Maharashtra & the Konkan (Marathi)

The Deccan plateau behind the Western Ghats, and the coastal strip beneath them, which between them produced the power that broke the Mughals. The terrain is the explanation: a wall of hills studded with forts, easy to hold and impossible to occupy cheaply. Shivaji built a Maratha state out of it in the mid-seventeenth century using exactly that advantage, escaping Aurangzeb's army repeatedly and crowning himself in 1674. After his death the Mughals spent twenty-seven years and enormous resources trying to finish the job, and the effort broke the empire's finances. Under the Peshwas the Marathas became the dominant power in India, collecting tribute from Bengal to the Punjab, until catastrophic defeat by Ahmad Shah Durrani at Panipat in 1761 and three wars with the British ending in 1818. Bombay came to Britain as part of Catherine of Braganza's dowry in 1661 and grew into the subcontinent's commercial capital on cotton, especially once the American Civil War cut off Lancashire's usual supply. The city's mills created India's first industrial working class and its trade union movement. The region produced the reformers Phule and Ambedkar, who wrote the Indian constitution, and also Hindu nationalism's organisational core, founded at Nagpur in 1925. Maharashtra was created as a linguistic state in 1960 after agitation split Bombay State in two. Mumbai remains India's financial centre. Pune was the Peshwa capital and is now a university and industrial city. The Ajanta and Ellora cave complexes lie in the region. Mumbai's film industry is the largest in the world by output. Nagpur sits near India's geographic centre.

• Existed: 1000 CE – present
• Type: Entity