ਮੁਕੇਰੀਆਂਮੁਕੇਰੀਆਂ

Mukerian is a municipal council town and tehsil headquarters in Hoshiarpur district of Punjab, India, in the Doaba region between the Beas river and the Shivalik foothills. Standing on National Highway 44 and the Jalandhar to Jammu railway, it counted 29,841 residents in the 2011 census and serves dozens of surrounding villages as a grain market and transport centre.

Where is Mukerian?

Mukerian is in the north west of Hoshiarpur district, at 31.95 degrees north and 75.62 degrees east, about 245 metres above sea level. National Highway 44, the great Srinagar to Kanyakumari highway, passes through the town, which stands about 450 kilometres north of New Delhi. The Beas flows to the south west and the first Shivalik ridges rise to the north east, so the town sits between river plain and hill country, on the northern edge of the Doaba, with Dasuya to the south east, Hajipur and Talwara to the north east and Gurdaspur and Pathankot across the Beas side.

History: old settlements, then the railway

Local tradition, retold in modern accounts of the town, links its early settlement to Awan families who lived for centuries between the Beas and the Shivalik range, and traces the settled town to the twelfth century. In that telling the name softened over time from Makranian to Mukerian. These are origin stories passed down locally rather than dates fixed by documents, and they are best read in that spirit: they show a high plain above the Beas that was farmed and settled long before the modern town took shape.

What fixed Mukerian on the map was transport. The railway from Jalandhar City reached Mukerian in 1915. The line onward from Mukerian to Pathankot was built in 1952, and the Pathankot to Jammu Tawi section, begun after the war of 1965, opened in 1971. Each stage made the town a bigger funnel: grain, sugarcane and passengers from the villages of the northern Doaba came here to meet trains for Jalandhar, Delhi and Jammu, and traders, workshops and eating places gathered around the station and the highway.

After Partition in 1947 Mukerian remained in Hoshiarpur district in East Punjab and grew into a tehsil headquarters, with courts, government offices, schools and colleges serving its sub division. Its census growth tells the story of a service town rather than an industrial one: 17,813 residents in 1991, 21,384 in 2001 and 29,841 in 2011, a rise of about 40 percent in the last of those decades alone.

Geography and people

The municipal council counted 29,841 people in 2011: 15,531 men and 14,310 women, a sex ratio of 921 women for every 1,000 men. Children under six numbered 3,044, about a tenth of the town. The council is divided into 15 wards and covered 6,236 households. The counted town covers about 6.19 square kilometres, so it is compact and dense, at about 4,821 people per square kilometre.

Literacy reached 88.1 percent in 2011, above both the Hoshiarpur district average of 84.6 percent and the Punjab average of 75.84 percent, with men at 90.31 percent and women at 85.68 percent. Hindus formed 78.4 percent of residents and Sikhs 19.49 percent, with small Christian, Muslim and Jain communities. Scheduled Castes formed 21.8 percent of the town. Punjabi is the language of daily life, in the bazaar, the courts and the classroom.

Work shows what kind of town this is. Of the whole population, 9,235 people were recorded as workers in 2011, and almost all of them, 92.9 percent, were in main work lasting most of the year. Only 113 were cultivators and 92 agricultural labourers, while 8,224 were classed as other workers: in trade, transport, services and the professions. Mukerian works for its countryside rather than from its own fields, and like the rest of the Doaba many of its families have members settled abroad, whose visits and remittances are a visible part of local life.

What is Mukerian known for?

Mukerian is known first by its nickname, the City of Gardens, a name carried in its listings and local use, recalling the orchards and green plots that once fringed its streets. It is known second as a working crossroads: the grain mandi busy in the harvest seasons, the courts and offices of a tehsil headquarters, and a railway station and highway stop used by the whole northern Doaba. For travellers between Jalandhar and Jammu, and for families heading to Talwara, Hajipur and the Himachal hills, Mukerian is the natural halt, and its bazaars are built around that passing trade.

Places of interest

Mukerian rewards a traveller who likes working towns. The old railway station, the mandi in season and the bazaars around the highway show the town doing what it has done for a century. Its gurdwaras and temples serve its mixed population, and its colleges, among them SPN College and Dashmesh Girls College at Chak Ala Baksh, draw students from the surrounding villages and give the town a young daytime population. Short excursions lead to the Beas river belt to the south west, to Hajipur and Talwara under the Shivalik foothills, and to Dasuya, the next historic town of the sub division.

Getting there

By road, Mukerian stands on National Highway 44 between Jalandhar and Pathankot, and state highways and district roads connect it with Hoshiarpur, Talwara and Hajipur, and onward to Amritsar, Daulatpur and Kapurthala. Buses run through the day on the Jalandhar to Jammu route. By rail, Mukerian station, code MEX, stands at 257 metres with three platforms on the Jalandhar to Jammu line of Northern Railway; the line reached here in 1915 and the station was electrified in 2014. Express trains on the Jammu route link the town with Jalandhar, Delhi and Jammu Tawi. The town PIN code is 144211 and its telephone code is 01883.

Mukerian today

Today Mukerian is a compact service and trading town whose growth is steady and, in the last census decade, quickening. Through traffic on the widened highway now moves faster past its bazaars, which is a mixed blessing for a town built on passing trade, so its courts, colleges, mandi and station matter more than ever to its economy. What has not changed is its role: for dozens of villages between the Beas and the hills, Mukerian is still the place where the bus is caught, the grain is sold, the case is heard and the train to Jammu or Delhi is boarded.