UTTAR PRADESH
History
[edit]Legend and ancient periods
Mathura in Uttar Pradesh served as the capital of the Kushan Empire.
The known history of Uttar Pradesh goes back 4000 years, when the Aryans first made it their home in 2000 BC. This heralded the Vedic age of the Indian civilization and Uttar Pradesh was its home. The Aryans, who settled in the Doab region and the Ghagra plains, called it with various names: Madhya Desha (midland) or Aryavarta (the Aryan land) or Bharatvarsha (the kingdom of Bharat, an important Aryan king). In the ages to come, Aryans spread to other parts of the Indian subcontinent, reaching as far south as Kerala and Sri Lanka.
The ancient Mahajanapada era kingdom of Kosala in Ayodhya - where, according to Hindu legend, the divine king Rama of the Ramayana epic reigned – was located here. Krishna - another divine king of Hindu legend, who plays a key role in the Mahabharata epic and is revered as the eighth reincarnation (Avatara) of Hindu god Vishnu - was born in the city ofMathura. The aftermath of the Mahabharata war is believed to have taken place in the area between the present Uttar Pradesh and Delhi, during the reign of the Pandava king Yudhishtira, in what was Kuru Mahajanapada. The revered Swaminarayan - mentioned in the Brahma Purana and Vishwaksena Samhita as the manifestation of God – was born in the village of Chhapaiya.
Most of the empire building invasions of North India, from the east as well as the west, passed through the vast swathe of Gangetic plains of what is today Uttar Pradesh. Control over this region was of vital importance to the power and stability of all of India’s major empires, including the Mauryan (320-200 BC), Kushan (100-250 AD) and Gupta (350-600 AD) empires. After the Guptas, the Ganga-Yamuna Doab saw the rise of Kannauj. During the reign of Harshavardhana, the Kannauj empire was at its zenith: it covered an area extending from Afghanistan and Kashmir in the west to Bengal in the east and up to the Vindhyas in the south, with its capital at Kannauj. Even today many communities in various parts of India] – from Kashmir, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Bihar to Bengal - boast of being descendants of migrants from Kannauj, reflecting its glory in the past.[citation needed].
The state is also important to Buddhism since its early days. The Chaukhandi Stupa marks the spot where Buddha met his first disciples. TheDhamek Stupa in Sarnath commemorates Buddha’s first sermon. Also the town of Kushinagar is where Gautama Buddha died.
[edit]Medieval
Causing the fall of post-Harshavardhana Rajput kings of north India came the Turko-Afghan Muslim rulers and what we call Uttar Pradesh today once again became the catalyst for things to come; much of the state formed part of the various Indo-Islamic empires (Sultanates) after 1000 AD and was ruled from their capital, Delhi. Later, in Mughal times, U.P. became the heart-land of their vast empire; they called the place ‘Hindustan’, which is used to this day as the name for India in several languages.
Agra and Fatehpur Sikri were the capital cities of Akbar, the great Mughal Emperor of India. At their zenith, the Mughal empire covered almost the entire Indian subcontinent (including present day Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh), which was ruled at different times from Delhi, Agra and Allahabad. But, when the empire disintegrated, their last territory remained confined to the Doab region of Hindustan and Delhi.
Other areas of Hindustan (U.P.) were now ruled by different rulers: Oudh was ruled by the Nawabs of Oudh, Rohilkhand by Afghans,Bundelkhand by the Marathas and Benaras by its own king, while Nepal controlled Kumaon-Garhwal as a part of Greater Nepal. The state’s capital city of Lucknow was established by the Muslim Nawabs of Oudh in the 18th century.
[edit]Modern-colonial
Starting from Bengal in the later half of the 18th century, a series of battles for North Indian lands finally gave the British East India Companyaccession over this state’s territories, including the last Mughal territory of Doab and Delhi, also Bundelkhand, Kumaon and Benaras divisions.Ajmer and Jaipur were also included in this northern territory and they called it the North-Western Provinces (of Agra). Today, the area may seem big compared to several of the Republic of India’s present ‘mini-states’ – no more than the size of earlier ‘divisions’ of the British era – but at the time it was one of the smallest British provinces. Its capital shifted twice between Agra and Allahabad.
Mangal Pandey is widely seen as the starting point to what came to be known as the Indian Rebellion of 1857. After its failure and turmoil settled, the British made a major revamp, in desperation: they truncated the Delhi region from NWFP of Agra and merged it with Punjab, while the Ajmer- Merwar region was merged withRajputana. At the same time, they included Oudh into the state. The new state was called the ‘North Western Provinces of Agra and Oudh’, which in 1902 was renamed as the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh. It was commonly referred to as the United Provinces or its acronym UP.
In 1920, the capital of the province was shifted from Allahabad to Lucknow. The high court continued to be at Allahabad, but a bench was established at Lucknow. Allahabad continues to be an important administrative base of today’s Uttar Pradesh and has several administrative headquarters.
The All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) was formed at the Lucknow session of the Indian National Congress on April 11, 1936 with the legendary nationalist Swami Sahajanand Saraswati elected as its first President,[6] in order to mobilise peasant grievances against the zamindari attacks on their occupancy rights, and thus sparking theFarmers’ movement in India [7][8]
Uttar Pradesh continued to be central to Indian culture and politics and was especially important in modern Indian history as a hotbed of both the Indian Independence Movement and the Pakistan Movement.
[edit]Post Independence
After independence, the state was renamed Uttar Pradesh (”northern province”) by its first chief minister, Govind Ballabh Pant. Pant was known and close to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and was also popular in the Congress Party; he established such a good reputation in Lucknow that Nehru called him to Delhi, the capital and seat of Central Government of the country, to make him Home Minister of India in December 27, 1954. He was succeeded by Dr. Sampoornanand, a university professor and classicist Sanskrit scholar, who was chief minister till 1957, before becoming governor of Rajasthan.
Sucheta Kripalani served as India’s first woman chief minister from October 1963 until March 1967, when a two-month long strike by state employees caused her to step down.After her Chandra Bhanu Gupta assumed the office of Chief Minister with Laxmi Raman Acharya as Finance Minister, but the government lasted for only two years due to the confusion and chaos which ended only with the defection of Charan Singh from the Congress with a small set of legislators; he set up a party called the Jana Congress, which formed the first non-Congress government in U.P. and ruled for over a year.
Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna was chief minister for Congress Party government for part of the 1970s. He was dismissed by the Central Government headed by Indira Gandhi, along with several other non-Congress chief ministers, shortly after the imposition of the Emergency, when Narain Dutt Tewari – later chief minister of Uttarakhand – became chief minister. The Congress Party lost heavily in 1977 elections, following the lifting of the Emergency, but romped back to power in 1980, when Mrs. Gandhi handpicked the man who would later become her son’s principle opposition, V.P. Singh, to become Chief Minister.
On Nov 09, 2000, the Himalyan portion of the state, comprising the Garhwal and Kumaon divisions and Haridwar district, was formed into a new state called Uttarakhand, meaning the ‘Northern Segment’ state.
 Ancient Indian (Bharata) cities. |
 North-Western Provinces, 1837 |
 North-Western Provinces, 1857 |
 United Provinces, 1903 |
 Doab region in United Provinces, 1908 |
 United Provinces, 1909 |
[edit]Geography
Uttar Pradesh shares an international border with Nepal and is bounded by the Indian states of Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Delhi,Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Bihar. The state can be divided into two distinct hypsographical regions:-
- The larger Gangetic Plain in the north: it includes the Ganga-Yamuna Doab; the Ghaghra plains; the Ganga plains and the Terai. It has highly fertile alluvial soils and flat topography – (slope 2 m/km) – broken by numerous ponds, lakes and rivers.
- The smaller Vindhya Hills and plateau region in the south. It is characterised by hard rock strata; varied topography of hills, plains, valleys and plateau; limited availability of water.
[edit]Climate
The climate of Uttar Pradesh is predominantly subtropical, but weather conditions change significantly with location and season.
Temperature: Depending on the elevation, the average temperatures vary from 12.5–17.5°C (54.5–63.5°F) in January to 27.5–32.5°C (81.5–90.5°F) in May and June. The highest temperature recorded in the State was 49.9°C (121.8°F) at Gonda on May 8, 1958.
Rainfall: Rainfall in the State ranges from 1,000–2,000 mm (40–80 inches) in the east to 600–1,000 mm (24–40 inches) in the west. About 90 percent of the rainfall occurs during the southwest monsoon, lasting from about June to September. With most of the rainfall concentrated during this four-month period, floods are a recurring problem and cause heavy damage to crops, life, and property, particularly in the eastern part of the state, where the Himalayan-origin rivers flow with a very low north-south gradient.
Droughts: Periodic failure of monsoons results in drought conditions and crop failure.
Snowfall: In the Himalayan region of the State, annual snowfall averaging 3 to 5 metres (10 to15 feet) is common between December and March.
[show] Weather averages for Uttar Pradesh, India  |
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[edit]Constituent regions
The state comprises several distinct regions: -
- The Doab region: the upper Doab and the lower doab with the Braj-bhumi in its centre, which runs along its western border from north to south;
- The Rohilkhand region in the north;
- Awadh(or Oudh), the historic country of Kosalas in the centre;
- The northern parts of Bagelkhand and Bundelkhand in the south; and
- The south-western part of the Bhojpur country, commonly called Purvanchal (”Eastern Province”), in the east.
[edit]Administrative divisions and districts (as in 2007)
The state of Uttar Pradesh consists of seventy districts, which are grouped into eighteen divisions: Agra Division, Aligarh Division, Allahabad Division, Azamgarh Division, Bareilly Division, Basti Division, Chitrakoot Division, Devipatan Division, Faizabad Division, Gorakhpur Division,Jhansi Division, Kanpur Division, Lucknow Division, Meerut Division, Mirzapur Division, Moradabad Division, Saharanpur Division and Varanasi Division.
The largest district in terms of area is Lakhimpur Kheri. The largest district in terms of population is Allahabad followed by Kanpur Nagar (Census 2001).
Popularity: 3% [?]
