Regional lens · India’s Freedom Struggle
Mass satyagraha, revolutionary action, labour, peasant and regional movements converge against colonial rule.
Bal Gangadhar Tilak used newspapers, political associations and public festivals to build a wider nationalist audience. His demand for swaraj and Home Rule made Maharashtra a major centre of early mass politics.
The All-India Congress Committee adopted the Quit India resolution in Bombay. After senior leaders were arrested, Aruna Asaf Ali reached the maidan and raised the flag as resistance spread through local and underground networks.
Ajanta's rock-cut caves were made in separate phases from roughly the second century BCE into the fifth and sixth centuries CE. Monasteries, shrines, sculpture and surviving paintings reveal changing Buddhist practice and major achievements in narrative art.
The Bombay Reorganisation Act divided the former Bombay State and established Maharashtra on 1 May 1960. The new state joined Marathi-speaking districts that had previously sat within several colonial provinces and princely-state groupings.