Punjab takes its name from the Persian for five waters, a reference to the rivers that once defined the wider region. Its history reaches back to the Indus Valley Civilisation, and Harappan settlements have been excavated at Ropar, now Rupnagar, beside the Sutlej, as well as at other sites across the state. In the Vedic period the land of the rivers was an early heartland of Indo Aryan culture, and many scholars link early Vedic hymns with this part of the subcontinent.
Lying on the main route into India from the northwest, Punjab saw armies and empires come and go. Alexander of Macedon fought King Porus near the Jhelum river in 326 BCE, in what is now Pakistan. The region later formed part of the Mauryan Empire and was ruled in turn by Indo Greek, Kushan and Gupta kings, before passing to the Hunas and to Harsha in the 7th century. The site of Sanghol in Fatehgarh Sahib district, with its Buddhist stupa remains and Kushan era sculpture, is a reminder of this cosmopolitan age.
From around the 11th century Punjab came under Turkic rulers from Ghazni and then the Delhi Sultanate, followed by the Mughals. In 1469 Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, was born in the region, and the tradition was carried forward by nine successive Gurus. Guru Arjan Dev compiled the Adi Granth and completed the Harmandir Sahib in Amritsar, and in 1699 Guru Gobind Singh founded the Khalsa at Anandpur Sahib. Through the 18th century Sikh confederacies called misls grew in strength, and Maharaja Ranjit Singh united them into a powerful kingdom ruled from Lahore from the beginning of the 19th century. He is remembered for covering the Harmandir Sahib in gilded copper, which is why it is widely known as the Golden Temple.
After Ranjit Singh's death in 1839 the kingdom weakened, and following two Anglo Sikh wars the British annexed Punjab in 1849. Punjab was central to the freedom movement. The Ghadar movement drew heavily on Punjabi emigrants, and on 13 April 1919 British troops fired on an unarmed crowd at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar. The garden is now a memorial. The revolutionary Bhagat Singh, executed in 1931, is commemorated at Hussainiwala near Firozpur.
Independence in 1947 brought the partition of Punjab between India and Pakistan, with the western part, including Lahore, going to Pakistan. Millions of people were uprooted in one of the largest migrations in history, a story told movingly at the Partition Museum in Amritsar. To replace Lahore, India built Chandigarh as a new capital, planned by the architect Le Corbusier, whose Capitol Complex is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The princely states of the region formed the Patiala and East Punjab States Union, which merged into Punjab in 1956.
The state took its present shape on 1 November 1966, when the Punjab Reorganisation Act created Haryana from its southern districts and transferred several hill areas to Himachal Pradesh. Chandigarh became a Union Territory serving as the shared capital of both Punjab and Haryana, an arrangement that continues today. Visitors can trace this layered history from the Golden Temple and Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar to the forts of Patiala and the evening ceremony at the Attari border.
Photo: Shagil Kannur, CC BY-SA 4.0
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