Pride series 14

 

North East — THE EVOLUTION OF A LAND OF IDEAS, DEVOTION AND POWER

There are places whose beauty makes us pause.

And there are places whose ideas make us pause.

The North East has done both.

A land of rivers, hills, forests, valleys, ancient communities, temples, monasteries and living traditions, the North East became one of the great cultural and intellectual landscapes of India.

Its story is not only one of kings and battles.

It is a story of philosophers, poets, saints, reformers, artists, administrators and seekers.

A place where people asked some of the most fundamental questions:

What is the nature of devotion?
What does it mean to live ethically?
How should society be organised?
What is the relationship between the individual and the Divine?
How can knowledge become a force for social transformation?

The North East did not merely preserve traditions.

It renewed them.

The North East — the land of learning

Ancient and medieval North East India became an important centre of Buddhist, Hindu, tribal and later Christian learning.

The region's temples, monasteries, inscriptions, sacred groves, royal centres and ancient settlements preserve evidence of long intellectual and artistic traditions.

Sites such as Kamakhya, Sivasagar, Majuli, Tawang, Unakoti, Tripura and the monasteries of Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh reveal a civilisation that invested deeply in philosophy, astronomy, literature, architecture and religious thought.

Knowledge had geography.

And the North East was one of its most important homes.

Buddhism, Hinduism and the traditions of learning

Buddhism became deeply connected with the North East.

The monasteries of Tawang, Bomdila, Rumtek and Sikkim, along with the Buddhist traditions of the Himalayan and border regions, preserve evidence of monastic life, artistic achievement and international religious exchange.

Assam, Manipur, Tripura and the Himalayan states became important centres of religious art, pilgrimage and cultural exchange, while the region's river routes and mountain passes connected the North East with wider networks across South and Southeast Asia.

Indigenous traditions also flourished across the region, especially through sacred groves, village institutions, ritual landscapes and oral traditions that remain central to the religious memory of the North East.

Across the region, Buddhist, Hindu, tribal, Islamic and later Christian influences formed part of a complex cultural landscape.

This was not a civilisation isolated from the world.

Ideas entered the North East—and ideas travelled through it.

The ancient kingdoms and the eastern Himalayan world

The ancient kingdoms of Kamarupa, Pragjyotisha, Manipur, Tripura and the Himalayan polities played an important role in the political and cultural history of eastern India.

Their cities connected the region with the wider subcontinent.

Pragjyotishpur, Guwahati, Sivasagar, Imphal, Agartala and the valleys of Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim became centres of political power, trade, philosophy and religious debate.

Sanskrit, Assamese, Bengali, Meitei, Bodo, Khasi, Mizo, Naga, Garo, Monpa, Lepcha and many other literary and oral traditions flourished, while inscriptions, chronicles, songs and legends reveal the participation of rulers, merchants, guilds, monks and communities in religious and social life.

The Brahmaputra was not merely a river flowing through the land.

It was a world of exchange.

Ashoka and the transformation of power

One of the most consequential political transformations in the history of the North East was associated with the spread of imperial and religious networks across the region.

From the Mauryan age onward, the eastern frontier became connected with wider systems of trade, administration and cultural exchange, while places such as Kamarupa and the Brahmaputra valley developed distinctive political traditions.

The spread of dhamma, compassion and ethical governance became part of the wider intellectual history of the region.

The states of the North East demonstrated the power of administration, communication and public welfare across difficult terrain and diverse communities.

The story of political power therefore became more than a story of imperial expansion.

It became a meditation on the moral responsibilities of power.

The North East and the path of knowledge

One of the North East's greatest intellectual traditions is centred on its monasteries, royal courts and centres of learning.

For centuries, the region served as a major centre of astronomy, literature, medicine, philosophy, theology and religious learning.

The courts of Kamarupa, the Ahom kingdom, Manipur, Tripura and Sikkim supported scholars, poets, chroniclers and teachers whose work contributed to the development of Indian and Himalayan intellectual traditions.

Its temples, monasteries and sacred landscapes transformed the region into a place where spiritual practice and intellectual inquiry existed side by side.

The pursuit of knowledge was not limited to kings or scholars.

It was sustained by anyone willing to seek truth.

The Buddhist movement

The North East became one of the important centres of the Buddhist movement.

The monasteries of the eastern Himalayas, the Buddhist traditions of Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim, and the networks linking Assam, Manipur and Southeast Asia connected the region with wider Buddhist worlds across the subcontinent and beyond.

Pilgrims, monks, merchants and artists travelled through mountain passes, river valleys and royal centres, carrying the memory of teachers and sacred places across generations.

The journey itself became a form of devotion.

The road became a place of encounter.

And learning became a vehicle for spiritual experience.

Mahavira, the Buddha and the traditions of debate

Jain and Buddhist traditions reached the eastern frontier through networks of monks, merchants and royal patrons.

The Buddha's teachings also influenced the religious and intellectual culture of the region through monasteries, pilgrimage routes and exchanges across the Himalayan and Brahmaputra worlds.

Their teachings helped shape the religious culture of the North East.

These teachers did not merely repeat inherited ideas.

They made spirituality immediate.

They asked whether ritual without compassion had any meaning.

They asked whether knowledge could exist without discipline.

And they insisted that truth had to be encountered through ethical action and personal transformation.

A culture of social questioning

The North East's philosophical and devotional traditions often challenged rigid social boundaries.

They did not erase inequality, and historical society remained deeply stratified.

But the teachings of the Buddha, Mahavira and later saints created powerful languages of spiritual dignity.

Figures such as Srimanta Sankardeva, Madhavdeva, Lalon Fakir and the saints and spiritual teachers of Assam, Manipur and the Himalayan regions expressed devotion and wisdom from social locations that elite religious institutions had often marginalised.

Their voices remain important because they reveal that the history of spirituality is also a history of social questioning.

The kingdoms of the North East and the idea of sovereignty

The North East's history also produced powerful political traditions through the Kamarupa, Ahom, Koch, Manipur, Tripura, Khasi, Jaintia, Mizo, Naga and Himalayan kingdoms.

The rulers of ancient and medieval eastern India built states that connected military power, administration, trade, agriculture and intellectual institutions.

Guwahati, Sivasagar, Imphal, Agartala and the Himalayan capitals became major political and cultural centres.

Their influence extended across large parts of the eastern subcontinent.

But their legacy is not only military.

The idea of kingship was closely connected with the protection of the land, the people and the moral order.

The cities, temples, monasteries and administrative systems of the North East became part of a larger political imagination:

that power could be sustained through organisation, knowledge and public responsibility.

The kingdoms of the North East

The North East's many dynasties and indigenous polities developed distinctive systems of administration, diplomacy and cultural patronage.

The Kamarupa, Ahom, Koch, Manikya, Ningthouja, Khasi, Jaintia and Himalayan rulers shaped the political history of the region.

Their courts supported architecture, sculpture, music, mathematics, astronomy, literature and scholarship.

This history was complex and involved warfare, alliances, taxation and negotiation.

But it also demonstrated the capacity of regional powers to preserve distinctive political and cultural traditions across centuries of change.

Sivasagar and the culture of public learning

Sivasagar became one of the great centres of Ahom political culture and public religious life.

Its temples, monuments, chronicles and royal institutions attracted pilgrims, artists, patrons and teachers from across the region.

The site's traditions included architecture, historical writing, ritual practice, music and scholarship.

The North East's institutions became places where knowledge was not merely preserved.

It was measured, debated and applied.

Reform, education and modern thought

The North East's modern history also produced reformers, educators and public thinkers who challenged social inequality and promoted education.

Movements for women's education, the reform of customary practices and the expansion of public institutions gradually transformed social life.

The work of figures such as Srimanta Sankardeva, Chandraprabha Saikiani, Rani Gaidinliu, Kanaklata Barua and Dr. B. R. Ambedkar's social vision influenced debates over land, labour, representation and social justice.

These figures and movements asked difficult questions:

Who has access to knowledge?
Who controls education?
Can a society call itself civilised while denying dignity to large sections of its people?

The struggle for equality

The North East's social history also includes the struggles of communities that faced ethnic discrimination, caste inequality, economic exclusion and limited access to education.

Reformers, activists and leaders from marginalised communities challenged inherited hierarchies and demanded dignity, representation and opportunity.

The work of figures such as Rani Gaidinliu, Bir Tikendrajit, Kanaklata Barua, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar and the leaders of tribal, women's and agrarian movements transformed the language of equality, democracy and social justice in the region.

Political democracy could not survive without social democracy.

Liberty, equality and fraternity had to become lived principles.

Literature and the eastern Indian imagination

The North East's contribution to Indian culture also lives in its literature.

Poets, storytellers, historians and performers developed rich traditions that explored devotion, heroism, love, honour, exile, social change and the relationship between people and land.

From the writings associated with Srimanta Sankardeva and the literary traditions of Assam and Manipur to the modern works of Lakshminath Bezbaroa, Indira Goswami, Mamang Dai, Temsula Ao and Easterine Kire, the literature of the North East has repeatedly expanded the boundaries of whose experience can become art.

The languages of the region became not only mediums of expression.

They became spaces of social memory.

The land and its people

The North East's physical diversity is extraordinary.

The Brahmaputra and Barak valleys.

The hills of Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Meghalaya and Tripura.

The forests of Arunachal Pradesh and Assam.

The mountains around Sikkim and Tawang.

The wetlands, tea gardens and agricultural fields.

The cities of Guwahati, Shillong, Imphal, Aizawl, Kohima, Agartala, Gangtok and Itanagar.

But landscapes do not create civilisation by themselves.

People do.

Farmers cultivated the river plains, valleys and hill slopes.

Fishing communities lived along the rivers and wetlands.

Tribal communities preserved distinctive relationships with forests, land and sacred landscapes.

Craftspeople developed traditions of textiles, weaving, painting, pottery, metalwork and woodwork.

Merchants connected inland markets with the wider subcontinent and Southeast Asia.

Pilgrims travelled to Kamakhya, Majuli, Tawang, Unakoti, Rumtek, Sivasagar and countless local shrines.

Workers built modern cities.

And generations carried memory forward.

Guwahati and the modern world

The North East's modern history cannot be understood without Guwahati.

A city shaped by administration, education, trade, technology and public institutions, Guwahati became one of the great urban centres of eastern India.

It brought together communities from across the region and the wider world.

Its markets, workshops, institutions, museums and universities transformed the surrounding landscape.

The North East's cities also became centres of journalism, theatre, cinema, handicrafts and public debate.

The region was often unequal and difficult.

But it became one of India's most powerful laboratories of political mobilisation, cultural continuity and modern change.

The difficult modern history

The North East's modern history also contains profound conflict, inequality, political change and social struggle.

Ethnic tensions, displacement, gender inequality, poverty, migration, insurgency, environmental degradation, communal tensions and the challenges faced by rural and tribal communities have shaped the lives of many people.

The region has witnessed intense debates over development, land rights, education, governance, autonomy, regional identity and social justice.

These are difficult chapters and remain subjects of political and historical disagreement.

They should neither be forgotten nor allowed to erase the much longer civilisational history of the North East.

What did the North East give India?

The North East gave India the sacred traditions of Kamakhya, Majuli, Tawang and the monasteries of the eastern Himalayas.

It gave India the intellectual traditions of Kamarupa, Assam, Manipur and the Himalayan kingdoms.

It gave India the architectural splendour of Sivasagar, Unakoti, Tripura and the monasteries of Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh.

It gave India the political vision of the Ahom, Manipur, Tripura, Khasi, Naga and Himalayan kingdoms.

It gave India the ethical and devotional traditions associated with Sankardeva, Madhavdeva and the spiritual teachers of the region.

It gave India the social questioning of Rani Gaidinliu, Kanaklata Barua, Bir Tikendrajit, Ambedkar and the reformers of the region.

It gave India a powerful literary and oral tradition.

It gave India distinctive traditions of weaving, painting, music, theatre, dance, crafts and scholarship.

And it gave India a reminder that regional culture can become a force of national transformation.

Perhaps the North East's deepest contribution is the way it connected knowledge, spiritual discipline, political courage and social memory.

Other regions built great temples.

Others built great kingdoms.

Others built great trading networks.

The North East built something equally enduring:

a culture of public learning.

Across its rivers, mountains, forests, cities, villages and pilgrimage roads, the North East's thinkers asked what it means to worship, to govern, to learn, to resist injustice and finally—

to create a society worthy of human dignity.

The land has known both extraordinary achievement and extraordinary suffering.

Yet beneath the changing political history remains an older North East:

the North East of the saint, the reformer, the warrior, the scholar and the seeker.

A land where ancient temples and monasteries rose beside sacred rivers and mountains—

and ideas continue to travel beyond them.

Pride series 13

 

Madhya Pradesh — THE EVOLUTION OF A LAND OF IDEAS, DEVOTION AND POWER

There are places whose beauty makes us pause.

And there are places whose ideas make us pause.

Madhya Pradesh has done both.

A land of rivers, plateaus, forests, ancient cities, temples, stupas and forts, Madhya Pradesh became one of the great cultural and intellectual landscapes of India.

Its story is not only one of kings and battles.

It is a story of philosophers, poets, saints, reformers, artists, administrators and seekers.

A place where people asked some of the most fundamental questions:

What is the nature of devotion?
What does it mean to live ethically?
How should society be organised?
What is the relationship between the individual and the Divine?
How can knowledge become a force for social transformation?

Madhya Pradesh did not merely preserve traditions.

It renewed them.

Madhya Pradesh — the land of learning

Ancient Madhya Pradesh became an important centre of Buddhist, Jain, Hindu and later Islamic learning.

The region's temples, stupas, inscriptions, monasteries, forts and ancient cities preserve evidence of long intellectual and artistic traditions.

Sites such as Sanchi, Ujjain, Vidisha, Khajuraho, Maheshwar and Omkareshwar reveal a civilisation that invested deeply in philosophy, astronomy, mathematics, architecture and religious thought.

Knowledge had geography.

And Madhya Pradesh was one of its most important homes.

Buddhism, Jainism and the traditions of learning

Buddhism became deeply connected with Madhya Pradesh.

The ancient stupas of Sanchi, commissioned during the Mauryan period and expanded by later dynasties, preserve evidence of monastic life, artistic achievement and international religious exchange.

Vidisha and Bharhut became important centres of Buddhist art and pilgrimage, while the region's trade routes connected central India with wider networks of cultural exchange.

Jain traditions also flourished across the region, especially around Sonagiri, Kundalpur and Bawangaja, where temples, caves and sacred landscapes remain central to the religious memory of Madhya Pradesh.

Across the state, Buddhist, Jain, Hindu, tribal and later Islamic influences formed part of a complex cultural landscape.

This was not a civilisation isolated from the world.

Ideas entered Madhya Pradesh—and ideas travelled through it.

The ancient kingdoms and the central Indian world

The ancient kingdoms of Avanti, Malwa, Vidarbha and the regions of the Narmada valley played an important role in the political and cultural history of central India.

Their cities connected the region with the wider subcontinent.

Ujjain, Vidisha, Mahishmati, Dhar and Mandu became centres of political power, trade, philosophy and religious debate.

Sanskrit, Prakrit, Apabhramsha and later Hindi, Bundeli, Malvi, Nimadi and other literary traditions flourished, while inscriptions and texts reveal the participation of rulers, merchants, guilds, monks and communities in religious and social life.

The Narmada was not merely a river flowing through the land.

It was a world of exchange.

Ashoka and the transformation of power

One of the most consequential political transformations in the history of Madhya Pradesh was associated with the Mauryan emperor Ashoka.

From his imperial centre, Ashoka ruled one of the largest empires in ancient Indian history, while places such as Sanchi and Vidisha became closely connected with the spread of Buddhism.

After the Kalinga War, his commitment to dhamma, compassion and ethical governance became one of the most influential political transformations in Indian history.

The Mauryan state demonstrated the power of administration, communication and public welfare across a vast territory.

The story of Ashoka therefore became more than a story of imperial expansion.

It became a meditation on the moral responsibilities of power.

Ujjain and the path of knowledge

One of Madhya Pradesh's greatest intellectual traditions is centred on Ujjain.

For centuries, Ujjain served as a major centre of astronomy, mathematics, astrology, literature and religious learning.

The city was associated with scholars such as Varahamihira and Brahmagupta, whose work contributed to the development of Indian scientific thought.

Its temples and observatories transformed the landscape into a place where spiritual practice and intellectual inquiry existed side by side.

The pursuit of knowledge was not limited to kings or scholars.

It was sustained by anyone willing to seek truth.

The Buddhist movement

Madhya Pradesh became one of the important centres of the Buddhist movement.

The stupas of Sanchi, the artistic traditions of Bharhut and the monastic networks of central India connected the region with wider Buddhist worlds across the subcontinent and beyond.

Pilgrims, monks, merchants and artists travelled through Sanchi, Vidisha and the Narmada valley, carrying the memory of teachers and sacred places across generations.

The journey itself became a form of devotion.

The road became a place of encounter.

And learning became a vehicle for spiritual experience.

Mahavira, the Buddha and the traditions of debate

Jain traditions spread across central India through networks of monks, merchants and royal patrons.

The Buddha's teachings also influenced the religious and intellectual culture of the region through monasteries, stupas and pilgrimage routes.

Their teachings helped shape the religious culture of Madhya Pradesh.

These teachers did not merely repeat inherited ideas.

They made spirituality immediate.

They asked whether ritual without compassion had any meaning.

They asked whether knowledge could exist without discipline.

And they insisted that truth had to be encountered through ethical action and personal transformation.

A culture of social questioning

Madhya Pradesh's philosophical and devotional traditions often challenged rigid social boundaries.

They did not erase inequality, and historical society remained deeply stratified.

But the teachings of the Buddha, Mahavira and later saints created powerful languages of spiritual dignity.

Figures such as Kabir, Ravidas, Singaji and the saints of the Narmada and Malwa regions expressed devotion and wisdom from social locations that elite religious institutions had often marginalised.

Their voices remain important because they reveal that the history of spirituality is also a history of social questioning.

The Mauryas, Guptas and the idea of sovereignty

Madhya Pradesh's history also produced powerful political traditions through the Mauryan, Gupta, Vakataka, Paramara and Chandela kingdoms.

The rulers of ancient and medieval central India built states that connected military power, administration, trade, agriculture and intellectual institutions.

Ujjain, Vidisha, Dhar and Khajuraho became major political and cultural centres.

Their influence extended across large parts of central and northern India.

But their legacy is not only military.

The idea of kingship was closely connected with the protection of the land, the people and the moral order.

The cities, temples and administrative systems of Madhya Pradesh became part of a larger political imagination:

that power could be sustained through organisation, knowledge and public responsibility.

The kingdoms of Madhya Pradesh

Madhya Pradesh's many dynasties developed distinctive systems of administration, diplomacy and cultural patronage.

The Maurya, Gupta, Vakataka, Kalachuri, Paramara, Chandela, Tomar, Gond, Bundela, Holkar and Scindia rulers shaped the political history of the region.

Their courts supported architecture, sculpture, music, mathematics, astronomy, literature and scholarship.

This history was complex and involved warfare, alliances, taxation and negotiation.

But it also demonstrated the capacity of regional powers to preserve distinctive political and cultural traditions across centuries of change.

Sanchi and the culture of public learning

Sanchi became one of the great centres of Buddhist art and public religious culture in ancient India.

Its stupas, gateways and monasteries attracted pilgrims, artists, patrons and teachers from across the subcontinent.

The site's traditions included sculpture, architecture, narrative art, monastic practice and Buddhist studies.

Madhya Pradesh's institutions became places where knowledge was not merely preserved.

It was measured, debated and applied.

Reform, education and modern thought

Madhya Pradesh's modern history also produced reformers, educators and public thinkers who challenged social inequality and promoted education.

Movements for women's education, the reform of customary practices and the expansion of public institutions gradually transformed social life.

The work of figures such as Ahilyabai Holkar, Savitribai Phule's educational movement in the wider region, Tantya Bhil and Dr. B. R. Ambedkar's social vision influenced debates over land, labour, representation and social justice.

These figures and movements asked difficult questions:

Who has access to knowledge?
Who controls education?
Can a society call itself civilised while denying dignity to large sections of its people?

The struggle for equality

Madhya Pradesh's social history also includes the struggles of communities that faced caste discrimination, economic exclusion and limited access to education.

Reformers, activists and leaders from marginalised communities challenged inherited hierarchies and demanded dignity, representation and opportunity.

The work of figures such as Tantya Bhil, Rani Durgavati, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar and the leaders of tribal and agrarian movements transformed the language of equality, democracy and social justice in the region.

Political democracy could not survive without social democracy.

Liberty, equality and fraternity had to become lived principles.

Literature and the central Indian imagination

Madhya Pradesh's contribution to Indian culture also lives in its literature.

Poets, storytellers, historians and performers developed rich traditions that explored devotion, heroism, love, honour, exile, social change and the relationship between people and land.

From the writings associated with Kalidasa and the literary traditions of Ujjain to the modern works of Subhadra Kumari Chauhan, Makhanlal Chaturvedi, Harishankar Parsai and Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh, the literature of Madhya Pradesh has repeatedly expanded the boundaries of whose experience can become art.

The languages of the region became not only mediums of expression.

They became spaces of social memory.

The land and its people

Madhya Pradesh's physical diversity is extraordinary.

The Narmada valley.

The Chambal and Betwa rivers.

The forests of Satpura and Vindhya.

The hills around Pachmarhi.

The wetlands and agricultural fields.

The cities of Bhopal, Indore, Ujjain, Gwalior, Jabalpur and Sagar.

But landscapes do not create civilisation by themselves.

People do.

Farmers cultivated the river plains and black-soil regions.

Fishing communities lived along the rivers and wetlands.

Tribal communities preserved distinctive relationships with forests, land and sacred landscapes.

Craftspeople developed traditions of textiles, painting, pottery, metalwork and woodwork.

Merchants connected inland markets with the wider subcontinent.

Pilgrims travelled to Ujjain, Omkareshwar, Maheshwar, Sanchi, Chitrakoot, Amarkantak and countless local shrines.

Workers built modern cities.

And generations carried memory forward.

Bhopal and the modern world

Madhya Pradesh's modern history cannot be understood without Bhopal.

A city shaped by administration, education, trade, technology and public institutions, Bhopal became one of the great urban centres of central India.

It brought together communities from across the region and the wider world.

Its markets, workshops, institutions, museums and universities transformed the surrounding landscape.

Madhya Pradesh's cities also became centres of journalism, theatre, cinema, handicrafts and public debate.

The region was often unequal and difficult.

But it became one of India's most powerful laboratories of political mobilisation, cultural continuity and modern change.

The difficult modern history

Madhya Pradesh's modern history also contains profound conflict, inequality, political change and social struggle.

Caste discrimination, agrarian distress, gender inequality, poverty, migration, displacement, environmental degradation, communal tensions and the challenges faced by rural and tribal communities have shaped the lives of many people.

The state has witnessed intense debates over development, land reform, education, governance, regional identity and social justice.

These are difficult chapters and remain subjects of political and historical disagreement.

They should neither be forgotten nor allowed to erase the much longer civilisational history of Madhya Pradesh.

What did Madhya Pradesh give India?

Madhya Pradesh gave India the stupas of Sanchi and the Buddhist art of Bharhut.

It gave India the intellectual traditions of Ujjain and Vidisha.

It gave India the architectural splendour of Khajuraho, Mandu and Maheshwar.

It gave India the political vision of Avanti, Malwa and the central Indian kingdoms.

It gave India the ethical transformation associated with Ashoka.

It gave India the devotional traditions of the Narmada, Omkareshwar, Ujjain and Chitrakoot.

It gave India the social questioning of Kabir, Rani Durgavati, Tantya Bhil, Ambedkar and the reformers of the region.

It gave India a powerful literary and oral tradition.

It gave India distinctive traditions of painting, music, theatre, crafts and scholarship.

And it gave India a reminder that regional culture can become a force of national transformation.

Perhaps Madhya Pradesh's deepest contribution is the way it connected knowledge, spiritual discipline, political courage and social memory.

Other regions built great temples.

Others built great kingdoms.

Others built great trading networks.

Madhya Pradesh built something equally enduring:

a culture of public learning.

Across its rivers, plateaus, forests, cities, villages and pilgrimage roads, Madhya Pradesh's thinkers asked what it means to worship, to govern, to learn, to resist injustice and finally—

to create a society worthy of human dignity.

The land has known both extraordinary achievement and extraordinary suffering.

Yet beneath the changing political history remains an older Madhya Pradesh:

the Madhya Pradesh of the saint, the reformer, the warrior, the scholar and the seeker.

A land where ancient stupas rose beside sacred rivers—

and ideas continue to travel beyond them.

Pride series 12

 

Bihar — THE EVOLUTION OF A LAND OF IDEAS, DEVOTION AND POWER

There are places whose beauty makes us pause.

And there are places whose ideas make us pause.

Bihar has done both.

A land of rivers, plains, forests, ancient cities, monasteries and universities, Bihar became one of the great cultural and intellectual landscapes of India.

Its story is not only one of kings and battles.

It is a story of philosophers, poets, saints, reformers, artists, administrators and seekers.

A place where people asked some of the most fundamental questions:

What is the nature of devotion?
What does it mean to live ethically?
How should society be organised?
What is the relationship between the individual and the Divine?
How can knowledge become a force for social transformation?

Bihar did not merely preserve traditions.

It renewed them.

Bihar — the land of learning

Ancient Bihar became one of the most important centres of Buddhist, Jain and Brahmanical learning.

The region's universities, monasteries, inscriptions and ancient cities preserve evidence of long intellectual and artistic traditions.

Sites such as Nalanda, Rajgir, Bodh Gaya and Vaishali reveal a civilisation that invested deeply in philosophy, logic, medicine, astronomy and religious thought.

Knowledge had geography.

And Bihar was one of its most important homes.

Buddhism, Jainism and the traditions of learning

Buddhism became deeply connected with Bihar.

The ancient university of Nalanda preserved evidence of monasteries, scholarship and international intellectual exchange. Students and teachers travelled there from across Asia to study philosophy, logic, grammar, medicine and Buddhist thought.

Bodh Gaya, where Siddhartha Gautama attained enlightenment beneath the Bodhi tree, became one of the most sacred places in the Buddhist world.

Jain traditions also flourished in the region, especially around Rajgir and Pawapuri, where Mahavira's life and teachings remain central to the religious memory of Bihar.

Across Bihar, Buddhist, Jain, Hindu and later Islamic influences formed part of a complex cultural landscape.

This was not a civilisation isolated from the world.

Ideas entered Bihar—and ideas travelled through it.

The ancient kingdoms and the Gangetic world

The ancient kingdoms of Magadha, Videha, Anga and Vajji played an important role in the political and cultural history of northern India.

Their cities connected the region with the wider Gangetic world.

Rajgir, Pataliputra, Vaishali and Mithila became centres of political power, trade, philosophy and religious debate.

Sanskrit, Prakrit, Pali and later Maithili literary traditions flourished, while inscriptions and texts reveal the participation of rulers, merchants, guilds, monks and communities in religious and social life.

The Ganga was not merely a river flowing through the land.

It was a world of exchange.

Ashoka and the transformation of power

One of the most consequential political transformations in the history of Bihar was associated with the Mauryan emperor Ashoka.

From his capital at Pataliputra, Ashoka ruled one of the largest empires in ancient Indian history.

After the Kalinga War, his commitment to dhamma, compassion and ethical governance became one of the most influential political transformations in Indian history.

The Mauryan state demonstrated the power of administration, communication and public welfare across a vast territory.

The story of Ashoka therefore became more than a story of imperial expansion.

It became a meditation on the moral responsibilities of power.

Bodh Gaya and the path of awakening

One of Bihar's greatest spiritual traditions is centred on Bodh Gaya.

Here, according to Buddhist tradition, Siddhartha Gautama attained enlightenment and became the Buddha.

The Mahabodhi Temple and the sacred Bodhi tree transformed the landscape into a place of pilgrimage for people from across the world.

The tradition of Bodh Gaya brought together diverse communities and developed a powerful vision of inner discipline, compassion and liberation.

The spiritual path was not limited to kings or scholars.

It was open to anyone willing to seek truth.

The Buddhist movement

Bihar became one of the most important centres of the Buddhist movement.

The teachings associated with the Buddha, the great monasteries of Nalanda and Vikramashila, and the networks of monks and pilgrims connected Bihar with Sri Lanka, Central Asia, Tibet, China and Southeast Asia.

Pilgrims travelled to Bodh Gaya, Rajgir, Nalanda and Vaishali, carrying the memory of teachers and sacred places across generations.

The journey itself became a form of devotion.

The road became a place of encounter.

And learning became a vehicle for spiritual experience.

Mahavira, the Buddha and the traditions of debate

Mahavira, the twenty-fourth Tirthankara of Jainism, was born in the region of ancient Videha and attained liberation at Pawapuri.

The Buddha spent significant years in Magadha and the surrounding regions, teaching communities of monks, rulers, merchants and householders.

Their teachings helped shape the religious culture of the region.

These teachers did not merely repeat inherited ideas.

They made spirituality immediate.

They asked whether ritual without compassion had any meaning.

They asked whether knowledge could exist without discipline.

And they insisted that truth had to be encountered through ethical action and personal transformation.

A culture of social questioning

Bihar's philosophical and devotional traditions often challenged rigid social boundaries.

They did not erase inequality, and historical society remained deeply stratified.

But the teachings of the Buddha, Mahavira and later saints created powerful languages of spiritual dignity.

Figures such as the Buddha, Mahavira, Kabir and the saints of Mithila expressed devotion and wisdom from social locations that elite religious institutions had often marginalised.

Their voices remain important because they reveal that the history of spirituality is also a history of social questioning.

The Mauryas, Guptas and the idea of sovereignty

Bihar's history also produced powerful political traditions through the Mauryan and Gupta empires.

The rulers of ancient Magadha built states that connected military power, administration, trade, agriculture and intellectual institutions.

Pataliputra became one of the major political centres of the ancient world.

Its influence extended across large parts of the Indian subcontinent.

But its legacy is not only military.

The idea of kingship was closely connected with the protection of the land, the people and the moral order.

The cities, universities and administrative systems of Bihar became part of a larger political imagination:

that power could be sustained through organisation, knowledge and public responsibility.

The kingdoms of Bihar

Bihar's many dynasties developed distinctive systems of administration, diplomacy and cultural patronage.

The Haryanka, Shishunaga, Nanda, Maurya, Gupta, Pala and Sena rulers shaped the political history of the region.

Their courts supported architecture, sculpture, mathematics, astronomy, literature and scholarship.

This history was complex and involved warfare, alliances, taxation and negotiation.

But it also demonstrated the capacity of regional powers to preserve distinctive political and cultural traditions across centuries of change.

Nalanda and the culture of public learning

Nalanda became one of the great centres of learning in the ancient world.

Its monasteries and lecture halls attracted students and teachers from across Asia.

The university's traditions included philosophy, grammar, medicine, mathematics, astronomy and Buddhist studies.

Bihar's institutions became places where knowledge was not merely preserved.

It was measured, debated and applied.

Reform, education and modern thought

Bihar's modern history also produced reformers, educators and public thinkers who challenged social inequality and promoted education.

Movements for women's education, the reform of customary practices and the expansion of public institutions gradually transformed social life.

The Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha and other social and political movements played important roles in debates over land, labour, representation and rural justice.

These figures and movements asked difficult questions:

Who has access to knowledge?
Who controls education?
Can a society call itself civilised while denying dignity to large sections of its people?

The struggle for equality

Bihar's social history also includes the struggles of communities that faced caste discrimination, economic exclusion and limited access to education.

Reformers, activists and leaders from marginalised communities challenged inherited hierarchies and demanded dignity, representation and opportunity.

The work of figures such as Swami Sahajanand Saraswati, Jagjivan Ram and Jayaprakash Narayan transformed the language of equality, democracy and social justice in the region.

Political democracy could not survive without social democracy.

Liberty, equality and fraternity had to become lived principles.

Literature and the Maithili imagination

Bihar's contribution to Indian culture also lives in its literature.

Bihari poets, storytellers, historians and performers developed rich traditions that explored devotion, heroism, love, honour, exile, social change and the relationship between people and land.

From the writings of Vidyapati and the Buddhist and Jain authors to the modern works of Ramdhari Singh Dinkar, Phanishwar Nath Renu and Nagarjun, the literature of Bihar has repeatedly expanded the boundaries of whose experience can become art.

The languages of the region became not only mediums of expression.

They became spaces of social memory.

The land and its people

Bihar's physical diversity is extraordinary.

The Ganga plain.

The Kosi and Gandak rivers.

The forests of southern Bihar.

The hills around Rajgir.

The wetlands and agricultural fields.

The cities of Patna, Gaya, Muzaffarpur, Bhagalpur and Darbhanga.

But landscapes do not create civilisation by themselves.

People do.

Farmers cultivated the river plains.

Fishing communities lived along the rivers and wetlands.

Tribal communities preserved distinctive relationships with forests, land and sacred landscapes.

Craftspeople developed traditions of textiles, painting, pottery, metalwork and woodwork.

Merchants connected inland markets with the wider Gangetic world.

Pilgrims travelled to Bodh Gaya, Rajgir, Vaishali, Pawapuri, Mithila and countless local shrines.

Workers built modern cities.

And generations carried memory forward.

Patna and the modern world

Bihar's modern history cannot be understood without Patna.

A city shaped by administration, education, trade, technology and public institutions, Patna became one of the great urban centres of northern India.

It brought together communities from across the region and the wider world.

Its markets, workshops, institutions, museums and universities transformed the surrounding landscape.

Bihar's cities also became centres of journalism, theatre, cinema, handicrafts and public debate.

The region was often unequal and difficult.

But it became one of India's most powerful laboratories of political mobilisation, cultural continuity and modern change.

The difficult modern history

Bihar's modern history also contains profound conflict, inequality, political change and social struggle.

Caste discrimination, agrarian distress, gender inequality, poverty, migration, displacement, environmental degradation, communal tensions and the challenges faced by rural and tribal communities have shaped the lives of many people.

The state has witnessed intense debates over development, land reform, education, governance, regional identity and social justice.

These are difficult chapters and remain subjects of political and historical disagreement.

They should neither be forgotten nor allowed to erase the much longer civilisational history of Bihar.

What did Bihar give India?

Bihar gave India the awakening of the Buddha at Bodh Gaya.

It gave India the teachings of Mahavira.

It gave India the intellectual traditions of Nalanda and Vikramashila.

It gave India the political vision of Pataliputra and the Mauryan state.

It gave India the ethical transformation associated with Ashoka.

It gave India the philosophical traditions of Mithila and Vaishali.

It gave India the social questioning of Kabir, Jayaprakash Narayan and the reformers of the region.

It gave India a powerful literary and oral tradition.

It gave India distinctive traditions of painting, music, theatre, crafts and scholarship.

And it gave India a reminder that regional culture can become a force of national transformation.

Perhaps Bihar's deepest contribution is the way it connected knowledge, spiritual discipline, political courage and social memory.

Other regions built great temples.

Others built great kingdoms.

Others built great trading networks.

Bihar built something equally enduring:

a culture of public learning.

Across its rivers, plains, forests, cities, villages and pilgrimage roads, Bihari thinkers asked what it means to worship, to govern, to learn, to resist injustice and finally—

to create a society worthy of human dignity.

The land has known both extraordinary achievement and extraordinary suffering.

Yet beneath the changing political history remains an older Bihar:

the Bihar of the saint, the reformer, the warrior, the scholar and the seeker.

A land where ancient universities rose beside sacred rivers—

and ideas continue to travel beyond them.

Pride series 11

 

Odisha — THE EVOLUTION OF A LAND OF IDEAS, DEVOTION AND POWER

There are places whose beauty makes us pause.

And there are places whose ideas make us pause.

Odisha has done both.

A land of coasts, rivers, forests, hills, temples and ancient cities, Odisha became one of the great cultural and intellectual landscapes of India.

Its story is not only one of kings and battles.

It is a story of philosophers, poets, saints, reformers, artists, administrators and seekers.

A place where people asked some of the most fundamental questions:

What is the nature of devotion?
What does it mean to live ethically?
How should society be organised?
What is the relationship between the individual and the Divine?
How can knowledge become a force for social transformation?

Odisha did not merely preserve traditions.

It renewed them.

Odisha — the land of learning

Ancient Odisha became an important centre of Buddhist, Jain and Brahmanical learning.

The region's temples, inscriptions, monasteries and ancient cities preserve evidence of long intellectual and artistic traditions.

Sites such as Bhubaneswar, Puri, Konark and Ratnagiri reveal a civilisation that invested deeply in philosophy, architecture, sculpture and religious thought.

Knowledge had geography.

And Odisha was one of its important homes.

Buddhism, Jainism and the traditions of learning

Buddhism became deeply connected with Odisha.

The ancient centres of Ratnagiri, Udayagiri and Lalitgiri preserve evidence of monasteries, sculpture, scholarship and international religious exchange.

Jain traditions also flourished in the region, especially around Khandagiri and Udayagiri, where caves and inscriptions preserve the memory of early religious communities and royal patronage.

Across Odisha, Buddhist, Jain, Hindu and later Islamic influences formed part of a complex cultural landscape.

This was not a civilisation isolated from the world.

Ideas entered Odisha—and ideas travelled through it.

The Kalinga kingdoms and the coastal world

The ancient kingdom of Kalinga played an important role in the political and cultural history of eastern India.

Its ports connected the region with Sri Lanka, Southeast Asia and the wider Indian Ocean world.

The maritime traditions of Odisha, remembered through festivals such as Boita Bandana, preserve the memory of merchants and sailors who travelled across the seas.

Sanskrit, Prakrit and Odia literary traditions flourished, while inscriptions reveal the participation of rulers, merchants, guilds, monks and communities in religious and social life.

The coast was not merely a boundary between land and sea.

It was a world of exchange.

Ashoka and the transformation of power

One of the most consequential events in the history of Odisha was the Kalinga War.

In the third century BCE, the Mauryan emperor Ashoka invaded Kalinga in a conflict remembered for its immense destruction and loss of life.

The suffering of the war is said to have transformed Ashoka's understanding of kingship and violence.

His later commitment to dhamma, compassion and ethical governance became one of the most influential political transformations in Indian history.

The story of Kalinga therefore became more than a story of conquest.

It became a meditation on the moral limits of power.

Jagannath and devotion in the language of the people

One of Odisha's greatest spiritual traditions is centred on Lord Jagannath of Puri.

The Jagannath tradition brought together diverse religious influences and developed a powerful vision of divine presence, community and shared devotion.

The annual Rath Yatra carries the deities beyond the temple, into the public world.

This was a remarkable act.

Devotion was not kept within the boundaries of courtly or elite religious culture.

It was brought into the language of ordinary people.

The Divine was not distant from everyday life.

The spiritual path could be walked by anyone.

The Bhakti movement

Odisha became one of the important centres of the Bhakti movement.

The devotional traditions associated with Jagannath, Krishna, Shiva and the saints brought together people across social backgrounds.

Pilgrims travelled to Puri and other sacred places, singing devotional songs and carrying the memory of saints across generations.

The journey itself became a form of devotion.

The road became a place of encounter.

And poetry became a vehicle for spiritual experience.

Chaitanya, Panchasakha and the devotional tradition

Chaitanya Mahaprabhu spent significant years in Puri, where his devotion to Krishna deeply influenced the religious culture of the region.

The Panchasakha—Balarama Dasa, Jagannatha Dasa, Achyutananda Dasa, Ananta Dasa and Jasobanta Dasa—helped shape Odia devotional literature and spiritual thought.

Their writings made religious ideas accessible through the Odia language.

These poets did not merely repeat inherited ideas.

They made spirituality immediate.

They asked whether ritual without compassion had any meaning.

They asked whether devotion could exist without humility.

And they insisted that the Divine could be encountered in the lives of ordinary people.

A culture of social questioning

Odisha's devotional traditions often challenged rigid social boundaries.

They did not erase inequality, and historical society remained deeply stratified.

But the poetry of the saints created a powerful language of spiritual dignity.

Figures such as Bhima Bhoi, the Panchasakha poets and the devotees of Jagannath expressed devotion from social locations that elite religious institutions had often marginalised.

Their voices remain important because they reveal that the history of spirituality is also a history of social questioning.

The Gajapati kings and the idea of sovereignty

Odisha's history also produced powerful political traditions through the Gajapati kings.

The rulers of medieval Odisha built a state that connected military power, temple institutions, maritime trade and regional administration.

The Gajapati kingdom became one of the major political powers of eastern India.

Its influence extended across large parts of the eastern coast and the Deccan.

But its legacy is not only military.

The idea of kingship was closely connected with the protection of the land, the people and the sacred order centred on Jagannath.

The temples and strongholds of Odisha became part of a larger political imagination:

that power could be defended through organisation, courage and cultural legitimacy.

The kingdoms of Odisha

Odisha's many dynasties developed distinctive systems of administration, diplomacy and cultural patronage.

The Mahameghavahana, Bhauma-Kara, Somavamsi, Eastern Ganga and Gajapati rulers shaped the political history of the region.

Their courts supported architecture, sculpture, music, literature and scholarship.

This history was complex and involved warfare, alliances, taxation and negotiation.

But it also demonstrated the capacity of regional powers to preserve distinctive political and cultural traditions across centuries of change.

Bhubaneswar and the culture of public life

Bhubaneswar became one of the great temple cities of India.

Its sacred landscape includes the Lingaraja Temple, Mukteshwar Temple, Rajarani Temple and countless other monuments that reveal the relationship between architecture, ritual, mathematics and political authority.

Odisha's cities became places where knowledge was not merely preserved.

It was measured, debated and applied.

Reform, education and modern thought

Odisha's modern history also produced reformers, educators and public thinkers who challenged social inequality and promoted education.

Movements for women's education, the reform of customary practices and the expansion of public institutions gradually transformed social life.

The Utkal Sammilani played an important role in the movement for linguistic and cultural unity, eventually contributing to the creation of Odisha as a separate linguistic province in 1936.

These figures and movements asked difficult questions:

Who has access to knowledge?
Who controls education?
Can a society call itself civilised while denying dignity to large sections of its people?

The struggle for equality

Odisha's social history also includes the struggles of communities that faced caste discrimination, economic exclusion and limited access to education.

Reformers, activists and leaders from marginalised communities challenged inherited hierarchies and demanded dignity, representation and opportunity.

The work of figures such as Bhima Bhoi transformed the language of equality and compassion in the region.

Political democracy could not survive without social democracy.

Liberty, equality and fraternity had to become lived principles.

Literature and the Odia imagination

Odisha's contribution to Indian culture also lives in its literature.

Odia poets, storytellers, historians and performers developed rich traditions that explored devotion, heroism, love, honour, exile, social change and the relationship between people and land.

From the writings of Sarala Dasa and the Panchasakha poets to the modern works of Fakir Mohan Senapati, Radhanath Ray and Gangadhar Meher, Odia literature has repeatedly expanded the boundaries of whose experience can become art.

The language became not only a medium of expression.

It became a space of social memory.

The land and its people

Odisha's physical diversity is extraordinary.

The Bay of Bengal coast.

The Mahanadi delta.

The Eastern Ghats.

The forests of Koraput and Mayurbhanj.

The Chilika Lake.

The rivers, wetlands and tribal highlands.

The cities of Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Puri, Sambalpur and Rourkela.

But landscapes do not create civilisation by themselves.

People do.

Farmers cultivated the river plains.

Fishing communities lived along the coast and around Chilika.

Tribal communities preserved distinctive relationships with forests, land and sacred landscapes.

Craftspeople developed traditions of textiles, jewellery, pottery, painting and metalwork.

Merchants connected inland markets with ports across the eastern coast.

Pilgrims travelled to Puri, Bhubaneswar, Konark, Taratarini and countless local shrines.

Workers built modern cities.

And generations carried memory forward.

Bhubaneswar and the modern world

Odisha's modern history cannot be understood without Bhubaneswar.

A planned city shaped by administration, education, technology and public institutions, Bhubaneswar became one of the great urban centres of eastern India.

It brought together communities from across the region and the wider world.

Its markets, workshops, institutions, museums and universities transformed the surrounding landscape.

Odisha's cities also became centres of journalism, theatre, tourism, handicrafts and public debate.

The region was often unequal and difficult.

But it became one of India's most powerful laboratories of cultural continuity and modern change.

The difficult modern history

Odisha's modern history also contains profound conflict, inequality, political change and social struggle.

Caste discrimination, agrarian distress, gender inequality, poverty, displacement, environmental degradation, communal tensions and the challenges faced by tribal communities have shaped the lives of many people.

The state has witnessed intense debates over development, mining, heritage, tourism, regional identity and social justice.

These are difficult chapters and remain subjects of political and historical disagreement.

They should neither be forgotten nor allowed to erase the much longer civilisational history of Odisha.

What did Odisha give India?

Odisha gave India the spiritual world of Jagannath.

It gave India the devotional poetry of the Panchasakha.

It gave India the ethical transformation associated with Ashoka after the Kalinga War.

It gave India the maritime traditions of ancient Kalinga.

It gave India the architectural vision of Bhubaneswar, Puri and Konark.

It gave India the compassionate social questioning of Bhima Bhoi.

It gave India a powerful literary and oral tradition.

It gave India distinctive traditions of music, dance, textiles, crafts and architecture.

And it gave India a reminder that regional culture can become a force of national transformation.

Perhaps Odisha's deepest contribution is the way it connected devotion, knowledge, political courage and cultural memory.

Other regions built great temples.

Others built great kingdoms.

Others built great trading networks.

Odisha built something equally enduring:

a culture of public memory.

Across its coasts, rivers, forests, cities, villages and pilgrimage roads, Odia thinkers asked what it means to worship, to govern, to learn, to resist injustice and finally—

to create a society worthy of human dignity.

The land has known both extraordinary achievement and extraordinary suffering.

Yet beneath the changing political history remains an older Odisha:

the Odisha of the saint, the reformer, the warrior, the scholar and the seeker.

A land where temples rise beside the sea—

and ideas continue to travel beyond them.

Pride series10

 

RAJASTHAN — THE EVOLUTION OF A LAND OF IDEAS, DEVOTION AND POWER

There are places whose beauty makes us pause.

And there are places whose ideas make us pause.

Rajasthan has done both.

A land of deserts, mountains, lakes, forests and ancient cities, Rajasthan became one of the great cultural and intellectual landscapes of India.

Its story is not only one of kings and battles.

It is a story of philosophers, poets, saints, reformers, artists, administrators and seekers.

A place where people asked some of the most fundamental questions:

What is the nature of devotion?
What does it mean to live ethically?
How should society be organised?
What is the relationship between the individual and the Divine?
How can knowledge become a force for social transformation?

Rajasthan did not merely preserve traditions.

It renewed them.

Rajasthan — the land of learning

Ancient Rajasthan became an important centre of Jain, Brahmanical and Buddhist learning.

The region's temples, inscriptions, monasteries and fortified cities preserve evidence of long intellectual and artistic traditions.

Sites such as Chittorgarh, Ranakpur, Osian and Dilwara reveal a civilisation that invested deeply in philosophy, architecture, sculpture and religious thought.

Knowledge had geography.

And Rajasthan was one of its important homes.

Jainism and the traditions of learning

Jainism became deeply connected with Rajasthan.

Merchants, monks and patrons supported the creation of temples, libraries and centres of learning along important trade routes.

The temples of Mount Abu and Ranakpur preserve some of the finest surviving examples of Jain architecture in India, expressing ideals of discipline, non-violence and spiritual liberation.

Across Rajasthan, Hindu, Jain and Islamic monuments stand within the same extraordinary landscape.

This was not a civilisation isolated from the world.

Ideas entered Rajasthan—and ideas travelled through it.

The Rajput kingdoms and the desert world

The Rajput kingdoms played an important role in the political and cultural history of northern and western India.

Their rule connected inland regions with trade routes leading toward Gujarat, Sindh, Central Asia and the Gangetic plains.

Sanskrit, Prakrit, Dingal and later Rajasthani literary traditions flourished, while inscriptions reveal the participation of rulers, merchants, guilds, monks and women in religious and social life.

The desert was not merely a barrier between regions.

It was a world of exchange.

Mirabai — devotion in the language of the heart

One of Rajasthan's greatest spiritual and poetic figures was Mirabai.

In the sixteenth century, she composed devotional songs dedicated to Krishna that continue to be sung across India.

This was a remarkable act.

Devotion was not kept within the boundaries of courtly or elite religious culture.

It was brought into the language of ordinary people.

Mirabai explored love, surrender, longing and the freedom of the individual soul.

The Divine was not distant from everyday life.

The spiritual path could be walked by anyone.

The Bhakti movement

Rajasthan became one of the important centres of the Bhakti movement.

The devotional traditions associated with Krishna, Rama, Shiva and the saints brought together people across social backgrounds.

Pilgrims travelled to temples and sacred towns, singing bhajans and carrying the memory of saints across generations.

The journey itself became a form of devotion.

The road became a place of encounter.

And poetry became a vehicle for spiritual experience.

Dadu Dayal, Charan poets and the devotional tradition

Dadu Dayal preached a path of devotion that challenged religious divisions and emphasised the unity of the Divine.

The Charan poets preserved heroic narratives, genealogies and ethical ideals through oral and written traditions.

Rajasthani devotional and heroic poetry gave voice to courage, loyalty, sacrifice and spiritual longing.

These poets did not merely repeat inherited ideas.

They made spirituality immediate.

They asked whether ritual without compassion had any meaning.

They asked whether devotion could exist without humility.

And they insisted that the Divine could be encountered in the lives of ordinary people.

A culture of social questioning

Rajasthan's devotional traditions often challenged rigid social boundaries.

They did not erase inequality, and historical society remained deeply stratified.

But the poetry of the saints created a powerful language of spiritual dignity.

Figures such as Mirabai, Dadu Dayal and the poet-saints of the desert expressed devotion from social locations that elite religious institutions had often marginalised.

Their voices remain important because they reveal that the history of spirituality is also a history of social questioning.

Maharana Pratap and the idea of resistance

Rajasthan's history also produced one of the most influential political figures of early modern India:

Maharana Pratap.

He became a symbol of resistance through military courage, strategic endurance and a refusal to surrender political autonomy.

But his legacy is not only military.

The idea of swadharma—the duty to protect one's land, people and honour—became central to his political imagination.

He relied upon forts, forests, local communities and knowledge of the rugged terrain of Mewar.

The mountains and strongholds of Rajasthan became part of a larger political imagination:

that power could be defended through organisation, courage and self-rule.

The Rajput states

Rajasthan's many kingdoms developed distinctive systems of administration, diplomacy and cultural patronage.

The rulers of Mewar, Marwar, Amber, Bikaner, Bundi and Kota shaped the political history of northern and western India.

Their courts supported architecture, painting, music, literature and scholarship.

This history was complex and involved warfare, alliances, taxation and negotiation.

But it also demonstrated the capacity of regional powers to preserve distinctive political and cultural traditions across centuries of change.

Jaipur and the culture of public life

Jaipur later became an important centre of education, science, commerce and political debate.

In the eighteenth century, Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II founded the city and built the astronomical observatories known as the Jantar Mantars.

These instruments reflected a culture that connected mathematics, astronomy, architecture and statecraft.

Rajasthan's cities became places where knowledge was not merely preserved.

It was measured, debated and applied.

Reform, education and modern thought

Rajasthan's modern history also produced reformers, educators and public thinkers who challenged social inequality and promoted education.

Movements for women's education, the reform of customary practices and the expansion of public institutions gradually transformed social life.

The Arya Samaj and other reform movements influenced education and religious debate across the region.

These figures and movements asked difficult questions:

Who has access to knowledge?
Who controls education?
Can a society call itself civilised while denying dignity to large sections of its people?

The struggle for equality

Rajasthan's social history also includes the struggles of communities that faced caste discrimination, economic exclusion and limited access to education.

Reformers, activists and leaders from marginalised communities challenged inherited hierarchies and demanded dignity, representation and opportunity.

Their work transformed the language of equality in modern Rajasthan.

Political democracy could not survive without social democracy.

Liberty, equality and fraternity had to become lived principles.

Literature and the Rajasthani imagination

Rajasthan's contribution to Indian culture also lives in its literature.

Rajasthani poets, storytellers, historians and performers developed rich traditions that explored devotion, heroism, love, honour, exile, social change and the relationship between people and land.

From the songs of Mirabai to the oral epics of the desert, Rajasthani writing and performance have repeatedly expanded the boundaries of whose experience can become art.

The language became not only a medium of expression.

It became a space of social memory.

The land and its people

Rajasthan's physical diversity is extraordinary.

The Thar Desert.

The Aravalli mountains.

The lakes of Mewar.

The forests of the southeast.

The Chambal ravines.

The cities of Jaipur, Jodhpur, Udaipur and Bikaner.

But landscapes do not create civilisation by themselves.

People do.

Farmers cultivated the arid plains.

Pastoral communities moved across the desert.

Craftspeople developed traditions of textiles, jewellery, pottery, painting and metalwork.

Merchants connected inland markets with ports across western India.

Pilgrims travelled to Pushkar, Nathdwara, Ajmer, Salasar and countless local shrines.

Workers built modern cities.

And generations carried memory forward.

Jaipur and the modern world

Rajasthan's modern history cannot be understood without Jaipur.

A planned city shaped by trade, craftsmanship, administration and education, Jaipur became one of the great urban centres of northern India.

It brought together communities from across the region and the wider world.

Its markets, workshops, institutions, museums and universities transformed the surrounding landscape.

Rajasthan's cities also became centres of journalism, theatre, tourism, handicrafts and public debate.

The region was often unequal and difficult.

But it became one of India's most powerful laboratories of cultural continuity and modern change.

The difficult modern history

Rajasthan's modern history also contains profound conflict, inequality, political change and social struggle.

Caste discrimination, agrarian distress, gender inequality, water scarcity, communal tensions and displacement have shaped the lives of many communities.

The state has witnessed intense debates over development, heritage, tourism, regional identity and social justice.

These are difficult chapters and remain subjects of political and historical disagreement.

They should neither be forgotten nor allowed to erase the much longer civilisational history of Rajasthan.

What did Rajasthan give India?

Rajasthan gave India the devotional poetry of Mirabai.

It gave India the spiritual questioning of Dadu Dayal.

It gave India the heroic traditions of Maharana Pratap and the Rajput courts.

It gave India the scientific vision of Jai Singh II.

It gave India extraordinary forts, temples, palaces, paintings and observatories.

It gave India a powerful literary and oral tradition.

It gave India distinctive traditions of music, textiles, crafts and architecture.

And it gave India a reminder that regional culture can become a force of national transformation.

Perhaps Rajasthan's deepest contribution is the way it connected devotion, knowledge, political courage and cultural memory.

Other regions built great temples.

Others built great kingdoms.

Others built great trading networks.

Rajasthan built something equally enduring:

a culture of public memory.

Across its deserts, mountains, cities, villages and pilgrimage roads, Rajasthani thinkers asked what it means to worship, to govern, to learn, to resist injustice and finally—

to create a society worthy of human dignity.

The land has known both extraordinary achievement and extraordinary suffering.

Yet beneath the changing political history remains an older Rajasthan:

the Rajasthan of the saint, the reformer, the warrior, the scholar and the seeker.

A land where forts rise above the desert—

and ideas continue to travel beyond them.

Pride series 9

 MAHARASHTRA — THE EVOLUTION OF A LAND OF IDEAS, DEVOTION AND POWER 

There are places whose beauty makes us pause.

And there are places whose ideas make us pause.

Maharashtra has done both.

A land of plateaus, rivers, forests, coastlines and ancient cities, Maharashtra became one of the great cultural and intellectual landscapes of India.

Its story is not only one of kings and battles.

It is a story of philosophers, poets, saints, reformers, artists, administrators and seekers.

A place where people asked some of the most fundamental questions:

What is the nature of devotion?

What does it mean to live ethically?

How should society be organised?

What is the relationship between the individual and the Divine?

How can knowledge become a force for social transformation?

Maharashtra did not merely preserve traditions.

It renewed them.

Maharashtra — the land of learning 

Ancient Maharashtra became an important centre of Buddhist, Jain and Brahmanical learning.

The region's caves, monasteries and inscriptions preserve evidence of long intellectual and artistic traditions.

Sites such as Ajanta, Ellora, Karla and Kanheri reveal a civilisation that invested deeply in philosophy, architecture, sculpture and religious thought.

Knowledge had geography.

And Maharashtra was one of its important homes.

Buddhism and the cave traditions 

Buddhism became deeply connected with the Deccan.

Merchants, monks and patrons supported the creation of monasteries and rock-cut sanctuaries along important trade routes.

The caves of Ajanta preserve some of the finest surviving paintings of ancient India, depicting the life of the Buddha, the Jataka stories and the ideals of compassion and renunciation.

At Ellora, Buddhist, Hindu and Jain monuments stand within the same extraordinary landscape.

This was not a civilisation isolated from the world.

Ideas entered Maharashtra—and ideas travelled through it.

The Satavahanas and the Deccan world 

The Satavahanas played an important role in the political and cultural history of the Deccan.

Their rule connected inland regions with western coastal ports and wider networks of trade.

Prakrit literature flourished, and inscriptions reveal the participation of merchants, guilds, monks and women in religious and social life.

The Deccan was not merely a frontier between northern and southern India.

It was a world of exchange.

Dnyaneshwar — philosophy in the language of the people 

One of Maharashtra's greatest intellectual and spiritual figures was Dnyaneshwar, also known as Jnaneshwar.

In the thirteenth century, he composed the Dnyaneshwari, a profound commentary on the Bhagavad Gita written in Marathi.

This was a remarkable act.

Philosophy was not kept within the boundaries of elite scholarship.

It was brought into the language of ordinary people.

Dnyaneshwar explored devotion, knowledge, action and the unity of existence.

The Divine was not distant from everyday life.

The spiritual path could be walked by anyone.

The Bhakti movement 

Maharashtra became one of the great centres of the Bhakti movement.

The Varkari tradition, centred on devotion to Vithoba of Pandharpur, brought together people across social backgrounds.

Pilgrims travelled in large processions, singing abhangs and carrying the memory of saints across generations.

The journey itself became a form of devotion.

The road became a place of equality.

And poetry became a vehicle for spiritual experience.

Namdev, Eknath and Tukaram 

Namdev carried the devotional traditions of Maharashtra beyond the region, and his compositions became part of the Sikh scripture, the Guru Granth Sahib.

Eknath combined scholarship with devotion and wrote in a language accessible to ordinary people.

Tukaram gave the Marathi language some of its most powerful devotional poetry.

His abhangs spoke of humility, compassion, social hypocrisy and the longing for the Divine.

These saints did not merely repeat inherited ideas.

They made spirituality immediate.

They asked whether ritual without compassion had any meaning.

They asked whether devotion could exist without humility.

And they insisted that the Divine could be encountered in the lives of ordinary people.

A culture of social questioning 

Maharashtra's devotional traditions often challenged rigid social boundaries.

They did not erase inequality, and the historical society remained deeply stratified.

But the poetry of the saints created a powerful language of spiritual dignity.

Figures such as Chokhamela, Janabai and Soyarabai expressed devotion from social locations that elite religious institutions had often marginalised.

Their voices remain important because they reveal that the history of spirituality is also a history of social questioning.

Shivaji and the idea of Swarajya 

Maharashtra's history also produced one of the most influential political figures of early modern India:

Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj.

He built a powerful state in the seventeenth century through military innovation, strategic diplomacy and administrative organisation.

But his legacy is not only military.

The idea of Swarajya—self-rule—became central to his political vision.

He developed forts, naval capabilities, revenue systems and institutions suited to the geography of the Deccan.

His state drew upon local communities, regional knowledge and a disciplined administrative structure.

The mountains and forts of Maharashtra became part of a larger political imagination:

that power could be built through organisation, courage and self-rule.

The Maratha state 

After Shivaji, the Maratha polity expanded across large parts of the Indian subcontinent.

The Peshwas made Pune an important centre of political power, administration and culture.

Maratha influence reached far beyond Maharashtra, shaping the political history of eighteenth-century India.

This expansion was complex and involved warfare, alliances, taxation and negotiation.

But it also demonstrated the capacity of a regional power to become a major force in the subcontinent.

Pune and the culture of public life 

Pune later became an important centre of education, reform and political debate.

In the nineteenth century, Maharashtra produced some of India's most influential social reformers and nationalist thinkers.

Jyotirao Phule and Savitribai Phule challenged caste oppression and worked for the education of women and marginalised communities.

Savitribai Phule became one of the first modern women teachers in India and a pioneering figure in the struggle for social equality.

Their work transformed education into an instrument of liberation.

Reform, education and modern thought 

Mahatma Jyotiba Phule founded the Satyashodhak Samaj, seeking to challenge Brahmanical dominance and promote social justice.

Gopal Ganesh Agarkar advocated rationalism, education and social reform.

Dhondo Keshav Karve worked for women's education and widow remarriage.

Pandita Ramabai, though associated with a wider national reform movement, also had deep connections with Maharashtra's intellectual and social landscape.

These figures asked difficult questions:

Who has access to knowledge?

Who controls education?

Can a society call itself civilised while denying dignity to large sections of its people?

Ambedkar and the struggle for equality 

Maharashtra was also the intellectual and political home of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar.

Born in Mhow but deeply connected with Maharashtra, Ambedkar became one of the principal architects of the Indian Constitution and one of the greatest thinkers on caste, democracy and social justice.

His work transformed the language of equality in modern India.

He argued that political democracy could not survive without social democracy.

Liberty, equality and fraternity had to become lived principles.

His conversion to Buddhism at Nagpur in 1956 marked a historic rejection of caste oppression and a powerful embrace of dignity, reason and ethical community.

Literature and the Marathi imagination 

Maharashtra's contribution to Indian culture also lives in its literature.

Marathi poets, novelists, playwrights and essayists developed a rich literary tradition that explored devotion, modernity, caste, gender, rural life, urbanisation and political change.

From the abhangs of the saints to modern Dalit literature, Marathi writing has repeatedly expanded the boundaries of whose experience can become literature.

The language became not only a medium of expression.

It became a space of social argument.

The land and its people 

Maharashtra's physical diversity is extraordinary.

The Konkan coast.

The Sahyadri mountains.

The Deccan plateau.

The Godavari and Krishna river systems.

The forests of Vidarbha.

The cities of Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur and Nashik.

But landscapes do not create civilisation by themselves.

People do.

Farmers cultivated the plateau.

Fisher communities lived along the coast.

Craftspeople developed traditions of textiles, metalwork, woodwork and painting.

Merchants connected inland markets with ports across the Arabian Sea.

Pilgrims travelled to Pandharpur, Nashik, Shirdi and countless local shrines.

Workers built modern cities.

And generations carried memory forward.

Mumbai and the modern world 

Maharashtra's modern history cannot be understood without Mumbai.

A port city shaped by maritime trade, migration, industry and finance, Mumbai became one of the great urban centres of modern India.

It brought together communities from across the subcontinent and the wider world.

Its mills, docks, railways, film studios, universities and financial institutions transformed the region.

Mumbai also became a centre of journalism, theatre, cinema, labour politics and public debate.

The city was often unequal and difficult.

But it became one of India's most powerful laboratories of modern life.

The difficult modern history 

Maharashtra's modern history also contains profound conflict, inequality, political change and social struggle.

Caste violence, agrarian distress, communal tensions, industrial exploitation and displacement have shaped the lives of many communities.

The state has witnessed intense debates over language, regional identity, development and social justice.

These are difficult chapters and remain subjects of political and historical disagreement.

They should neither be forgotten nor allowed to erase the much longer civilisational history of Maharashtra.

What did Maharashtra give India? 

Maharashtra gave India the philosophical poetry of Dnyaneshwar.

It gave India the devotional power of Namdev, Eknath and Tukaram.

It gave India the social reform of Jyotirao and Savitribai Phule.

It gave India the political vision of Swarajya.

It gave India the constitutional thought of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar.

It gave India extraordinary cave architecture, painting and sculpture.

It gave India a powerful literary tradition.

It gave India modern cities, industries and institutions.

And it gave India a reminder that regional culture can become a force of national transformation.

Perhaps Maharashtra's deepest contribution is the way it connected devotion, knowledge, political courage and social reform.

Other regions built great temples.

Others built great kingdoms.

Others built great trading networks.

Maharashtra built something equally enduring:

a culture of public questioning.

Across its mountains, cities, villages and pilgrimage roads, Maharashtrian thinkers asked what it means to worship, to govern, to learn, to resist injustice and finally—

to create a society worthy of human dignity.

The land has known both extraordinary achievement and extraordinary suffering.

Yet beneath the changing political history remains an older Maharashtra:

the Maharashtra of the saint, the reformer, the warrior, the scholar and the seeker.

A land where forts rise above the valleys—

and ideas continue to travel beyond them.

Pride series 8

 KASHMIR — THE EVOLUTION OF A VALLEY OF LEARNING

There are places whose beauty makes us pause.

And there are places whose ideas make us pause.

Kashmir has done both.

A valley surrounded by mountains, nourished by rivers and lakes, Kashmir became one of the great intellectual landscapes of India.

Its story is not only one of kings and battles.

It is a story of philosophers, poets, historians, artists and seekers.

A place where people asked some of the most fundamental questions:

What is consciousness?
What is beauty?
What is reality?
What is the relationship between the individual and the Divine?
How does the human mind experience the world?

Kashmir did not merely preserve knowledge.

It produced it.

Kashmir — the land of learning

Ancient Kashmir became an important centre of Sanskrit learning.

The Sharada tradition became particularly associated with the region, and the Sharada script was used historically for writing Sanskrit and Kashmiri.

The very memory of Sharada Peeth represents Kashmir's ancient association with scholarship.

Knowledge had geography.

And Kashmir was one of its important homes.

Buddhism comes to Kashmir

Buddhism also became deeply connected with Kashmir.

The region played an important role in the history of Buddhist scholarship, particularly during the period of the Kushans.

Traditions associate Kanishka with a major Buddhist council in Kashmir, although details of the council remain debated by historians.

What is clear is that Kashmir became an important centre through which Buddhist ideas and scholarship travelled.

Again, Kashmir was not isolated.

Ideas entered Kashmir—and ideas travelled out.

Kalhana — history becomes literature

One of Kashmir's greatest intellectual gifts came in the twelfth century.

Kalhana wrote the Rajatarangini—the “River of Kings.”

It is one of the most important historical works produced in premodern India.

Kalhana did not simply glorify rulers.

He attempted to reconstruct Kashmir's political past through earlier sources, inscriptions, traditions and records.

History itself became a literary and intellectual discipline.

And the metaphor was perfect.

A river flows continuously.

Kings come and go.

The land remains.

Abhinavagupta — the philosopher of consciousness and beauty

Then we encounter one of Kashmir's greatest thinkers:

Abhinavagupta.

Philosopher.

Theologian.

Aesthetician.

Poet.

Scholar.

He became one of the most influential exponents of Kashmir Shaivism, particularly the Trika tradition.

His writings explored consciousness, the nature of reality and the relationship between the individual and the Absolute.

But his interests went beyond metaphysics.

He also transformed Indian thinking about aesthetics and art.

His interpretation of rasa—the aesthetic experience evoked through poetry and drama—became enormously influential in Indian aesthetic theory.

This is remarkable.

Kashmir was not simply asking:

“What is reality?”

It was also asking:

“Why does beauty move us?”

Kashmir Shaivism

The philosophical traditions associated with Kashmir Shaivism developed an extraordinarily sophisticated understanding of consciousness.

Thinkers such as Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta explored the idea that consciousness is fundamental to reality.

The Divine was not imagined merely as something distant.

Consciousness itself became central to the inquiry.

The individual experience of awareness became a doorway to philosophical investigation.

This was Indian philosophy at its most subtle.

Lal Ded — the voice of a mystic

And then there was Lalleshwari, popularly known as Lal Ded.

A fourteenth-century Kashmiri mystic, she expressed profound spiritual ideas in simple verses known as vakhs.

Her poetry transcended narrow boundaries.

She spoke of the search within.

The Divine was not merely somewhere outside.

The seeker had to look inward.

Her verses became part of the living cultural memory of Kashmir.

Nund Rishi

Another important spiritual figure was Sheikh Noor-ud-din Noorani, popularly known as Nund Rishi.

He became a major figure of the Kashmiri Rishi tradition, emphasising simplicity, spirituality and compassion.

Together, figures such as Lal Ded and Nund Rishi represent an important feature of Kashmir's cultural history:

spiritual traditions could meet and influence one another.

A culture of synthesis

Kashmir's history contains many layers.

Hindu traditions.

Buddhist traditions.

Shaiva philosophy.

Islamic traditions.

Persian literary influences.

Kashmiri language and folklore.

These did not simply replace one another in a straight line.

They interacted in complex ways over centuries.

The resulting culture—often referred to as Kashmiriyat in modern discourse—has been understood by many scholars and cultural figures as a shared regional cultural identity, although its meaning and historical interpretation have varied.

The important point for our story is that Kashmir developed a distinctive cultural landscape from many historical encounters.

The valley and its people

Kashmir's physical beauty is famous.

Dal Lake.

The Jhelum.

Snow-covered mountains.

Apple orchards.

Saffron fields.

But landscapes do not create civilisation by themselves.

People do.

Farmers cultivated the valley.

Craftspeople developed exquisite traditions of shawl-making, carpets, woodwork and papier-mâché.

Poets preserved language.

Scholars preserved manuscripts.

Pilgrims travelled to sacred places.

And generations carried memory forward.

The difficult modern history

Kashmir's modern history also contains profound conflict, political change, displacement and suffering.

The partition of British India in 1947 brought the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir into a conflict whose consequences continue to shape the region.

The later decades saw armed conflict, terrorism, political instability and displacement, including the displacement of many Kashmiri Pandits from the Valley.

These are painful chapters and remain subjects of political and historical disagreement.

They should neither be forgotten nor allowed to erase the much longer civilisational history of Kashmir.

What did Kashmir give India?

Kashmir gave India Kalhana's historical imagination.

It gave India the philosophical brilliance of Kashmir Shaivism.

It gave India Abhinavagupta's profound exploration of consciousness and aesthetics.

It gave India the poetry of Lal Ded.

It gave India traditions of Sanskrit scholarship.

It gave India Buddhist intellectual heritage.

It gave India extraordinary arts and crafts.

And it gave India a reminder that a geographical valley can become an intellectual universe.

Perhaps Kashmir's deepest contribution is the depth of its questions.

Other regions built great temples.

Others built great kingdoms.

Others built great trading networks.

Kashmir built something less visible but equally enduring:

a world of thought.

In the mountains of Kashmir, Indian thinkers asked what it means to see, to know, to experience, to create and finally—

to become aware of consciousness itself.

The valley has known both extraordinary beauty and extraordinary suffering.

Yet beneath the changing political history remains an older Kashmir:

the Kashmir of the scholar, the poet, the philosopher and the seeker.

A valley where mountains surround the land—

and thought reaches beyond the mountains.