Andhra Pradesh

By the Mauryan age, the evidence becomes documentary. The Greek envoy Megasthenes credited the Andhras with thirty fortified towns, and Ashoka's edicts list them among the peoples within his sphere. Ashokan inscriptions survive at Erragudi in Kurnool district. The relic caskets of Bhattiprolu carry one of the oldest scripts found in South India.

At its height, under Gautamiputra Satakarni, the realm stretched from the Konkan coast and the city of Pratishthana, the modern Paithan in Maharashtra, to the deltas of the Krishna and the Godavari. It reached north into Malwa and Saurashtra, and south into Karnataka. His mother's inscription at Nashik praises him as a king whose horses had drunk the water of three oceans. Roman coins found along the Krishna delta show how far Satavahana sea trade reached. Dharanikota, beside present-day Amaravati, was one of their chief cities. The great stupa there produced a school of limestone sculpture admired across Asia.

We turn now to the medieval period. From the year 624, the Eastern Chalukyas ruled the coastal country from Vengi for more than four centuries. Their court gave Telugu its literary standing. Around the eleventh century, under Rajaraja Narendra at Rajahmundry, the poet Nannaya began the Telugu Mahabharata, the starting point of classical Telugu literature.

Local powers filled the gap. The Reddi kings held the coast from Addanki, Kondavidu and Rajahmundry, while the Gajapatis of Odisha pressed down from the north. The Vijayanagara empire, founded in 1336, absorbed Rayalaseema and much of the coast. Its greatest ruler, Krishnadevaraya, reigned from 1509 to 1529. He wrote the Telugu poem Amuktamalyada, and endowed the temples of Tirumala and Srikalahasti. After the defeat at Talikota in 1565, the last Vijayanagara rulers retreated to Penukonda and Chandragiri.

Golconda rule was notable for its accommodation of local culture. Ibrahim Qutb Shah patronised Telugu poets, and Telugu officials held high posts in the revenue administration. Masulipatnam became the kingdom's chief port, exporting painted kalamkari cottons to Persia and Southeast Asia. The Kollur mines on the Krishna supplied the diamonds that made Golconda famous. The Dutch opened a trading post at Masulipatnam in 1606, and the English followed in 1611.

Then came the British. They acquired Andhra in stages, not by a single conquest. The French had held the Northern Circars from 1753. After a contest with them, the East India Company captured Masulipatnam in 1759, and secured a Mughal grant of the Circars in 1765. In 1800, the Nizam handed over the Ceded Districts of Rayalaseema to pay for British troops. In 1801, the Nawab of Arcot gave up Nellore and Chittoor. All of it was governed from Madras, as part of the Madras Presidency.

The engineer Arthur Cotton changed the coastal economy. He built the Godavari anicut at Dowleswaram in 1852, and the Krishna anicut at Vijayawada in 1855. Together, these dams turned the two deltas into the rice bowl of the south. Railways, missionary schools and a Telugu press followed. Reformers such as Kandukuri Veeresalingam campaigned for widow remarriage and women's education.

The non-cooperation years produced some of the most original protests in India. In 1921, Duggirala Gopalakrishnayya led the people of Chirala and Perala out of their town, so that they would not have to pay a new municipal tax. Farmers at Pedanandipadu refused land revenue, and villagers in Palnadu defied the forest laws. In the same year, at Vijayawada, Pingali Venkayya presented Gandhi with the flag design that grew into the national tricolour.

Independence in August 1947 did not reach every Telugu district. The districts of today's Andhra Pradesh were in British-run Madras. But Telangana lay inside the princely state of Hyderabad. Its ruler, the seventh Nizam, Mir Osman Ali Khan, chose to join neither India nor Pakistan. His aim was an independent Hyderabad under his own dynasty, ideally as a separate dominion within the Commonwealth. He did not seek to merge with Pakistan, which had no common border with his state. But he looked to Pakistan for support. He lent it money, obtained arms through it, and took his case against India to the United Nations.

These attacks were documented at the time. The Government of India's White Paper on Hyderabad, published in August 1948, listed more than 300 incidents attributed to the Razakars. After the surrender, a special tribunal convicted Razvi for an armed Razakar raid on the village of Bibinagar, and sentenced him to seven years in prison.

The violence did not end with the surrender. The Sunderlal Committee, a goodwill mission sent by Nehru, reported on what happened during and after the police action. The Razakar period was not its subject, though its notes record that where the Razakars were resisted, loot, rape and the murder of Hindus followed. It found that the districts where the Razakars had been strongest then saw the worst reprisals, with killing, rape, abduction and forced conversion. The report describes the victims of this phase as Muslims.

We come now to the years after independence. In 1947, the Telugu districts were still part of Madras State. Potti Sriramulu fasted for a separate Telugu state, and died on the 15th of December 1952. The unrest that followed led the Union government to create Andhra State on the 1st of October 1953, with Kurnool as capital and Tanguturi Prakasam as chief minister. It was India's first state formed on a linguistic basis. On the 1st of November 1956, it merged with the Telugu districts of Hyderabad State to form Andhra Pradesh, with Hyderabad as capital and Neelam Sanjiva Reddy as chief minister.

A renewed statehood movement ended with the creation of Telangana on the 2nd of June 2014. Telangana kept Hyderabad. The remaining state has since alternated between three governments. Naidu's Telugu Desam Party ruled from 2014 to 2019. Jagan Mohan Reddy's Y S R Congress Party ruled from 2019 to 2024. Then an alliance of the Telugu Desam, the Jana Sena and the B J P returned Naidu to office in 2024. The capital question, including a 2020 plan for three capitals, was settled in April 2026, when Parliament amended the Reorganisation Act to name Amaravati the sole capital.

The land falls into three belts. The coastal plain is widest where the Godavari and Krishna spread into twin deltas, among the most fertile rice lands in the country. Behind it, the Eastern Ghats run as broken ranges. In the north are the forested hills of the Visakhapatnam Agency, where Jindhagada rises to about 1,690 metres. Further south are the Nallamala, Velikonda and Seshachalam hills. To the south-west lies Rayalaseema, a dry plateau of granite and red soil, where Anantapur ranks among the least rainy districts in peninsular India.

The state's wildlife is protected in parks and sanctuaries. There are three national parks. Papikonda protects the forested gorge that the Godavari cuts through the Eastern Ghats. Sri Venkateswara National Park covers the Seshachalam hills around Tirumala, home of the red sanders tree, which grows wild nowhere else. Rajiv Gandhi National Park, at Rameswaram in Kadapa district, is a small riverine forest on the Penna.

Wetlands are equally rich. Coringa, near Kakinada, is one of the largest mangrove forests on the east coast, with fishing cats, otters and nesting olive ridley turtles. Kolleru is a protected wetland of international importance, known for its pelicans and painted storks. Nelapattu and Pulicat, in the south, draw flamingos and breeding spot-billed pelicans each winter. Zoological parks at Visakhapatnam and Tirupati serve city visitors.

Heritage sites span two thousand years. They include the Amaravati stupa and its museum, the island museum of Nagarjunakonda, the rock-cut Undavalli caves, and Lepakshi, with its Vijayanagara murals and its giant Nandi carved from a single rock. Gandikota's fort stands on the rim of a deep gorge of the Penna. The Belum Caves, near it, are among the longest cave systems in India.

The long coast gives the state its ports. Visakhapatnam is the only one run by the central government and classed as a major port. It is a sheltered natural harbour, opened in 1933, that handles iron ore, coal, crude oil and containers. The city is also the headquarters of the Indian Navy's Eastern Naval Command, and the home of Hindustan Shipyard.

The state is adding four more. Ramayapatnam, Machilipatnam and Mulapeta are new ports that the government has targeted for completion by December 2026. A fourth, Kakinada Gateway, is being built by a private developer. The stated aim is to raise port capacity from about 110 million tonnes a year to 400 million.

Visakhapatnam anchors heavy industry. It has the public-sector Vizag Steel Plant, the Hindustan Petroleum refinery, and Hindustan Shipyard. At nearby Parawada there is a pharmaceutical cluster, where Doctor Reddy's, Aurobindo, Divi's and Laurus Labs make bulk drugs. The Krishna Godavari basin supplies offshore gas to the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation and to Reliance. Kakinada has fertiliser plants run by Coromandel International.