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History of the State Orissa
On the height of their power in the 15 th century AD,
the Gajapati Kings of Orissa ruled over a kingdom,
extending from the Gangas in the north to the Kaveri in
the far south. But already in the early 16 th century,
the Gajapatis lost great portions of their southern
dominion to Vijayanagar and Golkonda. The dismemberment
of the Oriya-speaking central region began immediately
after the downfall of the kingdom in 1568, when the
present Ganjam district was conquered by Golkonda and
when, in the early 17 th century, the districts north to
the river Subarnarekha were annexed to the Bengal Subah
of the Mughal Empire. The fate of Orissa was further
determined in 1751 when the Marathas merely conquered
central and western Orissa whereas southern and northern
Orissa remained under the rule of the Nizam of Hyderabad
and the Nawab of Bengal respectively. And when, in the
year 1803, Orissa was finally conquered by the East
India Company, the districts of Ganjam and Midnapore,
already several decades ago, had become part of its fast
expanding territory.
The East India Company had no intention of unifying the
Oriya-speaking territories which it had conquered piece
by piece during a period of more than half a century. On
the contrary, after further reorganization of those
Oriya-speaking areas which lay outside the Orissa
Division, the Oriyas were administered by five separate
political authorities, i.e. Bengal and its Orissa
Division, Chota Nagpur, the Central Provinces, Madras
and the Garhjat Mahals of feudatory states of Orissa.
The formation of the linguistic province of Orissa in
1936 may be regarded as one of the landmarks in the
history of the evolution of the Indian Union. The demand
for linguistic states, which became so conspicuous in
India after independence had its genesis in the movement
of the Oriya-speaking people for a separate province on
the basis of language during the later half of the
British rule. This movement had a long and chequered
history ranging from the last quarter of the nineteenth
century till the new province was created on the 1 st
April, 1936.
The British conquest of India was carried on according
to prevailing political situations as well as military
conveniences of the conquering power. In the process of
territorial conquests the traditional compositions of
the socio-cultural affinities of the various Indian
people were very much neglected. As one of the major
linguistic communities of the Indian subcontinent, but
placed under several administrative jurisdictions, the
Oriya people suffered the injustice of dismemberment for
nearly a century since the British conquest of Orissa in
1803. Ganjam and other Oriya-speaking areas south of the
Chilika lake remained tagged to Madras; Midnapore to
Bengal; Singhbhum, Seraikela and Kharsawan to Chota
Nagpur Division; Sambalpur and Chhatisgarh feudatory
states to the Central Provinces. Thus, when the British
occupied Orissa in 1803 it was confined to the three
coastal districts of Puri, Cuttack and Baleswar. |
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