Stone Age rock shelters with paintings at
Bhimbetka in Madhya Pradesh are the earliest known traces of human life in
India. The first known permanent settlements appeared 9,000 years ago and
developed into the Indus Valley Civilization, which peaked between 2600 BC and
1900 BC. It was followed by the Vedic Civilization.
From
around 500 BC onwards, many independent kingdoms came into being. In the north,
the Maurya dynasty, which included the Buddhist king Ashoka, contributed
greatly to India's cultural landscape. From 180 BC, a series of invasions from
Central Asia followed, with the successive establishment in the northern Indian
subcontinent of the Indo-Greek, Indo-Scythian and Indo-Parthian kingdoms, and
finally the Kushan Empire. From the 3rd century onwards the Gupta dynasty
oversaw the period referred to as India's "Golden Age".
Pandyas prevailed
during different periods. Science, Art, literature, mathematics, astronomy,
engineering, religion, and philosophy flourished under the patronage of these
kings.
Following the
Islamic invasions in the beginning of the second millennium, much of north and
central India came to be ruled by the Delhi Sultanate, and later, much of the
entire subcontinent by the Mughal dynasty. Nevertheless, several indigenous
kingdoms remained in or rose to power, especially in the relatively sheltered
south.
During the middle
of the second millennium, several European countries, including the Portuguese,
French, and English, who were initially interested in trade with India, took
advantage of fractured kingdoms fighting each other to colonise the country.
After a failed revolution in 1857 against the British East India Company,
popularly known as the First War of Indian Independence, most of India came
under the direct administrative control of the crown of the British Empire.
A prolonged and
largely non-violent struggle for independence, the Indian independence
movement, followed, eventually led by Mahatma Gandhi, regarded officially as
the father of modern India. The culmination of this path-breaking struggle was
reached on 1947-08-15 when India gained full independence from British rule,
later becoming a republic on 1950-01-26.
As a multi-ethnic
and multi-religious country, India has had its share of sectarian violence and
insurgencies in different parts of the country. Nonetheless, it has held itself
together as a secular,liberal democracy barring a brief period from 1975 to
1977 during which the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared a "state
of emergency" with the suspension of civil rights. India has unresolved
border disputes with China, which escalated into a brief war in 1962, and
Pakistan which resulted in wars in 1947, 1965, and 1971, and a border
altercation in the northern state of Kashmir in 1999. India was a founding
member of the Non-Aligned Movement and the United Nations(as British India). In
1974, India conducted an underground nuclear test, making it an unofficial
member of the "nuclear club", which was followed up with a series of
five more tests in 1998. Significant economic reforms beginning in 1991, have
transformed India into one of the fastest growing economies in the world.
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