HISTORY OF INDIA

India is one of the oldest continuously inhabited regions in the world. In Harappa, an area in the Indus Valley (now in Pakistan), between 3000 and 2000 BC, scores of thriving municipalities developed a distinct urban culture. This riverain civilization disappeared around 1500–1200 BC, probably owing to the arrival of Aryan (Indo-European-speaking) invaders, who began pouring through Afghanistan onto the lush plains of northern India. There followed over a thousand years of instability, of petty states and larger kingdoms, as one invading group after another contended for power. During this period, Indian village and family patterns, along with Brahmanism—the ancient form of Hinduism—and its caste system, became well established. Among the distinguished oral literature surviving from this period are two anonymous Sanskrit epics, the Ramayana (traditionally attributed to the legendary poet Valmiki) and the Mahabharata (the longest poem in the world, containing over 100,000 verses, including the Bhagavad-Gita). The South Asian subcontinent already had a population of about 30 million, of whom approximately 20 million lived in the Ganges Basin, when Alexander the Great invaded the Indus Valley in 326 BC. His successors were absorbed by the new Maurya dynasty (c.321–c.184 BC); under Chandragupta (r. c.321–c.297 BC), from his capital at Pataliputra (now Patna), the Mauryans subdued most of northern India and what is now Bangladesh. His successor, Asoka (r.273–232 BC), put all of India under unified control for the first time; an early convert to Buddhism, his regime was remembered for its sectarian tolerance, as well as for remarkable administrative, legal, and cultural achievements. Many of the Buddhist monuments and elaborately carved cave temples found at Sarnath, Ajanta, Bodhgaya, and other places in India date from the reigns of Asoka and his Buddhist successors. In the years following Asoka, India divided again into a patchwork of kingdoms, as other invaders arrived from central and western Asia. In the process, Hinduism prevailed over Buddhism, which found wide acceptance in Asian lands other than India, its birthplace. Although predated by other states of Brahmanic origin, true Hindu kingdoms first appeared in the Peninsula after the 4th century AD. The era of the Gupta dynasty rule (AD 320–C.535) was a golden age of art, literature, and science in India. And Hindu princes of the Rajput sub-caste, ruling in the north, reached their peak of power from AD 700 to 1000, although their descendants retained much of their influence well into British days. In the 8th century, the first of several waves of Islamic invaders appeared at the traditional northwest portals; between the years 1000 and 1030, Mahmud of Ghazni made 17 forays into the subcontinent. The first Muslim sultan of Delhi was Kutb-ud-din (r. c.1195–1210), and Islam gradually spread eastward and southward, reaching its greatest territorial and cultural extent under the Mughal (or Mogul) dynasty. “Mughal” comes from the Farsi word for Mongol, and the Mughals were descendants of the great 14th-century Mongol conqueror Timur (also known as “Timur the Lame” or Tamerlane), a descendant in turn of Genghis Khan. One of the Timurid princes, the great Babur (r.1526–30), captured Kabul in 1504 and defeated the Sultan of Delhi in 1526, becoming the first of the Mughals to proclaim himself emperor of India. It was not until 1560 that Akbar (r.1556–1605), Babur’s grandson, extended the dynasty’s authority over all of northern India, and it was Akbar who was the first of the Muslim emperors to attempt the establishment of a national state in alliance with Hindu rajahs (kings). Though illiterate, he was a great patron of art and literature. Among his successors were Shah Jahan and his son Aurangzeb, who left their imprint in massive palaces and mosques, superb fortresses (like the Lahore fort), dazzling mausoleums (like the Taj Mahal at Agra), elaborate formal gardens (like those in Srinagar), and the abandoned city of Fatehpur Sikri (37 km/23 mi w of Agra). Under Aurangzeb (r.1658–1707), who seized his father’s throne, the Mughal Empire reached its greatest extent and then began its decline, largely the result of his repressive policies. The Hindu Marathas fought the Mughals and established their own empire in western India. Vasco da Gama reached India’s southwest coast by sea in 1498, and for a century the Portuguese had a monopoly over Indian sea. Although it continued to hold bits of Indian territory until 1961, Portugal lost its dominant position as early as 1612 when forces controlled by the British East India Company defeated the Portuguese and won concessions from the declining Mughals. The company, which had been established in 1600, had permanent trading settlements in Madras, Mumbai (formerly Bombay), and Calcutta by 1690. Threatened by the French East India Company, which was founded in 1664, the two companies fought each other as part of their nations’ struggle for supremacy in Europe and the western hemisphere in the 18th century. They both allied with rival Indian princes and recruited soldiers (sepoys) locally, but the French and their allies suffered disastrous defeats in 1756 and 1757, against the backdrop of the larger sweep of the Seven Years’ War (1756–63), and by 1761, France was no longer a power in India. The architect of the British triumph, later known as the founder of British India, was Robert Clive, later Baron, who became governor of the Company’s Bengal Presidency in 1764, to be followed by Warren Hastings and Lord Cornwallis in the years before 1800. The Company’s rule spread up the Gangetic plain to Oudh and Delhi, and eventually, to western India where the Maratha Confederacy, the alliance of independent Indian states that had succeeded the Mughal Empire there, was reduced to a group of relatively weak principalities owing fealty to the British in 1818. The British government took direct control of the Company’s Indian domain during the Sepoy Mutiny (1857–59), a widespread rebellion by Indian soldiers in the company’s service, and in 1859, Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India. The succeeding decades were characterized by significant economic and political development, but also by a growing cultural and political gap between Indians and British. Indian troops were deployed elsewhere in the world by the Crown in defense of British interests but without any recourse of Indian views.