PRAYAGRAJ, ALLAHABAD

GANGA AND YAMUNA

Recently, I went to see a City  which does not seem to be very much in the news now. Earlier Allahabad was always in the news because it was associated with higher education, great culture and high society. I had heard of its famous University, which was called Oxford of the East and also of the famous  Alumni of the University. Its amazing people who contributed to the Freedom Struggle. I had heard about the famous High Court and  its  Barristers. The city's poets, gardens, Swaraj Bhawan, Anand Bhawan and also the famous Civil Lines.

KAUSHAMBI

Allahabad as we know it today, has had a distinguished History. About 60 kms away from Allahabad are the ruins of Kaushambi, which  was founded by the descendants of the Kurus of the Mahabharata times. Kurus were the  rulers of Hastinapur, who moved to Kaushambi after their capital was deluged by flood. At the time of the Buddha in the 6th Century BC,  there were sixteen Ganarajyas and Kaushambi was one of the most prominent Ganarajya, which was then called the Vatsa Ganarajya. It was a place where rich merchants resided, and it was a major transport hub for people travelling from Kaushambi to Shrawasti, to Rajgrih, to Varanasi and also the Southern states.

THE CONFLUENCE OF GANGA, YAMUNA AND THE MISSING SARASWATI

Later the Mauryan, Gupta, Kushan Empires governed here. After the arrival of the Mughals,  Akbar built a Fort  near the confluence of the Ganga and Jamuna in 1573.  Jahangir the son of Akbar lived here as it was a Provincial capital of the Mughal Empire.

When the East India Company arrived and subsequently the British took the country over, they considered Allahabad to be strategically located and therefore made it their Administrative Centre. They established  the High Court, Police Headquarter and Public Service Commission here. It was later made  the capital of the North Western Provinces for twenty years, and it would surprise you to know that it was also made the Capital of India for a day in 1858.

Allahabad was originally called Prayag and in 1583 Akbar gave it the name of Illahabas, which was changed to Illahabad by Akbar's grandson Shah Jehan. The name got Anglicised and became Allahabad, but the locals still refer to it as Illahabad.

BOATS

Prayag the earlier name of Allahabad has always been important because of the confluence of the two major rivers of North India, the Ganga and the Jamuna. It is said that there is a third river too, the Saraswati which has been non existent since a long time. A dip at the Sangam is considered very holy. What I saw at the confluence was a beautiful sight. Both the rivers maintain their distinct colour and character for some distance. Ganga is quite calm whereas Jamuna had more waves and colour. There is a platform at the Sangam where people believe that they bathe and wash off their sins along with their skins.

Boatmen do flourishing business and there are plenty of boats at the shore, waiting to take people to the Sangam.

Allahabad has always been a major pilgrimage centre for Hindus. It is one of the four Centres where the Kumbh mela is held after every 12 years. When I visited Allahabad the Magh mela was on. This is an annual event and is held in January corresponding to the month of Magh of the Indian Calendar. In fact we were charged a Magh mela tax when we travelled by train from Allahabad to Delhi.

Allahabad is a beautiful city with amazing colonial style buildings. The University is a building of outstanding beauty. The All Saints Cathedral is majestic. There were many Schools and Colleges which were built during the British times and are all very spacious and beautiful.

The Alfred park where Chandrasekhar Azad killed himself, rather than fall into the hands of the British who had surrounded him, is now called Chandrasekhar Azad Park. The Park is very large and well maintained.

3rd CENTURY BC.

The Allahabad Museum is also located in the Park. The Collection of the Museum is very nicely displayed. The only problem is that there are no indications or directions telling the visitor the path to take to go from one hall to another. There are statues here which belong to the 2nd century BC too. Some of the Statues are very beautiful and a visit to the Museum is really worth it.

As the High court was located in Allahabad, there were many Legal luminaries in the city. Motilal Nehru was one of them. He was a lawyer and had a flourishing practice. He built  the Anand Bhawan for his residence. The history of Anand Bhawan  is quite interesting. In 1857 after the First War of Independence, the British government to appease and build better rapport with the Muslim population, invited Sir Syed Ahmed who later founded the Aligarh Muslim University, to come and live in Allahabad. For the purpose they gave him 20 acres of land where he built a house and named it Mahmud Manzil. Later Justice Mahmud the son of Sir Syed Ahmed lived here. When Justice Mahmud Ahmed left Allahabad he sold his property  to Rai Bahadur Parmanand Pathak who later sold it to Motilal Nehru for Rs. 20,000 in 1898.  At the house warming party of Sir Syed Ahmed's house, Sir William Moor had hoped that the palatial home built in Civil Lines of Allahabad would become the cement holding together the British Empire in India.  Isn't it ironical that the British who had brought Sir Syed Ahmed to Allahabad to build better rapport with the Muslim Population, built a house which later became the centre of the Freedom Movement? Motilal Nehru called the house Anand Bhawan and lived there with his family. In 1930 he gave the building to the Indian National Congress to serve as the party's official headquarter in the region and it was renamed Swaraj Bhawan.

Motilal built another house in the same campus and named it Anand Bhawan. This  is a beautiful bungalow which is maintained as a Museum and is maintained as it was when the Nehru family lived there. This second Anand Bhawan  was donated to the nation by Indira Gandhi in 1970.

ANAND BHAWAN

Although the Bamrauli airport now is a small airport, at one time it was an International airport from where flights left for London.

This city was home to a lot of well known Hindi poets and writers. Sumitranandan Pant, Mahadevi Verma, Subhadra Kumari Chauhan, Harivansh Rai Bachhan, Suryakant Tripathi Nirala, Akbar Allahabadi, Dharmvir Bharati all belonged to this place. One cannot think of Hindi poetry without Allahabad.

A lot of people from Allahabad have made their name in the field of Art and Music, to name a few there are Amitabh Bachhan, Jaddan Bai, Nargis, Sudhir Dar, Hariprasad Chaurasia, Shubha Mudgal.

This city was so distinguished that it gave us four Prime Ministers, JLNehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and V P Singh. Besides  these four, two other Prime Ministers Gulzari Lal Nanda and Chandrasekhar were educated at the Allahabad University.

The Pioneer newspaper was started at Allahabad in 1865 and Rudyard Kipling worked there as Asst Editor for two years.

Saraswati a Hindi magazine was started here in 1900 by  Chintamani Ghosh.This magazine published the stories of Tagore, Premchand and many upcoming authors who wrote in Hindi.

Jehangir the son of Akbar lived here before he became Badshah. Akbar had built a Fort near the Sangam and that is where Jehangir lived with his family.

NITHARI'S MAUSOLEUM

Jehangir's  son Khusrow built a row of three beautiful mausoleums. In one of them his mother Man bai who committed suicide was buried. The next mausoleum had been built for his sister Nithari. This mausoleum has very beautiful paintings on its walls, but Nithari was not buried here and therefore this one is empty. The third mausoleum is the tomb of Khusrow himself who was killed by his own brother who wanted the Mughal throne for himself.

THE WELL

These mausoleums are laid out in a very beautiful garden. The well from which water was drawn then to maintain the well laid out gardens,  still works and is used for watering the plants and lawns.

The grandeur and majesty of Allahabad  still remains. The sweet and very cultured Hindi can still be heard everywhere. The wide roads speak of the well planned city. Civil Lines is very well planned.

It was nice to see that old names of many areas still remain the same. If a road was named to honour a British luminary, so be it.

A lot of civilisations over time perish, cities become ruins, but by virtue of the confluence of the two most important rivers of India, Allahabad will always remain one of the most important cities of India.

THE MUGHAL GARDEN