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Short History Of india and Culture
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The people of India have had a continuous civilization since 2500 B.C., when the inhabitants of the Indus River Valley developed an urban culture based on commerce and sustained by agricultural trade. This civilization declined around 1500 B.C., probably due to ecological changes.
During the second millennium B.C., pastoral, Aryan-speaking tribes migrated from the northwest into the subcontinent. As they settled in the middle Ganges River Valley, they adapted to antecedent cultures.
The political map of ancient and medieval India was made up of myriad kingdoms with fluctuating boundaries. In the 4th and 5th centuries A.D., northern India was unified under the Gupta Dynasty. During this period, known as India's Golden Age, Hindu culture and political administration reached new heights.
Islam spread across the subcontinent over a period of 500 years. In the 10th and 11th centuries, Turks and Afghans invaded India and established sultanates in Delhi. In the early 16th century, descendants of Genghis Khan swept across the Khyber Pass and established the Mughal (Mogul) Dynasty, which lasted for 200 years. From the 11th to the 15th centuries, southern India was dominated by Hindu Chola and Vijayanagar Dynasties. During this time, the two systems--the prevailing Hindu and Muslim--mingled, leaving lasting cultural influences on each other.
The first British outpost in South Asia was established in 1619 at Surat on the northwestern coast. Later in the century, the East India Company opened permanent trading stations at Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta, each under the protection of native rulers.
The British expanded their influence from these footholds until, by the 1850s, they controlled most of present-day India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. In 1857, a rebellion in north India led by mutinous Indian soldiers caused the British parliament to transfer all political power from the East India Company to the Crown. Great Britain began administering most of India directly while controlling the rest through treaties with local rulers.
In the late 1800s, the first steps were taken toward self-government in British India with the appointment of Indian councilors to advise the British viceroy and the establishment of provincial councils with Indian members; the British subsequently widened participation in legislative councils. Beginning in 1920, Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi transformed the Indian National Congress political party into a mass movement to campaign against British colonial rule. The party used both parliamentary and non-violent resistance and non-cooperation to achieve independence.
India’s history is its essence, ungraspable but never far away. Its thousands of years have seen hundreds of invasions, the rise and fall of myriad empires and colonisation by the Mughals (who built the Taj Mahal), Portuguese (the first European powers to arrive and the last to leave, in 1961) and the French, who established themselves in Puducherry (Pondicherry).
Perhaps the most well-known of India’s colonisers were the British. The Mughals granted British traders a licence to trade in Bengal in the 17th century; by the early 19th century India was effectively under British control but it wasn’t until the mid 19th century, following the Indian Mutiny in 1857, that the British government took over administration of India from the East India Company.
Notions of Indian independence were temporarily pushed aside at the start of the 20th century and India fought alongside Britain in two world wars. It was during this time that one of India’s greatest political figures came to the forefront. Mahatma Gandhi preached a policy of equality to be gained through passive resistance. In 1942 he introduced the ‘Quit India’ campaign and was imprisoned, not for the first time, for subversive behaviour. Gandhi was assassinated in January 1948, not long after India gained her independence from Britain in 1947.
With independence came the decision to divide India into Muslim and Hindu territories; a decision that is reaping the seeds of discontent even today. Indian foreign policy continues to be dominated by relations with Pakistan. The main cause of friction is the status of Jammu & Kashmir, a disputed territory straddling both India and Pakistan.
In July 2007 Pratibha Patil became India's first female president and her supporters hailed her election as a victory for women. She succeeds APJ Abdul Kalam, an esteemed scientist and the architect of the country's missile programme.
