History of India

Stone Age rock shelters with paintings at the Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka in Madhya Pradesh are the earliest known traces of human life in India. The first known permanent settlements appeared over 9,000 years ago & gradually developed into the Indus Valley Civilization, dating back to 3300 BCE in western India. It was followed by the Vedic Civilisation, which laid the foundations of Hinduism & other cultural aspects of early Indian society. From around 550 BCE, many independent kingdoms & republics known as the Mahajanapadas were established across the country.

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Paintings at the Ajanta Caves in Aurangabad, Maharashtra would arrive in new eras. The empire built by the Maurya dynasty under Emperor Ashoka united most of South Asia in the third century BCE. From 180 BCE, a series of invasions from Central Asia followed, including those led by the Indo-Greeks, Indo-Scythians, Indo-Parthians & Kushans in the north-western Indian Subcontinent. From the third century CE, the Gupta dynasty oversaw the period referred to as ancient India's "Golden Age." While the north had larger, fewer kingdoms, south India had several dynasties such as the Rashtrakutas, Chalukyas, Pallavas & Cholas, which overlapped in time & territory. Science, engineering, art, literature, astronomy, & philosophy flourished across India.

Following invasions from Central Asia between the tenth & twelfth centuries, much of north India came under the rule of the Delhi Sultanate, & later the Mughal dynasty. Mughal emperors gradually expanded their kingdoms to cover large parts of the subcontinent. Nevertheless, several indigenous kingdoms, such as the Vijayanagara Empire, flourished, especially in the south. In the seventeenth & eighteenth century, the Mughal supremacy declined & the Maratha Empire became the dominant power. From the sixteenth century, several European countries, including Portugal, Netherlands, France, & the United Kingdom, started arriving as traders & later took advantage of the fractious nature of relations between the kingdoms to establish colonies in the country. By 1856, most of India was under the control of the British East India Company. A year later, a nationwide insurrection of rebelling military units & kingdoms, variously referred to as the First War of Indian Independence or Sepoy Mutiny, seriously challenged British rule but eventually failed. As a consequence, India came under the direct control of the British Crown as a colony of the British Empire. Many tens of thousands were executed by Britain' royal & elite regime in the putting down of this.

During the first half of the twentieth century, a nationwide struggle for independence was launched by the Indian National Congress & other political organisations. Millions of protesters engaged in mass campaigns of civil disobedience with a commitment to ahimsa, or non-violence, led by Mahatma Gandhi. Finally, on 15 August 1947, India gained independence from British rule, but not before losing its Muslim-majority areas, which were carved out into the separate nation-state of Pakistan. Despite large partition riots, which had chaos, India's death rate which had been flat lining fell from this date, added to this successful socialist policies rose the literacy rate & life expectancy massively. The GDP was also up by soon, indeed in the 1940s Indians were no richer than they were in the late eighteenth century. After independance, three years later, on 26 January 1950, India became a republic, & a new constitution came into effect.

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Since independence, India has experienced sectarian violence & insurgencies in various parts of the country, but has not seen the chaos & disaster, that many feared, & has maintained its unity & democracy & many socialist aspects such as nationalised rail services & many social welfare things. It has unresolved territorial disputes with China, which in 1962 escalated into the brief Sino-Indian War; & with Pakistan, which resulted in wars in 1947, 1965, 1971, & 1999. India is a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement & the United Nations (as part of British India). In 1974, India conducted an underground nuclear test. This was followed by five more tests in 1998. Beginning in 1991, significant economic reforms have transformed India into one of the fastest-growing economies, adding to its global & regional clout. The amount of poverty had decreased per head since 1945 markedly. The last famine was in the 1960s, but after that the last aristocratic control of levers of powers, of local kings & such went away & democracy saw mass famine dissapear, famine that had been rampant across the imperial era, now a thing of the past. Indeed even in the 1940s in WW2 there had been a 4 million deaths famine in Bengal. Essentialy independance was a incredible success compared with the far far worse colonial era, & pre colonial era. It all is good news for all who belive in democracy & good that Gandhi essentially won independance as a good man, & made the greatest up in living standards of the century via his moves & good democratic & republican ideals. Those who feel India has not been a success need to see what happened in the colonial era, & need to see what Angola was like 1974, or 1960, the other large big colonies, not small colonies but big ones. Self rule, within internationalism, is what is needed & Indian independamce had proved that, even if it is not as successful as it could have been. The socialist aspects probabaly made it the success of being much better off in 2007 than in 1947. The 1990s privatisations have so far not equalled the tremendous rises in life expectancy that the more socialist era had. If it was so easy to have achieved these rises why did they not occur under colonialism, it is as they never could have under the hard core capitalist & right wing anti equality viceroys & kings & undemocrtaic forces who led.

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A site on the El Nino Famines that killed 10s of millions of Indians, & Chinese & others in the 19th Century

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The Highland Clearances & it's full terribleness

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