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HistoryOver the millennia various invasions have added great diversity and complexity to the cultures of the Indian subcontinent; yet many ancient and unique features have remained recognizable throughout its history. Diversity is particularly evident in the 20th-century political division of the subcontinent into three nations: India (Bharat), Pakistan, and Bangladesh. However, the gradual incorporation of various cultural elements into its own complex civilization has been a continuing feature of India's history. - Challenges to Brahmin Ascendancy THE INDIAN NATIONALIST MOVEMENT Because the Indian subcontinent is one of great geographical diversity, it is not surprising that at least two distinct cultures developed in ancient India. Archaeological evidence suggests that humans first migrated to the subcontinent between 400,000 and 200,000 years ago. Some of these primitive peoples had probably crossed the Hindu Kush Mountains into the area that is now northern Pakistan. Other peoples had possibly sailed to southern India from eastern Africa. One of the world's oldest and greatest civilizations took shape between about 3000 and 2500 BC in the valley of the Indus River, from which the name of the Indian subcontinent is taken. Sites of this INDUS CIVILIZATION at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro--both in present-day Pakistan--have been extensively excavated; other sites have been uncovered in India as far east as the cities of Simla and Bikaner and as far south as the Kathiawar Peninsula and the coast of the Gujarat region. The Indus, or Harappa, civilization, one of the most advanced of ancient times, was similar in many ways to contemporary cultures in Mesopotamia. Harappans lived in towns with two- and three-story brick houses, and well-laid-out streets and drainage systems; they employed tools of copper, bronze, and stone; they wore clothing of cotton; and they used rather sophisticated pottery and other kinds of cooking and serving utensils. Harappa script, which appears on innumerable seals and art works, has not yet been deciphered. Harappa culture thrived until about 1500 BC, when the Indus Valley was overrun by ARYAN invaders from the Iranian plateau. The seminomadic Aryans spoke an archaic form of Sanskrit and left no remains of cities, burials, arts, or crafts. What is known about the Aryans has been passed down through religious texts--the VEDAS, especially the Rig Veda ("Verses of Knowledge"). Originally transmitted orally, the Vedas describe a highly ritualistic worship with innumerable deities, a rich mythology, and an elaborate fire sacrifice. They also mention the system of varnas, or classes, from which evolved the CASTE system. The four varnas were the Brahmans , or priests; the Kshatriya, political rulers or warriors; Vaishya, traders and cultivators; and Shudra, artisans. The Vedas and the caste system remain central to the Indian socioreligious system, HINDUISM. Thus the Aryans gave to India many of its basic institutions and cultural habits. According to one theory, the Aryans, a warlike people who rode on horseback, pushed southward many of northern India's darker-skinned and shorter inhabitants, whom they called dasas. This theory, yet to be proven, is sometimes used to explain the origins of the division between the Aryan linguistic groups in the North and the DRAVIDIAN LANGUAGES of the South. Some modern southern separatists have claimed that the Dravidian speakers predate the Aryan invaders, but there is not yet sufficient linguistic evidence to date the arrival of Dravidian speakers in southern India. Cultural distinctions between North and South remain, however, in modern India. Aryan religious texts indicate that the Aryans viewed themselves as racially and culturally superior and despised the dasas. In the north, the area of Aryan dominance, the name dasa eventually came to mean "slave" or "bondsman." The dasas probably performed many of the unpleasant but necessary tasks in the segmented society that was developing under Aryan influence. Challenges to Brahman Ascendancy Over the centuries pre-Aryan and Aryan cultures gradually fused in northern India as the Aryans expanded slowly eastward into the Gangetic plain, where the second of ancient India's great urban civilizations developed. Such cities as PATALIPUTRA (near modern Patna), Kasi (modern VARANASI), and Ajodhya rose in importance. In the Bihar region in the 6th century BC a wealthy merchant class (largely Vaishyas) began to support speculation challenging orthodox beliefs. For example, that era's UPANISHADS (scriptural texts that were part of the Vedas but attempted to go beyond them) began to challenge the traditional authority of the Brahmans. In the northeast, where Aryan influence was relatively weak, the religious systems known as JAINISM and BUDDHISM were founded around 500 BC. Both were widely supported by the merchant and landowning aristocracies of eastern India, and both can be viewed in part as revolts against Brahmanism. In 326 BC, ALEXANDER THE GREAT, with his Macedonian army, invaded the Indus Valley. The subcontinent was still politically fragmented, and no Indian ruler was able to assemble an elephant and infantry force powerful enough to stop Alexander's armies. It was, rather, the vastness of the subcontinent and the discontent of his troops that convinced the Macedonian king to retreat. In c.321 BC, shortly after Alexander's invasion, the great king CHANDRAGUPTA MAURYA (founder of the MAURYA dynasty) established India's first large empire, centered at Pataliputra. His grandson ASOKA ruled an empire that extended to the south of central India's Deccan Plateau and west into Baluchistan and modern Afghanistan; in the east it included the state of Kalinga, which he had conquered c.261. Asoka also attempted to create a state religion incorporating Buddhism and other faiths as well as Hinduism. A convert to Buddhism, he sent Buddhist missionaries abroad and is credited with elevating Buddhism to a world religion (although eventually it waned as a separate belief system within India). Soon after Asoka's death (232 BC) his empire was reduced to the state of Magadha, although the dynasty survived until c.185 BC. Under the Mauryas and succeeding dynasties, for a period of about 800 years, India evolved a civilization that still remains fairly intact. The institution of caste was solidly implanted, and Hindu philosophy and legal codes were developed. The era of the GUPTA dynasty (AD c.320-c.540) is generally considered to be ancient India's classic period. Indic architecture, sculpture, painting, dance, and music flourished. Despite classical standards, however, many variations also came into being, primarily because of the numerous invasions of India by peoples from central Asia, but also because of the assimilation of elements of indigenous movements such as Buddhism. After the brilliance of the Gupta dynasty, India entered its medieval period, becoming divided politically into a number of small kingdoms. Scholasticism replaced scholarship, religion became highly ritualistic, and the arts generally turned from creativity to commentary and dialectic. This period, which was characterized by many invasions and large-scale migrations from the northwest, was one of relative isolation from the more advanced civilizations of the Arabs and Chinese. It continued until the founding of the Mogul Empire in the 16th century. Among the smaller states that appeared in India in the confusion of the 7th, 8th, and 9th centuries were the military aristocracies of the RAJPUTS in northern and central India. Racially, culturally, and linguistically distinct Dravidian kingdoms also flourished in southern India, where they are known to have existed from at least the 1st century BC. Most prominent were the kingdom of the Andhras, located in the areas around present-day Hyderabad, and the Tamil states of the Pandyas at the southern tip of the Indian peninsula; the Cholas, in the region that is now Madras; and the Cheras, who controlled the southwestern coast. From these local kingdoms many Indian ideas and practices spread to Indonesia and other parts of Southeast Asia. The Pallava dynasty, which sponsored limited colonization throughout the area and played a dominant role in southeast India from the 6th to the 8th century, although of uncertain genealogy, was most likely Brahman and northern Indian in origin. Through the Pallavas, who were patrons of the arts, elements of Indo-Aryan Sanskritic culture were widely introduced into southern India. Despite the fundamental unity of Indic civilization, political diversity was the rule during the medieval period. Units of government were of all sizes and types. Boundaries were constantly in flux, with kings and maharajas usually unwilling to band together even in federal arrangements. Small personal kingdoms were frequently overturned, and newly victorious rajas were able to make quick deals with village kin leaders. A tradition of relative autonomy for villages--governed largely through kinship groups and paying tribute to rulers of regional kingdoms--helped preserve much of the stability that might otherwise have been lost in the confusion of changing boundaries and sovereigns. Cultural unity was encouraged by shrines and pilgrimage sites throughout the subcontinent, by a great body of Sanskrit oral tradition and myth, and by cooperation between Brahman religious and political leaders. The ability of Hinduism to accommodate new peoples and ideas without conceding anything fundamental to them also helped to promote civilizational continuity. Islam first entered the Indian subcontinent in AD 711, when a young Arabian general, Muhammad ibn Qasim, fought his way into the Indus Valley. The state of Sind was added to the Arab caliphate and its people converted to Islam, but it did not serve as the springboard for a Muslim advance deeper into India. In the 9th and 10th centuries, Arab traders began to convert many Hindus in port cities along the southwest coast. Cultural influences were transmitted in both directions. Baghdad scholars were especially intrigued by Indian mathematics, astronomy, and other natural sciences. The chief Muslim conquerors of India were not Arabs, however, but central Asian converts to Islam--Turks, Afghans, Persians, and Mongols--who began to enter the subcontinent around 1000. From Ghazni, a center of Persian culture controlled by Turkish tribes in the area that is now Afghanistan, MAHMUD OF GHAZNI led (998-1030) a series of raids into the Punjab region. Mahmud's tactics of massacre, pillage, and destruction secured for the Muslims a gateway into the Indian subcontinent. The Muslims eventually converted many low-caste Hindus and Buddhists--particularly in Bengal and other eastern areas--as they pushed across India. Many converts hoped that they would become part of a more egalitarian society and gain the protection of the powerful armies of the invaders. The first Muslim empire based in India was established in Delhi in 1206 by Qutb-ud-Din Aybak (d. 1210). This DELHI SULTANATE, a constantly expanding and contracting empire, was ruled by a line of 34 succeeding sultans. The history of the sultanate was filled with bloodshed, tyranny, and treachery; it was divided among five dynasties (the "Slave" kings, the Khaljis, the Tughluqs, the Sayyids, and the Lodis). During the Tughlug dynasty, TIMUR, the great conqueror from Samarkand, desolated (1398-99) the entire sultanate. Under the Lodi kingdom, which endured until 1526, the Delhi Sultanate stretched from the Punjab in the west to the Bihar region in the east. The first ruler of the MOGUL dynasty was BABUR, who claimed the subcontinent as his right of inheritance because of the conquest of Delhi by his ancestor Timur. Babur (r. 1526-30) was a highly cultured man from Persia who disliked many facets of Indian life but nonetheless established the most glorious empire in India's history. Babur's son HUMAYUN reigned from 1530 to 1540 and again in 1555-56 despite the challenge mounted by the Afghan SHER SHAH, who ruled north India for five years. Until 1707 a series of able emperors expanded and added to the glory of the Moguls, each in his own way. The greatest of the Moguls was AKBAR (r. 1556-1605), who built the administrative machinery that forms the basis for many present-day practices in India. A tolerant man, Akbar abolished a discriminatory tax on Hindus and did much to combine Hindu and Muslim motifs in palace architecture, art, literature, and music. Akbar's son and successor, JAHANGIR, was a heavy drinker who reveled in luxurious living, as did Jahangir's son SHAH JAHAN. Best known for his great building program, which culminated in the TAJ MAHAL, Shah Jahan was also instrumental in extending the Mogul Empire to the Deccan Plateau. Both Shah Jahan and his son and successor AURANGZEB were much less tolerant of Hindus than their predecessors had been. After the death (1707) of Aurangzeb, the Mogul Empire disintegrated quickly, although ineffective rulers remained on the throne at Delhi until 1858. Extensive European contact with India began in 1498 when Vasco da GAMA, a Portuguese navigator, landed with three small ships at Calicut, on the southwest coast. Both the Portuguese and the Dutch attempted to colonize India during the 16th century, but neither proved strong enough to maintain the naval presence necessary to rival the British and French. The Portuguese, who were further handicapped by their heavy-handed policy of trying to convert Indians to Christianity by force, ended up with only a few small outposts in India, the most prominent of these being GOA on the western coast. The more tolerant Dutch concentrated on building a trading monopoly, through their Dutch East India Company. By the mid-17th century, however, they had turned their attention almost exclusively toward Indonesia. The British empire in India was established by a private trading firm, the East India Company (founded 1600), which governed with the consent of Parliament until 1858. The company bought a strip of sandy beach at Madras in 1639, acquired a lease to the port of Bombay from King Charles II in 1668, and in 1690 secured from the Mogul emperor Aurangzeb permission to build a settlement on a muddy flatland that eventually became Calcutta. At each of these three so-called presidency cities the company erected a fort, known as a factory, from which the British conducted their trading activities. The French got off to a slow start in their attempt to build a trading empire in India. The government-run French East India Company (established in 1664; see EAST INDIA COMPANY, FRENCH) never succeeded in fostering a trade volume comparable to that of the British. In the 18th century both Britain and France sought to protect their trading interests by allying with native princes to fill the growing power vacuums created as the Mogul Empire disintegrated. As part of the War of the AUSTRIAN SUCCESSION, the two European powers came into conflict in India in 1746, when the French, under the aggressive leadership of Joseph Francois DUPLEIX, seized Madras. However, in 1761, during the SEVEN YEARS' WAR, the French surrendered their territory of PONDICHERRY to the British, and after the 1763 peace treaty the French retained only a few trading centers in India. The British were able to defeat the French largely because the British East India Company had a better navy, greater flexibility, and more reliable funding than the French East India Company. The hero of Britain's battles against the French, Robert CLIVE, was a military adventurer who had started as a teenage clerk with the East India Company in the 1740s. Clive's greatest triumph came at the Battle of Plassey (1757), when he and 950 other Europeans combined with some 2,000 Indian soldiers (sepoys) to defeat a force of more than 50,000 led by a degenerate local Mogul nawab (provincial governor). Victory at Plassey led to effective political control over the vast riches of the Ganges Valley in 1765, when the nawab surrendered to Clive the right to collect land revenue for most of eastern India. Some of the directors of the East India Company initially demurred at the prospect of governing the eastern region, Bengal, preferring to set up puppet princes to administer the area while they exploited its wealth for their own private gain. To counter the growing corruption within the company and to reform the governance of India, Parliament passed the Regulating Act of 1773. Warren HASTINGS, governor of Bengal in 1772-73, helped to lay the administrative foundations for British rule under the provisions of this act. As India's first governor-general (1773-85), Hastings consolidated many of Clive's territorial gains. He attempted to assert the British right to interfere in the affairs of the MARATHAS, who became the leading rivals to the British after the virtual collapse of the Mogul Empire. He successfully met the challenge presented by the state of Mysore and its leaders HYDER ALI and his son TIPPU SULTAN in the early 1780s. Hastings was later tried before Parliament for high crimes and misdemeanors during his administration. He was eventually acquitted (1795), but his lengthy trial was an important factor leading to a genuine attempt by the company to put its house in order. Lord CORNWALLIS, governor-general of India from 1786 to 1793, established the administrative, legal, and land-revenue codes that made British rule possible. Cornwallis separated the administrative and commercial functions of the company, organized a prestigious civil service, raised salaries to the point where irregular profits were unnecessary, and established disciplinary measures that made it possible to curb private trade by company employees. Because of his belief that considerable corruption stemmed from contact with Indians, Cornwallis excluded people of Indian origin from higher posts of government. This policy led, during the 19th century, to a widening socioeconomic gap between the British and their Indian subjects, with British settlements taking on the character of prosperous English towns in the midst of increasingly squalid Indian slums. Indian poverty was encouraged by a rapid spurt in population growth that followed the establishment of peace and the adoption of public health measures throughout the subcontinent. British unwillingness to allow large-scale industrialization within India further intensified poverty. (The British preferred a subordinate economic role for their colonies within the British imperial system--a system that helped Britain to become an industrialized world power). Lord WELLESLEY, governor-general from 1798 to 1805, launched a policy of expansion, which culminated in the mid-19th century--when the East India Company controlled more than three-fifths of India with the remaining two-fifths being run by 562 local princes who were clearly subordinates of the British raj (government). Coupled with British policies of expansionism and exclusivity, British insensitivity to Indian traditions and religious practices helped to increase tensions. Among the Indian elites resentment of British rule grew, especially during the regime (1848-56) of Lord DALHOUSIE, who attempted to modernize and westernize India. In 1857 many traditional groups, largely in north India, revolted, led by mutineers in the army. This violent and brutal INDIAN MUTINY, or Sepoy Rebellion, was put down by the British in 1858. As a direct result of the revolt, the crown took over most of the functions of the British East India Company. The revolt also intensified widespread feelings of distrust between the Indians and the British. Such feelings deepened as both Indian poverty and British wealth became magnified during the next century. THE INDIAN NATIONALIST MOVEMENT Indian nationalist sentiments found expression early in the 19th century in the writings of Rammohun ROY, a religious reformer, who hoped that a modern state of India would combine the best of both Hindu and western cultures. The first organizations attempting to reform British rule were also formed early in the century. In 1885 they were welded together in the INDIAN NATIONAL CONGRESS by a retired British civil servant, Allan Octavian Hume (1829-1912), and a number of prominent Bengali leaders. The Congress was originally an elitist and moderate constitutional lobby, advocating such reforms as more seats for Indians in the legislatures and more schools. Early in the 20th century the British made some attempts to meet its demands by widening Indian political participation. However, the extreme wing of the Congress increasingly demanded swaraj (complete independence). By 1907 the organization had split into a moderate group led by Gopal Krishna Gokhale (1866-1915) and a militant faction under Bal Gangadhar TILAK. At about the same time (1906) Muslim leaders, dissatisfied with Hindu dominance of the Congress, formed their own nationalist organization, the MUSLIM LEAGUE. Although India's various nationalist groups united temporarily in 1916 in support of Britain's World War I effort, the increasingly dominant militants were disappointed in Britain's gradual approach to its professed goal of eventual self-rule for India. British prestige fell precipitously in 1919 with the passage of laws restricting political activity and with the massacre of Indian civilians by British troops at AMRITSAR. During the 1920s the Congress acquired a mass base, the support of prominent Indians, and increasing militancy under the leadership of Mahatma GANDHI, who introduced the highly successful techniques of passive resistance (satyagraha) and civil disobedience. During the 1920s, however, Muslims staged a large-scale withdrawal from the Congress. By the end of the decade, Muslim leaders such as Muhammad IQBAL were proposing the creation of a separate Muslim state. During World War II the Muslims, led by Muhammad Ali JINNAH and now demanding their own independent state (Pakistan), supported the British. The Congress, however, insisted that Britain leave India. When Indians refused to cooperate in repelling the Japanese attack on the subcontinent in 1942, Britain arrested many leaders and outlawed the Congress. A group of extreme anti-British Indian nationalists led by Subhas Chandra BOSE even fought on the Japanese side in Burma and India. At the end of the war Britain agreed to self-rule for India. However, in the 1946 elections the Muslim League won most of the Muslim vote, and Gandhi was unsuccessful in preventing the partition of the subcontinent into Muslim and Hindu states. In August 1947, India and Pakistan achieved independence. Five months later Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu fanatic. The task of governing India fell to its first prime minister, Jawaharlal NEHRU. Jinnah became governor-general of the Muslim nation of Pakistan, which was then comprised of two separate territories, East and West Pakistan. Article Excerpted from Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia, 1996. Following the trauma of Partition, India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru championed a secular constitution, socialist central planning and a strict policy of nonalignment. India elected to join the Commonwealth, but also increased ties with the USSR - partly because of conflicts with China and partly because of US support for arch-enemy Pakistan, which was particularly hostile to India because of its claim on Muslim-dominated Kashmir. There were clashes with Pakistan in 1965 and 1971. India's next prime minister of stature was Nehru's daughter Indira Gandhi, who was elected in 1966. She is still held in high esteem, but is remembered by some for meddling with India's democratic foundations by declaring a state of emergency in 1975. Mrs Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards in 1984 as a reprisal for using the Indian Army to flush out armed Sikh radicals from the Golden Temple in Amritsar. The Gandhis' dynastic grip on Indian politics continued when her son, Rajiv was swept into power. Rajiv brought new and pragmatic policies to the country. Foreign investment and the use of modern technology were encouraged, import restrictions were eased and many new industries were set up. These measures projected India into the 1990s and out of isolationism, but did little to stimulate India's mammoth rural sector. Rajiv was assassinated on an election tour by a supporter of Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers. The dangers of communalism in India were clearly displayed in 1992, when a Hindu mob stormed and destroyed a mosque built on the site of Rama's birth in Ayodhya. The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been keen to exploit such opportunities, and has led several disparate coalitions to power in recent years. Despite the dangers of playing communalist politics, the BJP's traditionalist Hindu stance has attracted voters concerned about retaining traditional values during the sudden onslaught of modern global influences. In 1998 India tested its first nuclear weapons. Despite international outrage, the nuclear tests were met with widespread jubilation in India and caused a groundswell of support for the BJP. But by April 1999 PM Vajpayee had lost majority support in parliament and was forced into a vote of confidence, which he lost by one vote. Sonia Ghandi, Rajiv Ghandi's widow, was expected to lead the Congress Party to victory after its three years in the political wilderness, but she was unable to secure a coalition and India was forced to the polls for the third time in as many years. The BJP was returned to government but with a significant decrease in support.
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