian and Jain communities. Literacy stood at 85.08 per cent, 88.02 per cent for men and 81.52 per cent for women, and 38,796 people were recorded as workers.

Punjabi is the language of the city, and the countryside around it is classic Doaba farmland: wheat, paddy and sugarcane, watered by canals and by the Kali Bein rivulet that threads the district. Four kilometres from the old town, the Kanjli Wetland spreads around a lake created in 1870, when headworks were built across the Kali Bein under Maharaja Randhir Singh. Designated a Ramsar site on 22 January 2002, its 490 hectares hold more than 40 resident bird species and 16 migratory ones, along with fish, civets, porcupines and hares.

Places of interest

Most visitors come for the princely buildings, best seen on a walk through the old city: the palace facade, the mosque, the Elysee Palace and the gardens. On the Jalandhar road stands the Pushpa Gujral Science City, set up jointly by the governments of India and Punjab and named after Pushpa Gujral, mother of Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral, who laid its foundation stone on 17 October 1997. It opened on 19 March 2005, with galleries, a science voyage hall, a theatre and an energy park. Kanjli Lake, four kilometres away, is the city's birding and picnic spot. In the same district, Sultanpur Lodhi draws pilgrims from across the world: Guru Nanak spent about fourteen years there in the service of Nawab Daulat Khan Lodhi, and Gurdwara Ber Sahib, built by Maharaja Jagatjit Singh between 1937 and 1941, stands on the bank of the Kali Bein where the Guru is remembered to have meditated under a ber tree.

Notable people

Jassa Singh Ahluwalia, who died in 1783, the misl chief who made Kapurthala a capital, and Maharaja Jagatjit Singh (1872-1949), its builder Maharaja, frame the city's story. Kapurthala was also the birthplace of Mehr Lal Soni, better known as Zia Fatehabadi, born on 9 February 1913, the Urdu poet of ghazals and nazms who worked at the Reserve Bank of India from 1936 to 1971 and died in Delhi in 1986. In our own time, the engineers and workers of the Rail Coach Factory and the cadets of the Sainik School carry the city's name across India.

Getting there, and Kapurthala today

At Hussainpur, on the city's edge, the Rail Coach Factory has built passenger coaches for Indian Railways since its first coach rolled out on 31 March 1988. Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had laid its foundation stone on 17 August 1985, and production began in September 1987. Today it builds LHB and MEMU coaches, including the Tejas high speed coach. In 2021-22 it turned out 1,862 coaches, its highest annual output to that point, and by March 2022 it had built 41,014 coaches, more than half of the entire coach stock of Indian Railways.

Trains on the Jalandhar to Firozpur line stop at Kapurthala station, buses run along NH 703A towards Jalandhar and Sultanpur Lodhi, and the international airport at Amritsar is the practical gateway for air travellers. Today Kapurthala is a quiet district headquarters whose grand buildings recall a princely past, while the coach factory, the science city and the district courts and colleges give it its working present.