Indian History – Important events History of India . An overview : The people of India have had a continuous civilization since 2500 B. C. , when the inhabitants of the Indus River valley developed an urban culture based on commerce and sustained by agricultural trade. This civilization declined around 1500 B. C. , probably due to ecological changes. During the second millennium B. C. , pastoral, Aryan-speaking tribes migrated from the northwest into the subcontinent. As they settled in the middle Ganges River valley, they adapted to antecedent cultures.
The political map of ancient and medieval India was made up of myriad kingdoms with fluctuating boundaries. In the 4th and 5th centuries A. D. , northern India was unified under the Gupta Dynasty. During this period, known as India’s Golden Age, Hindu culture and political administration reached new heights. Islam spread across the Indian subcontinent over a period of 500 years. In the 10th and 11th centuries, Turks and Afghans invaded India and established sultanates in Delhi. In the early 16th century, descendants of Genghis Khan swept across the Khyber Pass and established the Mughal (Mogul) Dynasty, which lasted for 200 years.
From the 11th to the 15th centuries, southern India was dominated by Hindu Chola and Vijayanagar Dynasties. During this time, the two systems–the prevailing Hindu and Muslim–mingled, leaving lasting cultural influences on each other. The first British outpost in South Asia was established in 1619 at Surat on the northwestern coast. Later in the century, the East India Company opened permanent trading stations at Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta, each under the protection of native rulers. [pic][pic][pic|The British expanded their influence from these footholds until, by the 1850s, they controlled most of present-day | |] |India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. In 1857, a rebellion in north India led by mutinous Indian soldiers caused the | | |British Parliament to transfer all political power from the East India Company to the Crown. Great Britain began | | |administering most of India directly while controlling the rest through treaties with local rulers. | |In the late 1800s, the first steps were taken toward self-government in British India with the appointment of | | |Indian councilors to advise the British viceroy and the establishment of provincial councils with Indian members; | | |the British subsequently widened participation in legislative councils. Beginning in 1920, Indian leader Mohandas | | |K. Gandhi transformed the Indian National Congress political party into a mass movement to campaign against British| | |colonial rule.
The party used both parliamentary and nonviolent resistance and non-cooperation to achieve | | |independence. | On August 15, 1947, India became a dominion within the Commonwealth, with Jawaharlal Nehru as Prime Minister. Enmity between Hindus and Muslims led the British to partition British India, creating East and West Pakistan, where there were Muslim majorities. India became a republic within the Commonwealth after promulgating its constitution on January 26, 1950.
After independence, the Congress Party, the party of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, ruled India under the influence first of Nehru and then his daughter and grandson, with the exception of two brief periods in the 1970s and 1980s. Prime Minister Nehru governed India until his death in 1964. He was succeeded by Lal Bahadur Shastri, who also died in office. In 1966, power passed to Nehru’s daughter, Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister from 1966 to 1977. In 1975, beset with deepening political and economic problems, Mrs. Gandhi declared a state of emergency and suspended many civil liberties.
Seeking a mandate at the polls for her policies, she called for elections in 1977, only to be defeated by Moraji Desai, who headed the Janata Party, an amalgam of five opposition parties. In 1979, Desai’s Government crumbled. Charan Singh formed an interim government, which was followed by Mrs. Gandhi’s return to power in January 1980. On October 31, 1984, Mrs. Gandhi was assassinated, and her son, Rajiv, was chosen by the Congress (I)–for “Indira”–Party to take her place. His government was brought down in 1989 by allegations of corruption and was followed by V. P.
Singh and then Chandra Shekhar. In the 1989 elections, although Rajiv Gandhi and Congress won more seats in the 1989 elections than any other single party, he was unable to form a government with a clear majority. The Janata Dal, a union of opposition parties, was able to form a government with the help of the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on the right and the communists on the left. This loose coalition collapsed in November 1990, and the government was controlled for a short period by a breakaway Janata Dal group supported by Congress (I), with Chandra Shekhar as Prime Minister.
That alliance also collapsed, resulting in national elections in June 1991. On May 27, 1991, while campaigning in Tamil Nadu on behalf of Congress (I), Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated, apparently by Tamil extremists from Sri Lanka. In the elections, Congress (I) won 213 parliamentary seats and put together a coalition, returning to power under the leadership of P. V. Narasimha Rao. This Congress-led government, which served a full 5-year term, initiated a gradual process of economic liberalization and reform, which has opened the Indian economy to global trade and investment.
India’s domestic politics also took new shape, as traditional alignments by caste, creed, and ethnicity gave way to a plethora of small, regionally based political parties. [pic][pic][pic]The final months of the Rao-led government in the spring of 1996 were marred by several major political corruption scandals, which contributed to the worst electoral performance by the Congress Party in its history. The Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) emerged from the May 1996 national elections as the single-largest party in the Lok Sabha but without enough strength to prove a majority on the floor of that Parliament.
Under Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the BJP coalition lasted in power 13 days. With all political parties wishing to avoid another round of elections, a 14-party coalition led by the Janata Dal emerged to form a government known as the United Front, under the former Chief Minister of Karnataka, H. D. Deve Gowda. His government lasted less than a year, as the leader of the Congress Party withdrew his support in March 1997. Inder Kumar Gujral replaced Deve Gowda as the consensus choice for Prime Minister of a 16-party United Front coalition. In November 1997, the Congress Party in India again withdrew support for the United Front.
New elections in February 1998 brought the BJP the largest number of seats in Parliament–182–but fell far short of a majority. On March 20, 1998, the President inaugurated a BJP-led coalition government with Vajpayee again serving as Prime Minister. On May 11 and 13, 1998, this government conducted a series of underground nuclear tests forcing U. S. President Clinton to impose economic sanctions on India pursuant to the 1994 Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Act. In April 1999, the BJP-led coalition government fell apart, leading to fresh elections in September. The National
Democratic Alliance-a new coalition led by the BJP-gained a majority to form the government with Vajpayee as Prime Minister in October 1999. | Indian Kingdoms, Indian Empires | LEARN ABOUT ANCIENT INDIA KINGDOMS, INDIAN RULERS & ANCIENT INDIAN EMPIRES | |From their original settlements in the Punjab region, the Aryans gradually began to penetrate eastward, clearing dense forests| | |and establishing “tribal” settlements along the Ganga & Yamuna ( Jamuna ) plains between 1500 and ca. 800 B. C.
By around 500 | | |B. C. , most of northern India was inhabited and had been brought under cultivation, facilitating the increasing knowledge of | | |the use of iron implements, including ox-drawn plows, and spurred by the growing population that provided voluntary and forced| | |labor. | | |As riverine and inland trade flourished, many towns along the Ganga became centers of trade, culture, and luxurious living. | | |Increasing population and surplus production provided the bases for the emergence of independent states with fluid territorial| | |boundaries over which disputes frequently arose. The rudimentary administrative system headed by tribal chieftains was transformed by a number of regional republics or hereditary monarchies that devised ways to appropriate revenue and to conscript labor for expanding the areas of settlement and agriculture farther east and south, beyond the Narmada River. These emergent states collected revenue through officials, maintained armies, and built new cities and highways. By 600 B. C. , sixteen such territorial powers–including the Magadha, Kosala, Kuru, and Gandhara–stretched across the North India plains from modern-day Afghanistan to Bangladesh.
The right of a king to his throne, no matter how it was gained, was usually legitimized through elaborate sacrifice rituals and genealogies concocted by priests who ascribed to the king divine or superhuman origins. | |The victory of good over evil is epitomized in the epic Ramayana (The Travels of Rama, or Ram in the preferred modern form), | | |while another epic, Mahabharata (Great Battle of the Descendants of Bharata), spells out the concept of dharma and duty.
More | | |than 2,500 years later, Mohandas Karamchand (Mahatma) Gandhi, the father of modern India, used these concepts in the fight for| | |independence (see Mahatma Gandhi, this ch. ). | | |The Mahabharata records the feud between Aryan cousins that culminated in an epic battle in which both gods and mortals from | | |many lands allegedly fought to the death, and the Ramayana recounts the kidnapping of Sita, Rama’s wife, by Ravana, a demonic | | |king of Lanka (Sri Lanka), her rescue by her husband (aided by his animal allies), and Rama’s coronation, leading to a period | | |of prosperity and justice. In the late twentieth century, these epics remain dear to the hearts of Hindus and are commonly read and enacted in many settings. In the 1980s and 1990s, Ram’s story has been exploited by Hindu militants and politicians to gain power, and the much disputed Ramjanmabhumi, the birth site of Ram, has become an extremely sensitive communal issue, potentially pitting Hindu majority against Muslim minority (see Public Worship, ch. ; Political Issues, ch. 8). Indian Kingdom page. Library of congress 1995 The discussion regarding India stirred my imagination on the events that comprises the civilization of India and stimulated me to argue against on the events that is ibn contradiction on the morality of Indus as humans. The Indus had undergone many ups and downs that consequently summed up their civilization,achievements and reputation.
However, it was cumbersome and absurd to knew that India had achieved its civilization adn developments, but the gradual process of developments of India involves events hostile to humanity such as war, violence, pratricide, fratricide, and any kinds of murder, including social injustices, tyranny, deceitfulness, corruption and humiliation. It is ridiculous and pitiful to visualize the scenarios wherein different groups of people kept on invading fractions of India brutally and roughly, plundering and sacking different cities of India, destroying their emples and buildings and killing those innocent civilians and rulers of India like on the invasions of done by the Aryans, Muslims, Sakas, Greeks, White Huns and other barbarians. I want to emphasize the downturns of attempting to control or influence others by using violence and dehumanization. Violence could reinforce or create power but it is the weapon of choice for the iimpotent. They use violence in an attempt to control or influence others. Also, using violence is an act that is detrimental to eyes of God and to people. Those groups who invaded India through war and violence are apparent examples of losers, weak, and dumb-headed.
