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Gurgaon

City in Haryana, India

  • 15 min read
  • 13 chapters
Cyber City View, Gurgaon
Tarun4u · CC BY-SA 4.0

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Gurgaon's economic growth started in the 1970s when Maruti Suzuki India Limited established a manufacturing plant and gathered pace after General Electric established its business outsourcing operations known as Genpact in the city in collaboration with real-estate firm DLF. New Gurgaon, Manesar and Sohna serve as adjoining manufacturing and upcoming real estate hubs for Gurgaon. Despite rapid economic and population growth, Gurgaon continues to battle issues like high air pollution. It also has a flood problem due to the limited drainage capacity and geographic location as with other South Asian as well as South East Asian cities. Gurgaon is infamous for prostitution, erotic spas, sex tourism and high-end escorts in areas like MG Road and Sector 29.

Gurgaon is a major hub of information technology (IT), civil aviation, hospitality, management consulting, and medical tourism. Nicknamed the "cocktail capital of India", Gurgaon is famous for its nightlife, with numerous pubs, nightclubs, bars, and liquor shops. Despite being India's 56th largest city in terms of population, Gurgaon is the eighth largest city in the country in terms of total wealth. It serves as the headquarters of many of India's largest companies, is home to thousands of startup companies and has local offices for more than 250 Fortune 500 companies. It accounts for almost 70% of the total annual economic investments in Haryana state, which has helped it become a leading hub for high-tech industry in northern India. Gurgaon is categorised as very high on the Human Development Index, with an HDI of 0.889 (2017).

History

The region of Gurgaon originally fell under the Kuru kingdom. Early people to inhabit the region were Hindus Ahirs. In the late 4th century BCE, the city was absorbed by the Maurya Empire as part of Chandragupta Maurya's earliest expansions of his kingdom.

Gurgaon may be same as the Gudapura town mentioned in the 12th century text Prithviraja Vijaya. According to the text, Nagarjuna, a cousin of the Chahamana king Prithviraj Chauhan, rebelled against the king and captured the town. Prithviraj crushed the rebellion and recaptured the town.

During the Mughal and initially during the British colonial era, Gurgaon was just a small village in Jharsa paragana of Delhi subah. Report of a Tour in Eastern Rajputana in 1882–83 (published in 1885) by Alexander Cunningham, the then Director-General of Archaeological Survey of India, he mentions a stone pillar at Gurgaon of a local feudal lord "Durgga Naga" with a 3-line inscription "Samvat 729 or 928, Vaisakh badi 4, Durgga Naga lokatari bhuta" dating back to 672 CE or 871 CE. Jharsa paragana passed to Begum Samru in 1776–77 and came under direct British rule in 1836 after her death when her territory was taken over by the British who established a civil lines at Jharsa and a cavalry cantonment at nearby Hiyadatpur. An 1882 land revenue settlement report records that the idol of Sitla Mata was brought to Gurgaon 400 years earlier (15th century). Begum Samru claimed the offering to Sitla Mata temple during the Chaitra month and the revenue from the offerings given to the deity for rest of the month was distributed among the local Jat families of the area.

In 1818, Bharawas district was disbanded and Gurgaon was made a new district. In 1821, the Bharaswas cantonment was also moved to Hidayatpur in Gurgaon. "Aliwardi mosque" in Gurgaon, "Badshahpur baoli" (1905). and "Bhondsi" (16th to 17th century) were built during mughal and British era. The "Church of the Epiphany" and "Kaman Serai" (Corrupted form of the "Command Serai" or Officer's Mess") was built by the Britishers in 1925 inside the civil lines.

Other British colonial era historic buildings The Gurgaon Club, a 3-room building surrounded by the lawn and currently run by the Zila Parishad, the erstwhile Coronation School—now renamed to the Government Boys' Senior Secondary School, one of the 13 school established in India in 1911 to commemorate the coronation of King George V. During 1980s, the airstrip and hangar, air conditioned yoga ashram and TV studio were built on outskirts of the city by former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's yoga mentor Dhirendra Brahmachari. The former Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar established his own ashram near this airstrip in 1983 on 600 acre of panchayat land, where another godman Chandraswami and notorious Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi used to visit him.

On 12 April 2016, Chief Minister of Haryana Manohar Lal Khattar announced a proposal to officially rename the city Gurugram (Sanskrit: गुरुग्राम, lit. village of the Guru), subject to the approval of the Haryana cabinet and the Union Government. He argued that the new name would help to preserve the "rich heritage" of the city by emphasising its history and mythological association with Drona. On 27 September 2016, he officially announced that the Union Government had approved the name change, and thus the city and district would henceforth be known as Gurugram, though the old name "Gurgaon" still lingers in the colloquial usage.

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