North India · Uttar Pradesh
Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh
Sources: wikimedia
About Kanpur
- Riverside
Where it is
Kanpur is a major industrial city in Uttar Pradesh, on the southern bank of the Ganges about 80 km south-west of Lucknow, in the heart of the Gangetic plain.
History
Kanpur is traditionally said to have been founded by Raja Hindu Singh of Sachendi, who called it Kanhpur. The British set up a military station here in 1778, and in 1857 their entrenchment was besieged for 22 days by forces under Nana Sahib in one of the uprising's best-known episodes. Textile mills and leather works then made it one of India's great industrial cities, once called the Manchester of the East.
People
Hindi and Urdu are the main languages, spoken with a distinctive local flavour. The city grew on the work of mill and tannery families drawn from across Uttar Pradesh, and the ghats of the Ganges and nearby Bithoor draw bathers on festival days.
Known for
- Leather goods and saddlery
- IIT Kanpur
- Green Park cricket stadium
- The JK Temple
- Bithoor's ghats on the Ganges
Did you know?
IIT Kanpur, one of the first Indian Institutes of Technology, was also the first institute in India to teach computer science, starting its first computer course in 1963.
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