ਮਾਝਾਮਾਝਾ

The heartland

Majha takes its name from the Punjabi word manjhla, meaning the middle, and the name fits: this is the central region of the historic Punjab, lying between the Beas river to the south and the Ravi to the north and west. The two rivers meet the Sutlej at Harike below it, so Majha sits at the top of the Punjab plains where the rivers are still close together.

The region speaks the Majhi dialect, which forms the basis of the standard Punjabi language. Its fertile alluvial plains, watered by the rivers and their canals, have supported dense farming settlements for centuries, and its villages are among the oldest continuously lived in places in Punjab.

The rivers are the region's lifeblood and its boundaries. The Beas marks Majha's southern edge, the Ravi runs past its northern districts toward Lahore, and the land between them, the Bari Doab, is some of the most prized farmland in the subcontinent.

Where is Majha?

On the Indian side, Majha covers the districts of Amritsar, Tarn Taran, Gurdaspur and Pathankot. Across the border in Pakistan it takes in Lahore and Kasur districts at its core, and is often extended to Gujranwala, Sialkot and Sheikhupura, including Nankana Sahib. Amritsar and Lahore, only some 50 kilometres apart, are its twin great cities, one the spiritual capital of the Sikhs and the other the cultural capital of Pakistani Punjab.

A region cut by the border

Partition in 1947 cut Majha in two, as it cut Punjab itself. There is no river boundary between Amritsar and Lahore, and the shared cultural zone the two cities formed over centuries was split by a line drawn in weeks. On the Indian side lie the districts of Amritsar, Tarn Taran, Gurdaspur and Pathankot; on the Pakistani side, Lahore and Kasur and the districts beyond the Ravi.

The border changed the region's demography profoundly, as Muslims moved west and Hindus and Sikhs moved east, but the dialect, the food and the memory of a single Majha survive on both sides, and the daily beating retreat ceremony at the Attari Wagah crossing has become the region's most watched ritual.

Towns of the Gurus

Almost every Majha town has a Guru connection. Goindwal Sahib, on the Beas in Tarn Taran district, was built up by Guru Amar Das around its famous baoli, the well of 84 steps. Khadoor Sahib was the seat of Guru Angad. The town of Tarn Taran grew around the great sarovar dug under Guru Arjan, whose tank is among the largest of any gurdwara. Batala remembers the marriage of Guru Nanak, and Dera Baba Nanak, on the Ravi, faces Kartarpur across the border, the town of Guru Nanak's last years, now joined to it by a corridor for pilgrims. Gurdaspur and Pathankot, at the region's northern edge, are its gateway towns to the hills.

Canals, crops and the Amritsari table

The Upper Bari Doab Canal, drawn from the Ravi at the Madhopur headworks in the mid 1800s, turned the Bari Doab into one of the subcontinent's most productive canal watered tracts. Paddy and basmati fill the low lands along the rivers, sugarcane feeds the mills around Batala and Gurdaspur, and wheat follows through the winter.

The region eats as famously as it farms. Amritsar's kulchas, its wadiyan and papad, and the langar of the Golden Temple, which feeds tens of thousands of people every day, have made Majha's kitchen a standard the rest of Punjab measures itself against, and breakfast in the walled city's old lanes is a pilgrimage of its own.

Significance

Majha is often called the birthplace of Sikhism: Guru Nanak was born at Nankana Sahib across the border, Amritsar holds the Golden Temple, and the region's towns and villages are thick with gurdwaras tied to the Gurus. The Sikh Empire itself was founded in this region, and Majha is sometimes called the sword arm of the country for the soldiers it has given to the armies of both India and Pakistan, out of all proportion to its size.

From its fields and towns have come soldiers, poets, musicians and statesmen out of all proportion to its size, and Majhi's role as the standard form of Punjabi means the voice of Majha is, in a sense, the voice in which Punjab speaks to the world.