Malwa (Punjab) in the context of "Bhatinda"

Bathinda is a city and municipal corporation in Punjab, India. The city is the administrative headquarters of Bathinda district. It is located in northwestern India in the Malwa Region, 227 km (141 mi) west of the capital city of Chandigarh and is the fifth largest city of Punjab. It is the second cleanest city in Punjab after Mohali.

Bathinda is home to the Maharaja Ranjit Singh Punjab Technical University, Central University of Punjab and AIIMS Bathinda. The city is also home to two modern thermal power plants, Guru Nanak Dev Thermal Plant and Guru Hargobind Thermal Plant at Lehra Mohabbat. Also located in the city is a fertiliser plant, two cement plants (Ambuja Cements and UltraTech Cement Limited), a large army cantonment, an air force station, a zoo, and a historic Qila Mubarak fort.

The Malavas (Brahmi script: 𑀫𑁆𑀫𑀸𑀭𑀯 Mālava) or Malwas were an ancient Indian tribe and confederation. They are a federation attested in various states in North and Central India. The modern regions of Malwa (Punjab) and Malwa region in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan are eponyms attributed to them. Their power gradually declined as a result of defeats against the Western Satraps (2nd century CE), the Gupta emperor Samudragupta (4th century), and the Chalukya emperor Pulakeshin II (7th century).

The Malava era, which later came to be known as Vikram Samvat, may have been first used by them.

Doaba, also known as Bist Doab or the Jalandhar Doab, is the region of Punjab, India that lies between the Beas River and the Sutlej River. People of this region are given the demonym "Doabia". The dialect of Punjabi spoken in Doaba is called "Doabi". The term "Doaba" or "Doab" is derived from Persian دو آب (do āb, literally "two bodies of water"), and signifies a region lying between and reaching to the confluence of two rivers. The river Sutlej separates Doaba from the Malwa region of India to its south and the river Beas separates Doaba from the Majha region, split between present day Pakistan and India, to its north.

Scheduled castes form more than 40% of the population in Doaba. This area is also called the NRI Hub of Punjab as a consequence of the migration of a significant percentage of Doabias.

Bathinda district is in Malwa region of Punjab, India. The district encompasses an area of 3,385 square kilometers. By area, Bathinda district is the second-largest in Punjab, after Ludhiana district. It is bounded by Faridkot district and Moga district on the north, Muktsar district on the west, Barnala and Mansa districts on the east, and the state of Haryana on the south. Bathinda is cotton producing belt of Punjab.

The Guru Nanak Dev Thermal Plant at Bathinda was one of the three coal-fired thermal power stations in Punjab (the other being at Lehra Mohabat and Ropar). It was a medium-sized power station with four units that were begun to be built in the early 1970s and completed in 1982. All total generate up to 460 MW (2x110+2x120 MW) of power that meets the irrigation needs of lower Punjab. Having generated electricity to meet the power demand of Punjab, the thermal plant shut down indefinitely on September 27, 2017.

The plant was named after the first Sikh guru and founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak.

The Mīnās (Gurmukhi: ਮੀਣਾ; mīṇā) were a heretical sect of Sikhs that followed Prithi Chand (1558–April 1618), the eldest son of Guru Ram Das, after his younger brother Guru Arjan was selected by the Guru to succeed him. Prithi Chand would vigorously contest this, attracting a portion of Sikhs to his side who followers of Guru Arjan referred to as ਮੀਣੇ mīṇe, meaning "charlatans," "dissemblers," or "scoundrels." They sustained their opposition to the orthodox line of Gurus through the seventeenth century, and upon Guru Gobind Singh's founding of the Khalsa in 1699, they were declared by him, as well as by Khalsa rahitnamas (codes of conduct), as one of the Panj Mel, or five reprobate groups, that a Sikh must avoid. They are occasionally referred to in the more neutral terms Sikhān dā chhotā mel ("those who remained with the true Guru lineage for a short time") or as the Miharvān sampraday (Gurmukhi: ਮਿਹਰਵਾਨ ਸੰਪਰਦਾ; miharavāna saparadā; meaning "the order of Miharvan") in scholarship. Minas referred to themselves in their writings as Sikhs.

They emerged as the only major rival sect of the Sikh Guru period, whose line of succession ran in parallel to that of Guru Arjan and his official successors. They controlled Amritsar and Harmandir Sahib built under Guru Arjan for much of the 17th century. The number of Minas rivalled that of the orthodox Sikhs and remained numerous in Malwa until the nineteenth century. The Minas gradually faded into the background of Sikh society in relation to the mainstream Khalsa, as Mina literati declined along with the sect. A surviving Mina group can be found in Guru Har Sahai, Punjab.

Khatri (IPA: [kʰət̪ɾiː]) is a caste originating from the Malwa and Majha areas of Punjab region of South Asia that is predominantly found in India, but also in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Khatris claim they are warriors who took to trade. In the Indian subcontinent, they were mostly engaged in mercantile professions such as banking and trade. They were the dominant commercial and financial administration class of late-medieval India. Some in Punjab often belonged to hereditary agriculturalist land-holding lineages, while others were engaged in artisanal occupations such as silk production and weaving.

The Khatris of Punjab, specifically, were scribes and traders during the medieval period, with the Gurumukhi script used in writing the Punjabi language deriving from a standardised form of the Lāṇḍa script used by Khatri traders; the invention of the script is traditionally ascribed to Guru Angad. During the medieval period, with the rise of Persian as an elite vernacular due to Islamic rule, some of the traditional high status upper-caste literate elite such as the Khatris, Kashmiri Brahmins and Kayasthas took readily to learning Persian from the times of Sikandar Lodi onwards and found ready employment in the Imperial Services, specifically in the departments of accountancy (siyaq), draftsmanship (insha) and offices of the revenue minister (diwan).