Ahmednagar - WikiHQ

Ahmednagar, officially Ahilyanagar, Ahmednagar has several dozen buildings and sites from the Nizam Shahi period. Ahmednagar Fort, once considered almost impregnable, was used by the British to detain Jawaharlal Nehru (the first prime minister of India) and other Indian Nationalists before Indian independence. A few rooms there have been converted to a museum. During his confinement by the British at Ahmednagar Fort in 1944, Nehru wrote the book The Discovery of India. Ahmednagar is home to the Indian Armoured Corps Centre & School (ACC&S), the Mechanised Infantry Regimental Centre (MIRC), the Vehicle Research and Development Establishment (VRDE) and the Controllerate of Quality Assurance Vehicles (CQAV). Training and recruitment for the Indian Army Armoured Corps takes place at the ACC&S.

Ahmednagar is a relatively small town and shows less development than the nearby western Maharashtra cities of Mumbai and Pune. Ahmednagar is home to 19 sugar factories and is also the birthplace of the cooperative movement. Due to scarce rainfall, the city often suffers from drought. Marathi is the primary language for daily-life communication. The city administration has recently published a plan of developing the city by year 2031.

Etymology

Ahmednagar took its name from Ahmad Nizam Shah I, who founded the town in 1494 on the site of a battlefield where he won a battle against superior Bahamani forces. It was close to the site of the village of Bhingar.

History

The town Ahmednagar was founded in 1494 by Ahmad Nizam Shah I on the site of a more ancient city, Bhingar. The establishment of the city is described in major contemporary historical works.

One account, from Sayyid ‘Ali b. ‘Aziz Allah Tabataba’i's Burhān-i ma’āsir, notes the planned nature of the construction:

<blockquote>An auspicious day was selected, and the surveyors, architects and builders obeyed the king’s commands, and laid out and began to build the city in with its palaces, houses, squares and shops, and laid around it fair gardens.</blockquote>

Another chronicler, Muhammad Qasim Hindushah Astarabadi, known as Firishta, discusses the founding in his Tārīkh-i Firishta. His work suggests the design, particularly the inclusion of gardens with palaces and pavilions both inside and outside the city walls, followed the conventions of a post-Timurid city. Firishta describes:

<blockquote>“In 900, he laid the foundation of a city in the vicinity of the Sina river, to which he gave the name of Ahmadnagar. So great exertions were made in erecting buildings by the king and his dependents, that in the short space of two years the new city rivalled Baghdad and Cairo in splendour.”</blockquote>

It was one of the Deccan sultanates, which lasted until its conquest by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in 1636. Aurangzeb, the last Mughal emperor, who spent the latter years of his reign, 1681–1707, in the Deccan, died in Ahmednagar and is buried at Khuldabad, near Aurangabad in 1707, with a small monument marking the site.

In 1759, the Peshwa of the Marathas obtained possession of the place from Nizam of Hyderabad and in 1795 it was ceded by the Peshwa to the Maratha chief Daulat Rao Sindhia. In 1803 Ahmednagar was besieged by a British force under Richard Wellesley and captured.

During the First World War, Ahmednagar was the site of a camp for Prisoners of War, mainly for German and Austrian civilian internees and the captured crews of German ships, but also some Turkish soldiers captured in Mesopotamia.

On 31 May 2023, Eknath Shinde (the chief minister of Maharashtra) announced that Ahmednagar would be renamed "Ahilya Nagar", in honour of Ahilyabai Holkar who was Rani of Indore, within the Maratha Confederacy in the late 18th-century. Deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis spoke at the same meeting, referring to Shinde's government as "pro-Hindutva", and asked Shinde to rename the district "Ahilyanagar"; Shinde replied: "The state government has accepted your demand to rename Ahmednagar as Ahilyadevi Holkar Nagar". The BJP demanded that Ahmednagar be renamed. Rais Shaikh (group leader of the Samajwadi Party in the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly) said that "The Maha Yuti government is implementing the 'Yogi pattern' of creating an illusion of development by changing the names of cities without doing anything for development" On 13 March 2024, the Maharashtra state cabinet announced that they had approved the renaming of Ahmednagar at the same time as they announced the renaming of seven railway stations in Mumbai.

Military base

Ahmednagar is home to:

Indian Armored Corps Centre & School (ACC&S)
Mechanized Infantry Regimental Centre (MIRC)
Vehicle Research and Development Establishment (VRDE)
Controllerate of Quality Assurance Vehicles (CQAV)

Training and recruitment for the Indian Army Armored Corps take place at the ACC&S. Formerly, the city was the Indian base of the British Army's Royal Tank Corps/Indian Armored Corps, amongst other units. The town houses the second-largest display of military tanks in the world and the largest in Asia.

Geography

Climate

Situated in the rain shadow region of the Western Ghats, Ahmednagar has a hot semi-arid climate (Köppen BSh). The climate is hot throughout the year and sweltering during the pre-monsoon months from March to mid-June, whilst monsoon rainfall averages less than a third of that received in Mumbai and about a tenth what is received in Mahabaleshwar on the crest of the mountains.

Demographics

As of 2011 Indian census, Ahmednagar had a population of 350,859. Ahmednagar has a sex ratio of 961 females per 1000 males and an average literacy rate of 84%, higher than the national urban average of 79.9%. 10% of the population is under 6 years of age.