Pune

• 1. Introduction

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  Pune sits at the confluence of the Mula and Mutha rivers, on the western margin of the Deccan Plateau, 560 metres above sea level. For most of its life in English it was spelled Poona, and that older spelling stuck until 1978. It is the largest city in Maharashtra by area, covering 516.18 square kilometres, yet by population it trails a long way behind Mumbai. The earliest written trace of it is a copper plate from 937 CE that calls the place Punya-vishaya, which means holy land.

  How does a town that once held only a few peths become one of India's largest hubs for software and for cars at the same time? Why do people call it the Oxford of the East, and why did so many figures in the fight against British rule do their work here? The answers run through rock-cut temples, a riverside palace, dam floods, vaccine factories, and the rules of a game first written down in a garrison town. This is the story of a city that has been ruled, destroyed, rebuilt, and renamed more than once.

• 2. Names And Holy Ground

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  Punya-vishaya, the name on that 937 CE Rashtrakuta copper plate, breaks into parts that explain the city's self-image. Vishaya means land, while Punaka and Punya both mean holy. Under the Rashtrakuta dynasty the place was also called Punnaka and Punyapur. Copper plates of 758 and 768 CE record that the Yadava dynasty renamed it Punakavishaya and Punya Vishaya. By the 13th century it had become known as Punawadi.

  Kasbe Pune was the name in use during the reign of Shahaji, the father of the Maratha king Shivaji. A rare break from the holy-land theme came under the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. Some time between 1703 and 1705 he renamed a small neighbourhood in the central part of the old city Muhiyabad, in memory of his great-grandson Muhi-ul-Milan, who died there. The name Muhiyabad did not last. It was reverted soon after Aurangzeb's death, and the city carried its older identity forward into the centuries that followed.

• 3. Seat Of The Peshwas

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  In 1599 the Nizamshahi, the Ahmadnagar Sultanate, granted Pune as a jagir, or fiefdom, to Maloji Bhosale, who passed it to his son Shahaji. In 1636 a general of the rival Adil Shahi dynasty, Murar Jagdeo, destroyed the town. Shahaji later regained the Pune jagir and chose the town as the residence for his wife Jijabai and his young son Shivaji, the future founder of the Maratha empire. The Lal Mahal, their residence, was completed in 1640, and Shivaji spent his young years there. Jijabai is said to have commissioned the Kasba Ganapati temple, whose Ganesha idol became the presiding deity of the city.

  In 1720 Baji Rao I was appointed Peshwa, or prime minister, of the Maratha Empire by Shahu I, the fifth Chhatrapati. Bajirao moved his base from Saswad to Pune in 1728, beginning the change from kasbah into city. He commissioned the Shaniwar Wada on the high right bank of the Mutha, finished in 1730.

  Nanasaheb, Bajirao's son and successor, built a lake at Katraj and an underground aqueduct to carry its water to Shaniwar Wada and the city. That aqueduct was still working in 2004. Under the Peshwas the city gained around 250 temples and bridges, including the Lakdi Pul, and religion came to account for about 15 percent of the local economy. Nanasaheb also developed Saras Baug, Heera Baug and Parvati Hill, along with the peths of Sadashiv, Narayan, Rasta and Nana.

  The Peshwa influence across India declined after the defeat at the Battle of Panipat, yet Pune remained the seat of power. In 1802 Yashwantrao Holkar captured the city at the Battle of Poona, setting off the Second Anglo-Maratha War of 1803 to 1805. Peshwa rule finally ended in 1818 with the defeat of Peshwa Bajirao II by the British East India Company.

• 4. Poona Under The Raj

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  The Third Anglo-Maratha War broke out in 1817, and the Marathas were defeated at the Battle of Khadki, then spelled Kirkee, on the 5th of November near Pune. The British seized the city and placed it under the Bombay Presidency. They built a large military cantonment to the east, now used by the Indian Army, developed on European lines for the British military class. The old city kept its narrow lanes and areas segregated by caste and religion, while the cantonment grew differently.

  Poona Municipality was established in 1858, the year Crown rule began, and a railway line from Bombay opened that same year, run by the Great Indian Peninsula Railway. The settlement of regiments such as the Poona Horse cavalry, the Lancashire Fusiliers and the Maratha Light Infantry pushed the population up. The milder weather made Pune the monsoon capital of the Governor of Bombay. The Southern Command of the Indian Army, established in 1895, is still headquartered in the Pune cantonment.

  Gopal Krishna Gokhale and Bal Gangadhar Tilak led agitation in the city between 1875 and 1910. Social reform ran alongside the political struggle, led by Gopal Ganesh Agarkar, Mahatma Jyotirao Phule, the feminist Tarabai Shinde, Dhondo Keshav Karve and Pandita Ramabai. They demanded the abolition of caste prejudice, equal rights for women, harmony between Hindu and Muslim communities, and better schools for the poor. Mahatma Gandhi was held at Yerwada Central Jail several times. He was placed under house arrest at the Aga Khan Palace between 1942 and 1944, where both his wife Kasturba Gandhi and his aide Mahadev Desai died.

• 5. Motor City And Code

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  Hindustan Antibiotics, established in 1954, marked the start of industrial development in the Hadapsar, Bhosari and Pimpri areas. MIDC, formed in 1962, provided the infrastructure for new businesses and drove a constant process of industrial land acquisition. In the 1970s several engineering companies set up here, letting the city compete with Chennai. Chakan, one of the major industrial areas, has been called India's Motor City.

  Bajaj Auto, headquartered in Pune, is ranked the world's fourth largest two and three wheeler manufacturer. Automobile companies including Tata Motors, Mahindra and Mahindra, Skoda, Mercedes Benz, Force Motors, Volkswagen and Fiat run plants at Chakan. The Kirloskar Group, among India's largest makers of pumps, is headquartered here, as is the Kalyani Group, whose Bharat Forge operates the world's largest single location forging facility. As of August 2023, Tesla had leased space in Pune as a first step toward a presence in India.

  The Rajiv Gandhi Infotech Park in Hinjawadi is a 60,000 crore rupee project by MIDC, covering about 2,800 acres and home to over 800 IT companies. In the 1990s the city began attracting foreign capital in information technology and engineering. As of 2017 the IT sector employed more than 300,000 people. Infosys was founded in Pune and keeps a mega campus here, while firms such as Persistent Systems, Quick Heal, KPIT Technologies and Ubisoft Pune are headquartered in the city.

  The city also holds the world's largest vaccine manufacturer, the Serum Institute of India, described as the world's fifth largest vaccine producer by volume. Pune District had an estimated nominal GDP of 3,31,478 crore rupees for 2019 to 2020, making it the third largest contributor to Maharashtra's economy after Mumbai and Thane.

• 6. Faith And Festival

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  The Parvati temple complex on Parvati Hill, with at least 250 others, dates back to the 18th century, commissioned by the Peshwas and dedicated to deities including Maruti, Vithoba, Vishnu, Mahadeo, Rama, Krishna and Ganesh. Kasba Ganapati and the Tambadi Jogeshwari are considered guardian deities of the city, while the Dagadusheth Halwai Ganapati Temple is the richest Ganesh temple in Pune. Hinduism is practised by a little under 80 percent of people in the city.

  The Varkari sect of the Bhakti movement keeps two of its most important pilgrimage centres in Pune district. Alandi holds the samadhi of the 13th century saint Dnyaneshwar, and Dehu is where the 17th century saint Tukaram lived. Every year in the Hindu month of Ashadh the symbolic sandals of these saints are carried in the Pandharpur Vari, stopping in the city and drawing hundreds of thousands of devotees on the way to meet Vithoba.

  Ganesh Chaturthi is celebrated widely and publicly. Lokamanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak started the public version of the festival to get around the colonial ban on Hindu gatherings under anti-public assembly legislation in 1892. Processions are accompanied by Dhol-Tasha pathaks, percussion groups that have become a cultural identity of the city, with over 150 operating in and around Pune.

  Pune holds faiths well beyond the Hindu majority. The 19th century Ohel David Synagogue, known locally as Lal Deval, is said to be one of the largest synagogues in Asia outside Israel. St. Patrick's Cathedral, built in 1850, is the seat of the bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Poona. The controversial guru Rajneesh, also known as Osho, lived and taught in Pune through much of the 1970s and 1980s, and the Osho International Meditation Resort in Koregaon Park draws visitors from over a hundred countries.

• 7. Floods Metros And Marathons

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  The breach in the Panshet dam and the flood of 1961 destroyed housing close to the river banks and pushed the city to develop new suburbs and housing complexes. To bring order to growth, the Pune Metropolitan Region was defined in 1967, covering PMC, the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation, three cantonments and the surrounding villages. That region has since grown to 7,256 square kilometres, taking in seven municipal councils and 842 villages.

  Work on the six-lane Mumbai-Pune Expressway began in 1998 and was completed in 2001, cutting travel between the two cities to a little over two hours. Only four-wheeler vehicles are allowed on it. On the 13th of February 2010 a bomb exploded at the German Bakery in the Koregaon Park neighbourhood, killing 17 and injuring 60, with evidence pointing to the Indian Mujahideen group.

  Pune Metro now runs two operational lines, the Purple Line and the Aqua Line, with a combined length of 31.25 km, crossing at the District Court station. A third line is under construction to connect the Hinjewadi IT hub to the District Court, which would raise the combined length to 59.1 km. In January 2019 Pune became the first Indian city to adopt e-buses, and Bhekrai Nagar became the country's first all electric bus depot. As of January 2026 up to 490 electric buses had been deployed.

  Once known as the cycle city of India, Pune saw motorised two wheelers replace the bicycle. By 2018 the number of vehicles in the city, 3.62 million in total, had exceeded its population, with 2.70 million being two wheelers. The 2008 Commonwealth Youth Games encouraged development in the northwest, and the Pune International Marathon runs each year. The Maharashtra Cricket Association Stadium, seating 37,000, has hosted T20s, One Day Internationals and a test match.

• 8. Where Badminton Was Written Down

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  Badminton in its modern form originated in Pune. The game was also known as Poona or Poonah, after the British garrison town where it was particularly popular and where the first rules were drawn up in 1873. Games using shuttlecocks had been played for centuries across Eurasia, but the modern game developed among the British in the mid-19th century as a variant of battledore and shuttlecock, with battledore being an older word for racquet.

  The College of Engineering Pune, an autonomous institute of the government of Maharashtra founded in 1854, is the third oldest engineering college in Asia. The Deccan Education Society was founded by local citizens in 1884, including Bal Gangadhar Tilak, who founded Fergusson College in 1885. The Savitribai Phule Pune University, established as the University of Pune in 1949, is the largest university in the country by number of affiliated colleges.

  Research runs deep in the city. Pune hosts the Inter-university Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics, the National Chemical Laboratory founded in 1950, the National Institute of Virology and the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute. The PYC Hindu Gymkhana, one of the oldest clubs in India, has produced cricketers including D. B. Deodhar and Vijay Hazare. A city that wrote down the rules of a global game now trains astronomers and virologists within a few kilometres of where Shivaji spent his childhood at the Lal Mahal.