The Hindi Heartland: A Study

by Ghazala Wahab

The Hindi heartland, comprising Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, and Uttar Pradesh, covers nearly 38 per cent of India’s total area and is home to over 40 per cent of India’s population. It provides the country with over 40 per cent of its parliamentarians and determines the contours of national politics (out of the fifteen prime ministers India has had since 1947, eight have been from the Hindi belt). Yet, despite its political significance, the Hindi belt is among the most impoverished regions in the country. It consumes the bulk of the country’s resources, but lags behind other states on various economic and welfare indices. It is plagued by violence, illiteracy, unemployment, corruption, poor life expectancy, and numerous other ills.

Centuries of war, conquests, invasions, political movements, and religious unrest have made the heartland a place of immense paradox. Despite its extraordinary and timeless religious heritage—some of the country’s most revered spiritual leaders were born here and it is home to innumerable shrines and places of pilgrimage—it has also witnessed some of the worst communal riots in the country and has been troubled by long-running, divisive sectarian politics. Many of India’s founders, who gave the country its secular identity, hailed from the heartland, but so too did those who have spread religious discord. And the land of Ganga–Jamuni tehzeeb routinely witnesses lynching and murder in the name of religion.

The book is divided into five sections. Section I explores the geography of the region, which stretches from Rajasthan in the west to Jharkhand in the east with Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Uttarakhand, and Uttar Pradesh in between. The author then looks at caste, religion, the rural–urban divide, and the tribes who belong to the region. In the chapter on the economy, she attempts to show how the economic backwardness of the Hindi belt has come about through faulty and myopic post- Independence policies conceived by various governments—these have come in the way of sustained and inclusive development.

Section II looks at the medieval and modern history of the region and covers the emergence of the Delhi Sultanate, the Mughals, the Marathas, and the East India Company.

Section III examines British colonialism through the lens of empire building, and shows how the imperialists distorted history to facilitate their divide and rule policy. It also dwells on the deliberate economic impoverishment of the Hindi belt and how this continues to impact the region even after Independence.

Section IV analyses the freedom struggle—and covers among other things the emergence of the idea of India and the increasing Hinduization of that idea. It establishes the Hindi belt’s criticality to Gandhi’s satyagraha, and the success of the British Indian government’s experiments with strategies that divided communities, which eventually led to the partition of the country.

Section V appraises developments in the region after Independence. It outlines the government’s struggle to rehabilitate refugees coming in from the west and the adoption of a liberal Constitution for the citizens of the newly independent nation.

Given its disproportionate influence on the nation’s politics, culture, and identity, it is surprising that there has never been an authoritative history and account of the region until now. Based on meticulous research and interviews with key stakeholders, award-winning journalist and writer Ghazala Wahab, a native of the region, gives us a magisterial account of the Hindi heartland.

Genres: Politics, History

494 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 5, 2025

Reviews

[Srishti · Rating 4 out of 5]

I grew up thinking the Hindi belt was just “the political centre of India.” Ghazala Wahab’s 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑯𝒊𝒏𝒅𝒊 𝑯𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒕𝒍𝒂𝒏𝒅: 𝑨 𝑺𝒕𝒖𝒅𝒚 revealed it instead as a paradox of power and poverty, heritage and violence.

Meticulous and unflinching, this book traces the history, geo-politics, and culture of Bihar, UP, Rajasthan, MP, Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand, and Jharkhand, showing how the region both defines and distorts the nation’s identity. From the Ganga–Jamuni tehzeeb to the rise of sectarian violence, from the socialist movement to temple politics, Wahab lays bare how deeply the heartland shapes India’s destiny.

What makes this study remarkable is how it balances scale with intimacy, mixing research with lived stories, archives with voices from the ground. It is a chronicle of contradictions: a land of saints and riots, of democracy and disenfranchisement, of boundless influence and chronic neglect.

It’s not just about the heartland; it’s about India itself, reflected in a mirror that doesn’t flatter but tells the truth.

[Debabrata Mishra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some books are written to inform, others to provoke, and a rare few to make you sit uncomfortably with truths you would rather sidestep. Ghazala Wahab’s "The Hindi Heartland" does all three. It is not a tourist’s guide to India’s so-called political powerhouse. It is a meticulous excavation of its soil, blood, contradictions, and history and a reluctant love letter to a homeland the author both belongs to and resists.

The Hindi heartland, as she frames it, is not just geography, it’s a political engine, a cultural incubator, and a stubbornly persistent paradox. Here lies the Ganga–Jamuni tehzeeb and the ground zero of sectarian flashpoints. Here were born some of India’s greatest secular visionaries and its most vocal purveyors of religious division. It is where political winds begin and where social decay stubbornly refuses to lift.

The author does not take the easy route of romanticising the land’s spiritual heritage or reducing it to a basket case of poverty and bigotry. Instead, she threads together multiple themes,

🪄 Power and Poverty : How a region that sends the largest number of parliamentarians remains among the poorest in India.
🪄 Faith and Violence : How the same land that nurtures syncretic traditions repeatedly erupts into communal bloodshed.
🪄 Caste and Class : How centuries-old hierarchies have survived every political revolution, morphing into new forms but never truly disappearing.
🪄 Language and Identity : How Hindi rose to dominance at the expense of linguistic diversity, and how language politics often hides deeper religious and cultural battles.
🪄 Colonial Legacy and Policy Myopia : How British economic plunder created a structural deficit the post-Independence leadership failed to repair.

By structuring the book into five thematic sections, geography and society, medieval and modern history, colonialism, the freedom movement, and post-Independence politics, she ensures the reader moves through both space and time without losing the thread of causality.

✍️ Strengths :

🔸The author writes without flinching from the uncomfortable. She calls out political opportunism, the corrosion of socialist ideals into caste patronage, and the weaponisation of religion. This is not academic neutrality, it’s informed moral clarity.

🔸The archival work, historical tracing, and integration of interviews give the narrative authority. This is not an outsider’s aerial view but a ground-level mapping.

🔸She neither vilifies nor glorifies the region. Instead, she paints it in shades, tragic, hopeful, maddening, inspiring, often within the same chapter.

🔸Few works manage to convincingly connect medieval invasions, colonial strategies, post-Independence economic missteps, and today’s identity politics into one continuous narrative. Wahab does.

🔸Her understanding of the heartland’s cultural grammar, the rituals, the rural-urban divide, the symbolic role of temples, the persistence of oral histories, makes the book feel lived-in.

✒️ Areas for Improvement :

▪️Certain sections, particularly on policy and economic data, are exhaustively detailed to the point of fatigue. While necessary for rigour, they could have been better balanced with narrative storytelling.

▪️The voices of students, young entrepreneurs, activists, or migrants, those shaping the region’s future, are notably underrepresented. The bookleans heavily on historical and middle-aged perspectives.

▪️Some chapters flow with narrative drive, while others read like a stitched-together research paper. This can cause dips in reader engagement, especially for those not already deeply invested in the subject.

▪️For a book covering such a politically and socially volatile region, the everyday lives and struggles of women could have been explored more deeply beyond statistical mention.

In conclusion, it is not an easy read, not because it’s overly academic, but because it forces you to confront the contradictions of a place that has given India both its unifying ideals and its most divisive realities. She writes like someone who loves her homeland enough to criticise it honestly. It is a rare kind of book, one that informs without simplifying, critiques without sneering, and mourns without giving up hope. For scholars, political observers, or anyone curious about what truly drives the Indian republic’s heart and headaches, this is not optional reading, it’s foundational.

[Rahul Vishnoi · Rating 5 out of 5]

-How Free Are We?-
Review of 'The Hindi Heartland'

Quote Alert
"𝐈𝐧 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟒, 𝐁𝐉𝐏-𝐥𝐞𝐝 𝐠𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐘𝐨𝐠𝐢 𝐀𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐲𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐡 𝐢𝐧 𝐔𝐏 𝐩𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐧 𝐚𝐝𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐫. 𝐀𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐭 𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐨𝐫𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐝𝐡𝐚𝐛𝐚𝐬 𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐧𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐨𝐰𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐛𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐥𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐛𝐨𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐬. 𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐝𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐟𝐲 𝐌𝐮𝐬𝐥𝐢𝐦 𝐨𝐰𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐦𝐚𝐝𝐞 𝐜𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐫 𝐛𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐚𝐜𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐫—𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐌𝐮𝐬𝐥𝐢𝐦 𝐞𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐨𝐲𝐞𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐇𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐮-𝐨𝐰𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐝𝐡𝐚𝐛𝐚𝐬 𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐨𝐫 𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐨𝐧 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐢𝐥𝐠𝐫𝐢𝐦𝐚𝐠𝐞.𝟑 𝐌𝐮𝐬𝐥𝐢𝐦𝐬 𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐝𝐞𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐛𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐠𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭, 𝐚 𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐛𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐢𝐥𝐠𝐫𝐢𝐦𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐯𝐞𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐚—𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐀𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐡 𝐘𝐚𝐭𝐫𝐚 𝐢𝐧 𝐊𝐚𝐬𝐡𝐦𝐢𝐫 𝐭𝐨 𝐃𝐮𝐫𝐠𝐚 𝐏𝐮𝐣𝐚 𝐢𝐧 𝐁𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐚𝐥—𝐌𝐮𝐬𝐥𝐢𝐦𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐲𝐚𝐭𝐫𝐚 𝐭𝐨𝐨."

The Hindi Heartland starts with an anecdote about a kanwar yatra and how it has been used, particularly in UP, to drive a wedge between the Hindus and the Muslims. Using food to divide people, religion has been used as a knife to tear the social fabric apart. The book is sombering and analyses the Hindi belt as it is supposed to affect the political future of the country.

The reason for writing this book are multiple refrences to the role of UP in deciding the political future of India. Until Morarji Desai in 1977, author writes, all the PM were from UP. This notion was sealed when Modi decided to contest the election from Benaras.

The book is an attempt at profiling the region from a geographical, social, historical, and political perspective examining culture, economics, and language. It looks at the past of the Hindi heartland to illuminate the path to the future of the nation. It’s not a mere dive into history; it’s a reminder of the fact that India was at its best when people lived and worked together for their collective well-being, irrespective of religion and ethnicity. It’s a spark of hope.

The Hindi heartland, comprising Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, and Uttar Pradesh, covers nearly 38 per cent of India’s total area and is home to over 40 per cent of India’s population. It provides the country with over 40 per cent of its parliamentarians and determines the contours of national politics (out of the fifteen prime ministers India has had since 1947, eight have been from the Hindi belt). Yet, despite its political significance, the Hindi belt is among the most impoverished regions in the country. It consumes the bulk of the country’s resources, but lags behind other states on various economic and welfare indices. It is plagued by violence, illiteracy, unemployment, corruption, poor life expectancy, and numerous other ills.
Centuries of war, conquests, invasions, political movements, and religious unrest have made the heartland a place of immense paradox. Despite its extraordinary and timeless religious heritage—some of the country’s most revered spiritual leaders were born here and it is home to innumerable shrines and places of pilgrimage—it has also witnessed some of the worst communal riots in the country and has been troubled by long-running, divisive sectarian politics.

The author has microscopically analysed these issues and has presented us with some distressing but real facts. Pick it on this Independence Day.

[Rounak · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s rare to find a book that feels like both a deep examination and a heartfelt tribute. Ghazala Wahab’s The Hindi Heartland masterfully achieves this delicate balance with a quiet yet powerful brilliance. This isn’t merely a book about the northern heart of India; it’s a profound reckoning.

The Hindi belt often gets discussed in stark contrasts: the cradle of India’s culture versus the foundation of its setbacks, the land of saints versus the home of mobs, the engine of democracy versus the center of decay. Wahab navigates this complex landscape with the perspective of a chronicler and the voice of a witness. As someone from the region, she doesn’t shy away from its shadows, nor does she romanticize its history. Her tone is precise, often reflective, and never overly sentimental.

Divided into five carefully researched sections, the book traverses time, exploring the region’s geography and caste dynamics, the linguistic politics that have overshadowed other languages under the Hindi umbrella, and the soul-crushing grip of communalism that has become all too familiar. Wahab’s critique of post-Independence economic choices and the entrenched violence of caste and religion reads like a slow-burning indictment.

The book avoids easy scapegoats. Everyone shares in the complicity, governments, political parties, heroes, and revolutionaries alike. This is a work that perceives power not just as policy, but as memory, myth, and what’s left unsaid.

The Hindi Heartland isn’t light reading, but it’s essential. It amplifies the voice of a region that shapes India’s identity while simultaneously being suffocated by it. In Wahab’s capable hands, the heartland transforms from an abstract concept into a palpable pulse, uneven and urgent.

This isn’t a book to simply read and forget; it’s one to revisit, debate, and carry with you like a lingering ache.

[ناسازگار · Rating 5 out of 5]

What brilliant writing. Even with my own interest in South Asian history and sociolinguistics, my experience of writing on the ‘Hindi heartland’ is limited to dedicated chapters in more general titles, or very niche writing on, say, the politics of Hindi-Urdu. I have never found a single tome that so brilliantly describes the region I ‘come from’, its history, its language(s), its political movements, and the many tragedies of history that led to its divisive, volatile present.

My copy is all highlights, everywhere. I absolutely loved the (very rigorously cited) section on the Mughal era in the heart of its empire, imperial policies and rhetoric that contrast very sharply with the present day political reimagination of the Mughals as ‘invaders’. I gained so much nuance in my understanding of the beginning of the Pakistan movement in the erstwhile United Provinces, how identity politics and nation building narratives of early 20th century had begun marginalising Muslim identity as ‘peripheral’ to how India was envisioned. I loved the (also brilliantly cited) section that talked of how historiography in the subcontinent was dramatically revised by the colonial rulers, to paint themselves as the ‘civilised’, benevolent alternative to what they tried to paint as the ‘dark’ era of Islamic rule, ignoring actual historical records, which were available aplenty. Coupled with cruel reprisals for what they saw as Muslim role in the 1857 rebellion, and census policies that ‘enforced’ for the first time the idea of a ‘Hindu monolith’ that must defend itself against the Muslim invader, this was a very saddening lesson on how we continue to perceive our own past in the way a parasitic colonial hegemon ‘instructed us’ to.

On that note, what amazing detail on the economic policies of the British colonisers that wrought devastation upon the region’s sought-after manufacturing sector, impoverished the farmers by trapping them in predatory contractual arrangements for growing export-oriented crops that were useless to anyone but the colonisers. The loss of much traditional art and handicraft because the Mughals or their vassals were no longer around to sustain them through royal patronage. I spent a lot of time utterly enraged while reading this. I loved also that peasants’ political movements, and farmers’ plights and agitations were given appropriate space.

Really enjoyed also the section on language, there was apt regard for the Hindi-Urdu tussle, of course, but I particularly loved the descriptions of local languages across the Hindi heartland, that were subsumed within Hindi, relegated to ‘dialect’ despite only partial mutual intelligibility at times.

More than anything, I loved how much I felt reflected in what I was reading. From the ‘kacha’/‘paka’ distinction in food that has nothing to do with raw and cooked, to the Sunday breakfast tradition of store-bought stuffed puri and alu, one that my family shares with the author’s. This felt to me like something I’d call ‘our history’, more than anything else I’ve ever read.

Can’t wait for what Ghazala Wahab writes next.

[Prerna Shambhavee · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Hindi heartland—Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and their neighbors—holds a strange grip on India. It shapes the country’s politics, fuels its culture, and yet struggles with poverty, violence, and deep contradictions. Ghazala Wahab’s book digs into this paradox with clarity and patience, unraveling why a region so powerful remains so troubled. She doesn’t just list problems; she traces their roots—through history, bad policies, and the slow erosion of shared traditions. The result is a book that feels necessary, especially now, when the heartland’s tensions spill into national headlines daily.

Wahab splits her study into five parts, each peeling back another layer. She starts with geography and caste, moves through medieval kingdoms and British rule, then lands in today’s messy politics. What stands out is her balance—she shows how the same land that birthed Gandhi and Kabir also breeds sectarian hate. The chapters on language and economy hit hard, explaining how Hindi’s dominance and decades of flawed planning left the region stunted. There’s no sugarcoating here, just facts: this is where India’s dreams and failures collide most violently.

The most gripping sections expose how history got twisted—first by colonizers, then by politicians. The British drained the region economically; later leaders turned caste and religion into weapons. Wahab, a journalist from the heartland herself, doesn’t just rely on archives. She talks to people, capturing voices often drowned out by grand narratives. You see the human cost behind terms like "backwardness" and "communalism."

This isn’t a cheerful read, but it’s an important one. Wahab doesn’t offer easy fixes, just a mirror. If you want to understand why India works—or doesn’t—start here. The heartland isn’t just a place; it’s the country’s uneasy conscience. And this book? It’s a sharp, unflinching look at why.

[Tanya Shrivastava · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Hindi Heartland by Ghazala Wahab is not an easy read, but it is exactly the kind of book I wish more people had the courage to pick up. It feels like a slow, relentless excavation of North India’s deep contradictions the caste violence, the toxic masculinity, the communal politics, the suffocating hold of honour and pride that keep so many people trapped in cycles of power and silence.
Wahab’s research is meticulous yet deeply humane. Every chapter is loaded with hard facts, on-ground voices, references that show just how calculated this neglect and oppression really is. She writes with clarity and honesty, never slipping into sensationalism or empty moralising. What stayed with me most is how she forces us to see the paradox: the Hindi heartland fuels national politics and pride yet remains shackled in mindsets that hurt its own people first. This book is not comforting but it is necessary. I found myself pausing every few pages just to sit with the weight of what I was reading.
If you want to understand India beyond slogans and news debates, read this. If you want a mirror that does not flatter you, read this. Some books do not entertain they confront. This one does that, and I am grateful for it.

Read it. Sit with it. Let it get under your skin. I promise it’ll stay with you long after the last page, the way it’s still sitting heavy in my head and heart right now. Maybe that’s exactly what a good book should do make us see what we’d rather not see, and remind us that we’re not as innocent as we pretend to be.

[Pranjal Awasthi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ghazala Wahab’s The Hindi Heartland is a sweeping, well researched exploration of the cultural, political, and historical forces that have shaped—and continue to dominate—India’s mainstream narrative. Moving effortlessly between history, colonial legacies, food, dress, literature, and language, Wahab throws light on this demographic behemoth and geographical grouping which would spawn multiple nations just by themselves.

The book doesn’t shy away from complexity or controversy. Wahab’s takes on electoral politics, gender roles, colonialism, and even episodes like the Maratha legacy may invite debate, but they are anchored in credible scholarship. It’s this combination of bold argument and meticulous research that gives the book its intellectual and physically heft.

Owing to its sheer breadth, the book has a tremendously well crafted bibliography— it's an expansive, carefully curated resource that will send readers down multiple rabbit holes if any of the socio-political or electoral themes strike a chord.

This is an ambitious, multi-layered narrative that invites both reflection and critical engagement. Whether you agree with Wahab’s interpretations or not, The Hindi Heartland is a valuable, thought-provoking read for anyone interested in understanding how India’s cultural and political identity has been—and continues to be—shaped.