Raja Ravi Varma was an Indian painter and artist. His works are one of the best examples of the fusion of European academic art with a purely Indian sensibility and iconography. Especially, he was notable for making affordable lithographs of his paintings available to the public, which greatly enhanced his reach and influence as a painter and public figure. His lithographs increased the involvement of common people with fine arts and defined artistic tastes among the common people. Furthermore, his religious depictions of Hindu deities and works from Indian epic poetry and Puranas have received profound acclaim. He was part of the royal family of erstwhile Parappanad, Malappuram district.
Nathdwara is a city in the Rajsamand district of the state of Rajasthan, India. It is located in the Aravalli hills, on the banks of the Banas River and is 48 kilometres north-east of Udaipur. Shrinathji, is a swarup of lord Krishna which resembles his 7-year-old "infant" incarnation of Krishna. The deity was originally worshiped at Jatpura, Mathura and was shifted in the year 1672 from Govardhan hill, near Mathura along holy river Yamuna after being retained at Agra for almost six months. Literally, Nathdwara means 'Gateway to Shrinathji (God)'. Nathdwara is a significant Vaishnavite shrine pertaining to the Pushti Marg or the Vallabh Sampradaya or the Shuddha Advaita founded by Vallabha Acharya, revered mainly by people of Gujarat and Rajasthan, among others. Vitthal Nathji, son of Vallabhacharya institutionalised the worship of Shrinathji at Nathdwara. Today also the Royal king family of Nathdwara belongs to the lineage of vallabhacharya mahaprabhuji. They are called Tilkayat or tikaet of Nathdwara.
Pichhwai, literally meaning 'that which hangs from the back' from the Sanskrit words "Pichh" means back and "wais" means hanging, are large devotional Hindu painted pictures, normally on cloth, which portray Krishna. They are mainly made to hang in Hindu temples of the Pushtimarg devotional tradition, especially the Shrinathji Temple in Nathdwara, Rajasthan, built around 1672. They are hung behind the idol of Shrinathji, a local form of Krishna and the centre of Pushtimarg worship, to depict his leelas. Aurangabad was another area associated with them. The purpose of pichhwais, other than artistic appeal, is to narrate tales of Krishna to the illiterate. Temples have sets with different images, which are changed according to the calendar of festivals celebrating the deity.
Rajput painting, painting of the regional Hindu courts during Mughal era, roughly from the end of the 16th-century to the middle of the 19th-century. Traditionally Rajput painting is further divided into Rajasthan and Pahari painting, that flourished in two different areas, "far apart from each other in terms of distance but all under the rule of Rajput chiefs, and bound together by a common culture".
The Laxminarayan Mandir is a Hindu temple located in Delhi, India. The presiding deity in the temple is Laxminarayan i.e., Vishnu along with his consort Lakshmi. The temple, inaugurated by Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi ensured that members of all castes would be allowed in the temple. It was built by Jugal Kishore Birla from 1933 and 1939. There are also small shrines on the sides dedicated to Shiva, Ganesha, Hanuman and Buddha.
Shrinathji is a form of Krishna, manifested as a seven-year-old child. The principal shrine of Shrinathji is the Shrinathji Temple in the temple city of Nathdwara, 48 kilometres north-east of Udaipur city in Rajasthan,India. Shrinathji is the central presiding deity of the Vaishnava sect known as Pushtimarg or the Vallabha Sampradaya, established by Vallabhacharya. Shrinathji is worshipped mainly by the followers of Bhakti Yoga and the Vaishnavas in Gujarat and Rajasthan, and Bhatias amongst others.
Mohan Lal Sukhadia was an Indian politician, who served as the Chief Minister of Rajasthan state for 17 years (1954–1971). He became chief minister at the age of 38 and was responsible for bringing major reforms and developments in Rajasthan. For this, he is still widely revered as the "founder of modern Rajasthan".
Shuddadvaita is the "purely non-dual" philosophy propounded by Vallabhacharya, the founding philosopher and guru of the Vallabhā sampradāya or Puśtimārg, a Hindu Vaishnava tradition focused on the worship of Krishna. Vallabhacharya's pure form (nondualist) philosophy is different from Advaita. The Shrinathji temple at Nathdwara, and compositions of eight poets, including Surdas, are central to the worship by the followers of the sect.
Bhanwar lal Girdhari lal Sharma, better known as B. G. Sharma, was a painter from Rajasthan, India. He is famous for his miniature devotional paintings and his rejuvenation and popularization of classic Rajasthan art, including the Mughal, Kishangarh, and Kangra styles. He is also well known for experimenting and mixing modern with traditional styles and producing some exemplary pieces of art.
Media in Bihar started with Bihar Bandhu, the first Hindi newspaper published there.
Sambanand Monappa Pandit was an Indian painter from Karnataka, popular in the school of Realism in contrast to the contemporaneous net-traditionalist Bengal Renaissance and other Indian modern art movements of his time. Most of his subjects oscillated between events from classical Indian literature including the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Puranas, and the contemporary cinema of his times. He infused a rare blend of artistic virtuosity and filmi glamour to his portrayal of romantic characters like Radha-Krishna, Nala-Damayanti, and Viswamitra-Menaka as also the many heroes and heroines of Hindi cinema. In addition to his critically acclaimed masterpieces he also illustrated many popular film posters, film magazines and various other publications in what can collectively be termed as calendar art. His works remain hugely popular even today. His mythological paintings and calendar art have been collected widely. He is also widely celebrated in the Indian calendar industry for his "realistic" depiction of themes from Hindu mythology. In these paintings he emphasised the physical forms of the heroes, heroines, gods and goddesses in marked contrast to traditional and classical styles of Indian painting. In his paintings, Pandit depicted his subjects as handsome, muscular, valorous men and sensuously beautiful, voluptuous women set in surroundings suggestive of cinema settings and sceneries.
Nathdwara Painting refers to a painting tradition and school of artists that emerged in Nathdwara, a city in Rajsamand district in the Western state of Rajasthan in India. Nathdwara paintings are of different sub-styles of which Pichhwai paintings are the most popular. The word Pichwai derives from the Sanskrit words pich meaning back and wais meaning hanging. These paintings are cloth paintings hung behind the image of the Hindu god Shrinathji.
The Shrinathji Temple is a Hindu temple dedicated to Shrinathji in Nathdwara. It is considered an important pilgrimage centre by Vaishnavas.
C. Kodiya Raju was a popular Calendar artist well known for his depictions of Hindu Gods and Goddesses in a typical style, amalgamating the features of contemporary calendar art and traditional South Indian paintings. He reached the peak of his fame during the heyday of the lithographic printing presses in Sivakasi. Kondiah Raju has an important place in the evolution of Indian Calendar art, which gained popular attention with Ravi Varma and continued on through artists such as S. M. Pandit, Mulgaonkar and others in the 20th century. In addition to his painting skills he also displayed a spiritual streak, as also a starkly austere simplicity, that prompted many of his students to call him an 'artist-saint'.
Anil Relia is an Indian art collector, known for his portrait collection. He has over 3000 portraits and his personal collection includes many miniature paintings, early photographs along with works of artists like Raja Ravi Varma, M. F. Husain, Hemen Majumdar, Bhupen Khakhar, Jyoti Bhatt, Haku Shah, K. G. Subramanyan, S.H. Raza, Thota Vaikuntam, Manu Parekh and many more.
Pundit Devarshi Ramanath Shastri was a Sanskrit poet, scholar and commentator on Pushtimarg and Shuddhadvaita Vedanta, the philosophical school of pure non-dualism propounded by Shri Vallabhacharya (1479-1531). He was born in 1878 in Jaipur, Rajasthan in a renowned Vellanadu Brahmin family of Sanskrit scholars belonging to the Taittariya branch of Krishna Yajurveda, who migrated from Andhra Pradesh to North India in the 15th century AD and to Jaipur in the 18th century with his famous ancestor Kavikalanidhi Devarshi Shrikrishna Bhatt having been invited by Sawai Jai Singh II. His father’s name was Shri Dwarakanath Bhatt and mother’s name was Shrimati Janaki Devi. His only son was Devarshi Brajnath Shastri (1901-1954), who was also a scholar of Shuddhadvaita. He was the elder brother of epoch-making Sanskrit poet and scholar Bhatt Mathuranath Shastri. He wrote extensively in Hindi, Sanskrit and Brajbhasha languages.
Shanti Kumar Morarjee was a noted industrialist, businessman and close associate of Mahatma Gandhi.
Rajaram Sharma is an Indian artist of Pichhwai and Indian miniature paintings.
Khiladi (transl. Player) is a 2022 Indian Telugu-language action thriller film written and directed by Ramesh Varma who co-produced it with Satyanarayana Koneru under A Studios. The film stars Ravi Teja, Arjun Sarja, Unni Mukundan, Meenakshi Chaudhary, Dimple Hayathi, Thakur Anoop Singh, Sachin Khedekar and Nikitin Dheer in pivotal roles.
