Belgaum

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Belgaum Belgaum or ( Kannada: ಬೆಳಗಾವಿ Belgaum [ beɭʌɡa ʋi ː ]; Marathi बेळगांव Beḷgāṃv [be ː ɭɡɑ ː o] ) is a city in the southwestern Indian state of Karnataka with around 488,000 inhabitants ( 2011 census ). It is located in western Deccan Plateau, bordering the Western Ghats near the border of Maharashtra and Goa, at an altitude of 750 meters above sea level and is about 90 kilometers from the coast of the Arabian Sea. Belgaum is the administrative seat of the district of Belgaum. A large part of the population speaks the Indo-Aryan Marathi, the official language is Dravidian Kannada.

On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the state in 2006, the Government of Karnataka decided after a suggestion of the writer UR Ananthamurthy to rename the English name of the city in their Kannada names form Belgaum. Since the Indian central government to the name change has not yet been approved, the renaming process is not yet complete but.

History

Belgaum was built towards the end of the 12th century, when the Ratta dynasty moved their capital from nearby Saundatti here. The Ratta be mentioned in an inscription of 1199 on a pillar of the Friday Mosque. Another inscription of 1261 points to the Yadava, the Belgaum conquered by the mid-13th century. In the early 14th century, the city fell out of the Delhi Sultanate, and soon after to the Hindu Vijayanagara Empire in 1474 and the Bahmaniden whose crumbling rule was replaced in 1490 by the Adil Shahi of Bijapur. The Adil Shahi built from a native of the Ratta - time fortress. In the late 17th century Mughal emperor Aurangzeb submitted Bijapur and hence Belgaum, which temporarily was named Azamnagar. In the early 18th century was followed by the Marathas. This subject in 1818 in the Third Marathenkrieg finally the British, who eingliederten Belgaum in the Bombay Presidency and used as infantry base.

After India's independence in 1947, Belgaum was initially part of the State of Bombay. As the Indian states were reorganized in 1956 by the language barrier, the membership Belgaums where both Kannada and Marathi were common developed, to issue. In Taluk Belgaum made ​​at this time Marathi - speakers with a slight majority of 51.4 percent. Eight out of eleven taluks of Belgaum district but were mostly kannadasprachig. Ultimately came Belgaum City by the States Reorganisation Act, together with the greater part of the district to the state kannadasprachigen Mysore, which was renamed in 1973 in Karnataka. To date, the question is concerned about the membership Belgaums of tension between Karnataka and the marathisprachigen state of Maharashtra. In response to the claims of Maharashtra, the Karnataka government has decided to give Belgaum the status of a " second capital " of the state.

Economy and infrastructure

Belgaum is an important regional industrial center. The town is one of the largest aluminum plants in India. Furthermore significant is mainly machinery and equipment ( motors, vehicle parts, hydraulic pumps, valves), to a lesser extent, the production of textiles and the food industry.

Belgaum is connected to both the National Highway 4 between Pune and Bangalore as well as to the national railway network. In Sambre, about ten kilometers west of the city, a regional airport with regular connections to Mumbai and in several large cities in the Deccan.

The city is also the site of the Indian Army and a military airfield.

Attractions

The main attraction of the city is derived from the early 13th century fort that was rebuilt and expanded by later rulers often. Its present form was given largely in the 16th century. Within the fort walls are, among others, the Jain Temple Kalama Basti in late Chalukya style, the Safa Mosque and the Friday Mosque ( Jama Masjid ) from the 16th century.