Maharashtra

• 1. Introduction

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  Maharashtra sits at the heart of the Indian subcontinent, a state so large and so populous that it ranks as the fourth-most populous country subdivision on the planet. It is bordered on the west by the Arabian Sea, and the plateau it occupies has been home to human settlements for thousands of years. Its capital, Mumbai, handles nearly three-quarters of all stock trading in India and carries the country's financial pulse. Yet the state also employs nearly half its population in farming. How did a single region come to hold so many contradictions? What chain of empires, reform movements, and linguistic protests produced a state that is simultaneously India's richest and one of its most agricultural? And how did a territory governed for centuries by dynasties as varied as the Satavahanas and the Mughals eventually become home to seven UNESCO World Heritage Sites, more than a hundred thousand graduates each year, and the world's largest film industry outside Hollywood?

• 2. Millennia of Dynasties

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  Around 1300 BCE, settlements belonging to the Jorwe culture spread across what is now Maharashtra, the largest of them at Daimabad, where archaeologists found a mud fortification and an elliptical temple with fire pits. The Maurya Empire absorbed the region in the fourth and third centuries BCE, and around 230 BCE the Satavahana dynasty took over and held it for roughly four centuries. The Buddhist cave temples at Ajanta, carved during this broad era, bear stylistic marks of both Satavahana and Vakataka influence.

  The Chalukya dynasty controlled the region from the sixth to the eighth centuries CE, and two rulers stand out in the records. Pulakeshin II defeated the north Indian Emperor Harsha, while Vikramaditya II repelled Arab invaders in the eighth century. The Arab traveller Sulaiman al Mahri, writing of the Rashtrakuta ruler Amoghavarsha who governed from the eighth to the tenth century, called him one of the four great kings of the world.

  In the early fourteenth century, Delhi Sultanate ruler Alauddin Khalji overthrew the Yadava Dynasty. His successor Muhammad bin Tughluq went further, temporarily moving his entire capital from Delhi to Daulatabad inside Maharashtra. After the Tughluq collapse in 1347, the Bahmani Sultanate of Gulbarga stepped in and governed for the next 150 years. When that sultanate itself fractured in 1518, Maharashtra split into five competing Deccan Sultanates. United, those five kingdoms decisively defeated the Vijayanagara Empire of the south in 1565, though they spent much of their energy fighting one another.

  Portugal captured the area of present-day Mumbai from the Sultanate of Gujarat in 1535. The Faruqi dynasty ruled the Khandesh region from 1382 until 1601, when the Mughal Empire finally annexed it. Malik Ambar, regent of the Nizamshahi dynasty of Ahmednagar from 1607 to 1626, reorganised and enlarged the local military and is credited in the sources with introducing guerrilla warfare tactics to the Deccan.

• 3. The Maratha Century

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  Shahaji Bhosale, a general who had served the Ahmadnagar Sultanate, the Mughals, and Adil Shah of Bijapur at different points in his career, tried to carve out his own independent rule in the early seventeenth century. That attempt failed, but his son Shivaji succeeded where his father had not, founding the Maratha Empire. Both Shivaji's grandfather Maloji and his father Shahaji had earlier served under Malik Ambar, who had also assisted the future Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in his struggle against his stepmother, Nur Jahan.

  Shortly after Shivaji died in 1680, Mughal emperor Aurangzeb launched what the sources describe as a strategic defeat for the Mughals. He failed to subdue the Maratha territories and the campaign drained both the imperial treasury and army. After Aurangzeb's own death in 1707, Maratha generals under Peshwa Bajirao I and commanders he had elevated, including Ranoji Shinde and Malharrao Holkar, pushed north and west across Mughal territory. By the 1750s, the Mughals had been confined to the city of Delhi itself.

  The Marathas also built a navy, established around the 1660s. At its peak under Kanhoji Angre, that navy controlled the coastal waters from Mumbai to Savantwadi and resisted British, Portuguese, Dutch, and Siddi fleets alike. British civil servant Charles Metcalfe, who later served as Acting Governor-General, wrote in 1806 that India contained only two great powers, British and Maratha, and that every other state acknowledged one or the other's influence.

  The Third Anglo-Maratha War, fought in 1817-1818, ended the Maratha Empire and transferred control to the British East India Company. The Maratha Navy, dominant through the 1730s and declining by the 1770s, formally ceased to exist in 1818, the same year the empire fell.

• 4. British Rule and Reform

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  Britain governed western Maharashtra as part of the Bombay Presidency, a territory that stretched from Karachi in the north down to the Deccan. After the crown assumed direct control from the East India Company in 1858, several Maratha princely states remained, including Nagpur, Satara, and Kolhapur. Satara was annexed to the Bombay Presidency in 1848, and Nagpur followed in 1853 to become Nagpur Province. Berar, previously part of the Nizam of Hyderabad's kingdom, was occupied by the British in 1853 and annexed to the Central Provinces in 1903.

  British colonial rule introduced roads and railways, standardised the Marathi language, and established universities modelled on the western system. In April 1853, the first passenger train in all of India ran from Mumbai to Thane. The forerunner of Deccan College Post-Graduate and Research Institute was established in 1821. College of Engineering Pune, founded in 1854, is the third oldest engineering college in Asia.

  Jyotirao Phule became the pioneer of social reform in the region during the second half of the nineteenth century, with his work later continued by Shahu, Raja of Kolhapur, and then by B. R. Ambedkar. Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Justice Mahadev Govind Ranade, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, and Dadabhai Naoroji all emerged from this region to evaluate British rule and press for change in the late 1800s. The Shreemati Nathibai Damodar Thackersey Women's University, the oldest women's liberal arts college in South Asia, began operating in 1916.

  The ultimatum that launched the Quit India Movement was issued in Mumbai and led to the transfer of power and independence in 1947. After independence, B. G. Kher had already served as the first chief minister of the Congress-led government of the trilingual Bombay Presidency, a role made possible by the partial autonomy granted under the Government of India Act 1935.

• 5. Birth of a State

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  On the 1st of May 1960, the State of Bombay was divided into two new states: Maharashtra and Gujarat. The split did not come without cost. Protests under the banner of the Samyukta Maharashtra Samiti had demanded a Marathi-speaking state with Mumbai as its capital, and 106 people died among the demonstrators. The samiti won electoral seats in the 1957 elections, and it was Prime Minister Nehru who ultimately ordered the bifurcation.

  The leaders of the samiti included Keshavrao Jedhe, S. M. Joshi, Shripad Amrit Dange, Pralhad Keshav Atre, and Gopalrao Khedkar. On the Gujarati side, a parallel Mahagujarat Movement made the same demand for a separate state in majority Gujarati areas, and both movements ultimately prevailed together.

  The process of consolidation had started earlier. Between 1950 and 1956, Berar, the Deccan states, and the Gujarat states were added into Bombay State. The States Reorganisation Act of 1956 then expanded the territory further by attaching Marathwada from the former Hyderabad state and the Vidarbha region from the Central Provinces and Berar, while ceding the southernmost portion of Bombay State to Mysore.

  A border dispute with Karnataka over Belgaum and Karwar remained unresolved after the 1957 demarcation. Maharashtra claimed 814 villages and three urban settlements, and a petition filed in India's Supreme Court staking a claim over Belgaum is listed in the sources as still pending.

• 6. Economy and Industry

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  Maharashtra is the richest state in India, responsible for roughly 14% of all-India nominal GDP. Its service sector accounts for 69.3% of the value of the state's output. The Bombay Stock Exchange, India's largest and Asia's oldest stock exchange, is headquartered in Mumbai, as is the National Stock Exchange, India's second-largest and one of the world's largest derivatives exchanges. Maharashtra's share markets transact close to 70% of the country's stocks.

  The state has the highest number of recognised startups in India, with 11,308 at the time of the source. It contributes 25% of India's industrial output and has attracted foreign direct investment totalling roughly 28% of all FDI inflows at the national level from April 2000 through September 2021. Industrial activity clusters heavily in seven districts: Mumbai City, Mumbai Suburban, Thane, Aurangabad, Pune, Nagpur, and Nashik.

  Mumbai produces roughly a third of all Indian films. Bollywood productions, with the most expensive costing up to figures not specified in exact rupee amounts in the source, have made the city a global production centre. Maharashtra accounts for 28% of India's software exports, and roughly a quarter of the top 500 Indian IT companies are based in the state, with Pune Metropolitan Region serving as the leading IT hub.

  Agriculture, despite contributing only around 12-13% of state GDP, still employs nearly half the population. Key cash crops include sugarcane, cotton, oilseeds, tobacco, and spices such as turmeric. Maharashtra pioneered agricultural cooperative societies after independence, with sugar cooperatives given a special status under a Congress government model of rural development. The three largest urban cooperative banks in India are all headquartered within the state.

• 7. Land, People, and Heritage

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  Maharashtra covers 307,713 square kilometres, making it the third-largest Indian state by land area and accounting for 9.36% of India's total geographical area. The Western Ghats, also called the Sahyadri Range, run parallel to the Arabian Sea coast with an average elevation of 1,200 metres. To their west lie the Konkan coastal plains; to their east, the flat Deccan Plateau. The state's 840-kilometre coastline along the Arabian Sea hosts 1,527 recorded marine animal species, among them 289 species of fish and 581 species of molluscs.

  The 2011 census recorded Maharashtra's population at 112,374,333. The literacy rate stood at 83.2%, above the national rate of 74.04% at the time. The human sex ratio was 929 females per 1,000 males. Marathi is the official language, though the state holds a remarkable range of tongues: Powari, Lodhi, Varhadi, Dangi, Khandeshi, Konkani, Gondi, Lambadi, and several Hindi dialects are all spoken across its regions.

  On religion, Hinduism was followed by 79.8% of the population per the 2011 census. Maharashtra holds the highest number of Buddhist followers in India, at 5.8% of the state's population, with Marathi Buddhists accounting for 77.36% of all Buddhists across the country. Mumbai is also home to around 5,000 Jews, mainly from the Bene Israel and Baghdadi Jewish communities, and around 44,000 Parsis who follow Zoroastrianism.

  The state is home to seven UNESCO World Heritage Sites, a tally that includes the Ajanta Caves, the Ellora Caves, the Elephanta Caves, Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, the Victorian Gothic and Art Deco Ensembles of Mumbai, the Maratha Military Landscapes of India shared with Tamil Nadu, and sections of the Western Ghats. The Zoological Survey of India has found 1,527 marine animal species off its coastline, and the Maharashtra State Biodiversity Board, constituted in January 2012, serves as the nodal body for biodiversity conservation across the state.