History[edit]
Malegaon is located on the Mumbai-Agra national highway (N.H.03) at the confluence of the Mausam and Girna rivers. Situated on the road linking Mumbai and Agra — now National Highway No 3 — it used to be a small junction known as Maliwadi (hamlet of gardens). It quickly gained the reputation for being a source of employment in 1740 when a local jahagirdar, Naro Shankar Raje Bahadur,
started building a fort in the area. As the fort took 25 years, a sizeable number of Muslim workers and artisans from places like Surat and northern India settled in the area. After the British capture of the Malegaon fort in 1818, Muslims from Hyderabad migrated to the region. The 1857 revolt saw many Muslims from the north locate themselves here, and the pattern kept repeating itself over the years. Malegaon, with its growing Muslim presence, became something of a shelter and a source of employment for the community whenever it faced reversals. If famine in 1862 forced Muslim weavers in the Varanasi area to move to Malegaon, the political upheavals in the Hyderabad of the late 1940s and 1950's saw a similar exodus to the town. Communal riots, specially from the 1960s onward, have also undoubtedly contributed to swelling the number of Muslim migrants to Malegaon. Geography[edit]
Malegaon is located at the confluence of Girna and Mausam rivers, at elevation of 438 metres (1437 feet) at 18°25′N 77°32′E / 18.42°N 77.53°E. It is located at around 280 km northeast of state capital Mumbai. It has good connectivity with nearby cities like Nashik, Manmad,Mumbai and Dhule. Economy[edit]
Malegaon is major hub for cloth weaving using early twentieth century power looms. It has an estimated 3 lakh power looms producing about 1 crore (10 million) meters of cloth every day. It attracts workers from various part of India due to lower cost of living and Muslim dominance. The power loom industry is going through difficult times due to various factors like fluctuating government policies, frequent electricity outage, lack of political will, middleman at every stage and reluctance to migrate to advanced machines. Though it is still a major source of employment, most of workers struggle to make a living. In recent times, the city has observed a change in migration pattern wherein the worker prefer to move to Metros compared to Malegaon for better and stable job opportunities.
