ਲੁਧਿਆਣਾਲੁਧਿਆਣਾ

Ludhiana is the largest city in Punjab, India, a major industrial centre in the Malwa region on the old bank of the Sutlej. The 2011 census counted 1,618,879 people in the city. It is called the Manchester of India for hosiery and bicycles, and is home to Punjab Agricultural University.

Where is Ludhiana?

Ludhiana is in the Malwa region of central Punjab, about 100 kilometres west of Chandigarh, and is the headquarters of Ludhiana district, the most populous district in the state with 3,498,739 people at the 2011 census. The city stands on the old southern bank of the Sutlej; the river has since shifted about 13 kilometres north of its former course.

The municipal city spreads over about 310 square kilometres, which made it the most densely populated urban centre in Punjab at the census. It divides naturally into the congested Old City around Chaura Bazar and the Clock Tower, and the New City that grew out of the British Civil Lines, with planned residential colonies and industrial estates spreading far beyond both.

ਇਤਿਹਾਸ

Ludhiana was founded in 1480, in the reign of Sikandar Lodi of Delhi. Tradition says the sultan sent two chiefs, Yusuf Khan and Nihad Khan, to restore Lodi authority in this part of Punjab. Yusuf Khan crossed the Sutlej and founded Sultanpur Lodhi, while Nihad Khan raised the new town on the site of the village of Mir Hota. Its first name, Lodi ana, the town of the Lodis, softened over the centuries into Ludhiana. The Lodhi Fort, popularly called the Purana Qila, is the only surviving building from the founding years: repaired under Maharaja Ranjit Singh and the British, it was declared a state protected monument in December 2013.

Under the Mughals the town lay in the Lahore province on the Delhi to Lahore road and traded in grain, cloth and craft goods. After the Treaty of Amritsar of 1809 it became an important British cantonment and political agency on the Sutlej frontier, facing Ranjit Singh's empire across the river. Annexation in 1849 brought railways, roads and canals, hosiery and textile workshops grew from the late nineteenth century, and a municipality was established in 1867.

The district was a stronghold of the Ghadar movement: Ludhiana emigrants in North America joined the Ghadar Party, and men who returned to raise revolt during the First World War were prosecuted in the Lahore Conspiracy Case. Its best known revolutionary is Kartar Singh Sarabha, from Sarabha village in the district, whose example later inspired Bhagat Singh. Partition in 1947 then remade the city. In 1941 its 111,639 residents were 62.9 percent Muslim; the Muslim population largely left for Pakistan, and Hindu and Sikh refugees from western Punjab arrived in their tens of thousands. Their workshops and trading skills seeded the industrial boom that followed.

Geography and people

The 2011 census counted 1,618,879 people in the municipal city: 874,908 men and 743,971 women, a sex ratio of 850 women per 1,000 men. Effective literacy was 85.77 percent, at 88.87 percent for men and 82.13 percent for women. The district around it is largely urban, with 2,069,708 of its people living in towns and cities.

Hindus were 65.96 percent of the city in 2011 and Sikhs 28.75 percent, with Muslim, Jain and Christian minorities. Punjabi was the first language of 67.00 percent of residents and Hindi of 29.24 percent, a balance shaped by decades of workers arriving from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and other states for the factories; Bhojpuri was the first language of 1.35 percent.

The growth is recent and steep: 153,795 people in 1951, 607,052 in 1981, then 1,618,879 in 2011. Industry, not administration, drove it, and the inflow continues to make Ludhiana the most mixed city in Punjab by language and origin.

The Manchester of India

The BBC label for Ludhiana, India's Manchester, rests on hosiery. Its knitwear cluster produces India's largest share of winter clothing, woollen sweaters and cotton T shirts, and most of India's woollen clothing brands are based here, alongside a large trade in shawls and stoles for domestic and international brands.

Bicycles are the second pillar. Ludhiana is described as Asia's largest hub for bicycle manufacturing, producing more than 50 percent of India's bicycles each year, and about 60 percent of the country's tractor parts, plus a large share of auto and two wheeler parts, some produced exclusively for German car makers. Domestic sewing machines, hand tools and industrial equipment complete the cluster, and the World Bank ranked Ludhiana as the Indian city with the best business environment in 2009 and again in 2013.

The structure matters as much as the scale. Thousands of small and medium family firms, many founded by Partition refugee families, each specialise in a single process or part and supply one another across the industrial estates and the old city's lanes. What one lane casts, the next machines, and a third packs for dispatch across India.

Punjab Agricultural University and the Green Revolution

Ludhiana's second famous institution works on fields, not looms. Punjab Agricultural University traces its lineage to the Punjab Agriculture College and Research Institute founded at Lyallpur in 1906, re established after Partition at Amritsar, shifted to Ludhiana in 1949 and to its present campus in 1957, before university status in 1962. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru formally inaugurated the university on 8 July 1963.

The university is known across India as a mother of the Green Revolution: its scientists' work on high yielding wheat and rice helped move the country from food scarcity towards sufficiency in the 1960s and 1970s. It was adjudged the best agricultural university in India in 1995. Its veterinary college became the separate Guru Angad Dev Veterinary and Animal Sciences University in 2006, and since 1967 its Kisan Melas, held each March and September, have drawn farmers from across northern India to the Ludhiana campus for seed, machinery and advice.

The wider education city around it includes Christian Medical College, founded in 1894 by Dame Edith Brown and described as the first medical school for women in Asia, Guru Nanak Dev Engineering College, with its research centre for bicycles and sewing machines, and hundreds of schools serving the industrial workforce.

Places of interest

The Lodhi Fort is the city's one surviving founding monument, and the Maharaja Ranjit Singh War Museum, on the Grand Trunk Road, displays weapons, armour and the history of historic battles. On the university campus, the PAU Museum presents Punjabi rural life, while the Nehru Rose Garden and Rakh Bagh give the industrial city its green lungs.

Guru Nanak Stadium has hosted two Kabaddi World Cup finals as well as national football, and at Kila Raipur, just outside the city, the annual rural sports festival, popularly called the Rural Olympics, draws crowds for kabaddi, gatka and traditional rural contests. In the wider district, Gurdwara Manji Sahib at Alamgir and the historic town of Machhiwara are among the best known Sikh sites, and the towns of Khanna, Jagraon and Raikot each carry their own histories.

Getting there and Ludhiana today

Ludhiana Junction is on the main Delhi to Amritsar railway and is a junction in its own right, with lines to Jalandhar, Ferozepur, Dhuri and Delhi and daily or weekly trains to most major Indian cities, from Mumbai and Kolkata to Patna and Jaipur. National Highways 44 and 5 cross the city. It has its own small airport, and Chandigarh is the nearest international airport.

Selected under the Smart Cities Mission, Ludhiana today is Punjab's commercial capital in the plainest sense: its wholesale markets price winter clothing for much of India, its factories employ a vast migrant workforce, and its university still shapes Punjab farming. The costs residents debate most are traffic, air pollution and the state of the Budha Dariya stream that runs through the city.