Jabalpur - Arts and Culture

Arts and Culture

Jabalpur is also referred to as SanskarDhani or the cultural capital of Madhya Pradesh, while Bhopal is RajDhani or political capital and Indore is VanijyaDhani or economic capital. The reason for being called SanskarDhani is because many culture-connoisseurs have had long terms significant associations with the city, including Pritish Nandy, Roopkumar Soni, Makhanlal Chaturvedi, Harishankar Parsai, Beohar Rajendra Simha, Subhadrakumari Chauhan, Alakhnandan Sinha, Gyanranjan Shrivastava, Rehman, Prem Nath, Arjun Rampal, Jaya Bhaduri Bachchan, Aadesh Shrivastava, Raghubir Yadav, and more recently Abhas Joshi, etc., but, most important in this context, the internationally recognized artist-painter from Jabalpur Beohar Rammanohar Sinha who designed and decorated the original preamble to the Constitution of India.

The presence of the river Narmada, rule of Gond and Kalchuri-Maratha dynasties made Jabalpur a Hindu dominated area. Mughal rule brought in a sizable Muslim population. The city had Hindu-Muslim riots in the 1960s. There has been a sharp decline in these riots owing to gradual, yet slow path to progress.

The present culture is dominantly related to agricultural population of the city and surrounding areas. The food and clothing change with the harvest of crops in every season, usually observed by Hindus.

Jabalpur has a very cosmopolitan feel about it where you can find people of almost all major religions and castes in India. The city has Marwari, Bengali, Malyali, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannadiga, Marathi, and Punjabi people in sizable ratios and there are people from other regions of India as well.

The city has been a stage for many cultural inventions and many traditional rituals. The city has been peaceful since a long time after the 1960s and now is marching forward towards development in the spheres of infrastructure and industries.

It is indeed a city of culture, where each festival is celebrated with great pomp, the major being Navratri and Dusshera are celebrated with full energy. Not only residents but also visitors from all over MP come to see the Durga Pandals of the city.

Some of the nonprofit organizations (NGOs) active in promotion of art and culture are:

• Pahal literary magazine (Prof Gyanranjan & others)
• Vivechana (Himanshu Rai & others)
• Dialogue-With-Nature-International (Beohar Dr Anupam-Sangita Sinha & others)
• Pragatisheel Lekhak Sangha (Pankaj Swamy 'Gulush' & others)
• Patheya (Rajkumar Tiwari 'Sumitra' & others)
• Viprakul Parishad (Rajesh Pathak 'Pravin' & others)
• MP Artists' Forum (Kamta Sagar & others)
• MiPhoSo (Mukul Yadav & others)
• Triveni Parishad (Dr Gayatri Tiwari & others)
• Gunjan Kala Sadan (Omkar Shrivastava & others)
• MitraSangha (Ajeet Verma & others)
• Jabalpur Manch (Sakeel Hindusdtani & others)
• OFK Natya Kala Sansthan (V.M.Ignatius & others)
• Milan