Amritsar
| Amritsar ਅੰਮ੍ਰਿਤਸਰ |
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 India
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| State : | Punjab | ||
| District : | Amritsar | ||
| Location : | 31 ° 38 ′ N , 74 ° 52 ′ E | ||
| Height : | 235 m | ||
| Area : | 136 km² | ||
| Residents : | 1,159,227 (2011) | ||
| Population density : | 8524 inhabitants / km² | ||
| Website : | Amritsar | ||
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Amritsar ( Panjabi ਅੰਮ੍ਰਿਤਸਰ ; from Amrita Saras : "Nectar Lake ") is a city of millions ( Municipal Corporation ) in the Indian state of Punjab ; the city is the spiritual center of Sikhism .
location
Amritsar is located in the fertile " Five Rivers Land " ( Punjab ) at an altitude of approx. 232 m above sea level. d. M. between the rivers Beas (India) and Ravi ( Pakistan ) on the Grand Trunk Road , a historic road that led from Bengal over the Ganges plain to Lahore and on to Kabul . The Indian capital Delhi is located approx. 450 km (driving distance) southeast; the Pakistani city of Lahore is only approx. 50 km to the west.
climate
The climate is temperate to warm; Rain falls mainly in the summer monsoon months .
The climate crisis has led to a drastic shortage of drinking water in large parts of India . This is particularly noticeable in Amritsar. The city is one of those 21 major Indian cities whose groundwater reserves will be completely depleted in 2020 according to calculations by the government agency NITI Aayog.
population
Official population statistics have only been kept since 1991 and are published regularly. The sustained increase in urban population is mainly due to the immigration of families from the surrounding area.
| year | 1991 | 2001 | 2011 |
| Residents | 708.835 | 1.003.917 | 1,159,227 |
Approx. 49.5% of the population are Hindus , 48% are Sikhs and only about 2.5% are Muslims , Christians and other religious communities. The proportion of the male population is around 12% higher than the female population. They speak Punjabi , Hindi and Urdu .
economy
Amritsar is one of the most advanced cities in India. Crafts, industry, trade, services and tourism are the most important economic factors.
history
The Punjab area is the setting for several ancient Hindu legends about Rama and Sita . Alexander the Great traveled through the area on his campaign to India; on the river Beas (Greek: Hyphasis ) running about 30 km to the southeast ended in 326 BC. His long campaign of conquest. Presumably the nectar lake was a sacred place for ritual baths long before the city was founded. On the south bank of today's temple pond ( sarovar ), a Sikh sanctuary and an old tree mark the location of the original nectar lake. In 1577 Amritsar was founded or expanded by Ram Das , the fourth of the ten Sikh gurus . The old name of the city was therefore Ramdaspur . The city was named Amritsar after the nectar lake ( Amrit Sarovar ) surrounding the "Golden Temple" . An already naturally existing pond was expanded by Ram Das and bordered with stairs and walls. In addition, he had an underground canal laid by the Beas River, which still supplies the nectar lake with new water today (after appropriate filtering).
After the death of the last important Mughal ruler Aurangzeb (r. 1658–1707), the Sikhs gradually took power over large parts of north-west India; from 1802 to 1849 Amritsar was the capital of the Sikh Empire . During this time there was also looting, in which parts of the mausoleums of Jahangir and his wife Nur Jahan in Lahore were dismantled and brought to Amritsar. Around the middle of the 19th century, during the First and Second Sikh Wars, there were repeated armed conflicts with the British , who finally took power in this region as well. In 1919, the Amritsar massacre occurred at Jallianwala Bagh , in which 379 non-violent demonstrators were killed and 1,200 injured.
On June 5, 1984, at the height of unrest between Hindus and fundamentalist Sikhs , Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had units of the Indian army storm the "Golden Temple" ( Operation Blue Star ). The militant leader of the Sikhs, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale , holed up there. The extremely violent and controversial military action took the lives of around 500 people. As an indirect consequence, the Indian Prime Minister was killed by her Sikh bodyguards in an assassination attempt on October 31, 1984 in her home in Delhi. The announcement of the death news led to new outbreaks of violence, in which over 4,000 Sikhs were killed within three days in Delhi alone. It was not until the evening of the third day that the Indian army intervened and began to stop the attacks on Sikhs. In the years after 1984, the Sarovar was spatially separated from the surrounding old town by residential and farm buildings and was also surrounded by a park-like green belt.
Attractions
- The most important sanctuary in the city is the “Golden Temple” ( Harmandir Sahib ) , which was built in the 16th century, but has been continually expanded and embellished .
- Another important Sikh sanctuary is the Gurdwara Baba Atal with its central octagonal tower from the early 18th century.
- The 18th century bastion Gobindgarh Fort stands in the center of town.
- The imposing building of Khalsa College was built in the British-Indian colonial style in 1892 .
- The Jallianwala Bagh is the memorial to the victims of the massacre from the year 1919th
- The Hindu Durgiana Temple was rebuilt in 1921; its architecture is based on the "Golden Temple".
- Other Hindu temples and Sikh Gurdwaras are spread across the city.
Web links
- Amritsar, attractions - Photos and information (English)
- Amritsar Massacre - Information ( Encyclopædia Britannica , English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Amritsar - 2011 data
- ^ Amritsar - Municipal Corporation
- ↑ Amritsar - Map with altitude information
- ↑ Amritsar - Climate tables
- ↑ Jessie Yeung, Swati Gupta, Michael Guy: India has just five years to solve its water crisis, experts fear. Otherwise hundreds of millions of lives will be in danger. In: CNN. July 4, 2019, accessed on July 10, 2019 .
- ↑ Amritsar - City Population 1991–2011
- ↑ Amritsar - Census 2011
