Chhattisgarh Plains · Central Highlands & Forest Belt

People

Name	Years	Field	Known for
Guru Ghasidas	1756–1850	Religious teacher	Born at Girodpuri; founded the Satnam panth on a nirgun teaching of one formless name, with the white jaitkhamb as its emblem. The Panthi dance, its songs and a large part of the plain's social geography descend directly from his teaching.
Teejan Bai	Born 1956	Pandwani	From Ganiyari near Durg; took up the standing, acted-out Kapalik style of Pandwani at a time when women performed the seated style if they performed at all, and made it the form's public face. Awarded the Padma Vibhushan in 2019.
Habib Tanvir	1923–2009	Theatre	Born in Raipur; founded Naya Theatre and built it around Nacha performers acting in Chhattisgarhi rather than around trained urban actors. Charandas Chor (1975) is the result and remains the clearest case of an Indian village form entering the modern repertoire on its own terms.
Pandit Sundarlal Sharma	1881–1940	Poet and social reformer	Wrote Chhattisgarhi Danleela in 1898, conventionally taken as the first modern literary work in the language, and so the point at which Chhattisgarhi acquired a written literature distinct from its performed one.
Devdas Banjare	1949–2001	Panthi dance	The dancer and choreographer who took Panthi from Satnami village performance onto national and international stages without stripping out its doctrinal content. Awarded the Padma Shri.
Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh	1917–1964	Poet	Taught at Digvijay College in Rajnandgaon for the last years of his life and wrote his major long poems there, including Andhere Mein. A central figure of modern Hindi poetry, working from a small town in this plain.
Padumlal Punnalal Bakshi	1894–1971	Essayist and editor	From Khairagarh; edited the journal Saraswati and effectively established the modern Hindi essay as a form. His prose is the reason this region has a place in Hindi literary history at all.
Raja Chakradhar Singh	1905–1947	Ruler and musicologist	Ruler of Raigarh and a serious percussionist and writer on dance; his patronage produced the Raigarh Kathak gharana and treatises including Nartan Sarvaswa. The Chakradhar Samaroh at Raigarh continues in his name.
R. H. Richharia	1909–1996	Rice science	Directed rice research at Raipur and, through systematic village-by-village collection, documented on the order of nineteen thousand rice landraces from this plain — the reason its genetic diversity is a recorded fact rather than an impression.
Surujbai Khande	—	Bharthari singing	The best-known singer of the Bharthari epic in Chhattisgarhi, who kept the night-long sarangi-accompanied form in live performance when it had almost no other exponents.
Narendra Dev Verma	—	Poet	Wrote Arpa Pairi ke Dhar, the song that names the plain's rivers in order and is now the official state song — the one modern Chhattisgarhi composition most people can sing from memory.

People from Chhattisgarh Plains who shaped its history, arts, science, sport and public life. (11)