ਖੱਨਾਖੰਨਾ

Khanna is a city in Ludhiana district of Punjab, India, on the Grand Trunk Road in the Malwa region. About 500 years old, it is known across Asia for its grain market, described as the largest in Asia, and for its Purani Sarai travellers inn.

Where is Khanna?

Khanna is about 40 kilometres south-east of Ludhiana on the Grand Trunk Road, now National Highway 44, in the east of Ludhiana district. The Greater Ludhiana Area Development Authority master plan puts it about 60 kilometres from Chandigarh, 18 from Samrala, 70 from Ambala and 265 from Delhi, with roads out to Samrala, Malerkotla and Amloh as well as along the highway. The municipal council covers about 32 square kilometres at about 254 metres above sea level. Villages such as Payal, Ikolahi, Rahoun, Issru and Harion Kalan ring the city. Its PIN code is 141401 and its vehicles carry PB 26.

History: a small portion that grew

Khanna is a Punjabi word meaning one quarter, and the usual explanation is that the settlement was once only a quarter of the size of a proper city. The town's own records, quoted in the master plan, give a second account: revenue records say the town was founded by a Kahana Rajput and took its name from him. A third thread runs through the Daya Kaur story. After the Mughal decline, Banda Singh Bahadur took this country, and a Jathedar of Dahedu came to hold the land between Dahedu and Nabha. His daughter Daya Kaur married the ruler of Nabha; when the marriage broke down she came home, and her father cut her a kann, a small portion of land, which over time was spoken as Khanna. The accounts differ, and the page keeps them as accounts, not as settled fact.

What is documented is the road. Sher Shah Suri's administration built sarais, travellers inns, every 12 to 15 miles along the Delhi to Lahore road, and the one built here is still called the Purani Sarai, the old inn. Khanna was the seat of a small Sikh chief whose jagir lapsed to the British in 1850 on the death of its last holder, Mai Daya Kaur. The railway from Ludhiana reached Khanna in 1870 and the town began to grow on the far side of the Grand Trunk Road, around the station. It became a class II municipality in 1886, its grain market dates from 1906, and after Partition a Model Town colony was laid out along the Samrala road in 1947 to 1949 to resettle refugee families.

What is Khanna's grain market famous for?

Khanna's grain market is famous as the largest grain market in Asia, a title the master plan and the town's own records repeat, with Rajpura's market usually named next. The master plan counted about 250 licensed commission agents, the arhtiyas who sell the harvest, and about ten lakh tonnes of wheat moving through in a season. Around the mandi sits a whole economy of transport, storage, rice shelling, weighing and repair, and the plan lists Khanna's established trades in grain, cotton, groundnut oil, timber and iron. The city also grows into the steel town of Mandi Gobindgarh next door, and its industries include iron and steel and cattle feed alongside rice shelling.

Geography and people

The 2011 census counted 128,137 people in Khanna, up from 103,099 in 2001 and 71,990 in 1991: 67,801 men and 60,336 women. Literates numbered 95,385, an effective literacy rate of about 83.6 per cent for people aged seven and above. The wider Khanna tehsil counted 222,297 people, of whom 128,137 lived in the city and the rest in its villages.

By faith, the census recorded Hindus at 72,281 and Sikhs at 52,240 in the city, with smaller Muslim (2,513), Christian (661) and Jain (87) communities. Punjabi is the official language, and the local speech belongs to the Puadhi belt of eastern Punjab, though the master plan places Khanna in the Malwa region of the state. The climate is humid subtropical, with hot, wet summers and dry, cool winters. In the Swachh Vayu Survey 2024 the city ranked 34th among Indian cities of under three lakh people for clean air.

Places of interest

The Purani Sarai is the city's oldest landmark, the surviving travellers inn from the sarai chain built along the Delhi to Lahore road in Sher Shah Suri's time. Twelve kilometres out of the city on the road to Ludhiana stands Gurdwara Manji Sahib at Kotan, linked with Guru Hargobind: the master plan records the local account that a manji, a woven bed, was found in the fields here in 1953, and a large gurdwara, a dispensary and a women's college now stand at the site. The other great sarai of the road is Sarai Lashkar Khan, built in 1667 by Lashkar Khan, a general of Aurangzeb, with walls still standing, four gates and about 120 small rooms, on the Grand Trunk Road between Ludhiana and Khanna.

For students, Khanna's landmarks are its colleges: A.S. College, founded for boys in 1946 with a women's college added in 1973, the A.S. Women College, Shri Sarswati Sanskrit College, and a regional centre of IGNOU, the open university.

Notable people

Khanna's famous names mostly come from the villages of its countryside rather than the city streets. Singer and songwriter Karan Aujla was born on 18 January 1997 in Ghurala village in Ludhiana district, in the Khanna side of the district, before moving to Canada in 2014 and becoming one of Punjabi music's biggest global names. The veteran actor Dharmendra was born at Nasrali village in the same countryside. The city's own list of notables also carries the social worker Bhagat Puran Singh, the singers Jassi Gill, Labh Janjua, Sardool Sikander and Dilpreet Dhillon, and the lyricist Davinder Khannewala, whose very name carries the town with him.

Getting there and Khanna today

Khanna railway station stands on the Ambala to Attari line, the main Delhi to Amritsar railway, in the Ambala division of Northern Railway, and the Grand Trunk Road runs through the city, so buses and trains link it all day with Ludhiana, Ambala, Rajpura and Chandigarh. State roads run to Samrala, Malerkotla and Amloh.

Today Khanna is a working city of grain, steel and students: Asia's largest grain market at its heart, industry shared with Mandi Gobindgarh at its edge, and colleges that draw young people from the villages named above. The small portion of land in its oldest stories now holds more than 128,000 people, and in harvest season the mandi makes it feel like the centre of Punjab's farm economy.