Medieval India

Main article: Medieval India

Brihadisvara Temple, built by Chola Rajaraja I between 1003 and 1010 CE

Calligraphy on the Qutb Minar, built in the Delhi sultanate from 1199 CE to 1220 CE

The Indian early medieval age, from 600 to 1200 CE, was defined by regional kingdoms and cultural diversity.[99] No ruler of this period was able to create an empire and consistently control lands much beyond their core region.[q][100] During this time, pastoral peoples, whose land had been cleared to make way for the growing agricultural economy, were accommodated within caste society, as were new non-traditional ruling classes.[101] The caste system consequently began to show regional differences.[101]

In the 6th and 7th centuries, the first devotional hymns were composed in Tamil.[102] They were imitated all over India and led to both the resurgence of Hinduism and the development of all modern languages of the subcontinent.[102] Indian royalty, big and small, and the temples they patronised drew citizens in significant numbers to the capital cities, which became economic hubs as well.[103] Temple towns of various sizes began to appear everywhere as India underwent another urbanisation.[103] By the 8th and 9th centuries, the effects were felt in Southeast Asia, as South Indian culture and political systems were exported to lands that became part of modern-day Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Brunei, Cambodia, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia.[104] Indian merchants, scholars, and sometimes armies were involved in this transmission; Southeast Asians took the initiative as well, with many sojourning in Indian seminaries and translating Buddhist and Hindu texts into their languages.[104]

After the 10th century, Muslim Central Asian nomadic clans, using swift-horse cavalry and raising vast armies united by ethnicity, repeatedly overran South Asia's north-western plains,[r] leading eventually to the establishment of the Islamic Delhi Sultanate in 1206.[106] The sultanate was to control much of North India and to make many forays into South India. Although at first disruptive for the Indian elites, the sultanate largely left its vast non-Muslim subject population to its own laws and customs.[107][108]

By repeatedly repulsing Mongol raiders in the 13th century, the sultanate saved India from the devastation visited on West and Central Asia,[106] setting the scene for centuries of migration of fleeing soldiers, learned men, mystics, traders, artists, and artisans from that region into the subcontinent, thereby creating a syncretic Indo-Islamic culture in the north.[109] The sultanate's raiding and weakening of the regional kingdoms of South India paved the way for the indigenous Vijayanagara Empire.[110] Embracing a strong Shaivite tradition and building upon the military technology of the sultanate, the empire came to control a large portion of peninsular India,[111] and was to influence South Indian society for long afterwards.[110]

Early modern India

The dargah of Sufi Salim Chisti, built by Mughal emperor, Akbar, early 17th century

An East India Company rule gold mohur, issued during the reign of William IIII

In the early 16th century, northern India, then under mainly Muslim rulers,[112] fell again to the superior mobility and firepower of a new generation of Central Asian warriors.[113] The resulting Mughal Empire did not stamp out the local societies it came to rule. Instead, it balanced and pacified them through new administrative practices[114][115] and diverse and inclusive ruling elites,[116] leading to more systematic, centralised, and uniform rule.[117] Eschewing tribal bonds and Islamic identity, especially under Akbar, the Mughals united their far-flung realms through loyalty—expressed through a Persianised culture—to an emperor who had near-divine status.[118]

The Mughal state's economic policies, deriving most revenues from agriculture[119] and mandating that taxes be paid in the well-regulated silver currency,[120] caused peasants and artisans to enter larger markets.[121] The relative peace maintained by the empire during much of the 17th century was a factor in India's economic expansion,[121] resulting in greater patronage of painting, literary forms, textiles, and architecture.[122] Newly coherent social groups in northern and western India, such as the Marathas, the Rajputs, and the Sikhs, gained military and governing ambitions during Mughal rule, which, through collaboration or adversity, gave them both recognition and military experience.[123] Expanding commerce during Mughal rule gave rise to new Indian commercial and political elites along the coasts of southern and eastern India.[123] The incremental fragmentation of imperial authority during the late 17th and 18th centuries facilitated a process of decentralisation, enabling provincial elites to assert localised autonomy and consolidate control over their own affairs.[124]

By the early 18th century, with the lines between commercial enterprise and political sovereignty increasingly blurred, European chartered companies—notably the English East India Company—solidified their presence through fortified coastal outposts.[125][126] The East India Company's control of the seas, greater resources, and more advanced military training and technology led it to assert its military strength increasingly and caused it to become attractive to a portion of the Indian elite; these factors were crucial in allowing the company to gain control over the Bengal region by 1765 and sideline the other European companies.[127][125][128][129] Its further access to the riches of Bengal and the subsequent increased strength and size of its army enabled it to annexe or subdue most of India by the 1820s.[130] India was no longer exporting manufactured goods as it long had, but instead supplying the British Empire with raw materials. Many historians consider this to be the onset of India's colonial period.[125] By this time, with its economic power severely curtailed by the British parliament and having effectively been made an arm of British administration, the East India Company began more consciously to enter non-economic arenas, including education, social reform, and culture.[131]

Modern India

Main article: History of India (1947–present)

Mahatma Gandhi after a visit to the Presidency Jail, Calcutta, April 1938

The Capitol Complex in Chandigarh, commissioned after India's 1947 partition

The appointment in 1848 of Lord Dalhousie as Governor General of the East India Company set the stage for changes essential to a modern state: the consolidation and demarcation of sovereignty, the surveillance of the population, and the education of citizens. Technological changes—among them, railways, canals, and the telegraph—were introduced not long after their introduction in Europe.[132][133][134][135] Disaffection with the company also grew during this time and set off the Indian Rebellion of 1857. Fed by diverse resentments and perceptions, including invasive British-style social reforms, harsh land taxes, and summary treatment of some wealthy landowners and princes, the rebellion rocked many regions of northern and central India and shook the foundations of Company rule.[136][137] After the rebellion was suppressed in 1858, the East India Company was disbanded, and the British government began to directly administer India. Proclaiming a unitary state and a gradual but limited British-style parliamentary system,[138] the new rulers also protected princes and landed gentry as a feudal safeguard against future unrest.[139] In the decades following, public life gradually emerged across India, eventually leading to the founding of the Indian National Congress in 1885.[140][141][142][143]

The rush of technology and the commercialisation of agriculture in the second half of the 19th century was marked by economic setbacks, and many small farmers became dependent on the whims of faraway markets.[144] There was an increase in the number of large-scale famines,[145] and, despite the risks of infrastructure development borne by Indian taxpayers, little industrial employment was generated for Indians.[146] However, commercial cropping, especially in the newly canalled Punjab, led to increased food production for internal consumption.[147] The railway network provided critical famine relief,[148] notably reduced the cost of moving goods,[148] and helped nascent Indian-owned industry.[147]

After World War I, in which more than 1.3 million Indians served,[149] a new period began. It was marked by British reforms but also repressive legislation, by more strident Indian calls for self-rule, and by the beginnings of a nonviolent movement of non-co-operation led by Mahatma Gandhi.[150] During the 1930s, the British enacted slow legislative reform; the Indian National Congress won victories in the resulting elections.[151] The next decade was beset with crises: Indian participation in World War II, the Congress's final push for non-co-operation, and an upsurge of Muslim nationalism. All were capped by the advent of independence in 1947, but tempered by the partition of India into two states: India and Pakistan.[152]