History of Chhattisgarh

The origin of Chhattisgarh dates back to thousands of years. Recently, anthropologists have uncovered evidences of some of the initial human habitations in the rocks and caves of this mythological land. Chhattisgarh has also been mentioned in the legends of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. In these legends, the region was recognized as Dakshina Kosala, a place where Lord Rama spent some time of his exile period.

Besides the anonymous past, the known history of Chhattisgarh stretches back to the 4th century AD. The kingdoms, like that of the Sarabhpurias, Panduvanshi, Somvanshi, Kalchuri, and Nagvanshi, reigned the land during the 6th-12th centuries. Earlier Known as South Kosala, Chhattisgarh came to be known as Gondwana in the medieval period. Later it became part of the realm of the Kalchuris, who dominated the region until the late-18th century AD. The Muslim raconteurs, of the 14th century AD, have explained in detail about the dynasties, which ruled over the county.

Somewhere around the 16th century, Chhattisgarh was swayed by the Mughals and then, by the Marathas. By the year 1758, the entire region came under the territory of the Marathas, who harshly ransacked its natural resources. Actually the term 'Chhattisgarh' was popularized during the times of Marathas. In 1795, the term was utilized for the first time in an official document. In the early 19th century, the British entered and subsumed most of the territory into the Central Province. Past 1854, the British managed the region like a deputy commissionership with its control center at Raipur.

Chhattisgarh took active part in the Revolt of 1857, when Vir Narayan Singh (a landlord of Sonakhan) stood up to challenge the biasness of the British rule. After an extended battle with the British, Vir Narain Singh was eventually hanged in the same year. In 1904, the British restructured the region, wherein the estates of Surguja were added while Sambalpur was transferred to Orissa. In 1924, the initial demand for a separate state was raised by the Raipur Congress Unit at the meeting of the Raipur District Congress.

Without any outcome of the protest, Chhattisgarh got independence from the British like the entire country, but as the part of Madhya Pradesh. It was comprehended that the region was culturally and historically different from M.P.; it must get special recognition of its own. After independence, in 1955, the demand for a separate state recurred in the Nagpur Assembly though it didn't materialize. At last, on 1st November 2000, Chhattisgarh was constituted as the 26th state of India.