The historical discussion
that follows deals, until Indian independence, with
the Indian subcontinent, which includes the regions
that are now Bangladesh and Pakistan, and thereafter
concentrates on the history of India.
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India's extraordinary history is intimately tied to its
geography. A meeting ground between the East and the West,
it has always been an invader's paradise, while at the same
time its natural isolation and magnetic religions allowed
it to adapt to and absorb many of the peoples who penetrated
its mountain passes. No matter how many Persians, Greeks,
Chinese nomads, Arabs, Portuguese, British and other raiders
had their way with the land, local Hindu kingdoms invariably
survived their depradations, living out their own sagas
of conquest and collapse. All the while, these local dynasties
built upon the roots of a culture well established since
the time of the first invaders, the Aryans. In short, India
has always been simply too big, too complicated, and too
culturally subtle to let any one empire dominate it for
long.
True to the haphazard ambiance
of the country, the discovery of India's most ancient civilization
literally happened by accident. British engineers in the
mid-1800's, busy constructing a railway line between Karachi
and Punjab, found ancient, kiln-baked bricks along the path
of the track. This discovery was treated at the time as
little more than a curiosity, but archaeologists later revisited
the site in the 1920's and determined that the bricks were
over 5000 years old. Soon afterward, two important cities
were discovered: Harappa on the Ravi river, and Mohenjodaro
on the Indus.
The civilization that laid the bricks, one of the world's
oldest, was known as the Indus. They had a written language
and were highly sophisticated. Dating back to 3000 BC, they
originated in the south and moved north, building complex,
mathematically-planned cities. Some of these towns were
almost three miles in diameter and contained as many as
30,000 residents. These ancient municipalities had granaries,
citadels, and even household toilets. In Mohenjodaro, a
mile-long canal connected the city to the sea, and trading
ships sailed as far as Mesopotamia. At its height, the Indus
civilization extended over half a million square miles across
the Indus river valley, and though it existed at the same
time as the ancient civilizations of Egypt and Sumer, it
far outlasted them.
The first group to invade
India were the Aryans, who came out of the north in about
1500 BC. The Aryans brought with them strong cultural traditions
that, miraculously, still remain in force today. They spoke
and wrote in a language called Sanskrit, which was later
used in the first documentation of the Vedas. Though warriors
and conquerors, the Aryans lived alongside Indus, introducing
them to the caste system and establishing the basis of the
Indian religions. The Aryans inhabited the northern regions
for about 700 years, then moved further south and east when
they developed iron tools and weapons. They eventually settled
the Ganges valley and built large kingdoms throughout much
of northern India.
The second great invasion
into India occurred around 500 BC, when the Persian kings
Cyrus and Darius, pushing their empire eastward, conquered
the ever-prized Indus Valley. Compared to the Aryans, the
Persian influence was marginal, perhaps because they were
only able to occupy the region for a relatively brief period
of about 150 years. The Persians were in turn conquered
by the Greeks under Alexander the Great, who swept through
the country as far as the Beas River, where he defeated
king Porus and an army of 200 elephants in 326 BC. The tireless,
charismatic conqueror wanted to extend his empire even further
eastward, but his own troops (undoubtedly exhausted) refused
to continue. Alexander returned home, leaving behind garrisons
to keep the trade routes open.
While the Persians and Greeks
subdued the Indus Valley and the northwest, Aryan-based
kingdoms continued developing in the East. In the 5th century
BC, Siddhartha Gautama founded the religion of Buddhism,
a profoundly influential work of human thought still espoused
by much of the world. As the overextended Hellenistic sphere
declined, a king known as Chandragupta swept back through
the country from Magadha (Bihar) and conquered his way well
into Afghanistan. This was the beginning of one India's
greatest dynasties, the Maurya. Under the great king Ashoka
(268-31 BC), the Mauryan empire conquered nearly the entire
subcontinent, extending itself as far south as Mysore. When
Ashoka conquered Orissa, however, his army shed so much
blood that the repentant king gave up warfare forever and
converted to Buddhism. Proving to be as tireless a missionary
as he had been as conqueror, Asoka brought Buddhism to much
of central Asia. His rule marked the height of the Maurya
empire, and it collapsed only 100 years after his death.
After the demise of the Maurya dynasty, the regions it had
conquered fragmented into a mosaic of kingdoms and smaller
dynasties. The Greeks returned briefly in 150 BC and conquered
the Punjab, and by this time Buddhism was becoming so influential
that the Greek king Menander forsook the Hellenistic pantheon
and became a Buddhist himself. The local kingdoms enjoyed
relative autonomy for the next few hundred years, occasionally
fighting (and often losing to) invaders from the north and
China, who seemed to come and go like the monsoons. Unlike
the Greeks, the Romans never made it to India, preferring
to expand west instead.
In AD 319, Chandragupta II
founded the Imperial Guptas dynasty, which conquered and
consolidated the entire north and extended as far south
as the Vindya mountains. When the Guptas diminished, a golden
age of six thriving and separate kingdoms ensued, and at
this time some of the most incredible temples in India were
constructed in Bhubaneshwar, Konarak, and Khahurajo. It
was time of relative stability, and cultural developments
progressed on all fronts for hundreds of years, until the
dawn of the Muslim era.
Arab traders had visited
the western coast since 712, but it wasn't until 1001 that
the Muslim world began to make itself keenly felt. In that
year, Arab armies swept down the Khyber pass and hit like
a storm. Led by Mahmud of Ghazi, they raided just about
every other year for 26 years straight. They returned home
each time, leaving behind them ruined cities, decimated
armies, and probably a very edgy native population. Then
they more or less vanished behind the mountains again for
nearly 150 years, and India once again went on its way.
But the Muslims knew India
was still there, waiting with all its riches. They returned
in 1192 under Mohammed of Ghor, and this time they meant
to stay. Ghor's armies laid waste to the Buddhist temples
of Bihar, and by 1202 he had conquered the most powerful
Hindu kingdoms along the Ganges. When Ghor died in 1206,
one of his generals, Qutb-ud-din, ruled the far north from
the Sultanate of Delhi, while the southern majority of India
was free from the invaders. Turkish kings ruled the Muslim
acquisition until 1397, when the Mongols invaded under Timur
Lang (Tamerlane) and ravaged the entire region. One historian
wrote that the lightning speed with which Tamerlane's armies
struck Delhi was prompted by their desire to escape the
stench of rotting corpses they were leaving behind them.
Islamic India fragmented
after the brutal devastation Timur Lang left in Delhi, and
it was every Muslim strongman for himself. This would change
in 1527, however, when the Mughal (Persian for Mongol) monarch
Babur came into power. Babur was a complicated, enlightened
ruler from Kabul who loved poetry, gardening, and books.
He even wrote cultural treatises on the Hindus he conquered,
and took notes on local flora and fauna. Afghan princes
in India asked for his help in 1526, and he conquered the
Punjab and quickly asserted his own claim over them by taking
Delhi. This was the foundation of the Mughal dynasty, whose
six emperors would comprise most influential of all the
Muslim dynasties in India.
Babur died in 1530, leaving
behind a harried and ineffective son, Humayun. Humayun's
own son, Akbar, however, would be the greatest Mughal ruler
of all. Unlike his grandfather, Akbar was more warrior than
scholar, and he extended the empire as far south as the
Krishna river. Akbar tolerated local religions and married
a Hindu princess, establishing a tradition of cultural acceptance
that would contribute greatly to the success of the Mughal
rule. In 1605, Akbar was succeed by his son Jahangir, who
passed the expanding empire along to his own son Shah Jahan
in 1627.
Though he spent much of his time subduing Hindu kingdoms
to the south, Shah Jahan left behind the colossal monuments
of the Mughal empire, including the Taj Majal (his favorite
wife's tomb), the Pearl Mosque, the Royal Mosque, and the
Red Fort. Jahan's campaigns in the south and his flare for
extravagant architecture necessitated increased taxes and
distressed his subjects, and under this scenario his son
Aurungzebe imprisoned him, seeking power for himself in
1658.
Unlike his predecessors,
Aurungzebe wished to eradicate indigenous traditions, and
his intolerance prompted fierce local resistance. Though
he expanded the empire to include nearly the entire subcontinent,
he could never totally subdue the Mahrattas of the Deccan,
who resisted him until his death in 1707. Out of the Mahrattas'
doggedness arose the legendary figure of Shivagi, a symbol
Hindu resistance and nationalism. Aurungzebe's three sons
disputed over succession, and the Mughal empire crumbled,
just as the Europeans were beginning to flex their own imperialistic
muscles.
The Portuguese had traded
in Goa as early as 1510, and later founded three other colonies
on the west coast in Diu, Bassein, and Mangalore. In 1610,
the British chased away a Portuguese naval squadron, and
the East India Company created its own outpost at Surat.
This small outpost marked the beginning of a remarkable
presence that would last over 300 years and eventually dominate
the entire subcontinent. Once in India, the British began
to compete with the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the French.
Through a combination of outright combat and deft alliances
with local princes, the East India Company gained control
of all European trade in India by 1769.
How a tiny island nation,
thousands of miles away, came to administer a huge territory
of 300 million people is one of history's great spectacles.
A seemingly impossible task, it was done through a highly
effective and organized system called the Raj. Treaties
and agreements were signed with native princes, and the
Company gradually increased its role in local affairs. The
Raj helped build infrastructure and trained natives for
its own military, though in theory they were for India's
own defense. In 1784, after financial scandals in the Company
alarmed British politicians, the Crown assumed half-control
of the Company, beginning the transfer of power to royal
hands.
In 1858, a rumor spread among
Hindu soldiers that the British were greasing their bullets
with the fat of cows and pigs, the former sacred animals
to Hindus and the latter unclean animals to Muslims. A year-long
rebellion against the British ensued. Although the Indian
Mutiny was unsuccessful, it prompted the British government
to seize total control of all British interests in India
in 1858, finally establishing a seamless imperialism. Claiming
to be only interested in trade, the Raj steadily expanded
its influence until the princes ruled in name only.
The Raj's demise was partially
a result of its remarkable success. It had gained control
of the country by viewing it as a source of profit. Infrastructure
had been developed, administration established, and an entire
structure of governance erected. India had become a profitable
venture, and the British were loath to allow the Indian
population any power in a system that they viewed as their
own accomplishment. The Indians didn't appreciate this much,
and as the 20th century dawned there were increasing movements
towards self-rule.
Along with the desire for
independence, tensions between Hindus and Muslims had also
been developing over the years. The Muslims had always been
a minority, and the prospect of an exclusively Hindu government
made them wary of independence; they were as inclined to
mistrust Hindu rule as they were to resist the Raj. In 1915,
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi came onto the scene, calling
for unity between the two groups in an astonishing display
of leadership that would eventually lead the country to
independence.
The profound impact Gandhi
had on India and his ability to gain independence through
a totally non-violent mass movement made him one of the
most remarkable leaders the world has ever known. He led
by example, wearing homespun clothes to weaken the British
textile industry and orchestrating a march to the sea, where
demonstrators proceeded to make their own salt in protest
against the British monopoly. Indians gave him the name
Mahatma, or Great Soul. The British promised that they would
leave India by 1947.
Independence came at great cost. While Gandhi was leading
a largely Hindu movement, Mohammed Ali Jinnah was fronting
a Muslim one through a group called the Muslim League. Jinnah
advocated the division of India into two separate states:
Muslim and Hindu, and he was able to achieve his goal. When
the British left, they created the separate states of Pakistan
and Bangladesh (known at that time as East Pakistan), and
violence erupted when stranded Muslims and Hindu minorities
in the areas fled in opposite directions. Within a few weeks,
half a million people had died in the course of the greatest
migration of human beings in the world's history. The aging
Gandhi vowed to fast until the violence stopped, which it
did when his health was seriously threatened. At the same
time, the British returned and helped restore order. Excepting
Kashmir, which is still a disputed area (and currently unsafe
for tourists), the division reached stability.
India's history since independence
has been marked by disunity and intermittent periods of
virtual chaos. In 1948, on the eve of independence, Gandhi
was assassinated by a Hindu fanatic. His right-hand man,
Jawarhalal Nehru, became India's first Prime Minister. Nehru
was a successful leader, steering the young nation through
a period of peace that was contrasted by the rule of Lal
Bahadur Shastri, who fought Pakistan after it invaded two
regions of India. Shastri died in 1966 after only 20 months
in power, and he was succeeded by Nehru's daughter, Indira
Gandhi.
With the name Gandhi (though
no relation to Mahatma), Indira was a powerful, unchallenged
leader, and opposition remained negligible until she abused
her power by trying to suppress the press. When the rising
opposition began to threaten her power, she called a state
of emergency and continued to reform the nation, actually
making some positive economic and political changes despite
her questionable tactics. Her most unpopular policy was
forced sterilization, and she was eventually defeated at
the polls in 1977 by Morarji Desai of the Jenata party.
She won back power in '79, however, but was later assassinated
in 1984 by a Sikh terrorist. Although India's political
climate remains divisive, the country has attained apparent
stability in recent years. Today, India seems poised to
realize its potential as an international economic power.
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