This chapter traces the development of Odisha as a newly imagined territorial entity. By the late 1910s the leaders of the movement had begun to call this proposed province “Natural Orissa,” presenting it as a historical reality that had been lost during centuries of colonial rule. This perspective was backed up by new histories of “ancient” Odisha that were written by Odia advocates. Drawing on the Odia leadership’s portrayals of their desired motherland and sketches of Odisha in the rhetoric of nationalist leaders such as Gandhi, I illustrate the emergence of a shared discourse about the underlying qualities of this imagined province. Odisha was conceptualized as a fundamentally religious land. In contrast to other Hindu religious centers, however, Odisha was seen as being marked by a propensity to absorb lower-caste people, tribal groups, and even Muslims into the Hindu fold–though without undermining the purported differences between such minority groups and the upper-caste, Odia-speaking population. By analyzing this religious outlook and other projected aspects of “Natural Orissa,” I show how the province came to be seen as a fundamentally local and yet simultaneously cosmopolitan Indian space. Such an imagined territory exerted a great appeal for both local and national leaders.