ਮਲੇਰਕੋਟਲਾਮਲੇਰਕੋਟਲਾ

Malerkotla is a city in Malwa, Punjab, India, and the headquarters of Malerkotla district, the state's only Muslim majority district. It was the capital of a small princely state whose Nawab protested the execution of the younger Sahibzadas in 1705. The 2011 census counted 135,424 people in the city.

Where is Malerkotla?

Malerkotla is in the Malwa plain of southern Punjab, about 35 kilometres north of Sangrur and about 40 kilometres south of Ludhiana, with Khanna about 45 kilometres away. Since 2 June 2021 it has headed its own district, carved out of Sangrur district as the 23rd district of Punjab and placed in the Patiala division. The district has three subdivisions, Malerkotla, Amargarh and Ahmedgarh, covers 684 square kilometres and counted 429,754 people in 2011 across 192 villages and its towns, with about 40.5 per cent living in urban areas. The city stands on the Sangrur to Ludhiana state highway and on the Ludhiana to Delhi railway line. Its PIN code is 148023 and its vehicle registration is PB-28.

History: a princely state and the Haa da Naara

Local and district accounts trace the state to 1454, when Sheikh Sadruddin, an Afghan holy man, settled here. His Sherwani descendants ruled as Nawabs through the Sikh and British periods, keeping a small state alive between larger neighbours. The event that fixed the town in Punjab's memory came in the winter of 1704 to 1705. When Wazir Khan of Sirhind ordered Guru Gobind Singh's younger sons, Zorawar Singh and Fateh Singh, aged nine and seven, to be bricked alive, Nawab Sher Mohammed Khan of Malerkotla, who was present in the court and was related to Wazir Khan, protested that the act went against the tenets of Islam and walked out. His cry of anguish is remembered as the Haa da Naara. Sikh tradition holds that the Guru, on hearing of the protest, blessed the Nawab's house and the town.

The blessing is the explanation residents themselves give for what followed. In January 1872, after a Namdhari rising, the British deputy commissioner of Ludhiana and the commissioner of Ambala ordered 65 captured Namdharis to be executed by cannon without trial at Malerkotla, an episode the town remembers through its Kuka Martyrs Memorial. In 1947, when communal violence swept Punjab, the state stayed comparatively peaceful, and most of its Muslim residents stayed in India. The last Nawab, Iftikhar Ali Khan, remained in Malerkotla and died in 1982. His tomb stands in the Shahi graveyard at Sirhandi Gate. The state acceded to India in 1948, joined PEPSU, became part of Punjab in 1956 and then a tehsil of Sangrur district, until district status returned in 2021.

Geography and people

The municipal council counted 135,424 people in 2011, up from 107,009 in 2001 and 88,600 in 1991, on 31.16 square kilometres, a density of about 4,346 people per square kilometre. There were 71,376 men and 64,048 women. Scheduled Castes numbered 8,893, a small share for Punjab, and 81,937 residents were recorded as literate, an effective literacy rate of about 69 per cent among those aged seven and above. By faith the city is unlike any other in Indian Punjab: Muslims formed 68.50 per cent in 2011, Hindus 20.71 per cent, Sikhs 9.50 per cent and Jains 1.11 per cent. The wider district tells a different story, with Sikhs at 50.89 per cent, Muslims at 33.26 per cent and Hindus at 15.19 per cent, because the villages around the city are largely Sikh. Punjabi is the first language of 94.69 per cent of the district, with Urdu at 4.21 per cent, and Urdu is taught alongside Punjabi in the city's schools.

Places of interest

The Shahi Eidgah is the city's great open prayer ground and its best known monument. Gurdwara Haa Da Naara Sahib, in Sajida Colony, was built by Sikhs to honour the Nawab's protest and keeps the 1705 story at the centre of the city's shared life. The Mubarak Manzil Palace and the old Qila recall the Nawabi court, and the Shahi graveyard at Sirhandi Gate holds the ornate tombs of the princely rulers, including the last Nawab. The shrine of Baba Haidar Sheikh, the Sufi saint linked in local tradition with the town's founding more than five centuries ago, draws devotees across faiths, as do the city's mosques, its Jama Masjid and its dargahs. A walk through the old Nawabi quarter ties these places together better than any single visit.

Work, food and learning

The district administration describes Malerkotla as a major supplier of vegetables to this part of Punjab, and its bazaars carry that trade daily. Its artisans are known for hand embroidered badges and insignia made for the armed forces, a cottage industry unlike any other in the state, alongside a metal industry and the manufacture of agricultural machinery. The town is also known for its food, its mosques and its poets, a reputation the district portal itself records. For learning, the Nawab Sher Mohammad Khan Institute of Advanced Studies, part of Punjabi University, Patiala, supports research in Urdu, Persian and Arabic up to PhD level and runs postgraduate and certificate courses, giving the small city an outsized place in Urdu scholarship in Punjab.

Getting there and Malerkotla today

By rail the city stands at kilometre 45 of the Ludhiana to Jakhal line, which was commissioned in 1901 after an 1893 agreement between the British and the Jind, Malerkotla and Patiala states, through whose territories it ran. Malerkotla station, code MET, sits on the Delhi to Jakhal to Dhuri to Ludhiana route, with Dhuri junction about 18 kilometres away. By road, regular buses link the city with Ludhiana, Sangrur, Khanna and Jagraon. The nearest airport is Ludhiana's Sahnewal Airport, about 50 kilometres away, with Chandigarh's international airport about 120 kilometres away. Today Malerkotla is a district headquarters still building the offices and infrastructure its new status needs, and a city whose identity rests on a single act of protest in 1705 and on the peace that residents believe followed from it.