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The Ganges basin—from Haryana to Bengal—was once India’s civilizational core. Bengal, Odisha, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and Haryana weren’t fragmented states—they were limbs of a united province, pulsing with strategy, scholarship, and spiritual depth.
Even Alexander, who breached the Sindhu with ease, turned back at the doorstep of Magadha i.e. current era Punjab Haryana border. The Nanda Empire’s Golden Army's might—200,000 infantry, 20,000 cavalry, 3,000 elephants—was enough to trigger mutiny among his troops.
To dismantle the Nandas, it took Chanakya’s vision and Chandragupta’s grit to build the Mauryan Empire—stretching from Afghanistan to Karnataka, with Pataliputra as its capital.
This soil birthed Buddha’s enlightenment, Guru Gobind Singh’s valor, Gandhi’s awakening in Champaran, and Jayprakash Narayan’s second freedom movement. Bihar—Vihar, the garden of monasteries—wasn’t a state. It was the capital zone of empires.
But post-800 CE, the spine fractured. Petty feudalism replaced grand vision. Buddhism faded, replaced by ritualism and caste rigidity. The Mughals centralized power. The British disbanded native armies after the grand 1857 revolution and replaced leadership with psychological warfare—faith distortion, caste weaponization, and cultural amnesia.
Today, the people remain brilliant—but misaligned. The region that birthed both Padma-Nanda and Chanakya now breeds confusion. The soil that nurtured Ashoka now struggles with fractured identities.
This belt must rise again—not by nostalgia, but by reimagining forward. Not reform. Reinvention. Not resistance. Renaissance.
Post Green Revolution and 1960s the whole idea of binding Ganga and her sisters to fill in water and energy demands of some states hammered the last nail in the coffins of the Gangetic zone.
Follow the smog ball and parali burning trail, follow the rice trail, follow the hilsa trail, follow the massive water export via rice to the world trail, follow where the beneficiaries are right now, follow the 1857 revolution trail, the answers are there and abound.
The blueprint is in the soil. The mandate is in the memory, what worked for the great Gangetic planes before it started fading post Gupta's has to be researched and become part of larger policies.
Because, when the heart rises, the nation breathes.
Linkedin Link- https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ganges-belt-from-empire-echoand-why-must-rise-again-rakesh-prasad-xuxac/
I write and speak on the matters of relevance for technology, economics, environment, politics and social sciences with an Indian philosophical pivot.
