History (Ancient, Medieval, Modern)

Sources

• Archaeological: excavated sites, coins (numismatics), inscriptions (epigraphy), monuments and sculpture.
• Literary: the Vedas, epics, Puranas, Buddhist and Jain texts, and secular works such as Kautilya's Arthashastra and Kalidasa's plays.
• Foreign accounts: Megasthenes (Indica), Fa-Hien, Hiuen Tsang and Al-Biruni.

The Ashokan edicts were deciphered by James Prinsep in 1837, which opened up the whole Mauryan period.

Indus Valley (Harappan) civilisation

Roughly 2500–1750 BCE (mature phase), a Bronze Age urban civilisation of the north-west.

Features: grid town planning, burnt-brick houses, covered drains, the citadel-and-lower-town layout, standardised weights, seals with an undeciphered script, and no temples. Decline is attributed to a combination of climatic change, river shifts and flooding — not to a single invasion.

Vedic age

• Early Vedic (Rig Vedic), c. 1500–1000 BCE: pastoral society in the Sapta-Sindhu region; the Rig Veda is the oldest text, arranged in ten mandalas.
• Later Vedic, c. 1000–600 BCE: eastward movement to the Ganga plain, iron in use, agriculture and the varna order hardening.

The four Vedas are Rig, Sama, Yajur and Atharva; each has Brahmanas, Aranyakas and Upanishads attached. Satyameva Jayate comes from the Mundaka Upanishad.

Jainism and Buddhism

Buddha attained enlightenment at Bodh Gaya, gave his first sermon at Sarnath and died at Kushinagar.

Before the Sultanate

After Harsha, north India was divided among the Gurjara-Pratiharas, Palas and Rashtrakutas, whose three-way contest for Kanauj is called the tripartite struggle. In the south the Chola empire reached its height under Rajaraja I and Rajendra I, with naval expeditions to South-East Asia and the Brihadeshwara temple at Thanjavur.

Invasions from the north-west: Mahmud of Ghazni raided seventeen times (1000–1027), and Muhammad Ghuri was defeated at the first battle of Tarain (1191) by Prithviraj Chauhan and won the second battle of Tarain (1192), which opened north India to Turkish rule.

The Delhi Sultanate (1206–1526)

Institutions: the iqta (a revenue assignment in place of salary), the diwan-i-arz (military department), branding of horses (dagh) and descriptive rolls (chehra) under Alauddin.

The south

• Vijayanagara (1336–1646): founded by Harihara and Bukka; greatest ruler Krishnadeva Raya; capital Hampi; defeated at Talikota (1565).
• Bahmani kingdom (1347): later split into five Deccan sultanates, of which Bijapur (Gol Gumbaz) and Golconda are the best known.

Bhakti and Sufi movements

Bhakti saints taught devotion in the local language and rejected ritual and caste barriers: Kabir, Guru Nanak, Mirabai, Tulsidas, Surdas, Chaitanya, Namdev, Tukaram, Ramananda and, in the south, the Alvars and Nayanars. Sufi orders — Chishti (Moinuddin Chishti at Ajmer, Nizamuddin Auliya at Delhi) and Suhrawardi — stressed love and service.

The Europeans

Portuguese (Vasco da Gama reached Calicut in 1498), Dutch, English (East India Company chartered in 1600), Danish and French (1664). The Carnatic wars settled the Anglo-French contest in favour of the English.

Two battles made the Company a territorial power:

• Plassey, 1757 — Robert Clive defeated Siraj-ud-Daulah of Bengal.
• Buxar, 1764 — victory over the combined forces of Mir Qasim, Shuja-ud-Daulah and Shah Alam II, after which the Diwani of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa (1765) gave the Company revenue rights.

From Company to Crown

Land revenue settlements

• Permanent Settlement (1793, Cornwallis) — Bengal, Bihar, Orissa; zamindars made proprietors with a fixed demand.
• Ryotwari (Munro, Read) — Madras and Bombay; settlement directly with the cultivator, revisable.
• Mahalwari (Holt Mackenzie) — North-Western Provinces and Punjab; settlement with the village community.

All three raised the demand in cash, which pushed cultivators towards moneylenders and commercial crops.

Wars of expansion

• Anglo-Mysore wars (1767–1799): ended with Tipu Sultan's death at Seringapatam.
• Anglo-Maratha wars (1775–1818): ended Maratha power; Peshwa pensioned off.
• Anglo-Sikh wars (1845–49): annexation of Punjab.
• Subsidiary Alliance (Wellesley) and the Doctrine of Lapse (Dalhousie) absorbed states without war — Satara, Jhansi, Nagpur, and Awadh on grounds of misgovernment in 1856.

The Congress and its early phases

The Indian National Congress was founded in 1885 by A. O. Hume; its first session in Bombay was presided over by W. C. Bonnerjee.

• Moderates (1885–1905): Dadabhai Naoroji (the "drain of wealth"), Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Pherozeshah Mehta, S. N. Banerjee — petitions, prayers and constitutional argument.
• Extremists (1905–1919): Bal Gangadhar Tilak ("Swaraj is my birthright"), Bipin Chandra Pal, Lala Lajpat Rai, Aurobindo Ghosh — swadeshi, boycott and self-reliance.

The two wings split at Surat in 1907 and reunited at Lucknow in 1916, where the Lucknow Pact with the Muslim League was also signed.

Partition of Bengal and Swadeshi

Curzon's partition of Bengal (1905) provoked the Swadeshi and Boycott movement; the partition was annulled in 1911, when the capital was also shifted from Calcutta to Delhi. The Muslim League was founded at Dhaka in 1906.

Home Rule

Tilak (April 1916, Pune) and Annie Besant (September 1916, Madras) launched Home Rule Leagues demanding self-government within the empire.

Gandhi's satyagrahas

Then came the Rowlatt Act (1919), the Jallianwala Bagh massacre (13 April 1919) and the merging of the Khilafat cause with national politics.

The three mass movements

Between them: the Simon Commission (1927) with no Indian member, met by "Simon go back"; the Nehru Report (1928); the Lahore session (December 1929) which adopted Purna Swaraj, celebrated as independence day on 26 January 1930; the three Round Table Conferences (1930–32); the Communal Award and the Poona Pact (1932) between Gandhi and Ambedkar.