Two Lands, One Mountain Identity
For most of its recorded past, Uttarakhand was not one region but two. The western half, roughly today's Garhwal division, appears in the Puranas as Kedarkhand — the land of Kedar, or Shiva. The eastern half, today's Kumaon, is Manaskhand, the land on the route to Lake Manasarovar. The two developed different dialects, ruling houses and festivals, yet shared the same mountains, the same rivers and the same hard, self-reliant village life. That shared experience became the basis of a single Uttarakhandi identity in the 20th century.
Timeline at a Glance
| Period | What happened |
|---|---|
| c. 3rd century BCE | Emperor Ashoka's rock edicts are carved at Kalsi, near the Yamuna in today's Dehradun district. |
| c. 2nd century BCE – 3rd century CE | The Kunindas rule parts of the hills; their silver and copper coins are found across the region. |
| c. 7th – 11th century | The Katyuri kings rule much of the region, first from Joshimath and later from the Katyur valley near Baijnath. |
| 8th century | Adi Shankaracharya travels through the hills, re-establishes worship at Badrinath and founds Jyotirmath. |
| c. 10th – 18th century | The Chand dynasty rises in Kumaon; the Panwar (Parmar) dynasty unites Garhwal's "52 forts". |
| 1790 – 1815 | Gorkha armies from Nepal conquer Kumaon (1790) and Garhwal (1803–04). |
| 1815 – 1816 | The Anglo-Nepalese War ends Gorkha rule. Kumaon and eastern Garhwal pass to the British; Tehri Garhwal becomes a princely state. |
| 1921 | The coolie begar (forced labour) system ends after a mass protest at Bageshwar. |
| 1930 | Chandra Singh Garhwali and his men refuse to fire on unarmed protesters in Peshawar. |
| 1949 | Tehri Garhwal merges with the Indian Union. |
| 1973 – 1974 | The Chipko movement begins in Chamoli district. |
| 1994 | The statehood agitation peaks, with tragic firings at Khatima, Mussoorie and Rampur Tiraha. |
| 9 November 2000 | Uttaranchal becomes India's 27th state; it is renamed Uttarakhand in 2007. |
Ancient Uttarakhand
The oldest written record in the region is a set of Ashoka's fourteen major rock edicts, inscribed on a boulder at Kalsi where the Tons and Yamuna rivers meet. The inscription, rediscovered by the British in 1860, shows that the foothills were linked to the Mauryan empire's trade and administration. A few centuries later the Kunindas, a hill people mentioned in the Mahabharata, minted their own coins bearing the deer and the goddess Lakshmi — evidence of an organised local state.
The mountains were also sacred long before recorded kingdoms. The Mahabharata places the Pandavas' final journey in these hills, and the shrines of Kedarnath, Badrinath and the Panch Kedar are tied to that story. By the early medieval period, pilgrims from across India were already walking the "Badri-Kedar" route.
The Age of the Kingdoms
The Katyuri kings were the first dynasty to rule most of the region. Their stone temples — the great clusters at Jageshwar and Baijnath among them — still stand. After the Katyuri power fragmented, two long-lasting ruling houses emerged: the Chands in Kumaon, with their capital first at Champawat and later at Almora, and the Panwars in Garhwal, who brought dozens of feuding chieftains under one crown and ruled from Srinagar on the Alaknanda. Read the full story in Kingdoms of Garhwal and Kumaon.
Gorkha Rule and the British Period
At the end of the 18th century the expanding Gorkha kingdom of Nepal swept west, taking Almora in 1790 and Garhwal in 1803–04. The Garhwali king Pradyumna Shah died fighting at Khurbura near Dehradun in 1804. Gorkha rule is remembered in local memory as a harsh time of heavy taxes and slavery.
The Anglo-Nepalese War of 1814–16 ended it. Under the Treaty of Sugauli, Kumaon and eastern Garhwal became British territory, while the western part was returned to the Panwar heir, Sudarshan Shah, as the princely state of Tehri Garhwal. The British built hill stations such as Mussoorie, Nainital, Ranikhet and Lansdowne, and recruited heavily from the hills. The Garhwal Rifles and the Kumaon Regiment would go on to earn some of the highest gallantry awards in Indian military history.
Freedom Struggle in the Hills
- End of coolie begar (1921): At the Uttarayani fair in Bageshwar, thousands of villagers led by Badri Dutt Pandey threw the registers of the forced-labour system into the Saryu river, ending a practice that had made hill people carry officials' loads without pay.
- The Peshawar incident (1930): Havildar Chandra Singh Bhandari of the Garhwal Rifles — later known as Chandra Singh Garhwali — refused orders to fire on unarmed Pathan protesters of the Khudai Khidmatgar movement. He and his men were court-martialled, and he became a national hero.
- Sridev Suman and Tehri (1944): The young activist Sridev Suman died in Tehri jail after an 84-day hunger strike against the autocratic rule of the Tehri state. His sacrifice energised the Praja Mandal movement, and Tehri merged with India in 1949.
After Independence: Forests and Statehood
The hills became part of Uttar Pradesh in 1950, and many felt that decisions about their forests, rivers and jobs were being made in distant Lucknow. That frustration produced two of the most important people's movements in modern India: the Chipko movement, in which village women hugged trees to stop commercial felling, and the long Uttarakhand statehood movement, which ended with the creation of a new state on 9 November 2000.
State Symbols
- State animal: Alpine musk deer (kasturi mrig)
- State bird: Himalayan monal
- State flower: Brahma Kamal
- State tree: Burans (rhododendron)