Ancient India

The rock art tradition of India has been traced to about 40,000 years ago in the paleolithic at Bhimbetaka in Central India and other sites. The first permanent settlements in South Asia appeared about 9,000 years ago. This indigenous culture developed into the Indus Valley civilization (also referred to by some as the Sindhu-Sarasvati Tradition), which was at its height from around 2600 BC to 1900 BC and was one of the earliest civilizations.

There are two prevailing theories about the early history of India. One is the commonly accepted Aryan Migration/Invasion Theory, first propounded by the German historian Max M�ller in the 19th century . It avers that around 1500 BC, the influx of Aryan tribes from the northwest of India and to some extent their merger with the earlier inhabitants resulted in the classical Vedic culture. The other, more recent theory, is that there was no ingress at all. Essentially, Vedic/Aryan culture was not racially distinct but native to the Indian subcontinent. It is known commonly as the continuity theory. see Aryan Invasion Theory.

Persian incursions starting in the 8th century and Turkic in the 12th century. These Turkish invaders formed a series of Dynasties (Slave, Khilji, Tughlaq, Syed, Lodhi) in Northern India based in Delhi. In 1526 the Mughals invaded India and slowly captured most of the country. They were followed by incursions by European traders beginning in the late 15th century.

By subjugating the Mughal empire in the 19th century, the British Empire had assumed political control of virtually all Indian lands. India became a formal crown colony of the United Kingdom in 1876, and the successive British monarchs assumed the title of "Emperor of India." The British held much pride over India, describing it as the "crown jewel" in the Empire. However their subjugation of the nation brought with it the effects of a planned and documented "divide-and-conquer" policy.

The British, through economic policies that taxed Indians for buying native goods, imported more expensive British goods to India. Through a system that both implicitly and explicitly sought to enrich England through her colonial servants, India was gradually being drained, from natural resources to unscrupulously ellicted manpower. Much of India's freedom-fighters' campaigning focused on the racial discrimination and subversive economic policy that was imposed on the people of India by the British.

Mostly nonviolent resistance to British colonialism under Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, in addition to plenty of opposition voiced by other well-known leaders, among whom were such stalwarts like Sardar Patel, Maulana Azad, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, and Subhas Chandra Bose, led to the granting of independence in 1947.

The subcontinent was divided into the secular state of India and the smaller Muslim state of Pakistan. Pakistan occupied two noncontiguous areas, and a civil war between West and East Pakistan in 1971, in which India eventually intervened, resulted in the secession of East Pakistan to form the separate nation of Bangladesh.

Fundamental concerns in India include the ongoing dispute with Pakistan over Kashmir, overpopulation, environmental degradation, poverty, and ethnic and religious strife, all this despite impressive gains in economic investment and output.

Tell Your Friends About This Web Site

More Sites

Ancient India

Tell Your Friends About This Web Site