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Bihar or Behar
State of northeast India
Area: 173,900 sq km/67,125 sq mi
Capital: Patna
Physical: River Ganges runs west-east in the north, through intensely
cultivated alluvial plains, prone to
drought and floods; Rajmahal Hills, Chota Nagpur plateau in the
south, much of which is forested
Industries: copper, iron, coal; 40% of India's mineral production
Agriculture: rice, jute, sugar cane, cereals, oilseed, tobacco,
potatoes
Language: Hindi, Bihari
Population: (1994 est) 93,080,000 75% living in northern plains
Famous people: Chandragupta, Maurya, Asoka
History: the ancient kingdom of Magadha roughly corresponded to
central and south Bihar. Many Bihari people were massacred as a
result of their protest at the establishment of Bangladesh in 1971.
Elections were postponed and direct rule imposed after public disturbances
in 1995.
Ancient history Bihar figures prominently in the most notable eras
of India's history: it was the scene of Buddha's enlightenment and
mission; later it was the Magadha of the Mauryan and the Gupta dynasties;
Patna, as Pataliputra, was the capital. At the court there lived
and worked men such as Kalidasa, the playwright, and Aryabhatta,
the mathematician, and was a centre from which Indians went out
to preach Buddhism and to which Chinese came to study at the Buddhist
Nalanda
University. In the medieval period Bihar was ruled by the Delhi
sultans and a succession of Muslim rulers, until it was taken over
by the Moguls. In the mid-18th century the Mogul emperor gave the
East India Company the diwani (revenue administration) of Bengal
and Bihar.
The 20th century From 1912 to 1936 Bihar and Orissa were one province.
More recently, Bihar has declined to be one of India's poorest states,
and was beset by outbreaks of caste violence in the
1980s.
Recent industrialization Bihar has 40% of India's mineral reserves
of coal, copper, bauxite and
iron, located in the Chota Nagpur plateau in the south. India is
the world's leading producer of mica, of
which nearly half comes from Bihar. Since 1947, the government has
undertaken major industrial projects in the state such as the Bokaro steel
mill in the Damodar Valley, which provides employment for over 200,000
people. Steel is also produced at Jamshedpur at India's first integrated
iron and steel works, opened in 1908. Oil from Assam is refined at Barauni.
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