On 1 November 2014 the city of Gulbarga became the city of Kalaburagi, along with eleven other renamings across Karnataka. It is worth knowing what the two names mean, because between them they describe the place better than any paragraph could.
Gulbarga is Persian: a city of flowers and gardens. Kalaburagi is Kannada: stony land. The first is what a fourteenth-century sultanate coming down from Delhi called the seat it built here. The second is what the people who farmed the black soil around it had always called it. Both are accurate — this is a hard, dry, rocky plateau, and there are Persian rose-garden names all over it.
Why it does not feel like south India
Because for most of the last seven hundred years it has not been governed from the south. The Bahmani sultanate made Gulbarga Fort its capital in 1347 and ruled the Deccan from here until 1424. After the sultanate broke up the district went to Bijapur, then to Aurangzeb, then to the Nizam — and it stayed part of Hyderabad State right up until 1948, and part of the Indian state of Hyderabad until the linguistic reorganisation of 1956 handed most of the district to Mysore State, which later became Karnataka.
Seven centuries of Deccani rule leaves marks that a state boundary does not erase. The food is Deccani. The Urdu is Deccani. The great shrine of the city is a Chishti dargah. The dominant local architecture from before the modern period is Bahmani and Adil Shahi. If you have come here from coastal Karnataka or from Mysuru, the first hour in Kalaburagi will feel like a different country, and that is because for most of its recorded history it was.
- The region was called Hyderabad-Karnataka until 2019, when Karnataka renamed it Kalyana Karnataka — the old name tied it to the Nizams.
- Article 371J of the Constitution, inserted by the 98th Amendment of 2012 and in force from 1 January 2013, gives the region reservations in education and state employment.
- The districts are Kalaburagi, Bidar, Yadgir, Raichur, Koppal and Ballari.
- The special status exists because the region was, on almost every development measure, left behind — that is the argument that produced the amendment.
The tur bowl
The single most economically important thing about Kalaburagi is not the fort. It is pigeon pea — tur, togari in Kannada, the split yellow dal that goes into most Indian kitchens every day.
Kalaburagi district grows red gram on about 3.7 lakh hectares, roughly 41 per cent of Karnataka's total, and produces around 60 per cent of the state's tur; Karnataka is the largest producer in the country. The district is known as the tur bowl of Karnataka, and has something in the order of 250 dal mills. On 14 August 2019 the crop was granted a Geographical Indication as Gulbarga Tur Dal — in Kannada, Kalaburagi Togari Bele — recognising the variety and the black cotton soil it grows in.
It is a useful thing to know while looking at the fort. The Bahmanis chose this plateau for reasons of strategy and water; what has kept the district going for the six hundred years since is the soil.
What to eat
Ask for tahari — rice cooked with meat and spice, the local one-pot dish, and the thing to eat here rather than a biryani ordered out of habit. Jowar roti, the flat sorghum bread of the dry Deccan, comes with almost everything, and the dals are the district's own. The cooking is heavily spiced by the standards of southern Karnataka and has more in common with Hyderabad than with Bengaluru.
One correction while we are here: bidriware — the blackened zinc-alloy metalwork inlaid with silver — is often attached to Kalaburagi in tourism copy. It is properly from Bidar, 118 km north, which is where the Bahmanis moved their capital and where the craft is named for and still made.
The heat, and when to come
This is drought-prone country. The district's recorded summer high is 45°C and its rainfall is meagre — well under a metre a year, on a little over forty rainy days. There is very little shade at any of the monuments. November to February is the answer, and within that, mornings.
What there is to see
In the city: the fort, with its covered Jama Masjid; the Haft Gumbaz royal tombs; the echoing Chor Gumbad; the Khwaja Bande Nawaz Dargah, whose November urs is the biggest thing in the city's year; the Sharana Basaveshwara Temple, the Lingayat centre in the middle of town; and the modern Buddha Vihar out on the Sedam road.
In the district: the Rashtrakuta capital at Malkhed, the excavated Buddhist stupa at Kanaganahalli near Sannati where Ashokan edicts turned up under a temple floor in 1986, the Dattatreya pilgrimage town of Ganagapur, and the dry forest of Chincholi on the Telangana border.
Frequently asked questions
Why was Gulbarga renamed Kalaburagi?
The change took effect on 1 November 2014, as part of a set of twelve Karnataka renamings meant to restore Kannada forms of place names. Gulbarga is Persian, for a city of flowers and gardens; Kalaburagi is Kannada, for stony land.
What is Kalyana Karnataka?
The six northern districts of Karnataka — Kalaburagi, Bidar, Yadgir, Raichur, Koppal and Ballari — that were part of the Nizam's Hyderabad State until 1948. The region was called Hyderabad-Karnataka until Karnataka renamed it in 2019. Article 371J of the Constitution, in force since 1 January 2013, gives it reservations in education and state jobs.
What food is Kalaburagi known for?
Tahari — spiced rice cooked with meat — and jowar roti, and above all its dal. Kalaburagi grows around 60 per cent of Karnataka's tur, and Gulbarga Tur Dal has carried a Geographical Indication since 14 August 2019. The cooking is Deccani and closer to Hyderabad's than to southern Karnataka's.
Is bidriware from Kalaburagi?
No. Bidriware is from Bidar, 118 km north, and is named for it. Tourism copy attaches it to Kalaburagi fairly often; the craft belongs to the Bahmanis' second capital, not their first.