Our Motherland India - History

HISTORY
http://library.thinkquest.org/28853/history.htm

Archaeological excavations at Mohenjo-daro and Harappa (both in Pakistan) reveal the existence of a civilization in the Indus Valley as long ago as about 2500 BC . The remains show that an urban manner of living had developed in which the people had wells, bathrooms, drainage systems, handsome jewelry, and well-made household utensils and copper weapons. The Rig Veda, composed in about 1400 BC, tells of the struggle between the Aryan invaders and the prior occupants of the land. By the 6th century BC at least 16 Aryan states had been established south of the Himalayas, and Brahmanism was flourishing.

In 326 BC the armies of Alexander the Great reached the Hydaspes River, the modern Jhelum. Soon after Alexander's death in Babylon in 323, Candragupta founded the Maurya Empire. His grandson Asoka adopted Buddhism, then a relatively small sect, and energetically promoted that faith. Under Asoka the Maurya Empire extended over all India except the extreme south, but it began to break up shortly after his death. Candra Gupta I, who reigned from AD 320 to 330, was the founder of the imperial dynasty of the Guptas, which flourished until the mid-6th century. The Gupta Dynasty marked the peak of classical Indian civilization.

A succession of invaders, notably the Kushans, Sakas, and Ephthalites, or White Huns, penetrated the subcontinent during these centuries. Mongol forces of Genghis Khan made raids into Punjab in the 1200s, and in 1399 Timur Lenk's hordes poured in. In 1526 Baber, a descendant of Genghis Khan and Timur Lenk, came through the northwest passes from Afghanistan and seized the throne of Delhi, establishing the great Mughal Empire. This remained almost continuously powerful until the early 1700s. The south of India was never completely conquered, but the empire of the north, under such rulers as Akbar and Shah Jahan, was among the most brilliant in the history of the Orient. During the reign of Aurangzeb, the last of the great Mughals, from 1618 to 1707, the Marathas of the Deccan undermined the Mughal Empire.

Arrival of the Europeans

Meanwhile, the struggle between European powers for dominance in Indian affairs had begun. In 1498 Vasco da Gama, the Portuguese navigator, discovered the ocean route around the Cape of Good Hope, and by the early 17th century the Dutch, British, and French began to challenge the Portuguese for the Indian trade. In 1600 the British East India Company was chartered, and within a century it had trading posts at Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta (then called Fort William). The French organized local troops, and their role in the quarrels of Indian rulers brought much of the Deccan under French influence by 1751.

British presence in India was threatened with extinction, but the genius of Robert Clive turned the tables. His storming and subsequent defense of Arcot in 1751 and his victory at Plassey in 1757 overthrew the French power and laid the foundations of the rule of the British East India Company . Later, trading rights gradually grew into political rule. It was a strange conquest, in which a private trading company conquered an empire chiefly through the use of soldiers (Sepoys) raised in the land itself. Warren Hastings, who became governor-general for the East India Company in 1774, built upon the foundation Clive had laid . By 1849 the rule of the company had been extended over virtually the whole of the subcontinent by conquest or treaties.

Certain high-handed methods used by the British company, as well as the teachings of missionaries and the introduction of European customs, now stirred a great wave of unrest. In 1857 a rumor was circulated among the company's Indian soldiers that the cartridge papers they had to tear with their teeth were greased with the fat of cows and pigs. The cow is sacred to Hindus, and the pig is abhorred by Muslims. This rumor started the great Sepoy Revolt, or Indian Mutiny, of 1857. The outbreak, though crushed, ended the powers of the East India Company. In 1858 the administration was transferred to the British Crown. In 1876 the British Parliament ruled that India should be designated an empire. The next year Queen Victoria was crowned empress of India.

The Indian Empire

The viceroy of India, appointed by the crown, ruled directly only in the provinces of British India. Hindu and Muslim princes continued to govern almost 600 native, or princely, states. These were nominally autonomous, but they were forbidden to make war on one another, and the viceroy kept an agent at each court to advise the ruler.

British rule brought internal peace and some economic development. The British built roads and railways, canals, irrigation works, and mills and factories. They introduced Western law and police systems, modernized cities, and built schools. Most British civil service personnel were able, though their aloofness aroused resentment. Indian intellectuals, many of them educated in England, began to dream of a free India. In 1885 they founded the Indian National Congress to further the participation of Indians in their own government.

The Struggle for Independence

During World War I Indian troops served the British loyally, but nationalist agitation increased afterward. The British Parliament passed a reform act in 1919, providing for provincial councils of Indians with some powers of supervision over agriculture, education, and public health. Far from satisfied, the extreme nationalists, led by Mohandas K. Gandhi, gained control of the Congress. Gandhi preached resistance to the British by "noncooperation". Hundreds of thousands joined his civil disobedience campaigns. The Congress party quickly gained a mass following.

Rioting broke out when Parliament placed no Indians on the Simon Commission, appointed in 1927 to investigate the government of India. The British imprisoned Gandhi and his associates. In 1929 Jawaharlal Nehru was elected president of the Congress. Like Gandhi, Nehru was passionately devoted to the cause of freedom. He had absorbed Western ideas at Harrow and Cambridge, however, and, unlike Gandhi, wanted to bring modern technology and industrialization to India.

After three "round-table" conferences in London had considered the commission's report, Parliament passed a new Government of India Act in 1935. It provided for elected legislatures in the provinces, but property and educational requirements restricted the number of voters to about 14 percent of the population. To protect the interests of minorities, voting was by communal groups. Upper-caste Hindus, Untouchables, Muslims, Sikhs, and others voted for their own candidates. The system perpetuated religious strife. Mohammed Ali Jinnah, leader of the Muslim League, charged that Congress ministries mistreated their Muslim minorities . He agitated for the separation of the Muslim provinces from India and the creation of a state called Pakistan, which means "country of the pure."

When World War II broke out, the Congress demanded complete and immediate freedom for India as the price for India's active participation. In 1942 Sir Stafford Cripps went to India with a plan for granting dominion status after the war, but Indian leaders could not agree on the terms. The Congress insisted on a unified India. The Muslim League demanded a separate Pakistan. The princes were determined to preserve their states.

The Japanese invaded northeast India from Burma with a small force in the spring of 1944. It was quickly driven out. In spite of opposition to British rule, India raised a volunteer army of nearly 2.5 million. Its industries expanded greatly to supply arms and other goods for the war effort.

Birth of the New Nations

In February 1947 the British government announced that it would leave India not later than June 1948. Muslim threats of civil war then forced the Hindu leaders to agree to the establishment of the separate state of Pakistan. The British Parliament rushed through the Indian Independence Act in July. On Aug. 15, 1947, the Indian Empire came to an end.

The two new dominions--India and Pakistan--had complete self-rule. Though they remained in the Commonwealth, they were free to withdraw. India took over the Indian Empire's membership in the United Nations. Jinnah became the first governor-general of Pakistan. Nehru, a moderate socialist, took office as India's first prime minister.

The boundaries between India and Pakistan were drawn so as to separate Muslims from Hindus and Sikhs. The Punjab, Bengal, and Assam were split in two. Yet some 38 million Muslims remained in India and about 19 million Hindus and more than 1.5 million Sikhs were left in Pakistan. Rioting broke out. Millions poured across the borders to the country of their own faith. Hundreds of thousands were massacred or died of other causes while migrating. Hundreds of villages were burned in communal strife.

On Jan. 30, 1948, Gandhi was assassinated by a fanatical member of a militant Hindu group that disapproved of his efforts toward reconciliation. Hindus and Muslims alike mourned his death. The Indian government immediately acted against the extremist group, and violence subsided. In 1950 the two nations agreed to protect their religious minorities. By 1951 about 7.2 million Hindus and Sikhs had fled from Pakistan into India and 7.4 million Indian Muslims had entered Pakistan. Additional millions crossed later. Religious strife and violence persisted for decades, however, in spite of these migrations.