Sir Ganga Ram Agar­wal was the fa­ther of mod­ern La­hore. A fi­nan­cially rich man, an ar­chi­tect, de­signer and man­ager par ex­cel­lence. His works stand tall even to­day in La­hore and each mon­u­ment speaks for his metic­u­lous­ness and eye for de­tail. The au­thor, who is an avid trav­eller, vis­its his mon­u­ments and land­mark build­ings in La­hore and chron­i­cles his con­tri­bu­tion.

Of Sir Ganga Ram, none more com­pelling is than the story ‘The Gar­land’ Sa­dat Manto had writ­ten of about the Statue of Sir Ganga Ram that once stood near the side of the La­hore Mu­seum. In the frenzy of ha­tred of 1947 mobs were ran­sack­ing it as a ri­otous mob was seen ston­ing the statue of Sir Ganga Ram on a pub­lic square in La­hore. A ri­oter climbed up the pedestal and was seen putting a gar­land of shoes around the stat­ue’s neck. The po­lice who ar­rived at the scene, opened fire and some of the mis­cre­ants were in­jured. One among them was the man who had climbed up the pedestal to gar­land the statue with the gar­land of shoes. Some­one in the ri­otous mob shouted: “Take him to Sir Ganga Ram Hos­pi­tal”.

“Ganga Ram used to say the prob­lem of In­dia is the prob­lem of wa­ter. He de­signed Lift ir­ri­ga­tion by which wa­ter was lifted to ir­ri­gate fal­low lands and turn them into green fields by steam power.”

That in essence told the story of this vi­sion­ary whose con­tri­bu­tion, ex­cept the statue that no longer ex­ists, of sev­eral no­table ones in La­hore stand­ing to­day from the Raj era have his stamp. The mag­nif­i­cent build­ing of La­hore Mu­seum, the An­gli­can Church, the Mayo School of Arts, the Gen­eral Post Of­fice, Aitchi­son Col­lege, Pun­jab High Court, and Ganga Ram Hos­pi­tal, Vic­tor wing of the La­hore Mayo Hos­pi­tal and the Gov­ern­ment Col­lege Chem­i­cal Lab­o­ra­tory are his lega­cies. Look every­where and his sig­na­ture build­ings are vis­i­ble. He was the fa­ther of mod­ern La­hore.

He was born in 1851 to Lala Daulat Ram, a sub-in­spec­tor of a fam­ily that had trav­elled to Pun­jab from United Provinces in search of liveli­hood. At Man­gatan­wala, in Nankana Sahib Dis­trict, un­der the quiet shad­ows of a Gur­d­wara , the baby Ganga Ram was born. School­ing in Am­rit­sar, stu­dent days in Gov­ern­ment Col­lege La­hore and then to Roor­kee for en­gi­neer­ing col­lege, led in 1873 to his first as­sign­ment to in Delhi to as­sist in build­ing an am­phithe­atre. In 1877 he was brought in for plan­ning in the con­struc­tion of rail­way line from Am­rit­sar to Pathankot.

He trav­elled to Brad­ford, Eng­land for train­ing in the wa­ter works and drainage con­struc­tion. On re­turn his golden years in La­hore be­gan where all the build­ings men­tioned above were de­signed and en­gi­neered. He re­ceived the ti­tle of Rai Ba­hadur in 1903, and was ap­pointed a Com­pan­ion of the Or­der of the In­dian Em­pire (CIE) on 26 June 1903 for his ser­vices at the Delhi Dur­bar. He was knighted in the 1922 Birth­day Ho­n­ours list, and on 8 July the same year was per­son­ally in­vested with his ho­n­our at Buck­ing­ham Palace by the King-Em­peror George V.

““Anokha ….the un­usual” was in­deed this great phil­an­thropist who cre­ated wealth and to his last used the wealth for the peo­ple of the Pun­jab where he made his mil­lions. ”

In 1903 at the age of 52 he re­tired with a grant of twenty squares of land. It was soon af­ter that he was called to re-de­sign Pa­tiala by the Ma­hara­jah and he changed the en­tire cap­i­tal. Moti Bagh Palace, the Sec­re­tariat Build­ings, the Vic­to­ria Girls High School, the City High School, the Law Courts the Ijlas-i-khas all bore stamp of his hand­i­work.

With Im­pe­r­ial Dur­bar of 1911 on the anvil, the Ma­hara­jah of Pa­tiala pre­vailed upon him to be spe­cial ad­vi­sor to the In­dian Chief’s Camp.

Ganga Ram used to say the prob­lem of In­dia is the prob­lem of wa­ter. He de­signed Lift ir­ri­ga­tion by which wa­ter was lifted to ir­ri­gate fal­low lands and turn them into green fields by steam power. So be­gan his dream pro­ject in a vil­lage he named Gan­ga­pur that to date lasts in Lyallpur Dis­trict in its orig­i­nal name. He in­tro­duced mod­ern agri­cul­tural ma­chin­ery on the lands al­lot­ted to him.

Gan­ga­pur was the first farm to in­tro­duce a me­chan­i­cal reaper, rig­gers, har­rows, scythes, sprays and new type of gar­den­ing in­stru­ments were among the many mod­ern de­signed and im­proved tools used. He reaped re­wards mon­e­tar­ily as the farm out­puts in­creased man­i­fold due to his lat­est tech­no­log­i­cal adap­ta­tions been used on farm­lands.

It was in 1923 that he set up Sir Ganga Ram Trust to or­gan­ise and con­trol his char­i­ties that in­cluded amongst oth­ers a Wid­ows home. Two years ear­lier in the fa­mous area of Wach­howali he pur­chased land for con­struct­ing Sir Ganga Ram Char­ity Dis­pen­sary.

Later he set up a com­merce in­sti­tu­tion for young stu­dents to learn in­tri­ca­cies of money mak­ing and man­ag­ing by set­ting up Hai­ley Col­lege of Com­merce. Later ed­u­ca­tional in­sti­tute for women, by do­nat­ing his per­sonal home in La­hore for the pur­pose, was set up but he died be­fore it be­came op­er­a­tional. He also con­structed a char­i­ta­ble Hindu Apa­haj Ashram for the old, the ne­glected and the dis­abled.

He died in his Lon­don home on 10th July 1927. There still ex­ists in Gan­ga­pur his haveli that few visit and know of. About Gan­ga­pur agri­cul­tural pro­ject, Sir Ed­ward Dou­glas McLa­gan, the then Pun­jab gov­er­nor, spe­cially vis­ited the farm in 1920 and termed it “a mir­a­cle and skill­fully de­vel­oped vil­lage of the sub­con­ti­nent by an in­di­vid­ual”. His legacy to the lo­cal peo­ple is a mini rail­way track from Buchi­ana to Gan­ga­pur (around 2 miles stretch) on which plies the Horse Tram, pop­u­larly known as Ghora Train and ‘Anokhi Sawari .’

“Anokha ….the un­usual” was in­deed this great phil­an­thropist who cre­ated wealth and to his last used the wealth for the peo­ple of the Pun­jab where he made his mil­lions. His samadhi ex­ists till to­day in La­hore. The hos­pi­tal in La­hore con­tin­ues to treat peo­ple. 

Af­ter par­ti­tion,the then In­dian Prime Min­is­ter Jawa­har­lal Nehru al­lot­ted land to the Sir Ganga Ram Trust, which was set up in 1951 and started op­er­a­tions in 1954. The Sir Ganga Ram multi-spe­cial­ity hos­pi­tal in New Delhi is an­other re­minder of the gi­gan­tic per­son­al­ity and con­tri­bu­tion of Sir Ganga Ram.

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Do we have a mod­ern day Ganga Ram work­ing so zeal­ously for Pun­jab and Pun­jabis on ei­ther side of the Rad­cliffe line?