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BOTH
AMRITSAR AND JALANDHAR WERE NOT ON THE ORIGINAL SHER SHAH SURI HIGHWAY
Harjap
Singh Aujla Since times immemorial India was
famous amongst its North Western neighbors as a land of plenty and
opportunity. From the Aryans of Central Asia to Alexander the Great of
Macedonia and the Islamic invaders from the Western and Central Asian
countries, India has been a land of fascination for every invader. Some of
them were interested only in plundering the wealth of its state and
citizens and some decided to adopt this four season fertile land as their
future dream home. Most of the invaders crossed into India through the
Khyber Pass in Pakhtoonkhwa area with the aim of capturing or looting the
affluent capital of this country and other wealthy towns and cities.
Peshawar and Lahore were the other important landmark cities on the way to
the national capital, which most of the time used to be Delhi, Agra or
Patliputra (Patna).
Old milestone in village Jehangir in Jalandhar district Although need based animal driven
carriage paths were built all over the country from time to time, yet Sher
Shah Suri was the first visionary Emperor of India to realize that the
most fertile North Western heartlands of the country deserved a decent all
weather thoroughfare. So he applied the best available technology to
improvise a stabilized clay road with good drainage for monsoon runoff to
link Agra Delhi with Peshawar. Another branch linked Lahore to Multan
also. The route from the national capital of Delhi to the provincial
capital of Lahore was roughly via Panipat, Ambala, Shambhu, Sarhind,
Doraha, Ludhiana, Phillaur, Noormahal, Nakodar, Jehangir, Sultanpur Lodhi,
Goindwal, Jalalabad and Serai Amanat Khan. When Sher Shah Suri built this
highway, Amritsar did not exist as a city, it was only a small group of
villages. Jalandhar did exist as a small town, but Nakodar and Noormahal
(under a different name Kot Kahlur) were politically and culturally more
important places to the Islamic rulers. Sultanpur Lodhi was a very
prominent garrison headquarter, where the Lodhi Dynasty, which ruled
Northern India prior to the establishment of Mughal Empire, had its
permanently stationed Subedar assisted by a contingent of army. Later on
the Mughals occupied Sultanpur Lodhi too. From Sultanpur Lodhi the Sher
Shah Suri Highway crossed the Beas at Goindwal and entered village
Jalalabad and the alignment passed through Serai Amanat Khan (known with a
different name then) before entering the city of Lahore some twenty five
miles to the West. Later on during the reign of Mughal Emperor Jehangir,
three magnificent Serais (inns) were built in Noormahal, Jehangir, and
Serai Amanat Khan. All three inns were located along the original Sher
Shah Suri Highway and now form a part of Jalandhar and Amritsar districts.
Sikhs in pre-1947 Lahore When the British Colonial Rules
decided to rebuild the Grand Trunk Road in the beginning of the nineteenth
century, they roughly followed the same alignment which was adopted by
Sher Shah Suri. They built a compacted earth and gravel road on the
pattern of the European highways of the time. These highways were good
enough to handle two way passages of horse drawn carriages. But in India
of those days, the primary means of transportation was bullock carts,
which were slower in speed and less taxing on the compacted earth
surfaces. But the British possessions, under a treaty with the Sikh
Kingdom of Lahore, did not cross the Sutlej, so they terminated the road
at Ludhiana and built another similar road to link Ludhiana with
Ferozepore, from where they managed the Anglo-Sikh Battles to annexe the
Sikh Empire.
ANCIENT OUTDOOR EATRY IN LAHORE During the period of the Sikh
Empire, the most heavily travelled highway was between Lahore and Amritsar
via Mughalpura, Wagha, Pul Moran, Khasa and Chheharta. King Emperor Ranjit
Singh spent most of his leisure time not in his capital Lahore but in
Amritsar, where he stayed in a sprawling two hundred plus acre (now
reduced to ninety one acres) Ram Bagh. He ordered the gold plating of Sri
Darbar Sahib, which was completed during his life time. The route Ranjit
Singh often took to travel to Amritsar later on became a part of the Delhi-Lahore-Peshawar
Highway. After Amritsar the Sikh imperial forces occupied Jalandhar area
too in the Bist Doab region up to the town of Phillaur. It was the Sikh
Empire, which altered the original alignment of Sher Shah Suri Highway and
built a clay road from Lahore to Phillaur via Amritsar and Jalandhar.
GOLDEN TEMPLE DURING MAHARAJA RANJIT SINGH'S TIME When the Sikh Kingdom built the
Lahore-Phillaur Highway, they had to pass through a friendly Sikh princely
state of Kapurthala, which was then governed by Nawab Jassa Singh
Ahluwalia's decendents. Maharaja Fateh Singh was then the ruler of
Kapurthala. He welcomed the construction of the road from Dhilwan to the
outskirts of Kartarpur and then from Chaheru through Phagwara to Chachoki
and Chachrari. Thus the older Sher Shah Suri Highway alignment via Serai
Amanat Khan, Jalalabad, Sultanpur Lodhi, Jehangir, Nakodar, Noormahal and
up to Phillaur was superseded forever. The new alignment recognized the
commercial and industrial importance of Amritsar and enhanced the
importance of Jalandhar too by several notches.
Heritage buildings of Amritsar Ten years after the death of the
Sikh Emperor Ranjit Singh, the British Imperial Forces inflicted a
decisive defeat on the fragmented Sikh Army in 1949 and occupied the
capital city of Lahore. Both Lahore and Amritsar were on the priority of
the British. Lahore was very vital as the largest and most significant
city of the erstwhile Sikh Empire. Amritsar was commercially important as
the biggest trading centre in the Sikh Empire. Building a decent road from
Lahore to Amritsar became the top priority of the business savvy British
rulers. So they rebuilt a compacted earth and gravel road with a nice
camber from Lahore to Amritsar via Mughalpura, Wagha, Attari and Khasa.
Construction of this road increased the business and administrative
interaction between Lahore and Amritsar. The enterprising Marwari trading
community of Amritsar also impressed the British a lot. In the last
quarter of the nineteenth century a phase of rapid industrialization of
Amritsar started. In the twentieth century, the cotton grown in the newly
established Sikh farms of Lyallpur and Montgomery started arriving in bulk
in Amritsar for manufacture of cotton textiles within India and some major
consignments were sent to Karachi for export to the mills in the British
Midlands cities of Manchester and Birmingham. Slowly the factories of
Amritsar became the cash cow for the British rulers. Jalandhar was the
third largest city in the area. It, along with Phagwara in Kapurthala
State, also attracted a lot of industry. The British did not annexe
Kapurthala State, but snatched its possessions in the beyond Sutlej
Jagraon area.
Lahore Gate of Fort Sultanpur In the beginning of the twentieth
century, the Delhi-Lahore Grand Trunk Highway got priority in getting a
black top. The base was of water bound Macadam, which consisted of broken
bits of heavily compacted bricks mixed with soil with an overlay of broken
stones also mixed with soil and water and rolled to optimum compaction. On
the top was a layer of finely graded tiny stones bound by steaming hot
bitumen or asphalt and rolled with steam rollers. This highway also
received two long length bridges on the Beas and the Sutlej a little more
than a century ago.
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