Sironj
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Sironj is a town lying in the Vidisha district of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.
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Sironj is a small town in Vidisha district of Madhya Pradesh. It is a block or sub district, along with five more blocks in the district Vidisha of Madhya Pradesh.
It is about 120 kms North of Bhopal, the Capital of Central Indian State of Madhya Pradesh. Although it lies in the Vidisha district and is about 85 kms from Vidisha town, which is the district headquarters) it is much easier to reach Sironj from Bhopal then from Vidisha, on account of better roads and more frequent buses plying between Bhopal and Sironj. It takes about 3.5 hours by a public transport bus to reach Sironj from Bhopal. These buses are available from Berasia bus stand of Bhopal. The nearest railway station is Ganj Basoda, 45 kilometers east of Sironj, which lies on the main Mumbai-Delhi railway route. For a person coming from Delhi, the best train to take is Hazrat Nizamuddin- Habibganj Express which leaves Delhi at 9 O’clock in night and reaches Ganj Basoda at 6 in the morning. Thereafter, one has to take a bus from here to Sironj, which is about 1 hour drive. The roads are not very good.
Terrainwise, Sironj is a mixture of undulating hilly tracts coupled with black cotton soil plains. The area was once full of forests but now almost completely devoid of them, barring the forests on the fringes of the block in remote villages. Sironj has a mixed population of Hindus, Muslims and Jains. While the villages are dominated mostly by Hindus, in the town, the Hindus and Muslims are almost in equal numbers. There is a considerable Jain population in Sironj. Most of the inhabitants of Sironj are traders, surrounded by the agriculturist community of about 300 villages that surround it.
Historically, Sironj was a part of Malwa region on the fringes of Bundelkhand and has been a Jain pilgrimage. As a part of the kingdom of Nawabs of Tonk, it bordered the empire of Scindhias of Gwalior. At the time of independence of India, Sironj was a part of Tonk state of Rajasthan. Thus, it became a land locked district of Rajasthan surrounded from all four sides by Madhya Pradesh. Under the state reorganization act in 1956, Sironj was made a part of Madhya Pradesh. However, it lost its status of a district and became a block (sub-district) under the Vidisha district of MP.
Being very close to the medieval trade route between Delhi and Gujarat, Sironj was full of traders. The most famous of such traders were the Maheshwaris, who later left Sironj taking offence on the actions of Nawab of Sironj. Their deserted palaces still dominate the skyline of Sironj, which was famous for its three tiered market. In a single building, there were shops that were partly underground and partly on the surface (meant for customers on feet), shops that were slightly raised (for the customers on the horseback) and shops on the first floor (for the customers on the elephant back). Many of these shops survive till date.
Main crops of Sironj area are Wheat, maize and gram in winters and Soyabean and lentils in rains. The wheat from Sironj and other parts of Vidisha are famous throughout India and are sold at premium prices in the markets of Delhi. The Soyabean from this area forms the backbone of the Soya-oil industry based at Indore.
(Writer is an Indian NGO worker who lived in Sironj from April 2002 to June 2004. All information provided here have been acquired first hand. For more information you can write to the writer at prashantmishra7@gmail.com or see his blog prashantmishra1.blogspot.com, in which the writer has penned down his experiences working with the poor farmers of Sironj.)
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