ਮਾਹਿਲਪੁਰਮਾਹਿਲਪੁਰ

Where is Mahilpur?

Mahilpur is a town and Nagar Panchayat in Garhshankar tehsil of Hoshiarpur district in Punjab, India, in the Doaba region between the Beas and Sutlej rivers. It is known across India as a nursery of football, and it is also an old education centre, home to Sri Guru Gobind Singh Khalsa College, founded in 1946. At the 2011 census the town had 11,360 people.

The town stands at about 31.363 degrees north and 76.038 degrees east, at an elevation of about 296 metres, and covers about 6.56 square kilometres. It is one of only two towns in Garhshankar tehsil, the other being Garhshankar town itself, and it is administered by a Nagar Panchayat divided into 13 wards. Mahilpur lies on the road between Hoshiarpur, its district headquarters, and Garhshankar, and its post office works under PIN 146105. The surrounding countryside is the Kandi foothill belt of Doaba, where farming villages look to Mahilpur for their schools, college, markets and sport.

What is the population of Mahilpur?

The population of Mahilpur was 11,360 at the 2011 census, living in 2,469 households, an average of about 4.6 people per household. There were 5,907 men and 5,453 women, a sex ratio of 923 women for every 1,000 men. The census counted 8,986 literates, 79.1 per cent of the town's total population, a strong figure for a small Doaba town and one that fits Mahilpur's long record as a centre of schools and higher learning. Workers numbered 3,685, about 32.4 per cent of the population. In the census record the town is urban code 800178 of Garhshankar sub district.

A nursery of Indian football

Mahilpur's fame rests on football, and the story begins with one man. Principal Harbhajan Singh was born in Mahilpur on 9 January 1891 and became headmaster of Khalsa High School, Mahilpur, after teaching posts in Ambala, Ludhiana and Kharar. Under him the Mahilpur school earned statewide recognition in education and sport, and he personally supervised the practice sessions in football, tug of war and hockey. Students came from far and near, and the footballers the school produced went on to Punjab and India teams; the Olympian Jarnail Singh was among those who owed their careers to his coaching culture.

In 1946 his dream of a degree college for the area took shape: he paid guarantee money of Rs 85,000 to Panjab University from his own savings and became founder principal of the new Khalsa College. He drew no salary for 15 years, served as honorary principal until shortly before his death in 1962, and donated his life's earnings and property to the college. The memorial account kept by the tournament committee in his name sums up the result: from a remote village in Hoshiarpur district, Mahilpur became not just a prominent educational centre but a nursery of football. After he died on 16 August 1962, admirers started the Principal Harbhajan Singh Memorial Football Tournament in October and November 1962; the Harbhajan Sporting Club has run it since 1966, and Arjuna awardee Gurdev Singh Gill, who studied at Khalsa College Mahilpur, has been among its organisers.

The tradition is alive at the highest level of the Indian game today. In November 2024 the Punjab Sports Department signed an agreement with Minerva Football Academy's Delhi FC to use the town's newly constructed sports stadium for the I-League, India's national league competition organised by the All India Football Federation. Delhi FC played 12 matches at Mahilpur in the 2024-25 season, from 19 December 2024 to April 2025, with matches broadcast live on television. Announcing the move, the state government called Mahilpur the Mecca and nursery of Indian football, with a legacy going back to before independence and many national players hailing from the town.

Education and the Khalsa College

Sri Guru Gobind Singh Khalsa College, Mahilpur, established in 1946 before the Partition of India, is a multi faculty, postgraduate, co-educational college affiliated to Panjab University, Chandigarh. It was founded so that young people of this rural, backward and Kandi area, who could not travel to distant cities, could study for degrees at home. Eighty years on, the college offers more than 25 undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, from sciences and commerce to physical education, and its teams remain a force in university sport. Alongside the college, the town's schools, among them the historic Khalsa High School and Doaba Public School, where the runner Harmilan Bains studied, feed students from Mahilpur and the villages around it.

Places of worship and local shrines

The town's best loved shrine is Gurdwara Sahib Shahidan at Ladhewal, in the Mahilpur area. Local tradition, recorded by the Chabbewal-Mahilpur area history project, holds that the shrine is dedicated to Sahibzada Ajit Singh, the elder son of Guru Gobind Singh, who halted here on his way back from rescuing a bride at Bassi Kalan and cremated his warriors who had died of their wounds. In their memory a jorh mela is held on Tuesdays in the month of Jeth, around May and June, and an amrit sanchar ceremony is held at the gurdwara. The town also has Gurdwara Bunga Sahib, whose white domed building stands in the town, and other gurdwaras and temples serving its neighbourhoods.

About 7 kilometres away at Gondpur stands Gurdwara Tahli Sahib, linked by tradition to Guru Hargobind, who is said to have rested in a grove of tahli trees here on his way to Kiratpur Sahib. A platform raised in the grove was later replaced by the present gurdwara, a rectangular hall built in 1930 with a domed room above the sanctum, affiliated to the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee. Special assemblies are held there on the 1st and 13th of Phagun, the date the tradition gives for the Guru's visit.

Notable people from Mahilpur

Mahilpur's best known sporting name today is Harmilan Bains, the middle distance runner who grew up in the town and studied at Doaba Public School here. She won silver medals in both the 800 metres and the 1500 metres at the Hangzhou Asian Games of 2023 and gold in the 1500 metres at the Asian Indoor Championships at Tehran in February 2024, and she held the Indian 1500 metres record of 4:05.39, set in 2021. Her father Amandeep Bains and her mother Madhuri Singh were both international athletes, which makes her a third generation Mahilpur runner at the top of Indian athletics.

The Bains family of Mahilpur also produced two brothers who became national figures in very different fields. Justice Ajit Singh Bains (1922 to 2022) came from a Mahilpur family: his father Gurbakhsh Singh, a freedom fighter, later became sarpanch of Mahilpur and, by the family's account, made sure that not a single killing took place in the town during the violence of Partition in 1947. Ajit Singh Bains was a judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court from 1974 to 1984, headed the official Bains Committee of 1985 that reviewed cases against detained Sikh youth, and went on to chair the Punjab Human Rights Organization. His younger brother Hardial Bains (1939 to 1997) grew up in Mahilpur after the family moved to its ancestral village following Partition; some accounts describe Mahilpur as his birthplace, while his current biographical record gives his birth in a village now in Pakistan. He emigrated to Canada in 1959 and founded the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), which he led until his death. Neither brother has a separate entry on Jugti yet; they are recorded here as the town's own.

How do you reach Mahilpur?

Mahilpur is a road town: it stands on the Hoshiarpur to Garhshankar road, with buses linking it to Hoshiarpur city, Garhshankar, Phagwara and the towns of Doaba, and shared transport for the villages of its block. Hoshiarpur, about an hour's run north west, is the practical hub for administration, hospitals and onward travel. The town's own post office is a delivery sub office under PIN 146105, which it shares with nearby villages such as Bahowal, Dhakon and Gondpur. Visitors coming for football should aim for the sports stadium on match days, when the whole town turns out; visitors coming for the shrines should time a trip with the Jeth mela at Gurdwara Sahib Shahidan.