Orange City and winter seat on the river Nag
Nagpur is the biggest city in central India and serves as Maharashtra’s second capital, hosting the state assembly each winter. Known as the Orange City for its citrus trade and the Tiger Capital for nearby reserves, it also contains the stone marking the geographical centre of India.
The city takes its name from the Nag River, on whose north bank the old quarter, now called Mahal, stands; pur simply means city. An earlier name, Fanindrapura, comes from a Marathi word for a cobra’s hood, and under British rule the spelling was Nagpore. Megalithic burial sites at Drugdhamna show people lived here by the eighth century BCE, and the name first appears in a tenth-century copper-plate grant.
The Gond king Bakht Buland Shah of Deogarh founded the modern city in 1702 by merging twelve small villages, encouraging Marathi farmers to settle. His successor Chand Sultan walled it, and in the eighteenth century the Maratha Bhonsle dynasty made it the seat of their Nagpur kingdom. Pindari raiders burned much of it in 1765 and again in 1811, and after the Anglo-Maratha wars it fell under British control, later becoming capital of the Central Provinces. The railway arrived in 1867, and the Tata group opened its first textile mill here.
Nagpur shaped national movements. The non-co-operation campaign was launched at its 1920 session, K. B. Hedgewar founded the Hindu-nationalist RSS here in 1925, and on 14 October 1956 B. R. Ambedkar and his followers converted to Buddhism at a public ceremony, making the city central to the Dalit Buddhist movement; the Deekshabhoomi stupa marks the site. It was briefly capital of Madhya Pradesh before joining Bombay State in 1956 and Maharashtra in 1960.
The British used its Zero Mile Stone to measure distances across the subcontinent. Lakes such as Ambazari and Gorewada dot the city, and in 2010 it was ranked India’s cleanest and second-greenest city after Chandigarh. A 2013 survey placed it first nationally for livability and public transport, and it celebrated its three hundredth anniversary in 2002.
Source: Nagpur
