Mohammad Khalil remembers the first lock he ever opened. He was barely 10, standing beside his father in their cramped workshop on Railway Market Road. Decades later, at 60, he still stands in the same bustling lanes where tiny shops hum with the quiet authority of Aligarh’s legacy: locks of every kind and size. “My father was a locksmith, then I got into the business, and now my sons are taking it forward,” he says. “Locks aren’t just metal for us—they’re family.” A few shops away, Mohammad Mukhtadir shares the feeling. His extended family, scattered across India, is somehow threaded together through the lock trade. “I live in a house built 20 years ago, and we’ve been using the same lock ever since,” he laughs. “That’s Aligarh for you.”
The city’s roots in lockmaking run deep, reaching back to the British era when local karigars mastered the craft. Commercial production began in the 1870s with Johnson & Co., a British firm that trained local artisans. By the early 1900s, Aligarh had earned its moniker taalanagri—the city of locks—as workshops formalised and demand soared. “During British rule, there was suddenly a huge need for locks,” says Naveen Brijvasi, owner of Wolf Enterprises and Atom Locks. “And the raw materials and labour existed only in Aligarh. Things aligned perfectly back then, and they’ve stayed that way ever since.”
Today, Aligarh has grown into India’s largest lockmaking hub, home to roughly 6,400 registered companies that produce 75-80 per cent of the country’s locks. Yet, even with machines and modern production lines, much of the industry still rests in the hands of skilled karigars. In Shakeel Ahmed’s wholesale shop, decades of dusty files, brass keys, and unsold stock map the changing tides. “Our locks used to be exported, especially padlocks,” he says. “But that slowed down once China entered the market.” Demonetisation, fluctuating raw material prices, and cheap machine-made imports have weighed heavily on smaller sellers. Still, Mukhtadir believes Aligarh’s strength lies in sturdiness and range. “Even today, China cannot make lever locks the way we can,” he says. “Their products are limited in scope and heavily technology-dependent.”
But the soul of Aligarh’s lock industry lives in inherited craft. “I can’t operate a mobile phone,” Khalil admits, “but I know locks like the back of my hand.” And that is perhaps the city’s truest strength. Even as markets shift and pressures rise, Aligarh’s identity stays firmly fastened. As Ahmed puts it simply, “Everyone in Aligarh makes locks.”