Lakshman Jha (1916–2000), born at Rasiari in Darbhanga district, was the principal architect of the modern Mithila statehood movement. A nationalist from boyhood — he demonstrated against the Simon Commission and joined the Civil Disobedience and Quit India movements, serving on the Bihar committee during the 1942 uprising — he then turned his energy to the cause of Mithila and the Maithili language.
A gold-medallist in Sanskrit from Patna College, he earned a PhD at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, with a thesis on Mithila and Magadha. From 1952 he gave the demand for a separate Mithila state its modern organisational form, campaigning for it through the era of India’s states’ reorganisation.
Lakshman Jha stands as the intellectual and political founder of Maithili sub-nationalism — the figure who gave Mithila’s distinct linguistic and cultural identity its modern organisational form as a claim for political recognition, a demand that still animates the region today.
