Maharashtra Culture & Language

Maharashtrian culture spans the oldest painting in India and the most-watched films in the world.

Ajanta’s painting

The murals are the only substantial survival of classical Indian painting, and they establish what was otherwise known only from texts: a mature tradition of modelling, foreshortening and composition, with crowded court scenes, elaborate textiles and the famous bodhisattva figures of cave 1. Everything later in Indian and much in Central Asian and Tibetan painting descends from this tradition.

Kailasa

Ellora’s cave 16 is a full-scale temple — gateway, courtyard, shrine, tower and elephants — excavated downward and inward from a hillside, meaning it was made entirely by removal, with no possibility of correcting a mistake.

Marathi theatre and literature

Marathi stage drama is among the strongest regional theatre traditions in India, and the bhakti poets of the Varkari tradition — Dnyaneshwar, Tukaram — wrote devotional verse still sung on pilgrimage.

Warli painting

Tribal wall painting in white rice paste on mud walls, reduced to circles, triangles and lines, now recognised internationally.

Bollywood

The Hindi film industry has been based in Mumbai since the 1930s and produces more films annually than any other, watched from Morocco to Indonesia. Its conventions — the song sequences, the three-hour running time, the interval — are their own tradition, and Film City in the northern suburbs can be visited. The industry is also a major employer of the city’s migrants, from extras to the dance troupes that fill the frame.

Lavani

A fast, percussive song-and-dance form performed to the dholki drum.

Marathi is the state language, written in Devanagari, and is spoken by the large majority. It has a strong literary tradition and its use is a live political matter in Mumbai.

Hindi is widely understood, and Mumbai speaks a distinctive street register mixing Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati and English that has spread across India through films.

English is very widely spoken in Mumbai and Pune, in business, education and among the middle class, and is the easiest language for a visitor to use. It thins in the rural districts.

Gujarati, Konkani and Urdu are all significant community languages.

Useful Marathi: namaskar for hello, dhanyavad for thank you, kiti paise for how much, and tikhat nako for not spicy.