History
The origin of the town is related to a Sikh land owner called Didar Singh. When Didar Singh was married, his father gave him the lands surrounding the part of Qila Didar Singh that is currently known as "Old/Inside part of Qila". The name Qila implies a fort; this name originates in the fact that Didar Singh's family had a very large and tall mansion, which was surrounded by smaller houses. Because there was a wall surrounding the whole town with several gates, the town had the appearance of a fort.
During the Indian rebellion of 1857, British troops during chase of the rebels, arrived at the Qila and surrounded it, believing it to be a fort. Representatives of the townpeople however managed to convince the troops that the town was not in fact a fortification.
In 1947, the year of Pakistan's independence from the British Indian Empire, Qila Didar Singh was a very small town with mainly Sikh and Hindu population. Most of the Sikhs and Hindus living in the town moved to the Indian part of the Punjab and many Muslim immigrants moved to the area from the East Punjab, Haryana.
Read more about this topic: Qila Didar Singh
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)
“Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)
“There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History and, even, with the European tradition.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)