Telugu country (Andhra & Telangana)

The eastern Deccan and its coastal plain, home to the language with the second-largest number of speakers in southern India, and the region that twice redrew the Indian map. Satavahana rule from the second century BCE linked north and south, and Buddhism flourished here at Amaravati and Nagarjunakonda before it faded. The Kakatiyas of Warangal built a distinctly Telugu state in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and after their fall Vijayanagara rose in the same cultural world, becoming the last great Hindu empire of the south and reaching its height under Krishnadevaraya, himself a Telugu poet. Its destruction at Talikota in 1565 left the region divided between Deccan sultanates. The Nizams of Hyderabad then ruled the interior for two centuries as the richest princely state in India, Muslim at court and overwhelmingly Hindu below, and refused to join India in 1947 until the army took it in 1948. The first redrawing came in 1953, when Potti Sriramulu starved himself to death demanding a Telugu state; Andhra was created, and the linguistic reorganisation of every Indian state followed three years later. The second came in 2014, when Telangana - the old Nizam's interior, poorer and resentful of coastal dominance - was separated after decades of agitation. Hyderabad now serves both states. The city is India's second technology centre. Amaravati was designated Andhra Pradesh's new capital in 2015. The Nagarjuna Sagar dam is among India's largest. Tirupati is the most-visited pilgrimage site in the country. Telugu cinema now rivals Mumbai's in scale.

• Existed: 1000 CE – present
• Type: Entity