On the Pakistani
border, south of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, is a modern Indian state.
Modern Punjab is one of the so-called linguistic states,
which were established to bring together people who shared a same language and
culture (in this instance, Punjabi) under a single state government.
In 1966, the former state of Punjab (also known as Punjab)
was partitioned into three areas: Punjab (the Punjabi-speaking region), Haryana
(from the Hindi-speaking region), and Himachal Pradesh (from the Hindi-speaking
region) (from the hill regions).
Because it was the customary path through which conquerors
gained access to the northern Indian plains, the Punjab area is steeped in
history.
The Aryans were the first to call it after the five rivers
(pancab) that flowed through it.
The Punjab has become extraordinarily fruitful as a result
of the copious water from these rivers, which is delivered by a vast irrigation
network.
It is still India's major wheat-growing region.
Punjab is known as the Sikh religious community's origin,
and it is now the only Sikh-majority state in the world.
The Sikhs were the most hurt by the 1947 partition of India
into Hindu and Muslim nations, which effectively divided their motherland in
two.
Millions of people became refugees as a result of the
partition, and many of them were victims of the horrors of the period.
Sikh pro-independence organizations conducted an unofficial
war against the Indian government during the majority of the 1980s.
The Akal Takht, the traditional emblem of Sikh temporal
sovereignty, was besieged by the Indian army in June 1984, and the Indian prime
minister, Indira Gandhi, was killed four months later, in one of the most
dramatic occurrences of this time.
By the mid-1990s, the movement seemed to have died out, but
no one knows whether this is the case.
Punjab is most known for the Sikh Harmandir (Golden Temple)
at Amritsar, which is within a short distance from the Jallianwala Bagh, the
scene of a massacre that was one of the critical incidents in India's struggle
for independence.
Christine Nivin et al., India. 8th ed., Lonely Planet, 1998,
is an accessible resource for general information on Punjab and all of India's
regions.
