Uttar Pradesh
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Uttar Pradeshpronunciation (help·info) (Hindi: उत्तर प्रदेश, Urdu: اتر پردیش, IPA: / ʊt̪t̪ər prəd̪eːʃ /), also popularly known by its abbreviation U.P., means the 'northern province. It is the most populous and fifth largest state in the Union of India.
Uttar Pradesh covers a large part of the highly fertile and densely populated upper Gangetic plain. It shares an international border with Nepal and is bounded by the Indian states of Uttaranchal, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Delhi, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Bihar. The administrative and legislative capital is Lucknow and the judicial capital is Allahabad. Other notable cities include Agra, Aligarh, Ayodhya, Varanasi (Benares), Gorakhpur, and Kanpur.
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History
Uttar Pradesh has an important place in the history of Hinduism, as well as the history of ancient India. Control over the region was vital to the power and stability of all of India's empires and kingdoms - of Hindus, Muslims and Europeans.
The history of Uttar Pradesh goes back to more than 4000 years. When the Aryans first made it their home in 2000 BC, the area was occupied by a people whom the Aryans called Dasas. With the arrival of Aryans, the foundation for Hinduism was laid. The original home of the Aryans included almost all of present Uttar Pradesh with its Doab valley and Ghaghra plains, which they named 'Aryavarta' - the abode of the Aryans. The Aryans then moved to other parts of India in the centuries to come, reaching as far as to Kerala and Sri Lanka in the south.
The ancient Hindu kingdom of Kosala in Ayodhya, where Lord Rama of the Ramayana believed to have reigned was located here and Lord Krishna, revered as the eighth Avatara of Vishnu, is believed to have been born in the city of Mathura.
After that, this area was sometimes divided between petty kingdoms or formed important parts of larger empires from the east or the west, including the Mauryan, Gupta and Kushan empires.
The Kannauj Empire originated from the heart of the Ganga Yamuna Doab and covered areas from Afghanistan to Kashmir, Bengal and the Vindhyas. This empire was at its zenith during the reign of Harshavardhana.
Even today many communities in various parts of India --- from Kashmir, Rajasthan, Uttaranchal, Bihar and Bengal boast of being descendants of migrants from Kannauj --- reflecting its glory in the past. [edit]
Medieval
Causing the fall of the Rajput came the Muslims invaders and what we call UP today once again became the catalyst for things to come. Much of the state formed part of the various Muslim Sultanates who ruled from Delhi.
U.P. became the heart land of the Moghul empire who called the place 'Hindustan' which became the second name of U.P. (after Aryavarta/ Madhyadesh). Even today UP-ites call themselves 'Hindustani' rather than Uttar Pradeshi. Hindustani is also used as a synonym for India ------ which is a pointer that U.P. is the essence of India.
Agra and Fatehpur Sikri were important as the capital city of Akbar, the great Mughal Emperor of India. The city of Lucknow was established by the Muslim nawabs of Oudh in the 18th century.
The Mughals ruled almost the entire Indian subcontinent (including Pakistan and Afghanistan from Delhi, Agra and Allahabad (at different times). Even when the Mughal Empire disintegrated, Hindustan remained their last territory --- which now was confined to the Doab region including Delhi.
Other areas of Hindustan (U.P.) were 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.
Starting from the latter half of the 18th century, a series of battles finally gave British accession to the last Mughal territory --- the Doab, as also Bundelkhand, Kumaon and Banaras divisions. Delhi, Ajmer and Jaipur were also included in this territory. They called it the North western provinces (of Agra). Its capital shifted twice between Agra and Allahabad. The area may seem big compared to today's mini states the size of earlier divisions, but at the time it was one of the smallest British province.
After the mutiny of 1857, when things settled, the British made a major revamp and truncated the Delhi region and gave it to Punjab, and the Ajmer-Merwar region to Rajputana [edit]
Modern
At the same time it 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 administrative base of today's Uttar Pradesh and has several administrative headquarters.
Uttar Pradesh continued to be central to Indian culture and politics and was especially important in modern Indian history as a hotbed of the Indian Independence Movement, and the city of Allahabad was home to prominent nationalists such as Motilal Nehru, Purushottam Das Tandon, and Lal Bahadur Shastri. Allahabad was also home to a record five Prime Ministers of India: Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Vishwanath Pratap Singh and Rajiv Gandhi.
After independence the state was renamed Uttar Pradesh (northern province) by its first chief minister Govind Ballabh Pant.
Pant, who was welll known to Jawaharlal Nehru, was popular in the local party and left his mark in Lucknow before December 27, 1954, when Nehru called him to Delhi to make him Home Minister. He was succeeded by Dr. Sampoornanand, a university professor and classicist. A Sanskrit scholar, he was in office till 1957 before becoming governor of Rajasthan
Sucheta Kripalani was sworn in in October 1963, and became India's first woman chief minister, until a two-month long strike by state employees in March 1967 caused her to step down. The confusion and chaos 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.
Fellow socialist Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna of the Bharatiya Lok Dal was Chief Minister for part of the 1970s, and was dismissed, along with several other non-Congress chied ministers, shortly after the imposition of the Emergency, when Narain Dutt Tewari - later chief minister of Uttaranchal - became chief minister. The Congress Party lost heavily in 1977 following the lifting of the Emergency, but roared back to power in 1980, when Mrs. Gandhi handpicked the man who would become her son's principal opposition, V.P. Singh, to become Chief Minister.
In 2000 the Himalyan portion of the state --- the Garwhal and Kumaon divisions --- were formed into a new state called Uttaranchal (meaning the northern part of the state).
Geography
Uttar Pradesh can be divided into three distinct hypsographical regions:
- The Himalayan region in the north — highly rugged and varied terrain; transferred to Uttaranchal. Varying topography; elevation ranges from 300 to 5000m; slope ranges from 150 to 600 m/km.
- The Gangetic Plain in the centre — highly fertile alluvial soils; flat topography broken by numerous ponds, lakes and rivers; slope 2 m/km
- The Vindhya Hills and plateau in the south — hard rock Strata; varied topography of hills, plains, valleys and plateau; limited water availability.
The climate is generally tropical monsoon, but variations exist due to difference in altitudes.
Constituent regions
The state comprises the Doab region (inluding the upper Doab and the lower doab with the Brij bhumi in its centre), which runs along its western border from north to south, the Rohilkhand in the north, Awadh (Oudh) (the historic country of Koshal) 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.
Languages
The state is the birth place of Urdu and HIndi --- the two key sister languages of the Indian subcontinent. The language of Braj, the (Khadiboli) is the basis for the official Hindi language, created during the late 19th century. The most commonly spoken language in urban areas is Urdu/Hindi. Regardless of the script used, the language of Lucknow is called Lucknowie Urdu. It is a pure form of literary Urdu used by most Urdu poets. Urdu is one of the two official languages of the state. Various regions in the state speak different dialects of Hindi. These include Koshali, Braj, Koeli, Bagheli, Bundeli and Bhojpuri.
Politics
List of political parties in the state
The current chief minister of Uttar Pradesh is Mulayam Singh Yadav, one of the leaders of the Samajwadi Party (Socialist Party). The former Prime Minister of India, Atal Behari Vajpayee, represents the constituency of Lucknow.
Divisions and districts
Uttar Pradesh state consists of 70 districts, which are grouped into 17 divisions: Agra, Azamgarh, Allahabad, Kanpur, Gorakhpur, Chitrakoot, Jhansi, Devipatan, Faizabad, Bahraich, Bareilly, Basti, Mirzapur, Moradabad, Meerut, Lucknow, Varanasi, and Saharanpur.
Economy
Education
The State of U.P. has made investments over the years in all sectors of Education and has achieved some success. Female literacy situation in Uttar Pradesh is dismal. Only one out of four in the 7+ age group was able to read and write in 1991. This figure go down to 19 per cent for rural areas, 11 per cent for the scheduled castes, 8 per cent for scheduled castes in rural areas, and 8 per cent for the entire rural population in the most educationally backward districts. In terms of more demanding criteria of educational attainment on the completion of primary or secondary education, in Uttar Pradesh, in 1992-93 only 50 percent of literate males and 40 per cent of literate females could complete the cycle of eight years of schooling involved in the primary and middle stages. One other distinguishing feature of Uttar Pradesh education system is the persistence of high level of illiteracy in the younger age group. Within the younger age group, the illiteracy was endemic in rural. In the late 1980s, the incidence of illiteracy in the 10-14 age group was as high as 32 percent for rural males and 61 per cent for rural females, and more than two-thirds of all rural girls in the 12-14 age group never went to school. The problems of education system is exacting. Due to public apathy the school are in disarray, privately run school are functional, but beyond the reach of ordinary people. The State government has taken programmes to make the population totally literate. There are special programmes like World Bank aided DPEP. Steps are being taken with the help of NGOs and other organizations to raise popular participation. At the level of higher education and technical education Uttar Pradesh has 16 general universities, 3 technical universities, one Indian Institute of Technology (Kanpur), one Indian Institute of Management (Lucknow), one Indian Institute of Information Technology and large number polytechnics, engineering institutes and industrial training institutes.
Tourism
External link
- Official Website of the government of Uttar Pradesh (http://www.upgov.nic.in/)
- Railway Map (http://mapsofindia.com/maps/uttarpradesh/h3s3105.htm)
| Indian States and Territories | 
|
|---|---|
| Andhra Pradesh | Arunachal Pradesh | Assam | Bihar | Chhattisgarh | Goa | Gujarat | Haryana | Himachal Pradesh | Jammu and Kashmir | Jharkhand | Karnataka | Kerala | Madhya Pradesh | Maharashtra | Manipur | Meghalaya | Mizoram | Nagaland | Orissa | Punjab | Rajasthan | Sikkim | Tamil Nadu | Tripura | Uttaranchal | Uttar Pradesh | West Bengal | |
| Union Territories: Andaman and Nicobar Islands | Chandigarh | Dadra and Nagar Haveli | Daman and Diu | Lakshadweep | Pondicherry | |
| National Capital Territory: Delhi | |
es:Uttar Pradesh fr:Uttar Pradesh hi:उत्तर प्रदेश nl:Uttar Pradesh pt:Uttar Pradesh sv:Uttar Pradesh
