Punjab GK: Formation, Rivers, History and Exam Facts

Punjab is India's north western border state, the Indian half of the historic land of five rivers, and the state whose fields carried the Green Revolution. Examiners return to it because its facts are clean and dated: a reorganisation in 1966, a capital shared with another state, three rivers instead of five, a wheat and paddy economy, and a heritage that runs from the Sikh Gurus through the Anglo Sikh wars to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.

Name, borders and physical setting

The name joins the Persian words panj, five, and ab, water: the land watered by the Sutlej, the Beas, the Ravi, the Chenab and the Jhelum. Partition in 1947 cut the region along the Radcliffe Line and left the Chenab and the Jhelum in Pakistan, so only the Sutlej, the Beas and the Ravi flow through Indian Punjab. The state is bounded by Pakistan on the west, Jammu and Kashmir on the north, Himachal Pradesh on the north east, Haryana on the south east and Rajasthan on the south west. The Shivalik foothills form its northern rim, the stony Kandi belt runs along them, and the rest is a level alluvial plain laid down by the rivers. The seasonal Ghaggar, which many scholars identify with the Vedic Saraswati, drains its south eastern edge.

Formation and reorganisation

East Punjab was carved out at Partition from the Indian districts of the old province. The princely states of the tract were grouped in 1948 as the Patiala and East Punjab States Union, PEPSU, which merged into Punjab in 1956 under the States Reorganisation Act. The Punjabi Suba movement then pressed for a state on a language basis, and the Punjab Reorganisation Act, 1966 came into force on 1 November 1966. Haryana was created as a separate state, the hill districts such as Kangra, Kullu and Shimla went to Himachal Pradesh, and Chandigarh was made a Union Territory to serve as the capital of both Punjab and Haryana. The Shah Commission demarcated the boundary. The two states also share one High Court, the Punjab and Haryana High Court, which sits at Chandigarh.

Rivers, dams and wetlands

The Indus Waters Treaty of 1960, signed at Karachi with the World Bank as broker, gave India the use of the eastern rivers, the Ravi, the Beas and the Sutlej, and Pakistan the western rivers, the Indus, the Jhelum and the Chenab; that is why Punjab's canals draw on the three eastern rivers alone. Bhakra, a concrete gravity dam on the Sutlej, with the Nangal barrage below it, forms the Bhakra Nangal project shared by Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan. Harike, where the Beas meets the Sutlej, is the largest wetland of northern India, a Ramsar site since 2002, and the head works of the Indira Gandhi Canal that carries water into Rajasthan. Kanjli and Ropar are the state's other Ramsar wetlands listed in 2002.

Regions, the Green Revolution and industry

Punjab is read as three tracts and a fourth corner: Majha between the Ravi and the Beas around Amritsar, Doaba, literally two waters, between the Beas and the Sutlej around Jalandhar, Malwa south of the Sutlej around Ludhiana, Patiala and Bathinda, and the Puadh on the south eastern edge. With Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, Punjab was the cradle of the Green Revolution of the mid 1960s, when high yielding dwarf wheat varieties, assured canal and tubewell irrigation, fertiliser and price support made it the granary of India. Punjab Agricultural University at Ludhiana, founded in 1962, bred and spread those varieties. Wheat in the rabi season and paddy in the kharif dominate the cropping pattern, cotton gives the Malwa tract its name as the cotton belt, and maize and sugarcane follow. Ludhiana's hosiery and cycle parts, Jalandhar's sports goods, Batala's foundries and the steel rolling mills of Mandi Gobindgarh are the industrial names worth remembering.

History and heritage

Ropar, on the Sutlej, was the first Harappan site taken up for excavation after Independence; Sanghol and Rohira are the other early sites. Amritsar was founded by Guru Ram Das, the fourth Sikh Guru; Guru Arjan Dev completed the Harmandir Sahib and installed the Adi Granth in it in 1604; Guru Hargobind raised the Akal Takht facing it. Guru Gobind Singh founded the Khalsa at Anandpur Sahib on Baisakhi in 1699. Three of the five Takhts of the Sikhs stand in Punjab: the Akal Takht at Amritsar, Keshgarh Sahib at Anandpur Sahib and Damdama Sahib at Talwandi Sabo. Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the Sher e Punjab, ruled from Lahore from 1801 and signed the Treaty of Amritsar with the British in 1809. After his death in 1839 the First Anglo Sikh War closed with the Treaty of Lahore in 1846, and the Second ended with Lord Dalhousie's annexation of Punjab in 1849. On 13 April 1919, Baisakhi day, troops under General Reginald Dyer fired on a meeting in the Jallianwala Bagh at Amritsar; Rabindranath Tagore renounced his knighthood in protest and the Hunter Committee inquired into the firing.

Language, culture, symbols and administration

Punjabi, written in the Gurmukhi script standardised by Guru Angad Dev, is the state language and an Eighth Schedule language. Bhangra is the men's harvest dance and Giddha the women's; Jhumar, Sammi, Luddi and Kikli are the others. Lohri in January, Basant Panchami, Hola Mohalla at Anandpur Sahib, the Maghi mela at Sri Muktsar Sahib, the Shaheedi Jor Mela at Fatehgarh Sahib and the rural olympics at Kila Raipur fill the year, while Baisakhi in mid April is at once a harvest festival and the birthday of the Khalsa. Phulkari embroidery and the Punjabi jutti are its best known crafts. The state animal is the blackbuck, the state bird the northern goshawk, called baaz, and the state tree the shisham. Punjab has wildlife sanctuaries such as Harike, Abohar and Bir Motibagh and several conservation reserves, but no national park. Its Vidhan Sabha has 117 seats, the state returns 13 members to the Lok Sabha and 7 to the Rajya Sabha, and the Attari Wagah checkpost near Amritsar and the Kartarpur corridor from Dera Baba Nanak are its crossings towards Pakistan.