ਲੋਂਗੋਵਲਲੌਂਗੋਵਾਲ

Longowal is a municipal town in Sangrur district of Punjab, India, one of the largest villages turned towns in Malwa. It gave its name to Sant Harchand Singh Longowal, the Akali Dal president who signed the Punjab Accord of 1985, and it is home to SLIET, a national engineering institute. The 2011 census counted 23,851 people.

Where is Longowal?

Longowal is in the west of Sangrur district, about 16 kilometres south-west of Sangrur city on the road towards Sunam, in the flat wheat and paddy country of Malwa at about 226 metres above sea level. It sits in Sangrur tehsil, with Dhuri to the north and Sunam to the south-west, and its PIN code is 148106. The town should not be confused with the smaller village of the same name near Batala in Gurdaspur district, which some online maps and geocoders substitute for it: the Sangrur town, with its municipal council, its seven gurdwaras and its engineering institute, is the Longowal of Punjab's modern history.

History: one of Punjab's largest villages

Longowal was founded by Baba Alla Singh, and a very old gurdwara in his name still stands close to its original place, now near the centre of the town. For half a century Longowal ranked among the largest villages in Punjab, and it has been run by a municipality since the 1950s, a village in scale and feeling that is a town in law. Its modern rise was a joint effort of the 1950s: the young granthi Harchand Singh, who had settled here and become head of most of the town's gurdwaras, worked with Lala Bantram, a Hindu businessman of one of its old families, to press the government for development. The town accounts credit that partnership with Longowal's road connection, its first health centre, established at Gurdwara Shaheed Bhai Mani Singh, a sanctioned high school in a new community building, and improved postal services.

Who was Sant Harchand Singh Longowal?

Harchand Singh Longowal was born on 2 January 1932 at Gidariani, a village then in Patiala State and now in Sangrur district, into a Sikh family of modest means. At the seminary in nearby Maujo, under Sant Jodh Singh, he studied Sikh theology and texts and practised Sikh music. Leaving at twenty-one, he served as scripture reader and custodian at the gurdwara of Heron Kalan, and the following year moved to Longowal, where he raised a gurdwara in memory of Bhai Mani Singh, the 18th century scholar and martyr, the white Gurdwara Shaheed Bhai Mani Singh that remains the town's landmark. In 1962 he was named head of the historic shrine of Damdama Sahib at Talwandi Sabo, but he kept the suffix Longowal for the rest of his life, and was known with affection as Sant Ji.

His public life grew from the town outward. He led a demonstration for Sikh rights at Paonta Sahib in 1964, became president of the Akali organisation in Sangrur district in 1965, and in 1969 was elected to the Punjab Legislative Assembly, defeating Babu Brish Bhan, a former chief minister of PEPSU. During the Emergency he commanded the Akali protests from July 1975 to January 1977. Recalled to preside over the Akali Dal in 1980, he launched the Dharam Yudh Morcha, the civil disobedience campaign that began on 4 August 1982, and he was arrested by the army during Operation Blue Star in June 1984.

The Punjab Accord of 1985

Released from prison in March 1985 as the new prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, opened a path to settlement, Longowal negotiated through weeks of secret talks and on 24 July 1985 signed an eleven-point accord in Delhi, the Rajiv Longowal Accord. Its points covered the long-standing Akali demands, among them the transfer of Chandigarh to Punjab and a settlement of the river waters dispute, and the Akali Dal in turn agreed to withdraw its agitation. Orthodox leaders in Punjab and politicians in Haryana opposed it, and some of its promises were never fulfilled. Twenty-seven days after signing, on 20 August 1985, Longowal was shot at point-blank range by two militants opposed to the accord, at the gurdwara in Sherpur village near Longowal. He was cremated the next day. The accord still carries his town's name, and so does the institute that rose here in his memory.

Geography and people

The 2011 census counted 23,851 people in the municipal council, up from 20,239 in 2001 and 16,254 in 1991: 13,030 men and 10,821 women, a sex ratio of 830 women per 1,000 men, pulled down in part by the town's large population of young male students and workers. The council area covers 3.25 square kilometres of dense town core, within the much larger village lands from which Longowal grew. Children under seven numbered 2,477, about 10 per cent of the town. Literates numbered 14,346 among residents aged seven and above, an effective literacy rate of about 67 per cent. Scheduled Castes numbered 5,767, about 24 per cent, and 7,843 residents were recorded as workers. Punjabi is the language of home, bazaar and classroom, and the villages around the town farm the wheat, paddy and fodder of the Sangrur plain.

SLIET: the institute the Accord built

The Sant Longowal Institute of Engineering and Technology, SLIET, was established by the Government of India in 1989 in the Sant's memory, under the Rajiv Longowal Punjab Accord, and formally inaugurated on 20 December 1991. It began with certificate and diploma programmes in 1991, added degree courses in 1993 and postgraduate courses in 2003, and in 2007 to 2008 was accorded the status of a deemed to be university under the UGC Act. Its green campus covers 451 acres on land provided by the Punjab Government, a scale that has earned it the name of a modern gurukul of technical education. About 3,400 students study there under about 300 academic staff, living in 14 hostels named after Indian scientists, and admission runs through the national JEE Main, GATE and JAM examinations. The institute was ranked 76th among India's engineering colleges in the NIRF rankings of 2024. For a town of under 24,000 people, SLIET is both landlord and lifeline: its students fill the bazaars, its staff the housing, and its name carries Longowal across India on every admission list.

Places of interest, getting there and Longowal today

The town's places of memory are its gurdwaras. Gurdwara Shaheed Bhai Mani Singh, the pure white shrine the young Harchand Singh raised, is the landmark among the town's seven gurdwaras, and Baba Alla Singh's old gurdwara keeps the founder's name at the town's centre. Each year the town marks 24 July, the anniversary of the Accord, and 20 August, the Sant's martyrdom day, with gatherings that draw Akali workers and visitors from across Punjab, and the SLIET campus, with its main building, hostels and green grounds, is the town's modern showpiece.

Longowal is reached by road from Sangrur, about 16 kilometres north-east, and from Sunam, Dhuri and Barnala; Sangrur is the nearest railway station and the district headquarters for onward travel. Today the town lives in three layers at once: an old farming settlement of Baba Alla Singh, the political memory of the Sant who took its name into the hardest decade of Punjab's modern history, and a national institute whose students arrive each year from every state in India. That combination, village, martyrdom and university, is Longowal's singular place in Punjab.