Place · garden city & state capital · India

Bengaluru

Also known as Bangalore, Beṅgaḷūru, Bengalūru, Bengaluru, Benda-Kaal-uru, Garden City, Silicon Valley of India

Date

890 (first inscription) · 1537 (fort)

Function

Authority & administration

Patron dynasty

Kempe Gowda chiefs · Wodeyars of Mysore · Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan

Confidence

Established / referenced

Location

12.979, 77.592

Worth knowing

The name first appears in a Kannada stone inscription of 890 CE at the Nageshwara Temple in Begur. An apocryphal story derives it from Benda-Kaal-uru, 'town of boiled beans', after an old woman fed the lost Hoysala king Veera Ballala II.

Connections (14)

• Site withinBangalore Fort, Bengaluru

  Bangalore Fort is the core from which Bengaluru grew. Kempe Gowda I, a chieftain aligned with the Vijayanagara emperor Achyuta Deva Raya, built a mud fort here in 1537 that the city's history treats as its foundation, dividing the town within into trading quarters called petes. Hyder Ali built the Delhi and Mysore gates in 1760, British forces under Cornwallis captured the fort on 21 March 1791 in the Third Anglo-Mysore War, and Tipu Sultan's teak summer palace still stands within its old walls.

• Site withinIndian Institute of Science, Bengaluru

  The Indian Institute of Science was established in Bengaluru in 1909, after Sir William Ramsay, asked to recommend a site for Jamsetji Tata's proposed research institute, named Bangalore as the best location; the land and other facilities were donated by Maharaja Krishnaraja Wadiyar IV and Tata. C. V. Raman moved to the city in 1933 as the Institute's first Indian director, and after retiring from it in 1948 he founded the Raman Research Institute in Bangalore, a second research institution in the same city.

• Site withinVidhana Soudha, Bengaluru

  The Vidhana Soudha houses the state legislature and executive of Karnataka in Bengaluru. After independence the city became the capital of Mysore State and the two houses met temporarily in the Attara Kacheri, the British-built building in Cubbon Park. Jawaharlal Nehru laid the foundation stone of a new building on 13 July 1951, and Chief Minister Kengal Hanumanthaiah, who saw the Attara Kacheri as a symbol of colonial authority, pressed for an indigenous design; the Neo-Dravidian building was completed in 1956.

• Site withinISRO Headquarters, Bengaluru

  The Indian Space Research Organisation, India's national space agency, is headquartered in Bengaluru. It began as the Indian National Committee for Space Research, set up in 1962 by Jawaharlal Nehru on Vikram Sarabhai's recommendation, was renamed ISRO in 1969 and was brought under the new Department of Space in 1972. Its headquarters join the Indian Institute of Science, established in the city in 1909, among the national scientific institutions that have made Bengaluru their base.

• Site withinLalbagh Botanical Garden, Bengaluru

  Lalbagh lies in south Bengaluru and, with Cubbon Park, is one of the city's two great urban green spaces, home to wild birds and other wildlife. Hyder Ali commissioned it in 1760, the year he built the Delhi and Mysore gates of the town; in the nineteenth century it became the Government Botanical Garden, chosen although it lay at a distance from the British cantonment. The garden adjoins one of the towers erected by Kempe Gowda's line, whose fort of 1537 founded the city.

• Site withinCubbon Park, Bengaluru

  Cubbon Park sits in Bengaluru's central business district, reached from M.G. Road, Kasturba Road, Hudson Circle and Ambedkar Veedhi. It was created in 1870 under Richard Sankey, when the city was still split between the old pete and the British cantonment, and it held the colonial seat of government: the Attara Kacheri, built in 1864, housed the state's public offices from 1868 to 1956, and after independence the houses of the Mysore legislature met there before moving to the Vidhana Soudha across the road.

• Site withinBengaluru Palace

  Bengaluru Palace stands north of the city centre on a large plot that once belonged to John Garrett, linguist and principal of the Central High School. The Maharaja of Mysore commissioned it in 1873, after the town had been incorporated into the princely state of Mysore following Tipu Sultan's death in 1799 and while the British Residency of Mysore sat in Bengaluru. Today its courtyard and grounds are the city's venue for concerts, exhibitions, weddings and cultural programmes, alongside an amusement park.

• Site withinDodda Basavana Gudi (Bull Temple), Bengaluru

  The Bull Temple stands on Bull Temple Road in Basavanagudi, the south Bengaluru neighbourhood named after it, inside a park called Bugle Rock. Kempe Gowda, the city's founder, is credited with building it, and Basavanagudi was later developed, with Malleshwaram, as one of the extensions to the south and north of the old pete. Its annual groundnut fair, the Kadalekai Parishe, held on the last Monday and Tuesday of Karthika, brings farmers from other parts of the state to offer their first crop.

• Historical linkHampi / Vijayanagara

  Bengaluru was founded under Vijayanagara authority. Kempe Gowda I, a local governor and chieftain aligned with the Vijayanagara Empire under the emperor Achyuta Deva Raya, established the mud fort of 1537 that is treated as the city's foundation, and is credited with the Nandi temple at Basavanagudi built in the Vijayanagara style. After the empire's defeat at the Battle of Talikota in 1565, Kempe Gowda declared independence, and his successor Kempe Gowda II built four towers to mark the town's boundary.

• Historical linkHyder Ali

  Hyder Ali's rise ran through Bangalore. The Mysore minister Devaraja rewarded him with the jagir of Bangalore for his part in the siege of Devanahalli, and in 1758 he forced the Marathas to lift their siege of the town. After the death of Krishnaraja Wodeyar II in 1759 he took control of the Mysore kingdom, and in 1760 he built the Delhi and Mysore gates at the northern and southern ends of the city and commissioned the Lal Bagh garden that his son Tipu Sultan completed.

• Historical linkTipu Sultan

  Tipu Sultan inherited Bangalore from his father Hyder Ali and left two lasting works in it. He completed the Lal Bagh garden Hyder had begun in 1760, importing trees and plants from several countries, and in 1791 he completed the teak summer palace Hyder had begun inside the fort in 1781. That March, British forces under Cornwallis captured the fort in the Third Anglo-Mysore War, and after Tipu's death in the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War in 1799 the town was incorporated into the princely state of Mysore.

• Historical linkMysuru

  Bengaluru came under the Mysore kingdom in 1687, when the Mughal general Kasim Khan, acting for Aurangzeb, defeated Ekoji I and leased the town to the Mysore ruler Chikkadevaraja Wodeyar. The British Residency of Mysore State, established at Mysore in 1799, moved to Bengaluru in 1804, and after independence Bengaluru rather than Mysuru became the capital of Mysore State, keeping that role when the state was enlarged in 1956 and renamed Karnataka in 1973.

• PatronageKrishnaraja Wadiyar IV

  Bengaluru's reputation as India's 'Garden City' began, according to its history, in 1927 with the silver jubilee celebrations of Krishnaraja Wodeyar IV's rule; the same jubilee saw Cubbon Park officially renamed Sri Chamarajendra Park after the nineteenth-century ruler Chamarajendra Wodeyar. The maharaja also donated, with Jamsetji Tata, the land and facilities for the Indian Institute of Science, established in the city in 1909 after Sir William Ramsay recommended Bangalore as the best location for it.

• Worked atC. V. Raman

  C. V. Raman left Calcutta for Bangalore in 1933 to become the first Indian director of the Indian Institute of Science, an institute built on lands and funds given by Maharaja Krishnaraja Wadiyar IV, Jamsetji Tata and the Nizam Mir Osman Ali Khan. He retired from the Institute in 1948 and established the Raman Research Institute in Bangalore, where he worked until the end of his life; he died in November 1970, after thirty-seven years based in the city.

Sources

Wikipedia, "Bengaluru", "Lal Bagh", "Tipu Sultan's Summer Palace", "Hyder Ali" and "Indian Institute of Science".

• Wikipedia — Bengaluru
• Wikipedia — Kempe Gowda I