Badami Bagh or Badam Bagah is a

cantonment A cantonment (, , or ) is a type of military base. In South Asia, a ''cantonment'' refers to a permanent military station (a term from the British Raj). In United States military parlance, a cantonment is, essentially, "a permanent residential ...

town on the outskirts of

Srinagar Srinagar (; ) is a city in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir in the disputed Kashmir region.The application of the term "administered" to the various regions of Kashmir and a mention of the Kashmir dispute is supported by the tertiary ...

in Jammu and Kashmir, India. Established in the 1920s as military barracks on a site containing several ancient Hindu and Budhhist ruins near Pandrethan, the Badami Bagh Cantonment currently serves as the headquarters of the

Indian Army The Indian Army (IA) (ISO 15919, ISO: ) is the Land warfare, land-based branch and largest component of the Indian Armed Forces. The President of India is the Commander-in-Chief, Supreme Commander of the Indian Army, and its professional head ...

's Chinar Corps, with many of the army's soldiers residing here. The cantonment is established on the two road sides of Jammu–Srinagar National Highway, on the banks of the

Jhelum river The Jhelum River is a major river in South Asia, flowing through India and Pakistan, and is the westernmost of the five major rivers of the Punjab region. It originates at Verinag and flows through the Indian-administered territory of Jammu ...

. A architecturally significant Shiva Temple is located inside the cantonment.

History

The site of the present Badami Bagh military cantonment had formed part of the ancient city of Pandrethan, identified as the original site of the capital city of

. When the capital was shifted during the 6th century CE, the area came to be called ''puranadhisthana'', meaning 'old capital' in

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...

, which corrupted to 'Pandrethan' over time. By the 19th century, the site had numerous ancient Hindu and Buddhist ruins, including ruins of two

stupa In Buddhism, a stupa (, ) is a domed hemispherical structure containing several types of sacred relics, including images, statues, metals, and '' śarīra''—the remains of Buddhist monks or nuns. It is used as a place of pilgrimage and m ...

s and a monastery. Close to the end of 19th century, a

Parsi The Parsis or Parsees () are a Zoroastrian ethnic group in the Indian subcontinent. They are descended from Persian refugees who migrated to the Indian subcontinent during and after the Arab-Islamic conquest of Iran in the 7th century, w ...

''aramgah'' was built in the area, on land gifted to the Parsi community by Maharaja Pratap Singh. Many Buddhist artefcts were excavated in 1915, and several Hindu sculptures were accidentally discovered during the construction of military barracks in the 1920s, when the area was appropriated for military use and cleared of most ruins. In the 1954, the cantonment was established, with a total area of 1458.537 acres, including 313.50 acres of civilian area and the remaining being military establishment. A building constructed between 1926 and 1930 during Dogra rule, within the present-day cantonment, was converted in 1994 into a museum focused on the militancy period and called ''Ibadat-e-Shahadat''.

Geography

Badami Bagh is located at . It has an average elevation of 1727 metres (5666 feet).

Demographics

India

census A census (from Latin ''censere'', 'to assess') is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording, and calculating population information about the members of a given Statistical population, population, usually displayed in the form of stati ...

, Badami Bagh had a population of 13,477. Males constitute 53% of the population and females 47%. Badami Bagh has an average literacy rate of 71%, higher than the then national average of 59.5%; with 58% of the males and 42% of females literate. 6% of the population is under 6 years of age.

References

Cities and towns in Srinagar district Cantonments of India {{JammuKashmir-geo-stub