Merch
News
Panchangam
Apps
Downloads
For Teachers
Resources
About
PEOPLE
IDEAS
PLACES
CULTURE
CREATE
STORIES
GAMES
Icons of Bhārat
The freedom fighters, scientists, poets, saints, kings, artists, and champions who shaped Bhārat — from the heroes of the epics to the father of the nation. Meet the people who made the story of Bhārat.
38 icons in Kings & Strategists
Kings & Strategists
38 iconsAhilyabai Holkar
अहिल्याबाई होळकर
Ahilyabai Holkar was the greatest woman ruler of the Maratha age — the queen of Indore who governed her state for thirty years with a justice and devotion that made her legendary. A devout soul and a brilliant administrator, she is remembered for her temples, her welfare works, and her rule — praised by every historian as a model sovereign.
Ashoka
अशोक
Ashoka was the greatest emperor of ancient Bhārat — the conqueror of Kalinga who, sickened by the slaughter of war, renounced conquest by arms and ruled by dharma instead. His rock and pillar edicts, urging compassion, non-violence, and tolerance, survive across the subcontinent, and his lion capital is the emblem of modern Bhārat.
Bajiprabhu Deshpande
बाजीप्रभु देशपांडे
Bajiprabhu Deshpande was the Maratha warrior who held the mountain pass of Pavan Khind against a vast army, so that Shivaji could escape — and died fighting at the head of his men. His name is the Maratha ideal of sacrifice: the man who held the gate while his king rode to freedom.
Banda Bahadur
बंदा बहादुर
Banda Singh Bahadur was the warrior-saint who led the Sikh rebellion against the Mughal empire after the martyrdom of Guru Gobind Singh. He established the first independent Sikh state in the Punjab, struck at the oppressors of the Khalsa, and faced a martyr's death in Delhi in 1716 — becoming one of the greatest figures of the Sikh tradition.
Chanakya
चाणक्य
Chanakya — the 'Machiavelli of Bhārat', who lived 2,300 years ago — toppled the Nanda empire, crowned Chandragupta Maurya, and wrote the Arthashastra, one of the world's greatest books on statecraft, economics, and strategy.
Chandragupta Maurya
चंद्रगुप्त मौर्य
Chandragupta Maurya was the young adventurer who, guided by the strategist Chanakya, overthrew the Nanda dynasty and founded the Maurya empire — the first great imperial state of Bhārat, stretching from the Bay of Bengal to Afghanistan. His empire was described with wonder by the Greek envoy Megasthenes, and his grandson Ashoka would make it the largest Bhārat ever saw.
Chhatrapati Shivaji
छत्रपति शिवाजी
Chhatrapati Shivaji was the greatest king-warrior of Bhārat's medieval age — the founder of the Maratha empire who carved an independent kingdom out of the collapsing empires of the Deccan and defied the might of the Mughals for a lifetime. He built a navy, a fort network, and a state rooted in the soil of Bhārat — and his coronation in 1674 announced a new power in the land.
Chhatrasal
छत्रसाल
Chhatrasal was the Bundela Rajput king who defied the Mughal empire for decades — carving out his own kingdom of Bundelkhand and defending it against three Mughal emperors. He was rescued at the end by the Maratha hero Bajirao I, and his friendship with the Peshwa sealed the alliance of the Rajputs and the Marathas.
Chikkadevaraja Wodeyar
ಚಿಕ್ಕದೇವರಾಜ ಒಡೆಯರ್
Chikkadevaraja Wodeyar was the greatest king of Mysore before the age of Hyder Ali — the ruler who, in the late seventeenth century, expanded his small state into the dominant power of the southern Karnataka country. He was also a great builder and administrator who laid the foundations of Mysore's prosperity.
Dewan Purnaiah
ದಿವಾನ್ ಪೂರ್ಣಯ್ಯ
Purnaiah was the greatest Dewan of Mysore — the minister who served Tipu Sultan with fidelity, held the state together in its hour of ruin, and then restored the kingdom to the Wodeyar dynasty after the British conquest. His loyalty and administrative genius made him one of the most remarkable statesmen of the age.
Echchama Nayaka
एच्चम नायक
Echchama Nayaka was a chieftain of the Malnad hills of Karnataka who is remembered in the traditions of the Keladi kingdom — a warrior of the hill country whose life was woven into the wars and legends of the region's seventeenth-century history.
Field Marshal K.M. Cariappa
ಫೀಲ್ಡ್ ಮಾರ್ಷಲ್ ಕಾರ್ಯಪ್ಪ
Field Marshal K.M. Cariappa was the first Indian to command the Indian Army — the soldier from a small town of Karnataka who rose to the highest rank of the forces and took command of the army of independent Bhārat in 1949. He served in two world wars, led the nation's forces with distinction, and was honoured with the rank of Field Marshal in 1986.
Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw
फील्ड मार्शल सैम माणेकशॉ
Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw, Sam Bahadur to his men, was the greatest soldier of independent Bhārat — the Chief of Army Staff who planned and led the 1971 war that freed Bangladesh and broke Pakistan in two. He served in five wars across a career of four decades and was honoured with the rank of Field Marshal, the first Indian to receive it.
General Thimayya
जनरल थिमैया
General Kodandera Subayya Thimayya was the third Chief of the Army Staff of independent Bhārat — a soldier of the Kodava country, Karnataka, who served in three wars, earned the love of his troops, and was one of the most admired generals of his time. He later led the UN peacekeeping forces in Cyprus.
Hakka & Bukka
हक्क-बुक्क
Harihara and Bukka — Hakka and Bukka — were the brothers who founded the Vijayanagara empire in 1336, the great Hindu state that defended southern Bhārat for three centuries. Guided by the sage Vidyaranya, they built their capital at Hampi, whose ruins still astonish the world, and their dynasty became the shield of the south.
Jijabai
जिजाबाई
Jijabai was the mother of Chhatrapati Shivaji and the true architect of his spirit — the Rajput princess who raised her son in a land under Mughal rule, filling him with the stories of the epics and the dream of a Hindu swaraj. Her name, Jijau, is revered in Maharashtra as the mother who gave Bhārat its greatest hero.
Keladi Chennamma
केलाडी चेन्नम्मा
Keladi Chennamma was the brave queen of the small kingdom of Keladi in Karnataka who defied the might of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb — sheltering Rajaram, the son of Shivaji, when he fled the Mughal armies in 1689. Her defiance cost her a war with the empire, which she fought with skill and courage.
Kempegowda
ಕೆಂಪೇಗೌಡ
Kempegowda was the founder of Bengaluru — the visionary chieftain of the Vokkaliga community who, in 1537, laid the foundation of the city that would become the silicon capital of the world. He built its fort, its lakes, and its temples, and his city grew into one of the greatest of Bhārat.
Kharavela
खारवेल
Kharavela was the great emperor of Kalinga (Odisha) in the first century BCE — the Jain warrior-king who revived his land after its devastation by Ashoka, campaigned against the successors of the Mauryas, and whose exploits are carved in the celebrated Hathigumpha inscription in the Udayagiri caves.
Kumara Rama
ಕುಮಾರ ರಾಮ
Kumara Rama was the heroic prince of Kampili — a kingdom of the Karnataka country that defied the Delhi sultanate in the fourteenth century. His story, told in the folk epic Kumara Rama Charite, is one of the great hero-tales of Kannada: a prince of matchless valour who fought the invaders and died for the honour of his land.
Madakari Nayaka
ಮದಕರಿ ನಾಯಕ
Madakari Nayaka was the last king of the Paleyagar dynasty of Chitradurga — a ruler of the powerful Nayaka line of the Karnataka country who defied Hyder Ali and his son Tipu Sultan for years. His story, told in the Bharata Bharati series, is the tale of a small kingdom's heroic resistance against the growing power of Mysore.
Maharana Pratap
महाराणा प्रताप
Maharana Pratap was the Rajput king of Mewar who refused to submit to the Mughal emperor Akbar — and who, after losing his capital and his kingdom, fought on from the hills for years until he won back his land. His battle with Man Singh at Haldighati in 1576 and his beloved horse Chetak are legends of valour of Bhārat.
Mayurasharma
ಮಯೂರಶರ್ಮ
Mayurasharma was a Brahmin scholar who founded the Kadamba dynasty — the first great kingdom of the Karnataka country, established around 345 CE. According to the famous Talagunda inscription, he took up the sword when a horseman of the Pallavas insulted him, and carved out a kingdom that ruled the west coast for centuries.
Mirza Ismail
ಮಿರ್ಜಾ ಇಸ್ಮಾಯಿಲ್
Mirza Ismail was one of the greatest administrators of princely Bhārat — the Dewan of Mysore who, from 1926 to 1941, guided the state to a golden age of industry, education, and public works. Under him Mysore built its great industries, dams, and institutions, and he later served as Dewan of Jaipur and Hyderabad.
Nalwadi Krishnaraja Wodeyar
ನಾಲ್ವಡಿ ಕೃಷ್ಣರಾಜ ಒಡೆಯರ್
Nalwadi Krishnaraja Wodeyar was the greatest of the Maharajas of Mysore — the 'Rajarshi', the kingly sage, who ruled from 1902 to 1940 and made his state a model of progress for the whole of Bhārat. Under his rule Mysore led the nation in education, industry, and public welfare, and he was loved by his people as few rulers have been.
Netaji Palkar
नेताजी पालकर
Netaji Palkar was the first Sarnaubat — commander-in-chief — of the Maratha forces under Shivaji, the fierce warrior who carried the Maratha banners into the Mughal territories and whose raids made the Mughal governors tremble. His life of glory, capture, and return is one of the most dramatic stories of the Maratha age.
Nrupatunga
नृपतुंग
Amoghavarsha Nrupatunga was the greatest emperor of the Rashtrakuta dynasty — the ruler of a vast Deccan empire who was also a poet and the patron of the first great work of Kannada literature, the Kavirajamarga. His long reign of over sixty years was an age of peace, art, and learning.
Onake Obavva
ಒನಕೆ ಓಬವ್ವ
Onake Obavva was the woman of Chitradurga fort who, alone and armed only with a pestle, defended a narrow pass against the soldiers of Hyder Ali's army in the eighteenth century — killing more than a dozen invaders before she fell. She is honoured as one of the greatest folk heroines of Karnataka.
Peshwa Baji Rao I
पेशवा बाजीराव प्रथम
Baji Rao I was the greatest of the Maratha Peshwas — the twenty-year-old who convinced the Maratha council to carry their banners beyond the Deccan, and who in twenty years of campaigning shattered the Mughal power in the north. The Mughal court itself said of him: 'never has a spear been hurled like his'.
Rajendra Chola
राजेंद्र चोल
Rajendra Chola was the greatest emperor of the Chola dynasty — the king who carried Tamil power across the Bay of Bengal, defeated the kingdoms of Southeast Asia, and ruled an empire that stretched from the Ganga to Sumatra. His naval conquests made him the first great sea-emperor of Bhārat.
Rana Sanga
राणा सांगा
Rana Sanga was the greatest Rajput ruler of his age — the emperor of Mewar who united the Rajput clans, defeated the sultans of Malwa and Gujarat, and was the last great power to face Babur, the founder of the Mughal empire, at the battle of Khanwa in 1527. He fought his wars with eighty wounds on his body and one arm lost.
Ranadhira Kanthirava
ರಣಧೀರ ಕಂಠೀರವ
Kanthirava Narasaraja Wodeyar, remembered as Ranadhira, 'the heroic in war', was the greatest of the early kings of Mysore — a ruler who expanded his small kingdom, defied the Bijapur sultanate, and made Mysore a power to be reckoned with in the seventeenth century. He was also a patron of music and learning.
Rani Abbakka
ರಾಣಿ ಅಬ್ಬಕ್ಕ
Rani Abbakka was the queen of Ullal, on the coast of Karnataka, who fought the Portuguese for four decades in the sixteenth century — the first woman to lead of Bhārat a resistance against the European colonisers and one of the few rulers who repeatedly defeated them. She is honoured as the 'unconquered queen'.
Rani Durgavati
रानी दुर्गावती
Rani Durgavati was the queen of the Gond kingdom of Garha-Katanga in central Bhārat — a warrior-queen who ruled with skill after her husband's death and led her armies personally against the Mughal emperor Akbar's general Asaf Khan in 1564. She fell fighting, choosing death over surrender, and is honoured as one of Bhārat's greatest warrior queens.
Sayajirao Gaekwad
सयाजीराव गायकवाड
Sayajirao Gaekwad III was the reformer-Maharaja of Baroda — one of the most progressive rulers of princely Bhārat, whose reign of fifty years was a model of good governance. He made primary education compulsory in his state, freed his people from debt, supported the national movement, and patronised learning and the arts without equal.
Shivappa Nayaka
शिवप्पा नायक
Shivappa Nayaka was the great king of Keladi in Karnataka — a ruler remembered above all for the 'Shivappa Nayaka system' of land revenue, a scientific and just system of taxation that made his kingdom's farmers prosper and his state the envy of the Deccan. He is the model of the good administrator-king.
Vikramaditya
विक्रमादित्य
Vikramaditya is the most famous king of legend of Bhārat — the emperor of Ujjain whose name the Hindu calendar, the Vikram Samvat, bears. In the tradition, he is the just and generous king whose court had the nine gems, or Navaratnas, including the poet Kalidasa, and whose exploits fill the tales of Bhārat.
Vishnuvardhana
विष्णुवर्धन
Vishnuvardhana was the greatest king of the Hoysala dynasty — the emperor who expanded his small kingdom into a power of the Deccan and raised the temples of Belur and Halebidu, the masterpieces of sculpture of Bhārat. Under his rule, Hoysala art reached the perfection that still draws the world to Karnataka.
One land. Endless wonders.
Which story will you explore next? Every card below began on soil of Bhārat.