The flourishing states of Haryana and Punjab inhabit the fertile river plain northwest of Delhi. Crossed by the 5 major tributaries of the Indus River, the previous British-administered region of Punjab (“Five Rivers”) was split down the middle at Independence. Indian Muslims got away west into Pakistan, Sikhs and Hindus east, in an exodus accompanied by horrific massacres. In 1966, Indira Gandhi, in reaction to Sikh pressure, made the Punjab Hills into Himachal Pradesh.
The plains, on the other hand, were divided into the primarily Sikh Punjab and the 96-percent Hindu Haryana, both governed from the specifically constructed capital of Chandigarh.
There is little of tourist interest in the 2 states aside from the Golden Temple in Amritsar and the goofy Rock Garden of Chandigarh, but the area, India’s breadbasket, is essential to the nation’s economy. Its farmers produce almost a quarter of India’s wheat and one third of its milk and dairy foods, while Ludhiana produces ninety percent of the country’s woollen items. Helped by remittance cheques from millions of migrants in the UK, United States and Canada, the states’ per capita earnings is practically double the national average.
Crossing Haryana and Punjab, you’re bound to take a trip at some phase along part of the longest, oldest and most well-known highway in India– the NH-1, alias the Grand Trunk Road, stretching 2000km from Peshawar, near the rugged Afghan– Pakistan frontier, to Kolkata on the River Hooghly. The very first tape-recorded reference of this trade corridor dates from the fourth century BC, when it was understood as the Uttar Path (the “North Way”).
Punjab’s first urban settlement was the Harappan civilization of around 3000 BC. The legendary fights in the Mahabharata made use of real-life encounters in between the ancient kings of Punjab at Karnal. Dominated by the Mauryans in the third century BC, the Punjab saw even more action as different intruders gone through on their way from the Khyber Pass to Delhi– consisting of the Mughal emperor Babur, who routed Ibrahim Lodi at Panipat in 1526.
Sikhism began in the region under the tutelage of Guru Nanak (1469– 1539). Based on the notion of a single formless God, the guru’s vision of a casteless egalitarian society found favour with both Hindus and Muslims, in spite of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb’s efforts to mark it out. Certainly, one outcome of his intolerance was that the Sikhs– eager to prevent a Mughal resurrection– willingly assisted the British to quash the great uprising in 1857. Their relationship with the British only soured after the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre of 1919.
Partition in 1947 brought sectarian hatred to the surface, with an exodus of Muslims from the Indian half of the Punjab, and of Hindus and Sikhs from the Pakistani half, amid terrific massacre. After Independence, the Indian part grew wealthy on its agricultural output and militant Sikhs began to push for the development of an independent state called Khalistan. In 1966, the mainly Hindu area of Haryana was hived off, however that cannot silence the separatists, whose party, the Akali Dal, trounced Congress in state elections.
With covert assistance from the nationwide government (who saw the group as a way to beat the Akali Dal), a more extreme separatist motion led by Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale began a project of sectarian terror, coming to a head in 1984 with the occupation of Amritsar’s Golden Temple. Indira Gandhi’s brutal reaction, Operation Blue Star, plunged the Punjab into another unsightly bout of communal violence. 4 years later, a less threatening profession of the temple was squashed by Operation Black Thunder. A lot of Akali Dal factions boycotted the 1992 elections, which saw Congress returned on a 22 percent turnout. Chief minister Beant Singh was killed by an automobile bomb in 1995, but that was the militants’ last gasp. Public support had actually ebbed and subsequent state elections have seen a return to normality. An Akali Dal/BJP union– thrown out by Congress in 2002– restored power in 2007, and held it in 2012, with voter turnout back to typical and no paramilitary violence.
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