Lower Bari Doab Colony

The Lower Bari Doab Colony was one of the Punjab’s canal colonies, built between the Ravi and the Beas in Montgomery and Multan districts, now in Pakistan. Its water came from the Lower Bari Doab Canal, 201 km long, which takes off from the Balloki Barrage (built 1911 to 1913) and was commissioned in 1914. The Upper Chenab and Upper Jhelum canals were dug to carry Chenab and Jhelum water across to the Ravi and feed it. Today the canal and its 2,264 km of channels irrigate about 700,000 hectares in Okara, Pakpattan, Sahiwal and Khanewal districts.

Key moments

• 1906 and 1907: a colonisation bill extends the state’s powers over the Punjab’s canal colonies and, with crop failures and higher water rates, leads to the unrest of 1907. This colony had not yet opened.
• 1914 to 1924: colonisation, interrupted by the First World War, allots about 1,192,000 acres. The landholding peasantry of the Punjab took 68.66 percent. Land also went to horse-breeding grantees, military men and, for the first time, landless men of lower castes.
• 1901 to 1931: Sikhs in Montgomery district grow from 19,092 (4.12 percent) to 68,175 (12.74 percent) in 1911 and 148,155 (14.82 percent) in 1931. The 1941 census counts 175,064 (13.17 percent).
• 1947: with Partition the district’s Hindus and Sikhs move to India, and Muslim refugees from India settle in their place. The colonies pass to Pakistan’s Irrigation Department.

What it means today. The colony belongs to the Panth’s story before Partition: Sikh numbers in the district grew with the canals, and the district’s Sikhs left for India in 1947. The canal and its land are now in Pakistan.