Following a terror attack in Kashmir, India has closed down the Integrated Check Post at Attari, just outside Amritsar, since April 2025, shutting down the sole remaining land trade route1. Petitions have ensued from this as local traders, truckers and porters have tried to encourage the government to reopen it in aid of their trade-based livelihood, with a local MP referring to the route as, 'the backbone of employment in Amritsar'2; echoing the city's experiences from 80 years ago. It demonstrates that proximity to a fortified international border is a cost absorbed by those close to the line, rather than solely a neutral fact of geography.

Key Figures

What Ludhiana Gained

This shift was not engineered but a result of where each city happened to be situated relative to a line drawn almost overnight. Due to its location at the border, Amritsar encountered a specific kind of economic damage which it had no means to avoid, with severed trade routes to its previous trade partner, Lahore and a security risk which deterred merchants and capital. With its position further back from the border, Ludhiana avoided inheriting that risk.

This rests on a specific economic mechanism, whereby capital and trade routes attach a risk premium to locations with sustained volatility; and the market responds by relocating to the next viable alternative, rather than paying it. Being close to a hostile border imposed this premium on Amritsar permanently, and due to its location further back, Ludhiana became the favoured alternative.

What followed was driven predominantly by people moving faster than the state rather than in its absence. Archival research into resettlement during the Partition era surfaces one telling case. A shopkeeper displaced from Rawalpindi, sourcing his textiles from Amritsar, petitioned for formal recognition of a stall in Delhi's Gaffar Market that he had occupied only weeks earlier, having no other means of livelihood. A junior official replied that the property was still under verification by the Evacuee Custodian, so no licence could be issued until that cleared, though occupation would be allowed if no one complained6.

Refugees were unable to wait for clearance; they traded, set up stalls and reopened shops before formal allotment, subsequently seeking legal recognition6. People were enterprising and determinedly rebuilt, regardless of state resettlement delays7.

Beneath census figures, there's a sharper detail that lies concealed in the aggregate data. Many skilled migrants arriving in Ludhiana post partition had already been relocated once roughly 50 years earlier, into West-Punjab's canal colonies. This was under the same colonial-era irrigation scheme that first impacted towns such as Lyallpur3. The population was displaced a second time post-partition, back east, shown by the census as the Ludhiana district reduced as 302,482 Muslims left for Pakistan, whilst the city grew 38% in the same decade, with incoming migrants concentrating in the urban centre rather than the depopulating countryside4. Rather than a generic refugee population, this was a twice-displaced group of skilled traders and workers who built an industrial base mostly on their own initiative, for the second time in 50 years.

The Same Pattern, Reversed

This is mirrored across the border, with the Pakistani side arguably making the point starker. Pre-partition the Lyallpur Cotton Mill was built and run by a Delhi-based industrialist and had gained large profits by producing tents and garments for the army. When his ownership was broken due to Partition, many of the employees migrated to Delhi. They helped establish the Swatantra Bharat Mill in Delhi in 1948, with their previous knowledge and initiative guiding them8.

Lyallpur received an influx of Muslim refugees. Refugees here filled vacated roles of departing Hindus and Sikhs, working the land and mills; filling an existing industrial base8. They took matters into their own hands rather than waiting for the aid of the state; formal state involvement via 1950s tax incentives and an industrialisation push in the 1970s arrived once the workers had already been rebuilding of their own accord9.

Why This Still Matters

This divergence remains, after Ludhiana overtaking Amritsar in 1981, the gap widened to roughly half a million people by 2011. The city that was once a third of Amritsar's size ended the century as Punjab's largest, not due to government intervention or any planned action, but due to a displaced population of traders and skilled workers moving faster than any intervention.

Amritsar's border problem eased for a few years when the Attari-Wagah crossing reopened but has reasserted itself since. This exact collapse was mentioned in Parliament in 2024, where the MP dated the closure to the Balakot strikes2, and presently, the crossing has been shut again since April 20251. Being inland from the border, Ludhiana has not had to deal with this at all, which is not a coincidence, rather the same border imposing a cost on those within its reach every time relations have soured.

Footnotes

  1. The Tribune, Anniversary of Op Sindoor marks end of border trade (opens in a new tab), 7th May 2026. 2

  2. The Tribune, Aujla raises issue of Attari-Wagah border trade in Zero Hour (opens in a new tab), 8th August 2024. 2

  3. Journal of Punjab Studies, Demography of the Punjab (1849–1947) (opens in a new tab), 2007. 2 3

  4. Government of India, Census of India (opens in a new tab), 1951. 2 3

  5. Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, India, Census 2011: Provisional Population Totals (opens in a new tab), 31st March 2011.

  6. Modern Asian Studies, The bazaar as archive: Legibility, cosmopolitanism, and 'refugee entrepreneurs' in Delhi (opens in a new tab), 19th January 2026. 2

  7. The Tribune, Third wave of migration (opens in a new tab), 28th August 2022.

  8. The Wire, How Partition Shaped the Businesses That Moved Across Borders (opens in a new tab), 17th August 2017. 2

  9. Associated Press of Pakistan, From Lyallpur to Faisalabad – A Historic Perspective (opens in a new tab), 20th April 2025.