Ahmedabad

Ahmedabad is the largest city and former capital of the Indian state of Gujarat. It is located on the banks of the Sabarmati River, 30 km (19 mi) from the state capital Gandhinagar. It is also ranked third in Forbes' list of fastest growing cities of the decade and also the fifth largest city and seventh largest metropolitan area of India.

Clockwise from topː Gandhi Smarak Sangrahalay at Sabarmati Ashram, Ahmedabad Railway Station, CEPT University, Kankaria Lake and the Kirti Stambh at Hutheesing Temple.

Quotes

• The Sabarmati Ashram, which was founded in 1918 on the west bank of the Sabarmati River, was the second home for Mahatma Gandhi. This was his headquarters while he fought for his ideals of Indian independence. It was from here that he devised his plan for the final struggle for India’s freedom. His cottage, Hriday Kunj, is still fairly intact and is now a small museum that contains some of his personal items such as his round eyeglasses, wooden slippers, books, and letters. They still make handicrafts at the ashrama.
  • Knapp Stephen, Spiritual India Handbook (2011)

• When the city was founded in 1411, Ahmad Shah I initiated the construction of four buildings, which would define the ‘royal domain’ of the new city. At first, he built the Bhadra Fort in the centre of what would become the walled city. The Bhadra Fort was the residence of the ruler, as well as, the place from which he ruled the city. Only a small portion of the original rectangular fort remains now, while other elements were added to it in course of time, including a Mughal addition and a British built clock tower. The second major monument that was constructed in parallel with the Fort is the personal mosque of the Shah, which was completed in 1414. The mosque has all the distinctive features of the early Gujarati Sultanate style. It represents a merger of Islamic concepts of space and Hindu construction and stone-carving techniques. Not only were Hindu artisans used to construct_the building, many of the stone elements in the mosque were recycled from an earlier local Hindu temple. The interior of the mosque thus feels very much like a temple—tightly pillared hall, carved stone motifs, and abstracts from local practices such as flower garlands and blooming lotuses. The hall faces an open courtyard, allowing an overflow of worshippers and a natural space for the composition of the front facade to be admired from. The front facade consists of a series of arched openings, with two minarets on either sides of the central arched doorway. Unfortunately, these minarets fell during one of the many earthquakes that hit the city along the years. The construction of Jama Masjid was started in 1411 but took ten years to complete. Till that time, the much smaller Ahmed Shah Masjid was used for Friday prayers. Nonetheless, when the Jama Masjid was finally completed in 1424, it was the largest mosque on the Indian subcontinent— a testimony to the ambitions of its ruler.
  • Source: "The Making of old city of Ahmedabad" by Matthijs van Oostrum

• Ahmedabad is the seventh largest city of India. Over time the city has grown from a city of trade and commerce to an important industrial centre. Its citizens have made remarkable achievements in other spheres as well.
  • Dwijendra Tripathi, in Alliance for Change: A Slum Upgrading Experiment in Ahmedabad, 1 January 1998, p. vii

• Ahmedabad has been declared a mega city, and the city is also covered under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM)
  • Darshini Mahadevia, in Inside the Transforming Urban Asia: Processes, Policies, and Public Actions, Concept Publishing Company, 2008, p. 361

• What beauty and excellence can the founder of the city seen in this wretched city with its dust-laden air, its hot winds, its dry river-bed, its brackish nasty water and its thron covered suburbs.
  • Emperor Jahangir, who called it dust city Gurdabad and several other names, in 1608, in Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency: Ahmedabad, Government Central Press, 1879, pp.254-55

• During nine months of Jehangir;s stay in Ahmadabad [in 1608] his favourite wife Nur Jahan governor of the city
  • Colonel Briggs, in Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency: Ahmedabad, p. 255

• Until the beginning of the twentieth century most of Ahmedabad’s population resided within the Fort Walls [on the eastern bank of the Sabaramati River. The opening of the first Ahmedabad textile mill in 1861 and of the railway line between Ahmedabad and Bombay [now Mumbai] three years was a harbinger of the city’s rapid expansion. The developing textile industry generated waves of migration into the city and extensive growth of its population and territory.
  • Ornit Shani, in Communalism, Caste and Hindu Nationalism: The Violence in Gujarat, Cambridge University Press, 12 July 2007, p. 25

Panoramic view of Ahmedabad

• Socially, economically and in its structural and spatial design, the city had gradually been divided into three parts. From the end of 1960s, Ahmedabad became the story of three cities.
  • B.K. Roy Burman, in Social profile, in Communalism, Caste and Hindu Nationalism: The Violence in Gujarat, p. 32

• Under the blows of frequent Muslim pestering, such as the petty terror which drove Hindus out of certain neighbourhoods in Ahmedabad (as attested by a state law prohibiting inter-community sales of real estate in the wake of communal riots, a law routinely circumvented by Muslim mafia dons using stooges), they developed a strong resentment [...] In some southern cities, major Hindu temples have been isolated from their constituency of worshippers after Muslims strategically bought up all the real estate around the temple. In Ahmedabad, Hindus have practically been driven out of the old city. In such an important economic centre, the planning by Muslim Gulf-based mafias was obvious. One Muslim, or his Hindu stooge, would buy up a house in a Hindu neighbourhood... The next stage is that life for Hindus is made uncomfortable, initially in perfectly legal ways,... [later] a bogus Hindu provocation of Muslim sentiments is enacted and a communal riot ensues.... Hindus start panic-selling their houses.... The mafia dons distribute the loot among their supporters.
  • Elst, K. The Problem with Secularism (2007)

• Ahmedabad provides a case study in Islamic strategy as well as in the nexus of religious strategists and the underworld, vide [...] the tactics used since the 1970s to chase Hindus from targeted areas of the city in order to buy the real estate for a small price and repopulate them with Muslims.
  • Elst, K. (2010). The saffron swastika: The notion of "Hindu fascism". p 763

Mahatma Gandhi: This is the right place for our activities to carry on the search for Truth and develop Fearlessness- for on one side, are the iron bolts of the foreigners, and on the other, thunderbolts.

• This is the right place for our activities to carry on the search for Truth and develop Fearlessness- for on one side, are the iron bolts of the foreigners, and on the other, thunderbolts of Mother Nature.
  • Mahatma Gandhi, in Sabarmati Ashram Ahmedabad, Gujarat]. Gandhi stayed at the Ashram from 1915 to 1933, later on the Ashram was disbanded. The Ashram is a witness to many important historical events.

• Amedahad being inhabited also by a great number of heathens, there are Pagods, or Idol-Temples it it. That which was called the Pagod of Santidas was the chief, before King Auranzeb converted it into a Mosque. When he performed that ceremony, he caused a cow to be killed in the place, knowing very well, that after such an action, the Gentiles according to their Law, could worship no more therein. All round the temple there is a cloyster furnished with lovely Cells, beautified with Figures of Marble in relief, representing naked Women sitting after the Oriental fashion. The inside Roof of the Mosque is pretty enough, and the Walls are full of the Figures of Men and Beasts ; but Auranzeb, who hath always made a show of an affected Devotion, which at length raised him to the Throne, caused the Noses of all these Figures which added a great deal of Magnificence to that Mosque, to be beat off.
  • Description of the temple built by Shantidas Jhaveri. Indian Records Series Indian Travels Of Thevenot And Careri [1] Cited in Harsh Narain, The Ayodhya Temple Mosque Dispute: Focus on Muslim Sources, Appendix VI

• Ahmadabad is one of the largest towns in India, and there is a considerable trade in silken stuffs, gold and silver tapestries, and others mixed with silk ; saltpetre, sugar, ginger, both candied and plain, tamarinds, mirabolans, and indigo cakes, which are made at three leagues from Ahmadabad, at a large town called Suarkei.There was formerly a pagoda in this place, which the Musalinans seized and converted into a mosque. Before entering it you traverse three great courts paved with marble, and surrounded by galleries, but you are not allowed to place foot in the third without removing your shoes. The exterior of the mosque is ornamented with mosaic, the greater part of which consists of agates of different colours, obtained from the mountains of Cambay, only two days’ journey thence.
  • Description of the temple built by Shantidas Jhaveri. Travels In India Vol.-i by Tavernier Jean-baptiste [2] Cited in Harsh Narain, The Ayodhya Temple Mosque Dispute: Focus on Muslim Sources, Appendix VI

• “One day at Ahmadabad it was reported that many of the infidel and superstitious sect of the Seoras (Jains) of Gujarat had made several very great and splendid temples, and having placed in them their false gods, had managed to secure a large degree of respect for themselves and that the women who went for worship in those temples were polluted by them and other people… The Emperor Jahangir ordered them banished from the country, and their temples to be, demolished. Their idol was thrown down on the uppermost step of the mosque, that it might be trodden upon by those who came to say their daily prayers there. By this order of the Emperor, the infidels were exceedingly disgraced, and Islam exalted…”
  • Ahmadabad (Gujarat) Intikhab-i-Jahangir Shabi Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own historians, Vol. VI, p. 451.

• During the Subedari of religious-minded, noble prince, vestiges of the Temple of Chintaman situated on the side of Saraspur built by Satidas jeweller, were removed under the Prince's order and a masjid was erected on its remains. It was named 'Quwwat-ul-Islam.
  • Aurangzeb. Ahmadabad (Gujarat) . Mirat-i-Ahmadi by Ali Muhammad Khan, in Mirat-i-Ahmdi, translated into English by M.F. Lokhandwala, Baroda, 1965, P. 194

• In Ahmadabad and other parganas of Gujarat, in the days before my accession, temples were destroyed by my order. They have been repaired and idol worship has been resumed. Carry out the former orders.
  • Aurangzeb. Farman dated 20 November 1665 recorded in Mirat-i-Ahmadi, p. 275; translated by Jadunath Sarkar in History of Aurangzib: Mainly Based on Persian Sources - Vol. III, p. 185; Ayodhya Revisited by Kunal Kishore, p. 575; The Crescent in India: A Study in Medieval History by Shripad Rama Sharma, p. 554; Hindu Temples, what Happened to Them: The Islamic Evidence, by Arun Shourie & Sita Ram Goel, p. 33

• Amedabad being inhabited also by a great number of Heathens, there are Pagods, or Idol-Temples it. That which was called the Pagod of Santidas [temple of Chintaman built by Shantidas, a Jain merchant, in 1638 at a cost of nine lakh rupees] was the chief, before Auran Zeb converted it into a Mosque. When he performed that Ceremonie, he caused a Cow to be killed in the place, knowing very well, that after such an Action, the Gentiles according to their Law, could worship no more therein. All round the Temple there is a Cloyster furnished with lovely Cells, beautified with Figures of Marble in relief, representing naked Women sitting after the Oriental fashion. The inside Roof of the Mosque is pretty enough, and the Walls are full of the Figures of Men and Beasts; but Auranzeb, who hath always made a shew of an affected Devotion, which at length raised him to the Throne, caused the Noses of all these Figures which added a great deal of Magnificence to that Mosque, to be beat off [broken].
  • Santidas’s pagod converted into a mosque by Aurangzeb, Jean de Thevenot , Thevenot and Careri, Indian Travels of Thevenot and Careri, Edited by Surendra Nath Sen, National Archives of India, 1949. 13-4. quoted from Jain, M. (editor) (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts. New Delhi: Ocean Books. Volume III Chapter 5

• In 1714, the earliest recorded communal riot in Ahmedabad took place on the day of Holi. according to records, one hari ram, the agent of a shroff (local banker), sprinkled gulal on a muslim. the muslim complained to kazi khairullahkhan to lodge a protest, but the kazi did not intervene, as he knew that viceroy daud khan had a soft corner for hindus. this resulted in a crowd of restive muslims ransacking the house of hari ram and looting and burning shops of hindus.
  • City has a history of riots