Hadoti · Arid Northwest

People

Name	Years	Field	Known for
Rao Deva Hada	13th century	Ruler	Took Bundi in 1241 and gave the region both its ruling clan and its name — Hadoti is simply the Hada country.
Rao Ratan Singh of Bundi	1607–1631	Ruler	Bundi's Mughal-service ruler, under whom the state's territory reached its greatest extent and after whose death Kota was detached from it as a separate state for his son.
Rao Madho Singh	Ruled Kota from 1631	Ruler	The first ruler of Kota as an independent state. The split from Bundi is the single event behind the two painting schools: the same idiom, two courts, and within a generation two distinguishable manners.
Rani Nathavati Solanki	Active around 1699	Patron	Commissioned Raniji ki Baori during her son's reign — the largest of Bundi's stepwells, and the clearest piece of evidence that water architecture in this region was built as public work and signed as such.
Maharao Bhim Singh I of Kota	Ruled 1707–1720	Ruler	Turned the Kota state formally over to Krishna as Brijnathji, ruling as the deity's deputy. It reorganised the court calendar and it is why Kota's painters spent as much time on Krishna subjects as on hunts.
Rao Umed Singh of Bundi	Ruled 1739–1770	Ruler and patron	The patron under whom the Chitrashala programme was carried out, and under whom the Bundi mural idiom moved from the painted page to the wall.
Zalim Singh Jhala	1740–1824	Administrator	Kota's faujdar and effective ruler for close to half a century, who kept the state out of the Maratha and early British wars by treaty and cultivated a reputation for revenue administration. Jhalawar was carved out for his descendants in 1838, which is why a fourth state exists in a region that had three.
Maharao Ram Singh II of Kota	Ruled 1828–1866	Ruler and patron	The last great patron of the Kota school, who had himself painted in enormous processional and hunting scenes and kept a workshop running well into the photographic era.
Suryamall Misran	1815–1868	Poet	Charan poet at the Bundi court and author of the Vansh Bhaskar, a vast Dingal chronicle of the Hada houses. It is the region's principal literary monument and the fullest surviving example of bardic Rajasthani in the nineteenth century.
Maharaj Rana Bhawani Singh of Jhalawar	Ruled 1899–1929	Ruler and patron	Built the Bhawani Natya Shala in 1921 — a European-plan proscenium theatre with stage machinery, in a princely state most people could not find on a map. He wrote and staged productions in it himself.
Vinod Kumar Bansal	1949–2021	Education	An engineer at a Kota synthetics mill who began coaching students for the engineering entrance examination in the 1980s and formalised it into an institution. What followed turned a plateau town of half a million into the country's single largest destination for adolescent migration, with everything that has cost.

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