Gurdaspur
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| ?Gurdaspur Punjab • India |
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| Coordinates: | |
| Time zone | IST (UTC+5:30) |
| Area • Elevation |
• 241 m (791 ft) |
| District(s) | Gurdaspur |
| Population | 67,455 (2001) |
Gurdaspur is a city in the province of East Punjab, situated in the northwest part of the Republic of India. It is located in the center of and is the administrative head of Gurdaspur District. It was the location of a fort (later turned into a Brahman monastery) which was famous for the siege it sustained in 1712 from the Mughals.
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[edit] History
It is historically important in connection with the rise of the Sikh Confederacy. The whole of the Punjab was then distributed among the Sikh chiefs who triumphed over the Imperial Mughal governors. In the course of a few years, however, Maharaja Ranjit Singh acquired all the territory which those chiefs had held. Pathankot and the neighboring villages in the plain, together with the whole of the hill portion of the district, formed part of the area ceded by the Sikhs to the British after the First Anglo-Sikh War in 1845. In 1862, after receiving one or two additions, the district was brought into its present shape. In 1901 the population was 940,334, showing a slight decrease, compared with an increase of 15% in the previous decade.
Gurdaspur was founded by Sahib Deep Chand and was named after his grandfather Guriya in the beginning of 17th century. In his honour, this city was named Gurdaspur. He bought land for Gurdaspur from the Jatts of Sangi Gotra. Guriya a Sanwal Brahmin of Kaushal Gotra came from Paniar a village situated 5 miles north of Gurdaspur. The ancestors of Guriya came from Ayodhaya and settled in Paniar. Guriya Ji had two sons Nawal Rai and Pala. The descendants of Nawal Rai settled in Gurdaspur and Nawal Rai’s son Baba Deep Chand was a contemporary of Guru Gobind Singh. It is believed that Guru Gobind Singh gave the title of Ganj Bakhsh (Owner Of Treasure) to Baba Deep Chand. The descendants of Baba Deep Chand are called mahants
Gurdaspur was the last bastion of Banda Bahadur. Banda Bahadur's legend lives on in the poem "Bondo Bhir", by the Indian Nobel prize winner Rabindranath Tagore. The poem, written in Bengali, has been translated into English, since. [1]
[edit] Geography
Gurdaspur is located at [2]. It has an average elevation of 242 metres (793 feet). The district comprises an area of 1889 km². It is bounded on the north by the Jammu region, of Jammu & Kashmir. Chamba, on the east by Kangra district and the Beas River, on the south by Amritsar district, and on the west by Sialkot, and occupies the submontane portion of the Ban Doab, or tract between the Beas and the Ravi River. The district includes sanatorium of Dalhousie mountain which stands 7687 ft. above sea-level. This station, which has a large fluctuating population during the warmer months, crowns the most westerly shoulder of a snowy range, the Dhauladhar, between which and the plain two minor ranges intervene. Below the hills stretches an undulating plateau covered with abundant timber, made green by a copious rainfall, and watered by the streams of the Ban Doab, which, diverted by dams and embankments, now empty their waters into the Beas directly, in order that their channels may not interfere with the Ban Doab canal. The district contains several large jhils or swampy lakes, and is famous for its snipe-shooting. Pathankot is another town from which one has to pass to enter Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh state.
[edit] Demographics
According to the 2001 India census[3], Gurdaspur had a population of 67,455. Males constitute 53% of the population and females 47%. Gurdaspur has an average literacy rate of 78%, higher than the national average of 59.5%: male literacy is 80%, and female literacy is 75%. In Gurdaspur, 10% of the population is under 6 years of age.
[edit] Tourist Attractions
Fish Park - located near Civil Lines
One place to visit is Fish Park when visiting Gurdaspur. It is located near Civil Lines, a cluster of homes in the city. It is not uncommon to see locals exercising and spending time at Fish Park during evening and morning hours.
Fish Park once was an area of overgrown grass and weeds, and a pond was situated in the center. At the pond, one was able to purchase food for the fish and feed it to the fish in it. This was approximately ten to eleven years ago. A massive re-designing process took place a few years later, and that made Fish Park what it is today. Although there are no longer "fish" in the park, the center of the park has a statue of a fish, hence the name. The park is now well-manicured and well-kept by the city. It is a popular place to go to in the evening, where one may purchase snacks like popcorn, a kulfi, and freshly squeezed fruit juice.
Kabootri Darwaza - part of the old Gurdaspur bazaar
Here one can find sweet-makers, enjoy puri chole and lassi at its best, and every kind of sweet ranging from fresh hot jalebis to pure khoa barfi.
Historically Gurdaspur has its own importance. The great Mughal Emperor Akabar's Coronation site (Takhti-Akbari) is there in Kalanaur. Kalanaur is a small town around 30km away from Gurdaspur.
[edit] Pakistan and the Gurdaspur conspiracy
The Gurdaspur district in the undivided Punjab had on the basis of the 1941 census an overall Muslim majority of 51%. Gurdaspur had four Tehsils (sub-districts) viz., Shakargarh (51.3% Muslims), Batala (53% Muslims), Pathankot (65% non-Muslim) and Gurdaspur it self (50.5% Muslims). Gurdaspur straddled a major river of the undivided pre-partitioned Punjab of India, the Ravi, with Shakargarh Tehsil on the West Bank of the river and the rest three Tehsils on the East Bank. It will be seen from the map that a direct railhead for the State of Jammu and Kashmir ran from Amritsar to Pathankot through the very same three eastern Tehsils of the Gurdaspur district. According to one theory, as Gurdaspur district bordered the State of Jammu and Kashmir, India would find it impossible to have a road communication with the state without these three Tehsils. but the problem with this theory is that looking at the map of India its clear that the lines of communication ran through Pathankot tehsil only which was non-Muslim majority.
The terms of reference given were that the demarcation should be on the basis of contiguous Muslim or non-Muslim majority areas. With a provision for other factors which could be interpreted in any manner. Gurdaspur was a Muslim-majority District. The contiguous communal argument should have taken it according to the Tehsil boundaries but instead only Shakargarh went to Pakistan, leaving the eastern bank of the Ravi Hindu majority and thus a part of post-independence India.
There were two main pre-partition routes to Kashmir region One via Lahore, Rawalpindi and Murree into Muzaffarabad and Srinagar and the other through Sialkot, Jammu and Banihal pass. Neither would be available to India after partition as both Lahore and Sialkot were bound to go to Pakistan, even though the city of Lahore itself which straddled the border had a slight non-Muslim majority, but the district overall had a Muslim majority . There was a third route, more a dirt track than a road, via Gurdaspur. If Gurdaspur were also awarded to Pakistan there would be no effective road link between India and Kashmir until a new road could be constructed via Pathankot.
Mountbatten was quoted as saying before the final award was announced that the Radcliffe commission was unlikely to throw the whole of Gurdaspur with only 51% Muslim majority into Pakistan, as it would exponentially increase the number of Sikh and Hindu refugees as 49% of the district was non-Muslim, also the Muslim majority tehsils of Gurdaspur and Shakargarh had a bare Muslim mahority of 50.5% and 51% respectively and their partition could only be done along the Ravi.
Also, there was a possibility that if the three eastern Tehsils of Gurdaspur were awarded to India by the Boundary Commission the accession of the State of Jammu and Kashmir to India be a practicable proposition. Mountbatten did appreciate this fact. As he said to the Nawab of Bhopal and the Maharaja of Indore on 4 August 1947, the State of Jammu and Kashmir was so placed geographically that it could join either Dominion. In other words, only by giving Gurdaspur to India would the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir be presented with a free choice; to give Gurdaspur to Pakistan was effectively to guarantee that the State of Jammu and Kashmir would sooner or later fall to Pakistan. The question arises, was the final award of the Boundary Commission influenced in any way by Mountbatten which, if not conclusive, is certainly circumstantial.
In the original proposals for Partition it was generally understood by the Pakistan side, and probably by at least the majority of Indian side as well (despite a strong hint by Mountbatten to the contrary on 4 June when he observed that "it is unlikely that the Boundary Commission will throw the whole of the (Gurdaspur) district into the Muslim-majority areas"), that Gurdaspur was a Muslim-majority District in the Punjab which could go to Pakistan in its entirety or at least without the Pathankot tehsil. This conclusion was indicated in the notional boundary between India and Pakistan with which the Boundary Commission started in July 1947. This was derived from the First Schedule of the Indian Independence Act of 18 July 1947, which also pointed to a Muslim-majority salient along the southern edge of Amritsar District in the Lahore region of Pakistani territory jutting into the Indian part of the Punjab. Together, this southern salient and Gurdaspur resulted in Muslim-majority territory, which almost surrounded Amritsar, a city of supreme importance to the Sikhs. The Sikh question presented by far the greatest immediate problem for Partition in the Punjab.
On 8 August 1947 there emerged from Sir Cyril Radcliffe’s establishment a provisional boundaries map on which, there is strong evidence to indicate, and the southern salient had been modified in what seemed to be in Pakistan’s favour by substituting for a small portion of the Lahore District (the tip of the original salient, created by the need to somehow transfer the Indo-Pakistan border from the line of the Ravi to that of the Satluj, which, it could be argued, on this particular alignment encroached more than it was absolutely necessary upon what the Sikhs regarded as their special land around Amritsar) the adjacent Firozpur and Zira Tehsils of Ferozepore District, thus extending Pakistan to the eastern side of the Satluj. The same map also indicated that the three eastern Tehsils of Gurdaspur District were now located on the Indian side of the Partition line.
Sir George Abell, Mountbatten’s Private Secretary, immediately communicated the contents of this map to Stuart Abbott, Secretary to Sir E. Jenkins, the Governor of the Punjab, through whose province the new boundary would run. Jenkins also received at the time a memorandum of some kind on the question of the boundary award from Christopher Beaumont, a member of Sir Cyril Radcliffe’s staff. Thus several members of the Punjab Government were aware of the current state of Radcliffe’s thinking on partition by 9 August. So, also, it would seem were many other people.
There was, for example, immediate objection from the Maharaja of Bikaner who received vital water supply for his desert state from Harike headworks on the Satluj in Firozpur to the location of the Firozpur and Zira Tehsils in Pakistan, it being clearly impossible to confine such a secret to the inner circle of Viceroy’s House, New Delhi and Government House, Lahore. Not only were several rulers whose states depended upon irrigation works cut by the proposed Radcliffe line much disturbed by the dangers which they detected in the Boundary Commission’s proposals, but also a wide selection of officials, not all of them of particular seniority or major importance, found cause for concern. Thus on 9 August 1947 Jawaharlal Nehru wrote to Mountbatten enclosing a memorandum by A.N. Khosla, Chairman, Central Waterways, Irrigation and Navigation Commission, reporting various items of gossip, including the account of an eavesdropped lunchtime conversation between Sir Cyril Radcliffe and the members of the Boundary Commission, to the effect that the award of the Firozpur and Zira Tehsils to Pakistan was a compensation for the award of the three eastern Tehsils of Gurdaspur to India. Khosla pointed out that, if true, this arrangement would be most undesirable on technical irrigation grounds: Firozpur and Zira, as well as Gurdaspur; would have to be in India if certain canals were to operate adequately.
Jawaharlal Nehru’s Letter of 9 August is intriguing. If a relatively junior official like Khosla could pick up confidential discussion on Boundary matters by Radcliffe and his colleagues, it did not say much for the secrecy in which the Radcliffe Commission was claimed to have carried out its task. Moreover, why should Nehru have chosen to convey this titbit of information to the Viceroy at this particular time? Was he trying to influence the Radcliffe Commission by way of Mountbatten in at least three ways, to ensure that the Ferozepore Tehsil did not go to Pakistan, to guarantee that whatever decision was in the air concerning the award to India of the three eastern Tehsils of Gurdaspur was adhered to, and to provide reasons for both these decisions which could be argued to be? Judicial rather than Political? Mountbatten politely rebuked Nehru for this letter. "I hope you will agree" he wrote "that I should not do anything to prejudice the independence of the Boundary Commission, and that, therefore, it would be wrong of me even to forward any memorandum, especially at this stage". All the same, on 10 or 11 August 1947 the Governor of the Punjab, Jenkins, received a telegram from viceroy's House, New Delhi, which told him to eliminate the salient, in other words, delete from Pakistan (as shown in the earlier version of the partition proposals which he had received on 8 August) the Ferozepore and Zira Tehsils, and put them in India. Moreover, in the final award (which was ready on 12 August) the location of the Ferozepore and Zira Tehsils in India was justified on grounds of good irrigation policy, as was, also, the Indian possession of the three eastern Tehsils of Gurdaspur in India (which had already been shown on the map of 8 August).
[edit] Allegations of Bias
Throughout the difficult process of partitions of the provinces, of the Punjab (West) and Bengal (East) accusations of official partiality towards one group or another were leveled on all sides, not only in the popular press but also by the leaders themselves. For example, Justice Munir of the Punjab Commission accused Radcliffe’s top aide, Christopher Beaumont, of bias. Munir claimed that Beaumont intentionally misled Radcliffe in order to achieve a result favorable to India. Beaumont rejects these charges as ludicrous. The most contentious point was the Ferozepore border and the nearby headworks. On August 8, Mountbatten’s private secretary, George Abell, sent a letter with a preliminary description of the Punjab boundary to Evan Jenkins, the provincial governor. This draft showed the Ferozepore area and its headworks definitely going to the Dominion of Pakistan. When the final award was released, Ferozepore was illegally assigned to India. Infuriated Pakistanis were sure that Nehru and Mountbatten had pressured Radcliffe to change his original stance of the line. After partition of the subcontinent, each side leveled accusations in the vernacular press that their opponents had successfully bribed Radcliffe to take their part.
But neither Justice Munir nor any Pakistani leader objected to the inclusion of Chittagong hill tracts in the Bengal partition to Pakistan despite being 97% non-Muslim, as it benfitted Pakistan. Moutbatten instead told Nehru that accommodations will have to be made with the city of Lahore, CHT and Tharparkar district of Sindh that had a non-Muslim majority going to Pakistan if Gurdaspur was to be partitioned and Ferozepur and Zira were to be awarded to India.
Many were convinced that the Commissions were a sham and that Mountbatten himself had simply dictated the new divisions. In his final report as Viceroy, Mountbatten admitted, "I am afraid that there is still a large section of public opinion in this country which is firmly convinced that I will settle the matter finally."In 1992, Christopher Beaumont added his voice to the chorus of accusations against Mountbatten. This circumstantial evidence indicates that Mountbatten may well have influenced the final shape of the boundary award.
[edit] Economy
A branch of the North Western Railway runs through the district. The largest town and chief commercial centre is Batala. There are important woollen mills at Dhariwal, and besides their products the district exports cotton, sugar, grain and oil-seeds.
[edit] External links
[edit] References
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
- ^ Bondo Bhir by Rabindranath Tagore
- ^ Falling Rain Genomics, Inc - Gurdaspur
- ^ Census of India 2001: Data from the 2001 Census, including cities, villages and towns. (Provisional). Census Commission of India. Retrieved on 2007-09-03.
