Bastar district

Bastar District is a district of the state of Chhattisgarh in central India. Jagdalpur is the district headquarters. The district has an area of 8755.79 km². Bastar District is bounded on the northwest by Rajnandgaon District, on the north by Kanker District, on the northeast by Dhamtari District, on the east by Navarangpur and Koraput districts of Orissa state, on the south and southeast by Dantewada District, and on the east by Gadchiroli District of Maharashtra state.

The population of the district is 1,302,253 (2001 census). 70% of the district's population are tribal peoples (adivasis).

In 1981 Bastar had a population of 1,842,854 with 1,249,197 of the residents being members of scheduled tribes. This also represented about 70% of the population. [Gell, Simeran Man Singh. "The Ghotul in Muria Society" (Singapore: Hardwood Academic Publishers, 1992) p. 1] However these figures are for the pre-1999 Bastar District which had the same boundaries as the modern Bastar Division.

Administratively, the district is divided into four tehsils, Jagdalpur, Kondagaon, Keshkal, and Narainpur. The district has two municipalities, Jagdalpur and Kondgaon. Jagdalpur, the administrative headquarters, is a beautiful city having population of about 1.5 lakhs (150,000).

Bastar and Dantewada districts were formerly part of the princely state of Bastar. Earlier studies of the region were conducted by Verrier Elwin a colonial anthropologist, who went native. The state is described in Nandini Sundar, "Subalterns and Sovereigns". After Indian independence in 1947, the princely states of Bastar and Kanker acceded to the Government of India, and were merged to form Bastar District of Madhya Pradesh state. The district, which had an area of 39,114 km², was one of the largest in India. In 1999, the district was divided into the present-day districts of Bastar, Dantewada, and Kanker, which constitute Bastar Division. In 2000, Bastar was one of the 16 Madhya Pradesh districts that formed the new state of Chhattisgarh.

The Chitrakoot and Teerathgarh waterfalls are situated close to Jagdalpur. Bastar is famous for its traditional Dasara (Dussera) festival.

Photographs of chitrakoot water falls

please note these images are copy left - i am not sure how to make it more obvious.

References

External links

* [http://bastar.nic.in Bastar District website]