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Wardha

City in Maharashtra, India

  • 10 min read
  • 8 chapters

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History

Wardha was included in the empire of the Mauryas, Shungas, Satavahanas, and Vakatakas. Pravarapura, modern Pavnar, was once the capital of the Vakataka dynasty. The Vakatakas were contemporaries of the Imperial Guptas. Prabhavatigupta, the daughter of Chandragupta II (Vikramaditya), was married to the Vakataka ruler Rudrasena. The period of the Vakatakas was from the 2nd to the 5th century CE. The empire stretched from the Arabian Sea in the west to the Bay of Bengal in the east, and from the Narmada River in the north to the Krishna-Godavari delta in the south.

Later on, Wardha was ruled by the Chalukyas, Rashtrakutas, Yadavas, the Delhi Sultanate, the Bahamani Sultanate, the Muslim ruler of Berar, the Gonds and Marathas. Raja Bakht Buland Shah of the Gond Dynasty, and Raghuji of Bhonsale were the prominent rulers in the Medieval period.

During the 1850s Wardha district, (then a part of Nagpur district) fell into the hands of the British who included Wardha in the Central Province. In 1862, it was separated for convenient administrative purposes, and Kawatha near Pulgaon became the district headquarters. In 1866, the district headquarters was moved to Palakwadi village. The huts in the village were destroyed and a new city was constructed by English town-planner Sir Bachelor and Sir Reginald Craddock. This new city was named Wardha after the river Wardha which flows through the district.

Wardha has an adjacent city, Sevagram, and both were major centers for the Indian Independence Movement, especially as the location for an annual meeting of the Indian National Congress in 1934, and Mahatma Gandhi's Ashram.

Wardha was one of the pre-planned cities of British India. The town-planners were Sir Reginald Craddock and Sir Bachelor. In Craddock's memory, his name was given to the district's biggest school and an important road was named after Sir Bachelor in the British period. The Craddock School was renamed Mahatma Gandhi School. The District Hospital was named King George Hospital, but was renamed later on. The stone in which the old name was carved was at the main gate for more than a century. It was hidden by a new name board reading District Hospital. There are many buildings from the British period in the city, including the Z.P. old building, the Central Jail, the Church at Bajajwadi, and the Christian cemetery. The owners of Powale group and Dhandre group come from Wardha.

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