Dohad district General information
Dahod (also known as Dohad) district is one of the districts in Gujarat state. The city of Dahod is the district's administrative headquarters. The district has an area of 3,642 km², and a population of 1,636,433 (2001 census), with a population density of 449 persons per km². Dahod District was created on October 2, 1997, and was formerly part of Panchmahal District. It is the second-most backward district in Gujarat.
This district is bounded by Panchmahal District to the west, Vadodara District to the south, Jhabua District of Madhya Pradesh state to the east, and Banswara District of Rajasthan state to the north. The population of the district is mostly rural, and a majority of the districts residents are Adivasis, mostly Bhils. Dahod District also has the second largest population of Daoodi Vohra Samaj people in India. The actual name is Dohad, which later got transformed into Dahod. The Mughal emperor Aurangzeb was born in a mosque in Dahod.
History
Brief History of Dahod is just a posed between the states of Gujarat and Malva (Malva has since been divided into Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan).The name Dahod is result of the town's historic location on the boundary between two states, (Do = Two and had = border). It is estimated that Dahod is 1,000 years old.
During the war between the Gods and demons, the saint Dadhichi Rishi came to the aid of Lord Indra in his battle against the demons. Dadhichi destroyed himself in order for hte Gods to make weapons out of his bones. The Gods used these weapons crafted from the bones of Dadhichi to kill the demon Vritasur. It is fabled that the Dhadhichi Rishi meditated at the banks of the Dudhimati river in Dahod.
The Dahod area is also home to Bawka, an archeological marvel located eleven kilometers southwest of Dahod. It is said that this edifice built of stone and decorated with carved scenes from the Kamasutras was built by a prostitute. This architectural marvel was built during the prosperous reign of the Maharaja of Champaner. This historical site is considered to be Khajuraho of Panch Mahal district. The great Maharaja Siddjaraj Jaisingh invaded the state of Malva in Vikram Sanvat 1093 and camped in Dahod for the next 12 years. Siddharaj's enormous army built Talab (Basket Lake) in one night by having each soldiers of his army dig and fill the boundries of the lake with one basket of earth. The historical red stone with carved Hanumanji which was planted during the auspicious grand opening ceremony of the lake is still intact at the last overflow (Chhela Ovare). The Maharaj Sidharaj Jaisingh placed a stone writing (Shila lekh) in Sanskrit at Panigate.
The British government moved the Shila lekh to a museum in Poona, Maharashtra. The Mogul emperors also have a historical presence in Dahod. The emperor Jahangir rested in the cool and dense forest of Dahod while on his way to Mandavgadh from Ahmedabad (a town renamed Gardabad, Dusty town, because of his hatred for Ahmedabad and its heat and dust). Jahangir was so content with the lotus filled lake of Dahod that he rested in Dahod for a month. At the time his elder son, Khurram, who was known in his later life as Shahjahan was also with him. Khurram's fourth son was born during this respited in Dahod. This son, Aurangzeb, came to the Mogul thrown in 1658. Twenty years later he built a Dharma Shala (free sleeping facility) in Dahod. The Marathas later converted the Dharma Shala into a small fort or Gadhi. The Revolutionary Tatya Tope camped in the Nani Kharaj for three days and in that time attempted to capture the Gadhi. A lone soldier from Bhopal was left at the Gadhi to defend it from the attacks of Tope. Colonel Iwat came rushing to the aid of the Gadhi. Colonel Iwat camped in Gantaeir and began an attack on Dahod because of the offensive Tatya Tope fled from Dahod to the areas of Limdi-Jhalod and Banswada.
The worst famine to hit the Dahod area occured in 1900. Hundreds of Adivasi (Bhil) died as a result of the famine in front of the Desaiwada temple. The location of the railway workshop in Dahod is the result of general strike called by the labor union Girni, Bombay in the 1920s. This strike resulted in the shut down of the railroad services of GIP and the BBC. Because of the isolation of Bombay caused by the labor union strike, the British Government decided to relocate the railroad workshop from Parel in Bombay to Dahod in order to prevent railroad disruptions in the future. The area in Dahod where the workshop is located is named after its namesake in Bombay (Parel). The layout of Parel in Dahod is very similar to New Delhi, but much smaller in scale. The British Government had coveted Dahod ever since Tatya Tope's attempt to conquer Dahod in 1957. The British desired Dahod because of its locaiton in the midst of several princely states. The British leased Dahod from Shindhiya for seven years and permenantly acquired Dahod in 1890 in an exchange for another district. The great gujarati poet Nanalal heralded Dahod as a "easter gateway of Gujarat". Today Gujarat's second largest wholesale grain market flourishes in Dahod.