title: Indian Statistical Institute

text: The Kolkata campus houses the International Statistical Education Centre (ISEC), which opened in 1950. This centre provides training in statistics to sponsored students mainly from the Middle East, South and South East Asia, the Far East and the Commonwealth Countries of Africa. The centre also offers various short-term courses in statistics and related subjects.


title: Indian Statistical Institute

text: The Center for Soft Computing Research: A National Facility, an associate institute of Indian Statistical Institute and established in Kolkata in 2005, is unique in the country. Apart from conducting basic research, it offers a 3-month course and promotes less endowed institutes by providing fellowships and research grants.


title: Indian Statistical Institute

text: The Central Library of ISI is located at Kolkata with branches at the other facilities. The library has over 200,000 volumes of books and journals with a special emphasis on the field of statistics and related studies. The main branch also has a collection of official reports, reprints, maps, and microfilms. The library receives over a thousand new technical and scientific journals every year. The Library has databases on CD-ROM and is working on further digitization of the collection. The library has a separate collection of works on the topics of mathematics and statistics called the Eastern Regional Centre of NBHM collection, funded by grants from the National Board for Higher Mathematics. It also looks to set up research unit in artificial intelligence


title: Indian Statistical Institute

text: The Delhi campus offers two master level courses Master of Statistics (M. Stat) and Master of Science (M. S.) in Quantitative Economics, and doctoral programs.


title: Indian Statistical Institute

text: The Bengaluru centre of ISI started with a Statistical Quality Control and Operations Research (SQC & OR) unit in 1954. The Documentation Research and Training Centre (DRTC) here became operational from 1962 with honorary professor S. R. Ranganathan as the head. Prof. Mahalanobis planned of starting a full-fledged centre of ISI here around the mid-sixties. In 1966, the then Government of Karnataka granted ISI 30 acres of forest land full of eucalyptus trees, next to the upcoming campus of the Bangalore University, located on the Mysore Road on the outskirts of the city.


title: Indian Statistical Institute

text: However, after death of Prof. Mahalanobis in 1972, the project of establishing Bengaluru centre got temporarily shelved. The project was again revived during 1976–78. Concrete proposals were made to the Government of India to get grants for the development of the land already in possession of ISI, along with the construction of an academic block with a library and offices.


title: Indian Statistical Institute

text: In the meantime, a building was rented on Church Street, in Bengaluru downtown, and various activities of the Bengaluru centre started in September 1978. The Economic Analysis Unit (EAU) and the Statistics and Mathematics Unit (SMU) were established. The SQC&OR Unit and the DRTC unit, which were functioning from other rented buildings at that time, joined this new Centre.


title: Indian Statistical Institute

text: As construction of the administrative block at the new campus got completed, the various units moved to the new campus in May 1985. The sprawling green wooded Campus has Residential Facility for students, faculty and staff.


title: Indian Statistical Institute

text: The Bengaluru centre has by now became an institution well known for its academic activities in Mathematics, Statistics, Computer Science, SQC and Operations Research, Library and Information Science, and Quantitative Economics.


title: Indian Statistical Institute

text: The Bengaluru campus offers bachelor level course Bachelor of Mathematics (B. Math), master level courses Master of Mathematics (M. Math), Master of Science (M. S.) in Library and Information Science and Master of Science (M. S.) in Quality Management Science, and doctoral programs.


title: Indian Statistical Institute

text: Traditionally, ISI offers fewer programs (and admits fewer students) than most other degree granting academic institutions. Following the empowerment for granting degrees in the subject of Statistics as per the ISI Act 1959, in 1960, ISI initiated bachelor level degree program Bachelor of Statistics and master level degree course Master of Statistics, and also began awarding research level degrees such as PhD and DSc. Later, ISI started offering Master of Technology (MTech) courses in Computer Science and in Quality, Reliability & Operations Research (QR&OR); these courses got recognition from All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE). As ISI Act of 1959 was amended by the Parliament of India in 1995, ISI was empowered to confer degrees and diplomas in subjects such as Mathematics, Quantitative Economics, Computer Science, and other subjects related to Statistics and Operations Research as determined by ISI from time to time. Apart from the degree courses, ISI offers few diploma and certificate courses, special diploma courses for international students via ISEC, and special courses in collaboration with CSO for training probationary officers of Indian Statistical Service (ISS).


title: Indian Statistical Institute

text: ISI offers two undergraduate programs, viz. Bachelor of Statistics (Honours) (B.Stat) and Bachelor of Mathematics (Honours) (B. Math), seven graduate programs, viz. Master of Statistics (M. Stat), Master of Mathematics (M. Math), Master of Science in Quantitative Economics (MSQE), Master of Science in Library and Information Science (MSLIS), Master of Science in Quality Management Science (MSQMS), Master of Technology in Computer Science (MTech–CS), Master of Technology in Cryptology & Security (MTech-CrS) and Master of Technology in Quality, Reliability and Operations Research (MTech–QROR).


title: Indian Statistical Institute

text: ISI also offers four PG Diploma programs, viz. Postgraduate Diploma in Agricultural and Rural Management with Statistical Methods[PGDARSMA],Postgraduate Diploma in Statistical Methods & Analytics [PGDSMA],Post Graduate Diploma in Business Analytics [PGDBA] and PG Diploma in Applied Statistics [PGDAS].


title: Indian Statistical Institute

text: Undergraduate courses are of 3 years duration, whereas the graduate level courses of 2 years of duration. For all undergraduate and graduate level courses, the academic year is divided in two semesters. Except for sponsored candidates of MTech courses, ISI students are not required to pay any tuition fees. Conditional to performance beyond a threshold, all students and research fellows receive stipends, fellowships and contingency/book grants. Students demonstrating outstanding performances are rewarded at the end of the semesters. ISI campuses provide hostel accommodations with recreational facilities and limited medical facilities available free of cost.


title: Indian Statistical Institute

text: Applicants of all degree courses are required to go through written admission tests and interviews. ISI conducts the written tests at various examination centres across India. Only in few cases, candidates may get called for the interview directly, viz. applicants of MTech Computer Science course having a GATE score above a threshold. Candidates applying to doctoral research programmes who have been awarded (or qualified for) a Junior Research Fellowship by UGC / CSIR / NBHM etc. are also required to clear the ISI admission test or an equivalent separate test and interview conducted by the relevant JRF selection committee of the institute if they wish to obtain a PhD from Indian Statistical Institute.


title: Indian Statistical Institute

text: In 1950, ISI, in collaboration with International Statistical Institute, UNESCO and Government of India, had set up International Statistical Education Centre (ISEC) to impart knowledge of theoretical and applied statistics to participants from Middle East, East and South-East Asia, the Far East and Commonwealth countries of Africa. The main training course offered by ISEC is meant for international students, preferably graduates with proficiency in English and Mathematics. ISEC, located in Kolkata campus of ISI, functions with support from the Ministry of External Affairs and the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation of the Government of India.


title: Indian Statistical Institute

text: "Sankhya", the statistical journal published by ISI, was founded in 1933, along the lines of Karl Pearson's "Biometrika". Mahalanobis was the founder editor. Each volume of "Sankhya" consists of four issues; two of them are in Series A, containing articles on theoretical statistics, probability theory and stochastic processes, and the other two issues form the Series B, containing articles on applied statistics, i.e. applied probability, applied stochastic processes, econometrics and statistical computing.


title: Indian Statistical Institute

text: According to India Education Review, no Indian university is in the world's top 200 universities, as of 2012. The ascribed ranking of ISI is 186. The web ranking of this institute, according to 4ICU (4 International Colleges and Universities), is 1693. According to the web ranking published by Webometrics Ranking of World Universities, ISI currently holds the world rank of 1352. In the subject-wise academic world ranking of Computer Science, Indian Statistical Institute features in 101—150 category. The Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata is ranked 2nd in Computer Science research by mean citation rate, p-Index, h-index among all universities in India.


title: Indian Statistical Institute

text: Integration is the annual techno-cultural fest of Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata usually held during the first and second weekend of January each year. It is one of the biggest student fests in Kolkata, and attracts participation from all over the world. Also the performances of great artists are always a center of attraction for all.


title: Indian Statistical Institute

text: Chaos is the annual techno-cultural fest of Indian Statistical Institute, Bangalore usually held during the last weekend of March each year. It is one of the biggest student fests in Bangalore, and attracts participation from all over the world. Limit, an International Mathematics Olympiad is a part of Chaos. A lot of Students throughout the World take part in Limit. Also various other Events are held during Chaos which includes Gaming, Cultural Programmes, Quiz, Debate and much more.


title: Indian Statistical Institute

text: Alumni of ISIincluding recipients of PhD degreeare employed in government and semi–government departments, industrial establishments, research institutions, in India and other countries. There is a placement cell in ISI Kolkata that organizes campus interviews by prospective employers in various campuses of ISI. Since recent past, a high percentage of ISI alumni gets absorbed into jobs in analytics, banking, finance and software industry.


title: Indian Statistical Institute

text: Since mid-forties, ISI pioneered in research and application of Statistical Quality Control (SQC) in India. Walter A. Shewhart, the statistician known as "the father of SQC", and other experts of this field visited ISI over the years. The first Statistical Quality Control and Operations Research (SQC & OR) unit of ISI was set up in Mumbai in 1953, followed by Bangalore and Kolkata units in 1954. In 1976, this unit was transformed into the SQC & OR Division, which now operates seven units, located at various industrial centres in IndiaKolkata, Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Pune, Mumbai and Vadodara. These units partake in technical consultancy with public and private organisations, in addition with performing research and training activities. The branch at Giridih was set up in 1931 and it has two operational units, viz. the Sociological Research Unit and the Agricultural Research Unit.


title: Indian Statistical Institute

text: Over the years, researchers of ISI made fundamental contributions in various fields of Statistics such as Design of Experiments, Sample Survey, Multivariate statistics and Computer Science. Mahalanobis introduced the measure Mahalanobis distance which is used in multivariate statistics and other related fields. Raj Chandra Bose, who is known for his contributions in coding theory, worked on Design of Experiments during his tenure at ISI, and was one of the three mathematicians, who disproved Euler's conjecture on orthogonal Latin squares. Anil Kumar Bhattacharya is credited with introduction of the measures Bhattacharyya distance and Bhattacharya coefficient. Samarendra Nath Roy is known for his pioneering contributions in multivariate statistics. Among colleagues of Mahalanobis, other notable contributors were K. R. Nair in Design of experiments, Jitendra Mohan Sengupta in Sample Survey, Ajit Dasgupta in Demography and Ramkrishna Mukherjea in Quantitative Sociology. C. R. Rao's contributions during his association with ISI include two theorems of Statistical Inference known as Cramér–Rao inequality and Rao-Blackwell Theorem, and introduction of orthogonal arrays in Design of Experiments. Anil Kumar Gain is known for his contributions to the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient with his colleague Sir Ronald Fisher at the University of Cambridge.


title: Indian Statistical Institute

text: In 1953, India's first indigenous computer was designed by Samarendra Kumar Mitra who headed the Computing Machines and Electronics Laboratory at ISI Calcutta. The Indian Statistical Institute was also hosted the first two digital computers in South Asia; the HEC-2M from England in 1956, and the URAL from the Soviet Union in 1959. These were also among the earliest digital computers in Asia (outside Japan).


title: Indian Statistical Institute

text: During 1953 – 1956 distinguished scientists, like Ronald Fisher, Norbert Wiener and Yuri Linnik visited ISI. Norbert Wiener collaborated with Gopinath Kallianpur on topics including ergodic theory, prediction theory and generalized harmonic analysis. In 1962, during his month-long visit to ISI, Soviet mathematician Andrey Kolmogorov wrote his notable paper on Kolmogorov complexity, which was published in Sankhya, 1963. Other distinguished scientists including Jerzy Neyman, Walter A. Shewhart, W. Edwards Deming and Abraham Wald have visited ISI during the tenure of P. C. Mahalanobis.


title: Indian Statistical Institute

text: The second five-year plan of India was a brainchild of Mahalanobis. The plan followed the Mahalanobis model, an economic development model developed by Mahalanobis in 1953. The plan attempted to determine the optimal allocation of investment between productive sectors in order to maximise long-run economic growth . It used the prevalent state of art techniques of operations research and optimisation as well as the novel applications of statistical models developed at ISI. This second five-year plan shifted the focus from agriculture to industrialisation, with an objective of attaining self-reliance by economy of India. Domestic production of industrial products was encouraged in this plan, particularly in the development of the public sector. The two-pronged strategy devised in this plan targeted rapid growth of the heavy industry, keeping emphasis on growth of small and cottage industries.


title: Indian Statistical Institute

text: B. S. Minhas and K. S. Parikh, both from the Planning Unit of ISI Delhi, played key roles in the Planning Commission of the Government of India. Minhas, who joined the Planning Unit in 1962 and retired as a distinguished scientist in 1989, was a member of the Planning Commission during 1971–74. Parikh, who was a member of the Planning Commission during 2004–09, chaired Integrated Energy Policy Committee of the commission, was a member of the Economic Advisory Council of India during the tenure of five prime ministers, also played a role in the Department of Atomic Energy establishment, and was a key advisor to the government on energy issues.


title: Indian Statistical Institute

text: In India, the first analog computer was designed by Samarendra Kumar Mitra and built by Ashish Kumar Maity at ISI in 1953, for use in computation of numerical solutions of simultaneous linear equations using a modified version of Gauss-Siedel iteration. In 1955, the first digital computer of India was procured by ISI. This machine was of a model named HEC-2M, manufactured by British Tabulating Machine Company (BTM). As per the agreement with BTM, ISI had to take care of the installation work and maintenance of it, before it became operational in 1956. Though this HEC-2M machine and the URAL-1 machine, which was bought in 1959 from Russia, were operational until 1963, ISI began development of the first second-generation digital computer of India in collaboration with Jadavpur University (JU). This joint collaboration led by the head of the Computing Machines and Electronics Laboratory at ISI, Samarendra Kumar Mitra, produced the transistor-driven machine ISIJU-1, which became operational in 1964. The first annual convention of the Computer Society of India (CSI) was hosted by ISI in 1965. The Computer and Communication Sciences division of ISI produced many eminent scientists such as Samarendra Kumar Mitra (its original founder), Dwijesh Dutta Majumdar, Sankar Kumar Pal, Bidyut Baran Chaudhuri, Nikhil R. Pal, Bhabani P. Sinha, Bhargab B. Bhattacharya, Malay K. Kundu, Sushmita Mitra, Bhabatosh Chanda, C. A. Murthy, Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay and many. ISI is regarded as one of the top most centres for research in computer science in India and attracts some of the best students in the country.


title: Indian Statistical Institute

text: The Knowledge-based Computer Systems project (KBCS), funded jointly by Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DoE), Government of India and UNDP since 1986, has a nodal centre at ISI Kolkata. This unit is responsible for research in the area of image processing, pattern recognition, computer vision and artificial intelligence.


title: Indian Statistical Institute

text: R. L. Brahmachari, known for his work in many fields like agricultural sciences, zoology, botany, biometrics, did much of his work at ISI.


title: Indian Statistical Institute

text: The institute has done some pioneering work and research in anthropology and palaeontology. A trove of dinosaur fossils was discovered by a team led by ISI researchers in the early 1960s. The scattered fossils were recovered and the partial skeleton was reconstructed at ISI's Baranagar campus. It turned out to be a unique species and was named the "", after Rabindranath Tagore and was mounted in the Geology Museum at the Kolkata Campus of the institute.


title: Indian Statistical Institute

text: The Linguistic Research Unit (LRU) of ISI was involved in the study of speech pathology. Đorđe Kostić of this laboratory was a distinguished scientist. He invented a unique hearing aid, called SAFA (Selective Auditory Frequency Amplifier) that simulates frequency-range according to the need of the particular hearing impaired person.


title: Indian Statistical Institute

text: Many students and research scholars of ISI pursued a career in academics, and have excelled in the fields of statistics, mathematics, probability theory, computer science and economics. In statistics alumni of ISI who have been elected a Fellow of the American Statistical Association include P. V. Sukhatme (1950) and K. R. Nair (1951). There are many other notable ones including Samarendra Kumar Mitra, S. R. S. Varadhan, Debabrata Basu, K. R. Parthasarathy, Jayanta Kumar Ghosh, Bimal K. Roy, Sankar Kumar Pal, B. L. S. Prakasa Rao, G. Jogesh Babu, Thiruvenkatachari Parthasarathy, Gopinath Kallianpur, Rajeeva Karandikar, Ravindra Khattree, Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay, Palash Sarkar, J. S. Rao, Kesar Singh, Ranajit Chakraborty, Partha Pratim Majumder, Probal Chaudhuri, Arup Bose, Debashish Goswami, Ritabrata Munshi, Sourav Chatterjee, Jean Drèze, Sucharit Sarkar. ISI alumni notable for non-academic career include politicians Subramanian Swamy and Dipankar Bhattacharya.


title: Indian Statistical Institute

text: ISI functions as an autonomous institute under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MOSPI), which is the nodal ministry of the Government of India that ensures the functioning of ISI in accordance with The Indian Statistical Institute Act 1959. ISI Council is the highest policy–making body of the institute. Members of this council include the president of ISI, the chairman of ISI, representatives of the Government of India including one representative of RBI, scientists not employed in ISI including one representative from the Planning Commission of India and one representative of the UGC, representatives of scientific and non-scientific workers of ISI, and representative from academic staff of ISI, including the director of ISI and the Dean of Studies of ISI. Bimal Kumar Roy was the director until 10 June 2015; in a move unique in the history of the institute, he was removed from his post via a notice posted on the web site of the Ministry of Statistics and Planning. He was sacked over financial and administrative irregularities The list is the following:


title: Indian Statistical Institute

text: Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev visited ISI during his visit to India in 1955. Zhou Enlai, the Prime Minister of China, and Ho Chi Minh, the President of Vietnam, during their visit to India specifically visited ISI respectively on 9 September 1956 and 13 February 1958.


title: History of Punjab

text: The History of Punjab refers to the past human history of Punjab region which is a geopolitical, cultural, and historical region in the northwest of the Indian subcontinent, comprising eastern Pakistan and Punjab state in India. It is believed that the earliest evidence of human habitation in Punjab traces to the Soan valley between the Indus and the Jhelum rivers, where Soanian culture developed between 774,000 BC and 11,700 BC. This period goes back to the first interglacial period in the second Ice Age, from which remnants of stone and flint tools have been found.


title: History of Punjab

text: The Punjab region was the site of one of the earliest cradle of civilizations, the Bronze Age Harrapan civilization that flourished from about 3000 B.C. and declined rapidly 1,000 years later, following the Indo-Aryan migrations that overran the region in waves between 1500 and 500 B.C. The migrating Indo-Aryan tribes gave rise to the Iron Age Vedic civilization, which lasted till 500 BC. During this era, the Vedas were composed in Punjab, laying foundation of Hinduism. In 518 BC, the Achaemenid empire conquered Punjab. Following Alexander the Great's invasion, Punjab became part of the Mauryan Empire. After its decline, Indo-Greeks, Indo-Scythians and Indo-Parthians successively established kingdoms in Punjab. The rulers of these kingdoms were patron of Buddhism and Taxila became a great centre of learning and commerce. The great Buddhist Gandhara civilization in north of Punjab reached its height under Kushan Empire in 2nd and 3rd century AD. The devastating Hunnic invasions in 5th century caused decline of Buddhism in Punjab.


title: History of Punjab

text: Most of the Punjab region became unified under Taank kingdom which was established in 6th century. In the 8th century it was replaced with Hindu Shahis. The Umayyad Caliphate conquered southern portions of the region, which became independent under Emirate of Multan in 855 AD.


title: History of Punjab

text: Islam became firmly established under Ghaznavids, after whom Delhi Sultanate followed. The Langah Sultanate ruled much of south Punjab in 15th century AD. The Mughal Empire, established in 1526 AD, has left an immense cultural and architectural legacy in Punjab. The city of Lahore became one of the largest in the world under Mughals. In 16th century, Sikhism was founded by Guru Nanak in central Punjab which attracted many followers. After a long period of anarchy due to decline of Mughals in 18th century, the Sikh Empire in 1799 AD unified most of the Punjab region. The region was conquered by the British in 1849 AD after Second Anglo-Sikh War and Punjab province was created in 1857. In 1947, Punjab was partitioned which saw some of the most violent riots and massacres of the 20th century. Today most of Punjab including Lahore is part of Pakistan, with a smaller portion in India.


title: History of Punjab

text: Though the name Punjab is of Persian origin, its two parts ( and ) are cognates of the Sanskrit words, and , of the same meaning. The word "pañjāb" thus means 'The Land of Five Waters', referring to the rivers Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Sutlej, and Beas. All are tributaries of the Indus River, the Sutlej being the largest. References to a land of five rivers may be found in the "Mahabharata", which calls one of the regions in ancient Bharat "Panchanada" (). The ancient Greeks referred to the region as "Pentapotamía" (), which has the same meaning as the Persian word.


title: History of Punjab

text: Today Punjab region is usually considered to consist of Punjab province in Pakistan and Punjab state in India. The boundaries of the region are ill-defined and focus on historical accounts and thus the geographical definition of the term "Punjab" has changed over time. In the 16th century, Mughal Empire referred it to a relatively smaller area between the Indus and the Sutlej rivers. In British Raj, the Punjab Province was a large administrative region encompassing the present-day Indian states and union territories of Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, and Delhi and the Pakistani regions of Punjab and Islamabad Capital Territory. It bordered the Balochistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa regions to the west, Kashmir to the north, the Hindi Belt to the east, and Rajasthan and Sindh to the south.


title: History of Punjab

text: Homo erectus lived on the Pothohar Plateau, in upper Punjab, Pakistan along the Soan River (nearby modern-day Rawalpindi) during the Pleistocene Epoch. Soanian sites are found in the Sivalik region across what are now India, Pakistan and Nepal. The Soanian culture was a prehistoric technological culture from the Siwalik Hills. It is named after the Soan Valley in Punjab, Pakistan. The Soanian culture has been approximated to have taken place during the Middle Pleistocene period or the mid-Holocene epoch (Northgrippian). Soanian artifacts were manufactured on quartzite pebbles, cobbles, and occasionally on boulders, all derived from various fluvial sources


title: History of Punjab

text: on the Siwalik landscape. Soanian assemblages generally comprise varieties of choppers, discoids, scrapers, cores, and numerous flake type tools, all occurring in varying typo-technological frequencies at different sites.


title: History of Punjab

text: Relics and human skulls have been found dating back to 5000 BCE in the Pothohar Plateau in north of Punjab that indicate the region was home to Neolithic peoples who settled on the banks of the Swaan River, and who later developed small communities in the region around 3000 BCE.


title: History of Punjab

text: The Indus Valley Civilisation is also known as the "Harappan civilisation", after its type site Harappa, the first to be excavated early in the 20th century in Punjab. The discovery of Harappa and soon afterwards Mohenjo-daro was the culmination of work that had begun after the founding of the Archaeological Survey of India in the British Raj in 1861.


title: History of Punjab

text: The first modern accounts of the ruins of the Indus civilisation are those of Charles Masson, a deserter from the East India Company's army. In 1829, Masson traveled through the princely state of Punjab, gathering useful intelligence for the Company in return for a promise of clemency. Masson's major archaeological discovery in the Punjab was Harappa, a metropolis of the Indus civilisation in the valley of Indus's tributary, the Ravi river. Masson was impressed by the site's extraordinary size and by several large mounds formed from long-existing erosion.


title: History of Punjab

text: In 1861, three years after the dissolution of the East India Company and the establishment of Crown rule in India, archaeology on the subcontinent became more formally organised with the founding of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). Alexander Cunningham, the Survey's first director-general, who had visited Harappa in 1853 and had noted the imposing brick walls, visited again to carry out a survey, but this time of a site whose entire upper layer had been stripped in the interim. Archaeological work in Harappa thereafter lagged until a new viceroy of India, Lord Curzon, pushed through the Ancient Monuments Preservation Act 1904, and appointed John Marshall to lead the ASI. Several years later, Hiranand Sastri, who had been assigned by Marshall to survey Harappa, reported it to be of non-Buddhist origin, and by implication more ancient.


title: History of Punjab

text: During the Iron Age, first legendary kingdoms appeared in Punjab including Kekya, Madra, Trigarta, Sivi and Bahlikas. Literary evidence from the Vedic Era suggests a transition from early small janas, or tribes, to many Janapadas (territorial civilisations) and s. The latter are loosely translated to being oligarchies or republics. These political entities were represented from the "Rig Veda" to the "Astadhyayi" by Panini. Archaeologically, the time span of these entities corresponds to phases also present in the Indo-Gangetic divide and the upper Gangetic basin.


title: History of Punjab

text: Some of the early Janas of the "Rig Veda" can be strongly attributed to Punjab. Although their distribution patterns are not satisfactorily ascertainable, they are associated with the Porusni, Asikni, Satudri, Vipas, and Saraswati. The rivers of Punjab often corresponded to the eastern Janapadas. "Rig Vedic" Janas such as the Druhyus, Anus, Purus, Yadus, Turvasas, Bharatas, and others were associated in Punjab and the Indo-Gangetic plain. Other "Rig Vedic" Janapadas such as the Pakhthas, Bhalanasas, Visanins, and Sivas were associated with areas in the north and west of Punjab.


title: History of Punjab

text: An important event of the "Rig Vedic" era was the "Battle of Ten Kings" which was fought on the banks of the river Parusni (Ravi river) in central Punjab, in c.14th century BCE, between the Bharata clan on the one hand and a confederation of ten tribes on the other. The ten tribes pitted against Sudas comprised five major tribes: the Purus, the Druhyus, the Anus, the Turvasas and the Yadus; in addition to five minor ones: the Pakthas, the Alinas, the Bhalanas, the Visanins and the Sivas. Sudas was supported by the Vedic Rishi Vasishtha, while his former Purohita, the Rishi Viswamitra, sided with the confederation of ten tribes. Sudas had earlier defeated Samvaran and ousted him from Hastinapur. It was only after the death of Sudas that Samvaran could return to his kingdom.


title: History of Punjab

text: A second battle, referred to as the Mahabharat in ancient texts, was fought in Punjab on a battlefield known as Kurukshetra. This was fought between the Pandavas and the Kauravas. Duryodhana, a descendant of Kuru (who was the son of king Samvaran), had tried to insult the Panchali princess Draupadi in revenge for defeating his ancestor Samvaran.


title: History of Punjab

text: Many Janapadas were mentioned from Vedic texts and there was a large level of contact between all the Janapadas with descriptions being given of trading caravans, movement of students from universities, and itineraries of princes. In its heyday, the University of ancient Taxila attracted students from all over Indian subcontinent as well as those from surrounding countries.


title: History of Punjab

text: Cyrus the Great invaded and annexed the lands to the west of the Indus river, around 535 BCE. His son Darius the Great, in 518 BCE crossed the Indus and annex the regions up to the Jhelum River. Taxila is considered to be the possible capital of the Achaemenid province of Hindush.


title: History of Punjab

text: Frequent intertribal wars stimulated the growth of larger groupings ruled by chieftains and kings, who ruled local kingdoms known as Mahajanapadas. The rise of kingdoms and dynasties in the Punjab is chronicled in the ancient Hindu epics, particularly the Mahabharata. In 326 B.C. The earliest known notable local king of this region was known as King Porus, who fought the famous Battle of the Hydaspes against Alexander the Great. His kingdom spanned between rivers "Hydaspes" (Jhelum) and "Acesines" (Chenab); Strabo had held the territory to contain almost 300 cities. He (alongside Abisares) had a hostile relationship with the Kingdom of Taxila which was ruled by his extended family. When the armies of Alexander crossed Indus in its eastward migration, probably in Udabhandapura, he was greeted by the-then ruler of Taxila, Omphis. Omphis had hoped to force both Porus and Abisares into submission leveraging the might of Alexander's forces and diplomatic missions were mounted, but while Abisares accepted the submission, Porus refused. This led Alexander to seek for a face-off with Porus. Thus began the Battle of the Hydaspes in 326 BC; the exact site remains unknown. The battle is thought to be resulted in a decisive Greek victory; however, A. B. Bosworth warns against an uncritical reading of Greek sources who were obviously exaggerative. Alexander later founded two cities—"Nicaea" at the site of victory and "Bucephalous" at the battle-ground, in memory of his horse, who died soon after the battle. Later, tetradrachms would be minted depicting Alexander on horseback, armed with a "sarissa" and attacking a pair of Indians on an elephant. Porus refused to surrender and wandered about atop an elephant, until he was wounded and his force routed.


title: History of Punjab

text: When asked by Alexander how he wished to be treated, Porus replied "Treat me as a king would treat another king". Despite the apparently one-sided results, Alexander was impressed by Porus and chose to not depose him. Not only was his territory reinstated but also expanded with Alexander's forces annexing the territories of Glausaes, who ruled to the northeast of Porus' kingdom. After Alexander's death in 323 BCE, Perdiccas became the regent of his empire, and after Perdiccas's murder in 321 BCE, Antipater became the new regent. According to Diodorus, Antipater recognized Porus's authority over the territories along the Indus River. However, Eudemus, who had served as Alexander's satrap in the Punjab region, treacherously killed Porus. The battle is historically significant because it resulted in the syncretism of ancient Greek political and cultural influences to the Indian subcontinent, yielding works such as Greco-Buddhist art, which continued to have an impact for the ensuing centuries.


title: History of Punjab

text: Chandragupta Maurya, with the aid of Kautilya, had established his empire around 320 B.C. The early life of Chandragupta Maurya is not clear. Kautilya enrolled the young Chandragupta in the university at Taxila to educate him in the arts, sciences, logic, mathematics, warfare, and administration. Megasthenes' account, as it has survived in Greek texts that quote him, states that Alexander the Great and Chandragupta met, which if true would mean his rule started earlier than 321 BCE. As Alexander never crossed the Beas river, so his territory probably lied in Punjab region. He has also been variously identified with Shashigupta (who has same etymology as of Chandragupta) of Paropamisadae (western Punjab) on the account of same life events. With the help of the small Janapadas of Punjab and Sindh, he had gone on to conquer much of the North West Indian subcontinent. He then defeated the Nanda rulers in Pataliputra to capture the throne. Chandragupta Maurya fought Alexander's successor in the east, Seleucus when the latter invaded. In a peace treaty, Seleucus ceded all territories west of the Indus and offered a marriage, including a portion of Bactria, while Chandragupta granted Seleucus 500 elephants.


title: History of Punjab

text: Chandragupta's rule was very well organised. The Mauryans had an autocratic and centralised administration system, aided by a council of ministers, and also a well-established espionage system. Much of Chandragupta's success is attributed to Chanakya, the author of the "Arthashastra". Much of the Mauryan rule had a strong bureaucracy that had regulated tax collection, trade and commerce, industrial activities, mining, statistics and data, maintenance of public places, and upkeep of temples.


title: History of Punjab

text: Mauryan rule was advanced for its time, and foreign accounts of Indian cities mention many temples, libraries, universities, gardens, and parks. A notable account was that of the Greek ambassador Megasthenes who had visited the Mauryan capital of Pataliputra.


title: History of Punjab

text: The Indo-Greek kingdom was founded when the Graeco-Bactrian king Demetrius (and later Eucratides) invaded Punjab from Bactria in 200 BC, taking advantage of decline of Mauryans. The Greeks in the Indian Subcontinent were eventually divided from the Graeco-Bactrians centered on Bactria (now the border between Afghanistan and Uzbekistan), and the Indo-Greeks in the present-day north-western Indian Subcontinent. Later, Menander I Soter conquered Punjab and made Sagala (present-day Sialkot) the capital of the Indo-Greek Kingdom. Menander is noted for having become a patron and convert to Greco-Buddhism and he is widely regarded as the greatest of the Indo-Greek kings.


title: History of Punjab

text: The expression "Indo-Greek Kingdom" loosely describes a number of various dynastic polities, traditionally associated with a number of regional capitals like Taxila, (modern Punjab (Pakistan)), Pushkalavati and Sagala. Other potential centers are only hinted at; for instance, Ptolemy's "Geographia" and the nomenclature of later kings suggest that a certain Theophila in the south of the Indo-Greek sphere of influence may also have been a satrapal or royal seat at one time.


title: History of Punjab

text: During the two centuries of their rule, the Indo-Greek kings combined the Greek and Indian languages and symbols, as seen on their coins, and blended Greek and Indian ideas, as seen in the archaeological remains. The diffusion of Indo-Greek culture had consequences which are still felt today, particularly through the influence of Greco-Buddhist art. Following the death of Menander, most of his empire splintered and Indo-Greek influence was considerably reduced. Many new kingdoms and republics east of the Ravi River began to mint new coinage depicting military victories. The most prominent entities to form were the Yaudheya Republic, Arjunayanas, and the Audumbaras. The Yaudheyas and Arjunayanas both are said to have won "victory by the sword". The Datta dynasty and Mitra dynasty soon followed in Mathura. The Indo-Greeks ultimately disappeared as a political entity around 10 AD following the invasions of the Indo-Scythians, although pockets of Greek populations probably remained for several centuries longer under the subsequent rule of the Indo-Parthians and Kushans.


title: History of Punjab

text: The Indo-Scythians were descended from the Sakas (Scythians) who migrated from southern Siberia to Punjab, Pakistan and Arachosia from the middle of the 2nd century BCE to the 1st century BCE. They displaced the earlier Indo-Greeks. The power of the Saka rulers started to decline in the 2nd century CE and soon they were replaced with Indo-Parthians by the mid 1st century AD.


title: History of Punjab

text: The Indo-Parthian Kingdom was founded by Gondophares, and active from 19 CE to c. 226 CE. The city of Taxila is thought to have been a capital of the Indo-Parthians. The Greek philosopher Apollonius of Tyana is related by Philostratus in "Life of Apollonius Tyana" to have visited India, and specifically the city of Taxila around 46 AD. He describes constructions of the Greek type,


title: History of Punjab

text: probably referring to Sirkap, and explains that the Indo-Parthian king of Taxila, named Phraotes, received a Greek education at the court. The kingdom was conquered in 1st century AD by the Kushan empire.


title: History of Punjab

text: About the middle of the 1st century CE, the Kushan Empire expanded out of central Asia into the Punjab under the leadership of their first emperor, Kujula Kadphises. They were descended from an Indo-European, Central Asian people called the Yuezhi, a branch of which was known as the Kushans. By the time of his grandson, Kanishka the Great, the empire spread to encompass much of south Asia at least as far as Saketa and Sarnath near Varanasi (Benares). By the 3rd century, their empire in Indian subcontinent was disintegrating and their last known great emperor was Vasudeva I. Following territory losses in the west (Bactria lost to the Kushano-Sasanians), and in the east (loss of Mathura to the Gupta Empire), several "Little Kushans" are known, who ruled locally in the area of Punjab with their capital at Taxila: Vasudeva II (270 – 300), Mahi (300 – 305), Shaka (305 – 335) and Kipunada (335 – 350). They probably were vassals of the Gupta Empire, until the invasion of the Kidarites destroyed the last remains of Kushan rule.


title: History of Punjab

text: Following decline of Kushans, the Gupta Empire gradually extended its rule as far as Punjab. This time period is known as the golden age of the region, especially during the reign of Skanda Gupta. The Gupta rule in Punjab was probably indirect, with several vassals in the region.


title: History of Punjab

text: After the death of Skanda Gupta, the Empire suffered from various wars of succession. The last major Gupta King was Buddha Gupta; after him, the Empire had split into various branches across India. The last Guptas were defeated by the Huns who had established themselves in Punjab under Toramana and his son Mihirakula, described as a Saivite Hindu.


title: History of Punjab

text: After decline of Kushan empire, the central Asian Huns started migrating towards Punjab and other regions of Pakistan. First of them were the Kidarites, who around 390 AD invaded Punjab and replaced remaining remnants of the Kushans. They seem to have retained the western part of the Gupta Empire, particularly central and western Punjab, until they were displaced by the invasion of the Alchon Huns at the end of the 5th century.


title: History of Punjab

text: The Alchon Huns were a nomadic people who invaded South Asia during the 4th and 6th centuries CE. They were first mentioned as being located in Paropamisus. Between 460 and 470 CE, the Alchons took over Gandhara and the Punjab which also had remained under the control of the Kidarites, while the Gupta Empire remained further east. Their most famous ruler was Mihirakula who had capital in Sagala in northern Punjab.


title: History of Punjab

text: The Alchons apparently undertook the mass destruction of Buddhist monasteries and stupas at Taxila, a high center of learning, which never recovered from the destruction. Virtually all of the Alchon coins found in the area of Taxila were found in the ruins of burned down monasteries, where apparently some of the invaders died alongside local defenders during the wave of destructions. One of the long lasting impact of this was the decline of Buddhism in Punjab, which was soon replaced by Hinduism as the major religion.


title: History of Punjab

text: The Chinese monk Xuanzang visited in 630 AD and described a large and prosperous kingdom, Taank Kingdom in Punjab. It ruled the region in 6th and 7th centuries, as evident from the chronicles of Xuanzang and other sources. The country was located south of Kashmir and east of Zunbil dynasty, extending from the Indus river in the west to the Beas river in the east, centered around modern day Sialkot.


title: History of Punjab

text: In the ninth century, the Hindu Shahi dynasty replaced Takka kingdom in the Punjab, ruling much of Punjab along with eastern Afghanistan. The 10th century Arab historian Masudi mentioned that in his time the kings of Gandhara were all called "Hajaj", "J.haj" or "Ch'hach", while the area itself was called "country of the "Rahbūt"" (Rajputs). The character transliterated to "Hahaj" and Alexander Cunningham had it equated to the Janjua tribe/clan. Rahman doubts this theory and instead transliterates to "J.haj", an Arabicised form of "Chhachh", which is even today the name of the region around the Hindu Shahi capital of Hund. In the 10th century, this region was occupied by the tribe of the Gakhars/Khokhars, who formed a large part of the Hindu Shahi army according to the Persian historian Firishta.


title: History of Punjab

text: The Turkic Ghaznavids in the tenth century overthrew the Hindu Shahis and consequently ruled for 157 years, gradually declining as a power until around 1150 when the boundary between the Ghaznavid kingdom and the Hindu kingdoms that had conquered the eastern Punjab approximated the present international border between India and Pakistan.


title: History of Punjab

text: At the beginning of the 8th century, Arab armies of the Umayyad Caliphate penetrated into South Asia. In 712 the Umayyads conquered Sindh and Southern Punjab, and Islam emerged as a major power in the southern Punjab. The newly conquered region became known as Sind and was the easternmost state of the Umayyad Caliphate. Umayyad rule was later replaced with Abbasid rule in 750.


title: History of Punjab

text: In the mid 800s, Abbasid authority in Sind weakened and five independent principalities emerged. The Banu Munnabih established themselves based at Multan. The Banu Munnabih later gave allegiance to the Abbasids, and remained unchallenged for over a century. Visitors at the time noted the power, prestige and prosperity brought to the region under Banu Munnabih rule.


title: History of Punjab

text: Between 982–5, the power of the Banu Munnabih began to erode and Multan was conquered by Halam b. Shayban on behalf of the Fatimid caliph based in Egypt. By 985, the traveller Al-Maqdisi noted that the city of Multan was Shia, that the Friday sermon was in the name of the Fatimid and all decisions are taken in accordance with his commands.


title: History of Punjab

text: In 977, Sabuktigin, the Samanid governor of Ghazni, established an independent kingdom in western Afghanistan with Ghazni as its capital. When the Ghaznavids began expanding eastwards they came into conflict with the Hindu Shahi. This led to the Hindu Shahi ruler to form an alliance with Rajput rulers in the Punjab to check the Ghaznavid expansion.


title: History of Punjab

text: Sabuktigin's son Mahmud succeeded his father in 997, and began a series of raids into northern India. In 1001 he defeated Jayapala at the Battle of Peshawar and seized Hindu Shahi territory north of the river Sindh.


title: History of Punjab

text: Jayapala's son and grandson, Anandapala and Trilochanapala respectively, resisted Mahmud for another quarter of a century and later by Bhimapala and local Ghakkhar chieftains until Mu'izz ad-Din Muhammad's victory in Second battle of Tarain in 1192 . Mahmud's battles against the Hindu Shahi between 1001 and 1026 were significant in establishing Muslim political dominance in the Afghanistan region and surrounding Gandhar region west of Punjab. After Ghazni was conquered by Ghurid Empire, the capital of the Ghaznavids shifted to Lahore in Punjab which remained as their last capital.


title: History of Punjab

text: In 1173 the Ghurid dynasty replaced the Ghaznavids in Ghazni, and under Muhammad of Ghor they began expanding eastwards. Between 1175 and 1192, the Ghurid dynasty occupied the cities of Uch, Multan, Peshawar, Lahore, and Delhi. In 1206, the Ghurid general Qutb-al-din Aybeg and his successor Iltutmish founded the first of the series of Delhi Sultanates. Each dynasty would be an alternation of various inner-Asian military lords and their clients, constantly vying for power. These sultanates would make Delhi a safe haven for Muslim Turks and Persians who would flee the eventual Mongol invasions.


title: History of Punjab

text: The Khalji dynasty was the second dynasty of the Delhi sultanates, ruling from 1290 to 1320. This dynasty was a short-lived one, and extended Islamic rule to Gujarat, Rajasthan, the Deccan, and parts of Southern India.


title: History of Punjab

text: The Khalji dynasty was succeeded by the Tughluq dynasty, which had ruled from 1320 to 1413. Muhammad bin Tughluq was supported by Turkic warriors, and was the first to introduce non-Muslims into the administration, to participate in local festivals, and permit the construction of Hindu temples. The Tughluq dynasty, however, disintegrated rapidly due to revolts by governors, resistance from locals, and the re-formation of independent Hindu kingdoms.


title: History of Punjab

text: After the death of the last Tughluq ruler Nasir-ud-din Mahmud, Khizr Khan established the Sayyid dynasty, the fourth dynasty of the Delhi Sultanate after the fall of the Tughlaqs. According to Richard M. Eaton, Khizr Khan was son of a Punjabi chieftain. He was a Khokhar chieftain who travelled to Samarkand and profited from the contacts he made with the Timurid society Later, Bahlul Lodi captured Delhi and founded the Lodi dynasty, the last of the Delhi sultanates. The Lodi dynasty reached its peak under Bahlul's grandson Sikander Lodi. Various road and irrigation projects were taken under his rule, and the rule had patronised Persian culture. Despite this, there was still persecution of the local Hindu people as many temples, such as that of Mathura, were destroyed and had a system of widespread discrimination against Hindus. The rule of the last Lodi emperor was a weak one, and was eclipsed by the arrival of Babur's army.


title: History of Punjab

text: The first Mongol invasion of Punjab occurred when they were pursuing the Khwarezmian Shah, Jalal ad-Din, who was defeated in the battle of Indus in 1221. The early period of Delhi Sultanate saw numerous Mongol invasions of Punjab, and the cities of Multan and Lahore were even sacked. Ultimately, they were defeated during the rule of Khilji dynasty by its able generals, Zafar Khan and Ayn al-Mulk Multani who were Indian Muslims from Punjab. In the winter of 1297, the Chagatai noyan Kadar led an army that ravaged the Punjab region, and advanced as far as Kasur. Alauddin's army, led by Ulugh Khan and probably Zafar Khan defeated the invaders on the Battle of Jaran-Manjur near Lahore in 1298 where quite a large number of them were taken prisoner.


title: History of Punjab

text: In 1445, Sultan Qutbudin, chief of "Langah", a Jat Zamindar tribe established the Langah Sultanate in Multan. The reign of Sultan Husayn I who ruled from 1469 to 1498 is considered to most illustrious of the Langah Sultans. Multan experienced prosperity during this time, and a large number of Baloch settlers arrived in the city at the invitation of Shah Husayn. Shah Husayn successfully repulsed attempted invasion by the Delhi Sultans led by Tatar Khan and Barbak Shah. He fought off attempts to reinstall Shiekh Yousaf who had taken refuge under Delhi Sultans. Eventually, he signed a peace treaty with Sikander Lodhi and abducted in the favour of his son. His successor, Budhan Khan, who assumed the title Sultan Mahmud Shah I, inherited the Sultanate stretched encompassing the neighbouring regions, including the cities of Chiniot and Shorkot.


title: History of Punjab

text: Sultan Husayn I being unable to hold his trans-Indus possessions, assigned the region around Dera Ismail Khan to Sardar Malik Sohrab Dodai Baloch in 1469 or 1471 and appointed him as "Jagir". The city was invaded during the reign of Sultan Husseyn II by ruler Shah Husayn of the Arghun dynasty, probably at Babur's insistence, who was either ethnic Mongol, or of Turkic or Turco-Mongol extraction. Multan fell in 1528 after an extended siege and Shah Husayn appointed his son Mirza Askari as governor of the city, assisted by Langar Khan, one of the powerful amirs of Sultan Mahmud Langah I. Shortly after Shah Husayn departed Multan for Thatta, however, the governor was thrown out of the city. The rebels under Sultan Mahmud II administered Multan for a time independently but in 1541, Sher Shah Suri captured Multan, and the Sultanate ended.


title: History of Punjab

text: A significant event in the late 15th century Punjab was the formation of Sikhism by Guru Nanak who was born in Nankana Sahib, Punjab, Pakistan in the Lahore province of the Delhi Sultanate. The history of the Sikh faith is closely associated with the history of Punjab and the socio-political situation in the north-west of the Indian subcontinent in the 17th century. The hymns composed by Guru Nanak were later collected in the Guru Granth Sahib, the central religious scripture of the Sikhs.


title: History of Punjab

text: In 1526, Babur, a descendant of Timur and Genghis Khan from the Fergana Valley was ousted from his ancestral domain in Central Asia. Bābur turned to India and crossed the Khyber Pass. He was able to secure control of Punjab, and in 1526 he decisively defeated the forces of the Delhi sultan Ibrāhīm Lodī at the First Battle of Panipat. The next year, he defeated the Rajput confederacy under Rana Sanga of Mewar, and in 1529 defeated the remnants of the Delhi sultanates. At his death in 1530 the Mughal Empire encompassed almost all of Northern India.


title: History of Punjab

text: Bābur's son Humāyūn (reigned 1530–40 and 1555–56) had lost territory to Sher Shah Suri, launched campaigns against the Gakkhars, about whom he suspected of being friendly with the Mughals. During this period, Sher Shah constructed the Rohtas Fort near Jhelum. Following the death of Sher Shah, in 1556, the Mughal forces under Humayun defeated Sikandar at the Battle of Panipat in 1556 and re-established the Mughal Empire across the Punjab and northern India. In 1580 the Punjab was divided into two provinces, Subah of Lahore and Subah of Multan. From 1586 to 1598, Lahore remained capital of the Mughal Empire.


title: History of Punjab

text: Over the next twenty four year, the Mughals gradually consolidated power in the Punjab. Campaigns followed to subdue local Zamindars and the Hill forts. The Gakkhars were co-opted and assimilated into the Mughal polity under Kamal Khan, son of Rai Sarang. Akbar (reigned 1556–1605) defeated Hemu at the Second Battle of Panipat (1556) and re-established Mughal rule. Akbar's son Jahangir had furthered the size of the Mughal Empire through conquest, yet left much of the state bankrupt as a result. He was later buried in Lahore. Jahangir's son Shah Jahan (reigned 1628–1658) was known for his monuments, including the Taj Mahal. He was born in Lahore. Saadullah Khan, born into the Thaheem tribe in Punjab from Chiniot remained Grand vizier (or Prime Minister) of the Mughal empire in the period 1645 to 1656. Shah Jahan's son Aurangzeb was deeply religious and undertook extensive campaign in Deccan. He built famous Badshahi Mosque in Lahore. Aurangzeb had instilled heavy taxes on Hindus and Sikhs that had later led to an economic depression.


title: History of Punjab

text: During the reign of Muḥammad Shah (1719–48), the empire began to decline, accelerated by warfare and rivalries, and. After the death of Muḥammad Shah in 1748, the Marathas attacked and ruled almost all of northern India. Mughal rule was reduced to only a small area around Delhi, which passed under Maratha (1785) and the British (1803) control. The last Mughal, Bahādur Shah II (reigned 1837–57), was exiled to Burma by the British. Muslims from Punjab who rose to nobility during the Mughal Era include Wazir Khan, Adina Beg Arain, and Shahbaz Khan Kamboh.


title: History of Punjab

text: The lifetime of Guru Nanak Sahib, the founder of Sikhism, coincided with the conquest of northern India by Babur and establishment of the Mughal Empire. Jahangir ordered the execution of Guru Arjan Dev, whilst in Mughal custody, for supporting his son Khusrau Mirza's rival claim to the throne. Guru Arjan Dev's death led to the sixth Guru Guru Hargobind to declare sovereignty in the creation of the Akal Takht and the establishment of a fort to defend Amritsar. Jahangir then jailed Guru Hargobind at Gwalior, but released him after a number of years when he no longer felt threatened. The succeeding son of Jahangir, Shah Jahan, took offence at Guru Hargobind's declaration and after a series of assaults on Amritsar, forced the Sikhs to retreat to the Sivalik Hills. The ninth Guru, Guru Tegh Bahadur, moved the Sikh community to Anandpur and travelled extensively to visit and preach in defiance of Aurangzeb, who attempted to install Ram Rai as new guru.


title: History of Punjab

text: In 1747, the "Durrani kingdom" was established by the Pakhtun general, Ahmad Shah Abdali. The first time Ahmad Shah invaded Hindustan, the Mughal imperial army checked his advance successfully. Yet subsequent events led to a double alliance, one by marriage and another politically, between the Afghan King and the Mughal Emperor. The battle of Panipat was the effect of this political alliance. After the victory of Panipat, Ahmad Shah Durrani became the primary ruler over Northern India. The influence of Durrani monarch continued in Northern India up to his death.


title: History of Punjab

text: In 1757, the Sikhs were persistently ambushing guards to loot trains. In order to send a message, and prevent such occurrences from recurring, Ahmad Shah destroyed the Shri Harimandir Sahib and filled the Sarovar (Holy water pool) with cow carcasses.


title: History of Punjab

text: In 1758 the Maratha Empire's general Raghunathrao attacked and conquered Lahore and Attock driving out Timur Shah Durrani, the son and viceroy of Ahmad Shah Abdali, in the process. Lahore, Multan, Kashmir and other subahs on the eastern side of Attock were under Maratha rule. In Punjab and Kashmir, the Marathas were now major players. In 1761, following the victory at the Third battle of Panipat between the Durrani and the Maratha Empire, Ahmad Shah Abdali captured remnants of the Maratha Empire in Punjab and Kashmir regions and had consolidated control over them.


title: History of Punjab

text: In 1762, there were persistent conflicts with the Sikhs. Vadda Ghalughara took place under the Muslim provincial government based at Lahore to wipe out the Sikhs, with 30,000 Sikhs being killed, an offensive that had begun with the Mughals, with the Chhota Ghallughara, and lasted several decades under its Muslim successor states. The rebuilt Harminder Sahib was destroyed, and the pool was filled with cow entrails, again.


title: History of Punjab

text: In 1799, a process to unify Punjab was started by Ranjit Singh. Training his army under the style of the East India Company, he was able to conquer much of Punjab and surrounding areas. The invasions of Zaman Shah, the second successor of Ahmad Shah Abdali had served as a catalyst. After the first invasion, Singh had recovered his own fort at Rohtas. During the second invasion, he had emerged as a leading Sikh chief. After the third invasion, he had decisively defeated Zamah Shah. This had eventually led to the takeover of Lahore in 1799. In 1809, Singh signed the Treaty of Amritsar with the British; in this treaty, Singh was recognised as the sole ruler of Punjab up to River Sutlej by the British.


title: History of Punjab

text: Within ten years of Ranjit Singh's death in 1839, the Empire was taken over by the British who had already more or less exerted indirect or direct influence throughout the Subcontinent. At Lahore, there were increasing levels of nobles vying for power. A growing instability, allowed the British to come in and take over control of the area. After the British victories at the battles of the Sutlej in 1845–46, the army and territory of the boy Raja Duleep Singh was cut down. Lahore was garrisoned by British troops, and given a resident in the Durbar. In 1849, the British had formally taken control.


title: History of Punjab

text: The Bahawalpur state was founded in 1609 AD by Nawab Bahawal Khan Abbasi. The role of Bahawalpur state was important as the sole surviving Muslim state in Punjab. On 22 February 1833, Abbasi III entered into a subsidiary alliance with the British, to get protection against the expanding Sikh Empire. When British rule ended in 1947 and British India was partitioned into India and Pakistan, Bahawalpur joined the Dominion of Pakistan. Bahawalpur remained an autonomous entity until 14 October 1955, when it was merged with the province of West Pakistan.


title: History of Punjab

text: The Punjab was annexed by the East India Company in 1849. Although nominally part of the Bengal Presidency it was administratively independent. During the Indian Rebellion of 1857, apart from Revolt led by Ahmed Khan Kharal and Murree rebellion of 1857, the Punjab remained relatively peaceful. In 1858, under the terms of the Queen's Proclamation issued by Queen Victoria, the Punjab came under the direct rule of Britain.


title: History of Punjab

text: Colonial rule had a profound impact on all areas of Punjabi life. Economically it transformed the Punjab into the richest farming area of India, socially it sustained the power of large landowners and politically it encouraged cross-communal co-operation amongst land owning groups. The Punjab also became the major centre of recruitment into the Indian Army. By patronising influential local allies and focusing administrative, economic and constitutional policies on the rural population, the British ensured the loyalty of its large rural population.


title: History of Punjab

text: Administratively, colonial rule instated a system of bureaucracy and measure of the law. The 'paternal' system of the ruling elite was replaced by 'machine rule' with a system of laws, codes, and procedures. For purposes of control, the British established new forms of communication and transportation, including post systems, railways, roads, and telegraphs. The creation of Canal Colonies in western Punjab between 1860 and 1947 brought 14 million acres of land under cultivation, and revolutionised agricultural practices in the region. To the agrarian and commercial class was added a professional middle class that had risen the social ladder through the use of the English education, which opened up new professions in law, government, and medicine.


title: History of Punjab

text: Despite these developments, colonial rule was marked by exploitation of resources. For the purpose of exports, the majority of external trade was controlled by British export banks. The Imperial government exercised control over the finances of Punjab and took the majority of the income for itself.


title: History of Punjab

text: A highlight of religious controversy during this time was that of the Ahmaddiya movement, initiated by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. In his Burahin-i-Ahmaddiya, which was meant to rejuvenate Islam on the basis of the Quran, he had attempted to refute both Christian missionaries, and Hindus and Sikhs. In another work, Ahmad argued that Guru Nanak was a Muslim. He interpreted Jihad as a peaceful method, and declared himself to be the Messiah. This was met with significant controversy.


title: History of Punjab

text: In the first and second decades of the early 20th century, the idea of Hindu and Muslim separation had become an active political tone. Muslims were told to remain aloof of the Indian National Congress, the main body seeking Indian Independence, because there was a general fear that representation based on elections and employment-based upon competition was not in their interest. The All-India Muslim League's demand for separate electorates for Muslims was granted at Amritsar in 1909. The Muslim League also demanded separate electorates in every province, even in those without Muslim majority populations, which was also granted by the Indian National Congress in 1916.


title: History of Punjab

text: In 1862, the first section of railway in the Punjab was constructed between Lahore and Amritsar, and Lahore Junction railway station opened. Lines were opened between Lahore and Multan in 1864, and Amritsar and Delhi in 1870. The Scinde, Punjab and Delhi railways merged to form the Scinde, Punjab & Delhi Railway in 1870, creating a link between Karachi and Lahore via Multan. The Punjab Northern State Railway linked Lahore and Peshawar in 1883. By 1886, the independent railways had amalgamated into North Western State Railway.


title: History of Punjab

text: In 1854, the Punjab education department was instituted with a policy to provide secular education in all government managed institutions. Privately run institutions would only receive grants-in-aid in return for providing secular instruction. By 1864 this had resulted in a situation whereby all grants-in-aid to higher education schools and colleges were received by institutions under European management, and no indigenous owned schools received government help. In 1882, University of Punjab was established in Lahore, the 4th university to be established in South Asia. In 1884, a reorganisation of the Punjab education system occurred, introducing measures tending towards decentralisation of control over education and the promotion of an indigenous education agency. As a consequence several new institutions were encouraged in the province. The Arya Samaj opened a college in Lahore in 1886, the Sikhs opened the Khalsa College whilst the Anjuman-i-Himayat-i-Islam stepped in to organise Muslim education.


title: History of Punjab

text: An important event of the British Raj in Punjab was the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. In 1919, Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer led fifty riflemen from the 1/9th Gurkhas, 54th Sikhs, and 59th Sikhs into the Bagh and ordered them to open fire into the crowd that had gathered there. The official number of deaths, as reported by the British government, was given as 379 killed, but some reports claimed that more than 1,000 were killed. There had been many Indian independence movements in Punjab at the time as well. Notably, the actions of Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, and Rajguru on 17 December 1928 in which the trio was responsible for killing J.P. Saunders in revenge for the latter's killing of Lala Lajpat Rai. They were also responsible for the bombing of the Legislative Assembly in Delhi on 8 April in 1929. The three believed that the nonviolent movement was a failure. Nevertheless, the use of violence in the Indian independence movement became unpopular after the execution of the trio on 23 March 1931.


title: History of Punjab

text: Punjab Legislative Council was established by colonial authorities under Government of India Act 1919. The Government of India Act 1935 introduced introduced increased provincial autonomy to Punjab replacing the system of dyarchy. It provided for the constitution of Punjab Legislative Assembly of 175 members presided by a Speaker and an executive government responsible to the Assembly. The Unionist Party under Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan formed the government in 1937. Sir Sikandar was succeeded by Malik Khizar Hayat Tiwana in 1942 who remained the Premier of the Punjab till partition in 1947. The Unionist Party dominated Punjabi politics from the 1920s until the Second World War. Its influence over the rural population severely limited the local appeal and reach of both the Indian National Congress and Muslim League. A strong supporter of colonial rule, the Unionists were weakened by the war as they were directed to sacrifice their political interests to support the war effort. Unable to placate their traditional support base with benefits from the colonial administration, they suffered a loss of authority which led to their disastrous performance at the 1946 Punjab Provincial Assembly election and a breakdown in inter-communal cooperation at a political level. Although the term of the Assembly was five years, the Assembly continued for about eight years and its last sitting was held on 19 March 1945.


title: History of Punjab

text: In 1947, the Punjab Province of British India was divided along religious lines into West Punjab and East Punjab, with East Punjab containing modern states of


title: History of Punjab

text: Punjab (India), Harayana and Himachal Pradesh. The Partition of India in 1947 split the former Raj province of Punjab; the mostly Muslim western part became the Pakistani province of West Punjab and the mostly Sikh and Hindu eastern part became the Indian province of Punjab. Many Sikhs and Hindus lived in the west, and many Muslims lived in the east, and so partition saw many people displaced and much intercommunal violence. All Punjabi princely states, except Bahawalpur, also became part of India.


title: History of Punjab

text: The undivided Punjab, of which Punjab (Pakistan) forms a major region today, was home to a large minority population of Punjabi Sikhs and Hindus unto 1947 apart from the Muslim majority. The Gurdaspur district which is partially now part of the Indian state of Punjab had a slight Muslim majority (50.2% according to the 1941 census) prior to the partition. Many Muslims fled the partition violence to settle in Pakistan.


title: History of Punjab

text: As stated, a major consequence of partition was the sudden shift towards religious homogeneity occurred in all districts across Punjab owing to the new international border that cut through the province. This rapid demographic shift was primarily due to wide scale migration but also caused by large-scale religious cleansing riots which were witnessed across the region at the time. According to historical demographer Tim Dyson, in the eastern regions of Punjab that ultimately became Indian Punjab following independence, districts that were 66% Hindu in 1941 became 80% Hindu in 1951; those that were 20% Sikh became 50% Sikh in 1951. Conversely, in the western regions of Punjab that ultimately became Pakistani Punjab, all districts became almost exclusively Muslim by 1951.


title: History of Punjab

text: After independence, the Akali Dal, a Sikh-dominated political party active mainly in Punjab, sought to create a Sikh State but idea was not very popular. However, there was push in many regions of India for reorganisation of states based on language. In Punjab, instead of religion, the Akalis launched the Punjabi Suba movement aimed at creation of a Punjabi-majority subah ("province") in the erstwhile East Punjab state of India in the 1950s.In 1966, it resulted in the formation of the Punjabi speaking -majority Punjab state, the Haryanvi-Hindi-majority Haryana state and the Union Territory of Chandigarh. Some Pahari majority parts of the East Punjab were also merged with Himachal Pradesh as a result of the movement.


title: History of Punjab

text: Sikhs called for the creation of a separate Sikh homeland known as Khalistan in the 1970s, along with the lines of Pakistan. This had led to the state of emergency given by Indira Gandhi, who felt if Khalistan was created it would render a much weaker Indian nation. Especially since that region of the country provided up to 70% of the nations wheat, earning the Punjab region the name, “Bread Basket of India”. During the Green Revolution in India incentives were given to the people of Punjab to switch to growing strictly wheat since India was unable to feed many of its people. Gandhi called in Indian troops to extinguish the few militants who had taken shelter in the Golden Temple, killing thousands of civilians in the crossfire. Attacks then targeted the Punjab State police and Indian Security forces that opposed the creation of Khalistan and wished Punjab stay under Indian rule. Some extremists carried out a terror attack placing a bomb in an Air India flight over the Atlantic Ocean, killing more than 300 people. Much of the funding for the separatist revolutionaries had come from sources abroad in America and Europe, and some of the Sikh separatist movements were based in Pakistan.


title: 2010 flash crash

text: The May 6, 2010, flash crash, also known as the crash of 2:45 or simply the flash crash, was a United States trillion-dollar flash crash (a type of stock market crash) which started at 2:32 p.m. EDT and lasted for approximately 36 minutes.


title: 2010 flash crash

text: Stock indices, such as the S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq Composite, collapsed and rebounded very rapidly. The Dow Jones Industrial Average had its second biggest intraday point decline (from the opening) up to that point, plunging 998.5 points (about 9%), most within minutes, only to recover a large part of the loss. It was also the second-largest intraday point swing (difference between intraday high and intraday low) up to that point, at 1,010.14 points. The prices of stocks, stock index futures, options and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) were volatile, thus trading volume spiked. A CFTC 2014 report described it as one of the most turbulent periods in the history of financial markets.


title: 2010 flash crash

text: New regulations put in place following the 2010 flash crash proved to be inadequate to protect investors in the August 24, 2015, flash crash — "when the price of many ETFs appeared to come unhinged from their underlying value" — and ETFs were subsequently put under greater scrutiny by regulators and investors.


title: 2010 flash crash

text: On April 21, 2015, nearly five years after the incident, the U.S. Department of Justice laid "22 criminal counts, including fraud and market manipulation" against Navinder Singh Sarao, a British Indian financial trader. Among the charges included was the use of spoofing algorithms; just prior to the flash crash, he placed orders for thousands of E-mini S&P 500 stock index futures contracts which he planned on cancelling later. These orders amounting to about "$200 million worth of bets that the market would fall" were "replaced or modified 19,000 times" before they were cancelled. Spoofing, layering, and front running are now banned.


title: 2010 flash crash

text: The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) investigation concluded that Sarao "was at least significantly responsible for the order imbalances" in the derivatives market which affected stock markets and exacerbated the flash crash. Sarao began his alleged market manipulation in 2009 with commercially available trading software whose code he modified "so he could rapidly place and cancel orders automatically". "Traders Magazine" journalist, John Bates, argued that blaming a 36-year-old small-time trader who worked from his parents' modest stucco house in suburban west London for sparking a trillion-dollar stock market crash is "a little bit like blaming lightning for starting a fire" and that the investigation was lengthened because regulators used "bicycles to try and catch Ferraris". Furthermore, he concluded that by April 2015, traders can still manipulate and impact markets in spite of regulators and banks' new, improved monitoring of automated trade systems.


title: 2010 flash crash

text: In May 2014, a CFTC report concluded that high-frequency traders "did not cause the Flash Crash, but contributed to it by demanding immediacy ahead of other market participants".


title: 2010 flash crash

text: Some recent peer-reviewed research shows that flash crashes are not isolated occurrences, but have occurred quite often. Gao and Mizrach studied US equities over the period of 1993–2011. They show that breakdowns in market quality (such as flash crashes) have occurred in every year they examined and that, apart from the financial crisis, such problems have declined since the introduction of Reg NMS. They also show that 2010, while infamous for the flash crash, was not a year with an inordinate number of breakdowns in market quality.


title: 2010 flash crash

text: On May 6, 2010, U.S. stock markets opened and the Dow was down, and trended that way for most of the day on worries about the debt crisis in Greece. At 2:42 p.m., with the Dow down more than 300 points for the day, the equity market began to fall rapidly, dropping an additional 600 points in 5 minutes for a loss of nearly 1,000 points for the day by 2:47 p.m. Twenty minutes later, by 3:07 p.m., the market had regained most of the 600-point drop. At the time of the flash crash, in May 2010, high-frequency traders were taking advantage of unintended consequences of the consolidation of the U.S. financial regulations into Regulation NMS, designed to modernize and strengthen the United States National Market System for equity securities. The Reg NMS, promulgated and described by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, was intended to assure that investors received the best price executions for their orders by encouraging competition in the marketplace, created attractive new opportunities for high-frequency-traders. Activities such as spoofing, layering and front running were banned by 2015. This rule was designed to give investors the best possible price when dealing in stocks, even if that price was not on the exchange that received the order.


title: 2010 flash crash

text: At first, while the regulatory agencies and the United States Congress announced investigations into the crash, no specific reason for the 600-point plunge was identified. Investigators focused on a number of possible causes, including a confluence of computer-automated trades, or possibly an error by human traders. By the first weekend, regulators had discounted the possibility of trader error and focused on automated trades conducted on exchanges other than the NYSE. However, CME Group, a large futures exchange, stated that, insofar as stock index futures traded on CME Group were concerned, its investigation found no evidence for this or that high-frequency trading played a role, and in fact concluded that automated trading had contributed to market stability during the period of the crash. Others speculate that an intermarket sweep order may have played a role in triggering the crash.


title: 2010 flash crash

text: On September 30, 2010, after almost five months of investigations led by Gregg E. Berman, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) issued a joint report titled "Findings Regarding the Market Events of May 6, 2010" identifying the sequence of events leading to the flash crash.


title: 2010 flash crash

text: The joint 2010 report "portrayed a market so fragmented and fragile that a single large trade could send stocks into a sudden spiral", and detailed how a large mutual fund firm selling an unusually large number of E-Mini S&P contracts first exhausted available buyers, and then how high-frequency traders (HFT) started aggressively selling, accelerating the effect of the mutual fund's selling and contributing to the sharp price declines that day.


title: 2010 flash crash

text: The SEC and CFTC joint 2010 report itself says that "May 6 started as an unusually turbulent day for the markets" and that by the early afternoon "broadly negative market sentiment was already affecting an increase in the price volatility of some individual securities". At 2:32 p.m. (EDT), against a "backdrop of unusually high volatility and thinning liquidity" that day, a large fundamental trader (known to be Waddell & Reed Financial Inc.) "initiated a sell program to sell a total of 75,000 E-Mini S&P contracts (valued at approximately $4.1 billion) as a hedge to an existing equity position". The report says that this was an unusually large position and that the computer algorithm the trader used to trade the position was set to "target an execution rate set to 9% of the trading volume calculated over the previous minute, but without regard to price or time".


title: 2010 flash crash

text: As the large seller's trades were executed in the futures market, buyers included high-frequency trading firms—trading firms that specialize in high-speed trading and rarely hold on to any given position for very long—and within minutes these high-frequency trading firms started trying to sell the long futures contracts they had just picked up from the mutual fund. "The Wall Street Journal" quoted the joint report, "'HFTs [then] began to quickly buy and then resell contracts to each other—generating a 'hot-potato' volume effect as the same positions were passed rapidly back and forth.'" The combined sales by the large seller and high-frequency firms quickly drove "the E-Mini price down 3% in just four minutes".


title: 2010 flash crash

text: As prices in the futures market fell, there was a spillover into the equities markets. The computer systems used by most high-frequency trading firms to keep track of market activity decided to pause trading, and those firms then scaled back their trading or withdrew from the markets altogether.


title: 2010 flash crash

text: "The New York Times" then noted, "Automatic computerized traders on the stock market shut down as they detected the sharp rise in buying and selling". As computerized high-frequency traders exited the stock market, the resulting lack of liquidity "caused shares of some prominent companies like Procter & Gamble and Accenture to trade down as low as a penny or as high as $100,000". These extreme prices also resulted from "market internalizers", firms that usually trade with customer orders from their own inventory instead of sending those orders to exchanges, "routing 'most, if not all,' retail orders to the public markets—a flood of unusual selling pressure that sucked up more dwindling liquidity".


title: 2010 flash crash

text: While some firms exited the market, firms that remained in the market exacerbated price declines because they "'escalated their aggressive selling' during the downdraft". High-frequency firms during the crisis, like other firms, were net sellers, contributing to the crash.


title: 2010 flash crash

text: The joint report continued: "At 2:45:28 p.m., trading on the E-Mini was paused for five seconds when the Chicago Mercantile Exchange ('CME') Stop Logic Functionality was triggered in order to prevent a cascade of further price declines. In that short period of time, sell-side pressure in the E-Mini was partly alleviated and buy-side interest increased. When trading resumed at 2:45:33 p.m., prices stabilized and shortly thereafter, the E-Mini began to recover, followed by the SPY". After a short while, as market participants had "time to react and verify the integrity of their data and systems, buy-side and sell-side interest returned and an orderly price discovery process began to function", and by 3:00 p.m., most stocks "had reverted back to trading at prices reflecting true consensus values".


title: 2010 flash crash

text: A few hours after the release of the 104-page SEC/CFTC 2010 report, a number of critics stated that blaming a single order (from "Waddell & Reed") for triggering the event was disingenuous. Most prominent of all, the CME issued within 24 hours a rare press release in which it argued against the SEC/CFTC explanation:


title: 2010 flash crash

text: David Leinweber, director of the Center for Innovative Financial Technology at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, was invited by "The Journal of Portfolio Management" to write an editorial, in which he openly criticized the government's technological capabilities and inability to study today's markets. Leinweber wrote:


title: 2010 flash crash

text: Nanex, a leading firm specialized in the analysis of high-frequency data, also pointed out to several inconsistencies in the CFTC study:


title: 2010 flash crash

text: As of July 2011, only one theory on the causes of the flash crash was published by a "Journal Citation Reports" indexed, peer-reviewed scientific journal. It was reported in 2011 that one hour before its collapse in 2010, the stock market registered the highest reading of "toxic order imbalance" in previous history. The authors of this 2011 paper apply widely accepted market microstructure models to understand the behavior of prices in the minutes and hours prior to the crash. According to this paper, "order flow toxicity" can be measured as the probability that informed traders (e.g., hedge funds) adversely select uninformed traders (e.g., market makers). For that purpose, they developed the Volume-Synchronized Probability of Informed Trading (VPIN) Flow Toxicity metric, which delivered a real-time estimate of the conditions under which liquidity is being provided. If the order imbalance becomes too toxic, market makers are forced out of the market. As they withdraw, liquidity disappears, which increases even more the concentration of toxic flow in the overall volume, which triggers a feedback mechanism that forces even more market makers out. This cascading effect has caused hundreds of liquidity-induced crashes in the past, the "flash crash" being one (major) example of it.


title: 2010 flash crash

text: However, independent studies published in 2013 strongly disputed the claim that one hour before its collapse in 2010, the stock market registered the highest reading of "toxic order imbalance" in previous history. In particular, in 2011 Andersen and Bondarenko conducted a comprehensive investigation of the two main versions of VPIN used by its creators, one based on the standard tick-rule (or TR-VPIN) and the other based on Bulk Volume Classification (or BVC-VPIN). They find that the value of TR-VPIN (BVC-VPIN) one hour before the crash "was surpassed on 71 (189) preceding days, constituting 11.7% (31.2%) of the pre-crash sample". Similarly, the value of TR-VPIN (BVC-VPIN) at the start of the crash was "topped on 26 (49) preceding days, or 4.3% (8.1%) of the pre-crash sample".


title: 2010 flash crash

text: Note that the source of increasing "order flow toxicity" on May 6, 2010, is not determined in Easley, Lopez de Prado, and O'Hara's 2011 publication. Whether a dominant source of toxic order flow on May 6, 2010, was from firms representing public investors or whether a dominant source was intermediary or other proprietary traders could have a significant effect on regulatory proposals put forward to prevent another flash crash. According to Bloomberg, the VPIN metric is the subject of a pending patent application filed by the paper's three authors, Maureen O'Hara and David Easley of Cornell University, and Marcos Lopez de Prado, of Tudor Investment Corporation.


title: 2010 flash crash

text: A study of VPIN by scientists from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory cited the 2011 conclusions of Easley, Lopez de Prado and O'Hara for VPIN on S&P 500 futures but provided no independent confirmation for the claim that VPIN reached its historical high one hour before the crash:


title: 2010 flash crash

text: The Chief Economist of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and several academic economists published a working paper containing a review and empirical analysis of trade data from the Flash Crash. The authors examined the characteristics and activities of buyers and sellers in the Flash Crash and determined that a large seller, a mutual fund firm, exhausted available fundamental buyers and then triggered a cascade of selling by intermediaries, particularly high-frequency trading firms. Like the SEC/CFTC report described earlier, the authors call this cascade of selling "hot potato trading", as high-frequency firms rapidly acquired and then liquidated positions among themselves at steadily declining prices.


title: 2010 flash crash

text: Recent research on dynamical complex networks published in "Nature Physics" (2013) suggests that the 2010 Flash Crash may be an example of the "avoided transition" phenomenon in network systems with critical behavior.


title: 2010 flash crash

text: In April 2015, Navinder Singh Sarao, an autistic London-based point-and-click trader, was arrested for his alleged role in the flash crash. According to criminal charges brought by the United States Department of Justice, Sarao allegedly used an automated program to generate large sell orders, pushing down prices, which he then cancelled to buy at the lower market prices. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed civil charges against Sarao. In August 2015, Sarao was released on a £50,000 bail with a full extradition hearing scheduled for September with the US Department of Justice. Sarao and his company, Nav Sarao Futures Limited, allegedly made more than $40 million in profit from trading from 2009 to 2015.


title: 2010 flash crash

text: As of 2017 Sarao's lawyers claim that all of his assets were stolen or otherwise lost in bad investments. Sarao was released on bail, banned from trading and placed under the care of his father.


title: 2010 flash crash

text: In January 2020, Sarao was given a sentence of only one year's home confinement, with no jail time. The sentence was relatively lenient, as a result of prosecutors' emphasis on how much Sarao had cooperated with them, and that he was not motivated by greed.


title: 2010 flash crash

text: A stock market anomaly, the major market indexes dropped by over 9% (including a roughly 7% decline in a roughly 15-minute span at approximately 2:45 p.m., on May 6, 2010) before a partial rebound. Temporarily, $1 trillion in market value disappeared. While stock markets do crash, immediate rebounds are unprecedented. The stocks of eight major companies in the S&P 500 fell to one cent per share for a short time, including Accenture, CenterPoint Energy and Exelon; while other stocks, including Sotheby's, Apple Inc. and Hewlett-Packard, increased in value to over $100,000 in price. Procter & Gamble in particular dropped nearly 37% before rebounding, within minutes, back to near its original levels.


title: 2010 flash crash

text: Stocks continued to rebound in the following days, helped by a bailout package in Europe to help save the euro. The S&P 500 erased all losses within a week, but selling soon took over again and the indices reached lower depths within two weeks.


title: 2010 flash crash

text: The NASDAQ released their timeline of the anomalies during U.S. Congressional House Subcommittee on Capital Markets and Government-Sponsored Enterprises hearings on the flash crash. NASDAQ's timeline indicates that NYSE Arca may have played an early role and that the Chicago Board Options Exchange sent a message saying that NYSE Arca was "out of NBBO" (National best bid and offer). The Chicago Board Options Exchange, NASDAQ, NASDAQ OMX BX and BATS Exchange all declared self-help against NYSE Arca.


title: 2010 flash crash

text: SEC Chairwoman Mary Schapiro testified that "stub quotes" may have played a role in certain stocks that traded for 1 cent a share.


title: 2010 flash crash

text: Officials announced that new trading curbs, also known as "circuit breakers", would be tested during a six-month trial period ending on December 10, 2010. These circuit breakers would halt trading for five minutes on any S&P 500 stock that rises or falls more than 10 percent in a five-minute period. The circuit breakers would only be installed to the 404 New York Stock Exchange listed S&P 500 stocks. The first circuit breakers were installed to only 5 of the S&P 500 companies on Friday, June 11, to experiment with the circuit breakers. The five stocks were EOG Resources, Genuine Parts, Harley Davidson, Ryder System and Zimmer Holdings. By Monday, June 14, 44 had them. By Tuesday, June 15, the number had grown to 223, and by Wednesday, June 16, all 404 companies had circuit breakers installed. On June 16, 2010, trading in the Washington Post Company's shares were halted for five minutes after it became the first stock to trigger the new circuit breakers. Three erroneous NYSE Arca trades were said to have been the cause of the share price jump.


title: 2010 flash crash

text: On May 6, the markets only broke trades that were more than 60 percent away from the reference price in a process that was not transparent to market participants. A list of 'winners' and 'losers' created by this arbitrary measure has never been made public. By establishing clear and transparent standards for breaking erroneous trades, the new rules should help provide certainty in advance as to which trades will be broken, and allow market participants to better manage their risks.


title: 2010 flash crash

text: In a 2011 article that appeared on the "Wall Street Journal" on the eve of the anniversary of the 2010 "flash crash", it was reported that high-frequency traders were then less active in the stock market. Another article in the journal said trades by high-frequency traders had decreased to 53% of stock-market trading volume, from 61% in 2009. Former Delaware senator Edward E. Kaufman and Michigan senator Carl Levin published a 2011 op-ed in "The New York Times" a year after the Flash Crash, sharply critical of what they perceived to be the SEC's apparent lack of action to prevent a recurrence.


title: 2010 flash crash

text: In 2011 high-frequency traders moved away from the stock market as there had been lower volatility and volume. The combined average daily trading volume in the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq Stock Market in the first four months of 2011 fell 15% from 2010, to an average of 6.3 billion shares a day. Trading activities declined throughout 2011, with April's daily average of 5.8 billion shares marking the lowest month since May 2008. Sharp movements in stock prices, which were frequent during the period from 2008 to the first half of 2010, were in a decline in the Chicago Board Options Exchange volatility index, the VIX, which fell to its lowest level in April 2011 since July 2007.


title: 2010 flash crash

text: These volumes of trading activity in 2011, to some degree, were regarded as more natural levels than during the financial crisis and its aftermath. Some argued that those lofty levels of trading activity were never an accurate picture of demand among investors. It was a reflection of computer-driven traders passing securities back and forth between day-trading hedge funds. The flash crash exposed this phantom liquidity. In 2011 high-frequency trading firms became increasingly active in markets like futures and currencies, where volatility remains high.


title: 2010 flash crash

text: In 2011 trades by high-frequency traders accounted for 28% of the total volume in the futures markets, which included currencies and commodities, an increase from 22% in 2009. However, the growth of computerized and high-frequency trading in commodities and currencies coincided with a series of "flash crashes" in those markets. The role of human market makers, who match buyers and sellers and provide liquidity to the market, was more and more played by computer programs. If those program traders pulled back from the market, then big "buy" or "sell" orders could have led to sudden, big swings. It would have increased the probability of surprise distortions, as in the equity markets, according to a professional investor. In February 2011, the sugar market took a dive of 6% in just one second. On March 1, 2011, cocoa futures prices dropped 13% in less than a minute on the Intercontinental Exchange. Cocoa plunged $450 to a low of $3,217 a metric ton before rebounding quickly. The U.S. dollar tumbled against the yen on March 16, 2011, falling 5% in minutes, one of its biggest moves ever. According to a former cocoa trader: "The electronic platform is too fast; it doesn't slow things down like humans would."


title: 2010 flash crash

text: In July 2012, the SEC launched an initiative to create a new market surveillance tool known as the Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT). By April 2015, despite support for the CAT from SEC Chair Mary Jo White and members of Congress, work to finish the project continued to face delays.


title: Regions of Ghana

text: The Regions of Ghana constitute the first level of subnational government administration within the Republic of Ghana. As of 2020, there are currently sixteen regions, which are further divided for administrative purposes into 260 local metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (or MMDA's).


title: Regions of Ghana

text: The former ten regional boundaries were officially established in 1987, when the Upper West Region was inaugurated as the state's newest administrative region. Although the official inauguration was in 1987, the Upper West Region had already functioned as an administrative unit since the break-up of the Upper Region in December 1982, prior to the 1984 national census. The referendum on the creation of six new regions was held on 27 December 2018 – all proposed new regions were approved.


title: Regions of Ghana

text: At Independence in March 1957, the Northern Territories, Trans-Volta Togoland and the Gold Coast came together to form Ghana. There were initially five regions. The Trans-Volta Togoland was combined with part of the Eastern Region and Northern Territories to form the Volta Region.


title: Regions of Ghana

text: On 4 April 1959, the Ashanti Region was officially split into the Ashanti and Brong-Ahafo Regions. This followed the Brong Ahafo Region Act No. 18 of 1959. This was in line with what the Brong Kyempem movement had been campaigning for, which is the recognition of the Bono people as a separate ethnic group from the Ashantis with their own region.


title: Regions of Ghana

text: On the day Ghana became a republic, 1 July 1960, the Northern Region got split into the Northern and Upper regions raising the number of regions to seven.


title: Regions of Ghana

text: During the second republic, the Western Region was split into the Western and Central Regions, making eight regions in total. This was done ahead of the 1970 population census. In 1971, Sekondi and Takoradi were merged to form Sekondi-Takoradi, the new capital of the Western Region.


title: Regions of Ghana

text: The Provisional National Defence Council which was the military government in power between 31 December 1981 and January 1993 promulgated the Greater Accra Law (PNDCL 26) of 23 July 1982 which created the Greater Accra Region. This made the Accra Capital District, where the national capital, Accra was and the Ada Local Council, both areas within the Eastern Region parts of the new Greater Accra Region. In the following year 1983, the Upper Region was divided into the Upper East Region and Upper West Regions, bringing the total number of regions to ten.