Toba Tek Singh District (, ), is a district of Faisalabad division in the Punjab province of Pakistan. It is located between 30°33' to 31°2' Degree north latitudes and 72°08' to 72°48' Degree longitudes. It became a separate district in 1982.
Etymology
The city and district is named after a sikh figure Tek Singh. Legend has it that Tek Singh, a kind-hearted man served water and provided shelter to the worn out and thirsty travelers passing by a small pond (Toba in Punjabi) which eventually was called Toba Tek Singh, and the surrounding settlement acquired the same name.
History
British Raj
Toba Tek Singh was developed by the British toward the end of the 19th Century when a canal system was built. People from all over the Punjab (from the current Pakistani and Indian Punjab) moved there as farmlands were allotted to them. Most of the people who migrated there belonged to Lahore, Jalandhar ,Hoshiarpur and Sialkot districts.
The Imperial Gazetteer of India described the tehsil of Toba Tek Singh as follows:
Tehsil of the new Lyallpur District, Punjab, lying between 30°50' and 31°23' N. and 72° 20' and 72°54' E., with an area of . The population in 1906 was 148,984. It contains 342 villages, including Toba Tek Singh (population, 1,874), the headquarters, and Gojra (2,589), an important grain market on the Wazirabad-Khanewal branch of the North-Western Railway. The land revenue in 1905-6 amounted to Rupees 470,000. The tehsil consists of a level plain, wholly irrigated by the Chenab Canal. The soil, which is very fertile in the east of the tehsil, becomes sandy towards the west. The boundaries of the tehsil were somewhat modified at the time of the formation of the new District of Faisalabad (formerly called Lyallpur).
The predominantly Muslim population supported Muslim League and Pakistan Movement. After the creation of Pakistan in 1947, the minority Hindus and Sikhs migrated to India while the Muslim refugees from eastern Punjab settled in the Toba Tek Singh District.
After independence
The present Toba Tek Singh district was a Tehsil of Lyallpur District which was given the status of a district by the Punjab government in 1982 and Gojra and Kamalia became new Tehsils. In 2013 Pir Mahal was also given the status of Tehsil.
After the creation of Pakistan, when many Pakistani cities were renamed to names more acceptable to the local population, Toba Tek Singh was one of the few cities that retained its original name.
Kisan conference 1970
In Toba Tek Singh, the left parties held a farmers' conference on 23–25 March 1970, which was led by Maulana Bhashani. In this historic farmers' conference, 200,000 farmers and progressives from across the country gathered at the Toba Tek Sangh. This conference had a great impact on the political history of Pakistan. The farmers' conference made Toba Tek Singh famous in the country. Toba Tek Singh was chosen to host the farmers' conference because it was not only an important agricultural area but also had left-wing ideological leaders present before the partition of India.
Demography
Toba Tek Singh is located in center of Punjab and occupies 3252 square kilometers and is made up of large areas of lowlands that flood frequently during the rainy season; the floods originate from the Ravi River that runs along the southern and southeastern borders. During the British Raj, Toba Tek Singh had a sizeable Hindu and Sikh population, much of which migrated to India after the partition in 1947, while many Muslim refugees from present-day India settled in the Toba Tek Singh District.
As of the 2023 census, Toba Tek Singh district has 393,896 households and a population of 2,524,044. The district has a sex ratio of 105.49 males to 100 females and a literacy rate of 71.38%: 76.37% for males and 66.13% for females. 621,491 (24.62% of the surveyed population) are under 10 years of age. 563,525 (22.33%) live in urban areas.
! colspan="2" |2017
! colspan="2" |2023
|-
!
!
!
!
!
!
|-
| Islam 15px
|271,144
|68.40%
|2,122,084
|96.83%
|2,440,350
|96.68%
|-
| Hinduism 15px
|55,575
|14.02%
|123
|0.01%
|279
|0.01%
|-
|Sikhism 19x19px
|53,233
|13.43%
|
|
|19
|~0%
|-
| Christianity 15px
|16,353
|4.13%
|66,839
|3.05%
|81,259
|3.22%
|-
|Ahmadi
|
|
|2,419
|0.11%
|1,980
|0.08%
|-
| Others
|100
|0.02%
|30
|~0%
|157
|0.01%
|-
!Total Population
!396,405
!100%
!2,191,495
!
!2,524,044
!100%
|- class="sortbottom"
| colspan="7" |
|}