East Punjab
East Punjab
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East Punjab

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East Punjab

East Punjab was a state of Dominion of India from 1947 until 1950. It consisted parts of the Punjab Province of British India that remained in India following the partition of the state between the new dominions of Pakistan and India by the Radcliffe Commission in 1947. The mostly Muslim western parts of the old Punjab became Pakistan's West Punjab, later, renamed as Punjab Province, while the mostly Hindu and Sikh eastern parts remained with India.

With the partition of India, the Punjab province was to be divided in two as per the Indian Independence Act 1947, passed by the parliament of the United Kingdom. The province was to cease to exist, and two new provinces were to be constituted, to be known respectively as West Punjab & East Punjab. All the princely states of the Punjab States Agency, except Bahawalpur, which acceded to the Dominion of Pakistan, acceded to the new Union of India and were combined into the Patiala and East Punjab States Union (PEPSU). The northeast Hill States of the Punjab Province banded together and were declared a union territory in 1950 as Himachal Pradesh.

The Constitution of India, which came into effect in 1950, renamed the province of "East Punjab" as the state of "Punjab".

In 1956, the PEPSU was merged into an expanded Punjab state.

With effect from 1 November 1966, there was yet another Reorganisation, this time on linguistic lines, when the state of Punjab as constituted in 1956 was divided into three: the mostly Hindi-speaking part became the present-day Indian state of Haryana and the mostly Punjabi-speaking part became the present-day Punjab, while a new union territory (Chandigarh) was also created, to serve as a capital to both states. At the same time, some parts of the former territory of Patiala and East Punjab States Union, including Solan and Nalagarh, were transferred to Himachal Pradesh.

Prior to partition, the eastern portion of Punjab that was ultimately awarded to India following the demarcation of the Radcliffe Line was made into a new province – East Punjab. The area includes the contemporary states of Punjab, Haryana, and Himachal Pradesh. Below is the religious demographics of this region broken down by district and princely state with an overall total as per the 1941 Indian census.

After Partition, East Punjab underwent significant restructuring, particularly in its Punjab States Agency. Several princely states in the region were merged in 1948 to form the Patiala and East Punjab States Union (PEPSU), while a number of hill states in the north were integrated to form Himachal Pradesh. Bilaspur Princely state remained a separate entity as Bilaspur State. In the 1951 census, these regions — Punjab, PEPSU, Himachal Pradesh, Bilaspur, and Delhi — were grouped together in a single volume titled Census of India, 1951: Punjab, Pepsu, Himachal Pradesh, Bilaspur & Delhi. Although Delhi was included in this volume, it had become a separate province in 1911 and is not considered part of East Punjab for statistical purposes. Below is the religious demographics of this region broken down by district with an overall total as per the 1951 census of India.

In the following tables, 268,602 people from the Jullundur Division were not classified by religion due to missing records caused by a fire in the Jullundur Census Tabulation Office. As a result, their religious affiliation could not be included at the district level. These unclassified populations were distributed across Amritsar district (96,720 persons), Gurdaspur district (89,512 persons), Jullundur district (46,834 persons), Ferozepur district (18,283 persons), Kangra district (9,565 persons), Hoshiarpur district (6,362 persons), and Ludhiana district (1,326 persons). While their district level religious details were omitted, the number was included on the overall provincial tabulation. According to consolidated data, out of the 268,602 individuals, 117,186 persons were Hindus and others, 149,758 persons were Sikhs, and 1,658 persons were Muslims. Therefore, the actual total population of the province/state was not 16,975,754 as shown in the tables below, but 17,244,356 after including these 268,602 individuals.

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