Kanpur

Kanpur, on the banks of the Ganga in Uttar Pradesh, is today one of North India’s major industrial cities, but it began as a modest village. Tradition holds that it was founded by Raja Hindu Singh Chandel of the Sachendi estate in the 18th century and originally called Kanhpur / Kanhapur, possibly evolving from names like Kanhiyapur or Karnapur and linked in folklore to Lord Krishna or Karna of the Mahabharata.

In the late 18th century, after the Treaty of Benares (1773), the British established a military cantonment and trading post here because of its strategic position on the Ganga and routes between Awadh, Bengal and Central India. Under British rule it was known as Cawnpore and grew into a major garrison and commercial centre, especially during the 19th century with the rise of textile and leather industries.

Kanpur was a tragic flashpoint of the 1857 uprising, where massacres and reprisals at Cawnpore became infamous in colonial memory. After Independence, the city—now spelled Kanpur—expanded as an industrial hub often dubbed the “Manchester of the East,” while continuing to serve as a key urban, educational and commercial centre of modern Uttar Pradesh.