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Medieval India The period following the death of Harsha is known as the Rajput period. The word Rajput connotes the scion of a royal family and these princes claimed descent from the sun or the moon. This was an era of chivalry and feudalism. Family feuds and strong notions of personal pride often exacerbated conflicts. The Rajputs weakened each other by constant fighting. This allowed the foreigners (Turks) to embark on victorious campaigns using duplicity and deceit wherever military strength failed against Rajputs. One of them, Mohammad Ghori defeated Prithviraj Chauhan, the Tomar ruler of Delhi, at the battle of Tarain in 1192 and left the Indian territories in the charge of his deputy, Qutubudin (reign - 1206 - 1210), who had started life as a slave. This is the reason that the dynasty founded by him is known as the Slave Dynasty. It is he who built the towering Qutub Minar in Delhi. Raziya (reign - 1236 - 1239), the daughter of his successor Iltutmish (reign - 1210 - 1236), was quite an exception for that age. She sat on the throne of Delhi for a short while. Khiljis, Tughlaqs, Sayyids and Lodis followed in the footsteps of the 'Slaves'. This period is known as the Sultanate. Only a few rulers distinguished themselves in statecraft. Allauddin Khilji (reign - 1296 - 1316) was not only a distinguished commander but also an able administrator. He is remembered for his military campaign in the south as well as market reforms and price control measures. Muhammad Tughlaq (reign - 1324 - 1351) was a visionary who had the misfortune of being misunderstood by almost everyone who came in his contact. Modern historians, however, have judged him more sympathetically. Once derided for his whimsical decisions - he once ordered the imperial capital to be shifted to Daulatabad in the Deccan as the site was more central - he is now given credit for his unusual 'vision'. Lodis were, by comparison, quite mild and are only recalled when one is in the vicinity of the majestic Lodi tombs set in beautifully landscaped gardens. The Sultanate introduced, in the sub continent, the Islamic concepts of society and governance, and thus prepared the ground for a scintillating encounter between two important world civilisations. When the power of the Sultans declined, the outlying provinces once again became important and the process of Hindu Islamic synthesis continued almost without any interruption. Much before the expulsion of the last Lodi ruler from Delhi by Babur the lustre of the Sultanate had dulled. Babur (reign - 1526-30), the founder of the Mughal Empire in India, was a descendant of Timur as well as Changez Khan. Ousted by his cousins from the small principality in Central Asia that he had inherited, he came to India and defeated Ibrahim, the last Lodi Sultan in 1526 at the First Battle of Panipat. There was a brief interruption to Mughal rule when Babur's son Humayun (reign - 1530-40) was ousted from Delhi, by Sher Shah, an Afghan chieftain. Sher Shah (reign - 1540-55), assumed power in the imperial capital for a short while. He is remembered as the builder of the Grand Trunk road that spanned the distance from Peshawar to Patna and also one who introduced major reforms in the revenue system, gratefully retained by the Mughals. It was Babur's grandson Akbar (reign - 1556-1605), who consolidated political power and extended his empire over practically the whole of north India and parts of the south. Akbar realized that if the empire was to attain stability, it must grow roots in the native soil, and that it should seek support from the local ruling groups. Jahangir (reign - 1605-27) who succeeded Akbar was a pleasure loving man of refined taste. Contemporary chroniclers have recorded that during his reign the Persian nobility related to his wife Nur Jahan had become influential. Shah Jahan (1628-58) his son, ascended the throne next. Shah Jahan's fame rests on the majestic buildings he has left behind - the Taj Mahal, the Red Fort and the Jama Masjid. His successor, Aurangzeb (reign - 1658-1707) was a brave general and an able administrator but his many virtues were eclipsed by religious dogmatism and rigid attitudes. By the end of his rule it was becoming clear that he had overstretched himself and depleted the resources of the empire. The long drawn conflict with the Marathas unfortunately projected Aurangzeb as an enemy of the Hindus. The man continues to be misunderstood. Sharp decline set in after the death of Aurangzeb. His successors were weak and incapable of holding the far-flung empire together. Challengers to the imperial authority emerged in different regions. Provincial governors asserted their independence and soldiers of fortune made a bid for sovereign power. In western India, Shivaji (1637-80) had forged the Marathas into an efficient military machine and given them a sense of national identity. They adopted guerrilla tactics to maul the Mughals and put a severe drain on their economic resources. The contenders for political supremacy in the 17th and 18th Centuries included besides the Marathas, the Sikhs in Punjab and Hyder Ali (reign - 1721 - 1782) in Mysore. Tipu Sultan (reign - 1782 - 1799) - Hyder Ali's son and successor allied himself with the French against the British and strove to introduce the latest technical knowledge from Europe. To perceptive Indians of Tipu's generation it was becoming clear that Medieval Indian society and polity would have to meet the challenge of Europe by casting itself in its mould. Beset by fratricidal feuds and petty bickering India had remained indifferent to the advent of Europeans but, now the time of reckoning could not be delayed. Culture under the Mughals The Mughals were great patrons of the arts. Many emperors and princes - Akbar and Dara Shikoh (Shah Jahan's son) being the most prominent - were deeply concerned with problems of metaphysics, while some others were writers of considerable talent. Babur penned Babur Nama, a moving memoir wherein he expressed his nostalgia for the land of his birth and documented the Indian scene with great objectivity. Jahangir too has left behind an eminently readable memoir - Tuzuke Jahangiri. Babur and Humayun did not get enough time to undertake construction of imposing buildings but their successors displayed a great penchant for architecture. Akbar commissioned the building of Fatehpur Sikri where an exquisite blending of elements and motifs from both the Islamic and the Hindu architectural styles is encountered. Jahangir was a connoisseur of paintings and landscaped gardens. The beautifully landscaped gardens - Shalimar Bagh and Nishat Bagh - in Lahore and in Srinagar - evoke the resplendent floral exuberance of an expensive carpet. Shah Jahan was a prolific builder. He built the Red Fort and the majestic Jama Masjid in Delhi, though what he is remembered most for is the Taj Mahal - the mausoleum to his beloved wife Mumtaj Mahal who had died during childbirth. Impressive progress was made in the spheres of music, painting and literature. The Mughal miniatures influenced and spawned schools of art in the princely states of Kota, Bundi and Kishangarh in Rajasthan and in Kangra, Bhaisoli, and Guler in Himachal Pradesh. The themes of these exquisite landscapes and portraits deal with the love of Radha and Krishna, the changing cycle of seasons and the Ragas - modes - of Indian classical music. The Barahmasa and the Ragamalika - series of paintings are the evidence that the native genius in painting had survived the vicissitudes of political history since the days of Ajanta. Court chroniclers concentrated on the genre of biography, but it was the compositions of the saint poets who laid the foundation of modern Indian literature in vernacular. Poetry that was sensitive to the aspirations of the masses was penned not only in Hindi, but also in Marathi, Gujarati and Tamil. Jayasi, Namdev, Tukaram, Narsi Mehta, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Thyagraja are only some of the illustrious names. Many regional languages, such as Hindi, Urdu, Gujarati, Marathi and Bengali had by the 17th Century, acquired a distinct identity and could boast of a large body of literature. The languages that are spoken today in most parts of India are the ones that evolved and grew to maturity during the Mughal period.

Bahadurshah Zafar - the last of the great Mughals - was a passionate lover of poetry and eminent Urdu poets Ghalib and Zauk graced his court. Mir preceded them by a few decades lamenting the disintegration of a civilized way of life that followed in the wake of the decay of this great empire. A great churning of ideas during this period gave rise to the Bhakti movement - a powerful social upsurge for reform - spearheaded by poet-saints. The ripples caused by verses sung by wandering minstrels carried the stimulating message across the land and engendered what can only be termed a national resurgence. Kabir - the sharp-tongued weaver from Varanasi (Benaras) - delighted in exposing the hypocrisy of orthodox Hindus and Muslims alike. He wrote eloquently against idolatry, caste prejudice and articulated abstract metaphysical concepts in witty, memorable poetic phrases that were easy to grasp by the man on the street. The use of folk idiom blending many dialects made him exceptionally accessible for the masses. Tulsidas retold the story of Rama, the virtuous Prince of Ayodhya, in vernacular as a moral discourse to instill ethical values in private and public life. His narrative poem Ramcharitmanas soon acquired the status of a sacred book and continues to be regarded by many Hindus in the countryside as a most useful encapsulation of traditional wisdom. Another remarkable name is that of Mira - a princess from Rajasthan who walked out of the palace to express her love for the cowherd God Krishna. She asserted the right of a woman to choose her way of life in a strait jacketed feudal society. Raskhan was a Muslim devotee of Krishna and presents a wonderful illustration of communal harmony that prevailed. Interestingly, quite a few of these poet saints came from humble backgrounds.

India Geography Size: Total land area 2,973,190 square kilometers. Total area, including territorial seas, claimed is 3,287,590 square kilometers. Topography: Three main geological regions: Indo-Gangetic Plain and Himalayas, collectively known as North India; and Peninsula or South India. Ten physiological regions: Indo-Gangetic Plain, northern mountains of the Himalayas, Central Highlands, Deccan or Peninsular Plateau, East Coast (Coromandel Coast in south), West Coast (Konkan, Kankara, and Malabar coasts), Great Indian Desert (known as Thar Desert in Pakistan) and Rann of Kutch, valley of the Brahmaputra River in Assam, northeastern hill ranges surrounding Assam Valley, and islands of Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal. Climate: Climate varies significantly from Himalayas in north to tropical south. Four seasons: relatively dry, cool winter December to February; dry, hot summer March to May; southwest monsoon June to September when predominating southwest maritime winds bring rains to most of country; and northeast, or retreating, monsoon October and November. Society Population: 936,545,814 estimated in July 1995, with 1.8 percent annual growth rate. About 74 percent in rural areas in 1991; high population density--284 persons per square kilometer national average, major states more than 700 persons per square kilometer; 100 persons or fewer per square kilometer in some border states and insular territories. Bombay (officially renamed Mumbai in 1995) largest city, with 12.6 million in 1991; twenty-three other cities with populations of more than 1 million. Health: In 1995 life expectancy for men 58.5 years, for women 59.6 years; infant mortality rate 76.3 per 1,000 live births. Malaria, filariasis, leprosy, cholera, pneumonic plague, tuberculosis, trachoma, goiter, and diarrheal diseases all occur. In 1991 primary health centers, subcenters, and community health centers at local levels included more than 10,000 hospitals, 24,000 dispensaries, and 811,000 beds. Education: Twelve-year education system; mandatory primary and middle levels, optional secondary education; high drop-out rate even at compulsory levels. System supervised by Department of Education, part of Ministry of Human Resource Development. National adult literacy rate 52.2 percent in 1991 (male 63.9 percent, female 39.4 percent). More than 180 universities, some 500 teacher training colleges, and several thousand other colleges. Religion: Most (82 percent) observe Hinduism; 12.1 percent Muslim, 2.3 percent Christian, 1.9 percent Sikh, 0.8 percent Buddhist, 0.4 percent Jains, 0.4 percent other, 0.1 percent not identified. Language: Official language Hindi; English also has official status. For use in certain official capacities, constitution recognizes eighteen Scheduled Languages (see Glossary): Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu. Four major language families include officially 112 "mother tongues," each with 10,000 or more speakers; thirty-three languages spoken by 1 million or more persons. Total number of languages and dialects varies depending on source and how counted; between 179 and 188 languages and between forty-nine and 544 dialects have been tabulated; census respondents in 1961 provided names for 1,652 different "mother tongues." Ethnic Groups: Indo-Aryan 72 percent, Dravidian 25 percent, Mongoloid and other 3 percent. Caste system, although no longer sanctioned by government, prevails. Some 16 percent listed as members of Scheduled Castes (see Glossary), 8 percent as members of Scheduled Tribes (see Glossary).

India Economy Salient Features: Economy transformed from primarily agriculture, forestry, fishing, and textile manufacturing in 1947 to major heavy industry, transportation, and telecom-munications industries by late 1970s. Central government planning 1950 through late 1970s giving way to economic reforms and more private-sector initiatives in 1980s and 1990s. Agriculture predominates and benefits from infusion of modern technology by government. World Bank Group and developed nations provide most aid; Japan largest donor. Major trade partners United States, Japan, European Union, and nations belonging to Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC--see Glossary). Currency and Exchange Rate: Rupee; US$1 = Rs35.67 (July 1996). Fiscal Year (FY): April 1-March 31. Gross Domestic Product (GDP): Rs36.7 trillion (nearly US$1.2 trillion) in 1994 (estimated). GDP annual average growth rate 3.8 percent in 1994. Foreign Trade: Principal export trade with European Union, United States, and Japan. Main commodities agricultural and allied products, gems and jewelry, and ready-made garments. Iron ore, minerals, and leather and leather products also important. Exports 7.7 percent of GDP in FY 1992. Principal import trade with European Union, United States, and Japan. Major imports (28 percent of total) oil products from Middle East. Other major imports chemicals, dyes, plastics, pharmaceuticals, uncut precious stones, iron and steel, fertilizers, nonferrous metals, and pulp paper and paper products. Imports 9.3 percent of GDP in FY 1992. Balance of Payments: Negative trade balance in late 1980s and early 1990s. In 1993 estimated exports US$22.7 billion versus US$23.9 billion imports. Foreign Aid: Most aid provided by Aid-to-India Consortium, consisting of World Bank Group and Austria, Belgium, Britain, Canada, Denmark, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and United States. Japan largest aid granter and lender; US$337 million grants between 1984 and 1993, US$2.4 billion loans in same period. Indian aid program to Bhutan and Nepal; smaller programs assist Bangladesh and Vietnam. Industry: Increasing share (27.4 percent in FY 1991) of GDP, but employed only about 9 percent of the work force in 1991. Basic industries: textiles, steel and aluminum, fertilizers and petrochemicals, and electronics and motor vehicles. Energy: India importer of petroleum and natural gas but has abundant coal, hydroelectric power (especially in parts of North India), and burgeoning nuclear power industry. Minerals: Less than 2 percent share of GDP in FY 1990 and 1 percent of labor force involved in mining and quarrying in 1991. Basic minerals: iron, bauxite, copper, lead, zinc, mica, uranium ore, rare earths. Services: Some 39.8 percent of GDP in FY 1991, then employing about 13 percent of work force. Large and diverse transportation system. Agriculture: Declining share (32.8 percent) of GDP but employed majority of workers (67 percent of total labor force) in FY 1991. Around 45 percent (136 million hectares) of total land cultivated, 27 percent double cropped, effectively giving India 173 million hectares of cultivated land. Another 5 percent (15 million hectares) permanent pastureland or planted in tree crops or groves. Farming by smallholders; large landholders divested in 1970s. Rice, wheat, pulses, and oilseeds dominate production, but millet, corn (maize), and sorghum important; commercial crops--sugar (India world's largest producer), cotton, jute also important. Green Revolution technological advances and improved high-yielding variety seeds, and increased fertilizer production and irrigation between mid-1960s and early 1980s. Dairy farming, fishing, and forestry important parts of agricultural sector. Agricultural products around 18 percent of total exports. Science and Technology: Major government investment (80 percent of total) in and control of science and technology sector; 200 national laboratories, 200 government-sector research and development institutions, and about 1,000 research and development units in industrial sector supported by both public and private funds. Substantial investments in research and development in defense, nuclear science, space, and agriculture.

India Transportation and Telecommunications Railroads: Track route length 62,458 in mid-1990s, fourth most heavily used system in world, both for passengers and freight; all government-owned and operated by Indian Railways. Some 14,600 kilometers double or multiple tracked; 11,000 kilometers electrified, 116,000 bridges; some high-speed routes; domestic production of most rolling stock and other components. Major government investment in modernization in 1990s. Full metro system in Calcutta, rapid transit system in Madras, and major system planned for New Delhi; Bombay served by suburban rail network. Roads: Almost 2 million kilometers; 960,000 kilometers surfaced roads, and more than 1 million kilometers constructed of gravel, crushed stone, or earth. Fifty-three highways, almost 20,000 kilometers in total length, rated as national highways; carry about 40 percent of road traffic. Around 60 percent of all passenger traffic travels by road. Urban transit dominated by motor vehicles; increasing use of two- and three-wheel vehicles, automobiles, minibuses, buses, trucks. Large cities have major urban bus systems. Bullocks, camels, elephants, and other beasts of burden seen throughout India. Maritime Transport: Eleven major ports and 139 minor ports. In 1995 three government-owned and between fifty and sixty privately owned shipping companies. Four major and three medium-sized shipyards, all government run, thirty-five smaller shipyards in private sector. Major coastal and ocean trade routes, more than 16,000 kilometers of inland waterways, more than 3,600 kilometers navigable by large vessels, although only about 2,000 kilometers used. Airports: Two airlines (Air India and Indian Airlines) and one helicopter service (Pawan Hans) owned by government and six privately owned airlines; latter account for only 10 percent of domestic air traffic. Of 288 airports, 208 permanent-surface runways and two runways of more than 3,659 meters. Major international airports at Bombay (Mumbai), Delhi, Calcutta, Madras, and Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum). International service also from Mamargao (Goa), Bangalore, and Hyderabad. Major regional airports at Ahmadabad, Allahabad, Pune, Srinagar, Chandigarh, Kochi (Cochin), Nagpur, and Thiruvananthapuram. Telecommunications: National system controlled by government, with public corporations running service in New Delhi and Bombay; some basic telephone services opened to private-sector competition in 1994; telephone line density only 0.7 per 100 persons in 1994, among lowest of major nations of Asia. Submarine cables link India to Malaysia and United Arab Emirates. Paging, cellular phone service, and electronic mail being introduced. Government-owned radio (Akashvani) and television (Doordarshan) networks with extensive national and local coverage; private-sector television networks via cable and satellite becoming prolific. Government and Politics Government: Federal republic based on separation of powers into executive, legislative, and judicial branches. Central government known as union government. Constitution of 1950 in force but much amended; power concentrated in Parliament with upper house--Rajya Sabha (Council of States)--appointed by president and elected by state and territory assemblies and lower house--Lok Sabha (House of the People)--popularly elected. Supreme Court highest court of land; high courts in states. Administrative Divisions: Twenty-five states with 476 districts, one national capital territory, six union territories. State governors appointed by president, chief minister member of popularly elected state assembly; central-government agencies prevalent at local levels. Constitution allows central control of state government (President's Rule) during time of emergency on recommendation of governor. Districts subdivided into taluqs or tehsils, townships that contain from 200 to 600 villages. Small, centrally controlled union territories with lieutenant governor or chief commissioner appointed by president. Politics: With 354 million voters, some 14,700 candidates, more than 500 parties, and nearly 595,000 polling stations in April-May 1996 elections, India often called "world's largest democ-racy." Since independence, dominated by Indian National Congress (Congress--see Glossary) and its factions; occasional rule by minority-party and coalition governments; Janata Party, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), communist parties, and several regional parties also important. Foreign Relations: Member of United Nations (UN), South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), Nonaligned Movement, and numerous other international organizations. Relations with all major nations based on principles of nonalignment.

India National Security Armed Forces: Armed forces of India total active-duty personnel in 1994 approximately 1,104,000. Component services: army, 940,000; navy, 54,000, of which 5,000 naval aviation and 1,000 marines; air force, 110,000. Reserve forces personnel total 1,964,554; also twelve paramilitary forces under control of various ministries with total strength of 762,735 in 1994. Military Units: Army structured as twelve corps (twenty-two infantry divisions) under central control, organized into five tactical area commands. Navy units in three area commands. Air Force units in five operational commands. Police commands coincide with state boundaries. Military Equipment: Army main battle tanks, armored personnel carriers (APCs), towed and self-propelled artillery, helicopters. Navy: aircraft carriers, submarines, destroyers, frigates, fast-attack patrol craft, amphibious ships, fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and marine reconnaissance aircraft. Air Force: ground-attack fighters, transports, trainers, and helicopters. Emphasis on domestic production of most items; most imports from Britain, France, Germany, and Russia. Older equipment from Soviet Union. Military Budget: Approximately US$6.9 billion, or less than 5 percent of gross national product in FY 1994. Foreign Military Relations: Long-term ties with Soviet Union and, later, Russia. Occasional joint operations with Indian Ocean nations and United States. Peacekeeping forces sent to Sri Lanka and Maldives. Since 1950 Indian military and police contingents also have participated in UN peacekeeping forces in Korea, Suez Canal, Sinai Peninsula, Gaza, Congo, Lebanon, Yemen, West Irian, Iran-Iraq border, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Namibia, Angola, former Yugoslavia, Mozambique, Cambodia, and Somalia. Internal Security Forces: Paramilitary forces guard coasts, borders, and sensitive military areas; paramilitary sent by central government to aid local police forces and against insurgencies. Provincial Armed Constabulary and Central Reserve Police Force handle police duties.

India Introduction INDIA IS A LAND of ancient civilization, with cities and villages, cultivated fields, and great works of art dating back 4,000 years. India's high population density and variety of social, economic, and cultural configurations are the products of a long process of regional expansion. In the last decade of the twentieth century, such expansion has led to the rapid erosion of India's forest and wilderness areas in the face of ever-increasing demands for resources and gigantic population pressures--India's population is projected to exceed 1 billion by the twenty-first century. Such problems are a relatively recent phenomenon. Rhinoceros inhabited the North Indian plains as late as the sixteenth century. Historical records and literature of earlier periods reveal the motif of the forest everywhere. Stories of merchant caravans typically included travel through long stretches of jungle inhabited by wild beasts and strange people; royal adventures usually included a hunting expedition and meetings with unusual beings. In the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, early epics that reflect life in India before 1000 B.C. and 500 B.C., respectively, the forest begins at the edge of the city, and the heroes regularly spend periods of exile wandering far from civilization before returning to rid the world of evil. The formulaic rituals of the Vedas also reflect attempts to create a regulated, geometric space from the raw products of nature. The country's past serves as a reminder that India today, with its overcrowding and scramble for material gain, its poverty and outstanding intellectual accomplishments, is a society in constant change. Human beings, mostly humble folk, have within a period of 200 generations turned the wilderness into one of the most complicated societies in the world. The process began in the northwest in the third millennium B.C., with the Indus Valley, or Harappan, civilization, when an agricultural economy gave rise to extensive urbanization and long-distance trade. The second stage occurred during the first millennium B.C., when the Ganga-Yamuna river basin and several southern river deltas experienced extensive agricultural expansion and population growth, leading to the rebirth of cities, trade, and a sophisticated urban culture. By the seventh century A.D., a dozen core regions based on access to irrigation-supported kingdoms became tied to a pan-Indian cultural tradition and participated in increasing cross-cultural ties with other parts of Asia and the Middle East. India's inclusion within a global trading economy after the thirteenth century culminated in the arrival of Portuguese explorers, traders, and missionaries, beginning in 1498. Although there were ebbs and flows in the pattern, the overall tendency was for peasant cultivators and their overlords to expand agriculture and animal husbandry into new ecological zones, and to push hunting and gathering societies farther into the hills. By the twentieth century, most such tribal (see Glossary) groups, although constituting a substantial minority within India, lived in restricted areas under severe pressure from the caste-based agricultural and trading societies pressing from the plains. Because this evolution took place over more than forty centuries and encompassed a wide range of ecological niches and peoples, the resulting social pattern is extremely complicated and alters constantly. India had its share of conquerors who moved in from the northwest and overran the north or central parts of the country. These migrations began with the Aryan peoples of the second millennium B.C. and culminated in the unification of the entire country for the first time in the seventeenth century under the Mughals. Mostly these conquerors were nomadic or seminomadic people who adopted or expanded the agricultural economy and contributed new cultural forms or religions, such as Islam. The Europeans, primarily the English, arrived in force in the early seventeenth century and by the eighteenth century had made a profound impact on India. India was forced, for the first time, into a subordinate role within a world system based on industrial production rather than agriculture. Many of the dynamic craft or cottage industries that had long attracted foreigners to India suffered extensively under competition with new modes of mass production fostered by the British. Modern institutions, such as universities, and technologies, such as railroads and mass communication, broke with Indian intellectual traditions and served British, rather than Indian, economic interests. A country that in the eighteenth century was a magnet for trade was, by the twentieth century, an underdeveloped and overpopulated land groaning under alien domination. Even at the end of the twentieth century, with the period of colonialism well in the past, Indians remain sensitive to foreign domination and are determined to prevent the country from coming under such domination again. Through India's long history, religion has been the carrier and preserver of culture. One distinctive aspect of the evolution of civilization in India has been the importance of hereditary priesthoods, often Brahmans (see Glossary), who have functioned as intellectual elites. The heritage preserved by these groups had its origin in the Vedas and allied bodies of literature in the Sanskrit language, which evolved in North India during the second millennium B.C. This tradition always accepted a wide range of paths to ultimate truth, and thus encompassed numerous rituals and forms of divinity within a polytheistic system. Generally, Brahmans supported the phenomenon known as Sanskritization, or the inclusion of local or regional traditions within Sanskrit literary models and pan-Indian cultural motifs. In this way, there has been a steady spread of North Indian cultural and linguistic forms throughout the country. This process has not gone unopposed. Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) and Mahavira (founder of Jainism) in the fifth century B.C. represented alternative methods for truth-seekers; they renounced the importance of priesthoods in favor of monastic orders without reference to birth. The largest challenge came from Islam, which rests on Arabic rather than Sanskritic cultural traditions, and has served, especially since the eleventh century, as an important alternative religious path. The interaction of Brahmanical religious forms with local variations and with separate religions creates another level of complexity in Indian social life. Closely allied with religious belief, and deeply rooted in history, caste remains an important feature of Indian society. Caste in many Indian languages is jati, or birth--a system of classifying and separating people from birth within thousands of different groups labeled by occupation, ritual status, social etiquette, and language. Scholars have long debated the origins of this system, and have suggested as the origin religious concepts of reincarnation, the incorporation of many ethnic groups within agricultural systems over the millennia, or occupational stratification within emerging class societies. What is certain is that nineteenth-century British administrators, in their drive to classify and regulate the many social groups they encountered in everyday administration, established lists or schedules of different caste groups. At that time, it seemed that the rules against intermarriage and interdining that defined caste boundaries tended to freeze these groups within unchanging little societies, a view that fit well with imperialistic models imposed on India as a whole. Experience during the twentieth century has demonstrated that the caste system is capable of radical change and adaptation. Modernization and urbanization have led to a decline in the outward display of caste exclusiveness, so that issues of caste may never emerge directly on public transit or in the workplace. Entire castes have changed their status, claiming higher positions as they shed their traditional occupations or accumulate money and power. In many villages, however, the segregation of castes by neighborhood and through daily behavior still exists at the end of the twentieth century. In the cities, segregation takes more subtle forms, emerging directly at times of marriage but existing more often as an undercurrent of discrimination in educational opportunities, hiring, and promotion. The British schedules of different castes, especially those of very low or Untouchable (Dalit--see Glossary) groups, later became the basis for affirmative-action programs in independent India that allowed some members of the most oppressed caste groups access to good education and high-paying jobs. The reservation of positions for Backward Classes (see Glossary) has remained a sore point with higher-ranked groups and has contributed to numerous political confrontations. Meanwhile, attempts by low-ranking (and desperately poor) castes to organize and agitate against discrimination have been met with violence in most Indian states and territories. Caste, therefore, is a very live issue. Religious, caste, and regional diversity exist in India against a background of poverty. At independence in 1947, the British left India in terrible condition. The country emerged from World War II with a rudimentary scientific and industrial base and a rapidly expanding population that lived primarily in villages and was divided by gross inequalities in status and wealth. Under the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister (1947-64), India addressed its economic crisis through a combination of socialist planning and free enterprise. During the 1950s and 1960s, large government investments made India as a whole into one of the most industrialized nations in the world. Considerable expenditure on irrigation facilities and fertilizer plants, combined with the introduction of high-yield variety seeds in the 1960s, allowed the Green Revolution to banish famine. The abolition of princely states and large land holdings, combined with (mostly ineffective) land redistribution schemes, also eliminated some of the most glaring inequalities in the countryside and in some areas, such as Punjab, stimulated the growth of middle-sized entrepreneurial farms. Building on the education system bequeathed by the British, India established an infrastructure of universities, basic research institutes, and applied research facilities that trained one of the world's largest scientific and technical establishments. The socialist model of development remained dominant in India through the 1970s, under the leadership of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Nehru's daughter. Government-owned firms controlled iron and steel, mining, electronics, cement, chemicals, and other major industries. Telecommunications media, railroads, and eventually the banking industry were nationalized. Import-substitution policies, designed to encourage Indian firms and push out multinational corporations, included strict and time-consuming procedures for obtaining licenses and laws that prohibited firms from operating in India without majority ownership by Indian citizens or corporations. These rules were instrumental, for example, in driving IBM from India in the 1970s, leading to the growth of an indigenous Indian computer industry. By the late 1980s, however, after Mrs. Gandhi's 1984 assassination, the disadvantages of the centrally planned economy began to outweigh its benefits. Inefficiency in public-sector firms, lack of entrepreneurial innovation, excessive bureaucracy, and the inability of the Indian scientific and technical apparatus to transfer technology to marketable goods kept many Indian firms from being competitive in international markets. Under Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and his successors, the national and state-level (states, union territories, and the national capital territory) governments liberalized licensing requirements and eventually rescinded rules on foreign ownership, while taking steps to scale down government market share in a number of high-technology markets. Multinational firms began to reenter India in the late 1980s and the early 1990s, as the government encouraged private enterprise and international sales in its search for foreign exchange. India began to open its economy to the world. Indian-style socialism was probably necessary in the years after independence to protect the nation from foreign economic domination, but its biggest problem was that it did not eliminate poverty. The vast majority of India's population continued to live in small agricultural villages with few public amenities. A significant minority of the population in the 1990s live below the Indian definition of the poverty line, surviving at subsistence level, unemployed or underemployed, with little education or opportunity for training, and suffering from a variety of curable health problems. There are also some 200 million people who live above the official poverty line, but whose lives remain precariously balanced on the border of destitution. The per capita income of India as a whole remains among the lowest in the world. One of the biggest issues facing India as its economy has changed direction is that free-market capitalism offers little help for this large mass of people, who lack the skills or opportunity to participate in the new economy. The big social story of India in the 1980s and the 1990s is the emergence of the middle class. This group includes members of prosperous farming families, as well as the primarily urban-based professional, administrative, and business elites who benefited from forty years of government protection and training. By the mid-1990s, the drive toward modernization had transformed 26.1 percent of the country into urban areas, where, amid masses of impoverished citizens, a sizable class of consumers has arisen. The members of this increasingly vocal middle class chafe under the older, regulated economy and demand a loosening of economic controls to make consumer goods available on the free market. They want education for their children that prepares them for technical and professional careers, increasingly in the private sector instead of the traditional sinecures in government offices. They build their well-appointed brick houses in exclusive suburban neighborhoods or surround their lots with high walls amid urban squalor, driving their scooters or automobiles to work while their children attend private schools. The result of these processes over the course of fifty years is a dynamic, modernizing India with major class cleavages. The upper 1 or 2 percent of the population includes some of the wealthiest people in the world, who can be seen at the racetrack in the latest fashions from Paris or Tokyo, who travel extensively outside India for business, pleasure, or advanced medical care, and whose children attend the most exclusive English-language schools within India and abroad. For the middle class, which makes up between 15 and 25 percent of the population, the end of the twentieth century is a time of relative prosperity: incomes generally keep pace with inflation and jobs may still be obtained through family connections. The increase in consumer goods, such as washing machines and electric kitchen appliances, makes life easier and reduces dependence on lower-class (and low-caste) servants. For the industrial working class, the 1990s are a period of transition as dynamic new industries grow, mostly in the private sector, while many large government-sponsored plants are in jeopardy. The trade union movement, closely connected in some states with communist parties, finds itself under considerable pressure during a period of structural change in the economy. For large numbers of peasants and dwellers in urban slums, a way out of poverty remains as elusive as it had seemed for their grandparents at independence. The political system responsible for these gigantic successes and failures has been democratic; India has called itself "the world's largest democracy." Paradoxically, it was the autocratic rule of the British that gave birth to the rule of the people. Democratization started when a group of concerned British citizens in India and well-to-do Indian professionals gathered in Bombay in 1885 to form a political debating society, the Indian National Congress (Congress--see Glossary). Originally conceived as a lobbying group, the Congress after 1900 became radicalized and took the forefront in a drive for home rule that encompassed elected assemblies and parliamentary procedure. In the face of British intransigence, the Congress soon became the leading organization within a broad-based freedom struggle that finally forced the British out in 1947. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (the Mahatma or Great Soul) was a central figure in this struggle because he was able to turn the Congress from an elite pressure group into a mass movement that mobilized hundreds of millions of people against the immorality of a foreign, nondemocratic system. Gandhi perfected nonviolent techniques for general strikes and civil disobedience, and coordinated demonstrations with mass publicity; the techniques that he popularized have played a part in later Indian and world politics (including the United States civil rights movement). He evolved a philosophy of political involvement as sacrifice for the good of the world and played the role of a holy man who was also a cagey politician--an image that remained important for Indian political figures after independence. In a move to undercut British industrial superiority, Gandhi encouraged a return to a communal, rustic life and village handicrafts as the most humane way of life. Finally, he railed against the segregation of the caste system and religious bigotry that reduced large minorities within India to second-class citizenship. Gandhi was thus able to unite European humanistic and democratic ideas with Indian concepts of an interdependent, responsible community to create a unique political philosophy complete with action plan. In the last years before his assassination in 1948, Gandhi's idiosyncratic program fell out of step with the modernization paradigm of Nehru and the leadership of an independent India, and his ideas became a background theme within Indian political economy. On a regular basis, however, Indian leaders continue to hearken back to his message and employ his organizational and media tactics on the independent Indian political scene. The Congress remained the most important political organization in India after independence. Except for brief periods in the late 1970s and late 1980s and until the mid-1990s, the Congress always controlled Parliament and chose the prime minister. The political dynasty of Jawaharlal Nehru (1947-64), his daughter Indira Gandhi (1965-77, 1980-84), and her son Rajiv Gandhi (1984-89) was crucial in keeping the Congress in power and also providing continuity in leadership for the country. The party was able to appeal to a wide segment of the poor (including low castes and Muslims) through its ideology of social equality and welfare programs, while appealing to the more prosperous voters--usually from upper castes--by preserving private property and supporting village community leadership. Because it stayed in power so long, the Congress was able to dispense government benefits to a wide range of constituencies, which prompted charges of corruption and led to Congress reversals in the late 1980s. Because it affected a type of socialist policy, the Congress diffused or incorporated left-wing political rhetoric and prevented the growth of a communist-led insurrection that might have been expected under the difficult social conditions existing in India. Although a vibrant communist movement remains a force in Indian politics, it manifests itself at the state level of government rather than in national political power or large-scale revolutionary turmoil. Challenges from the right were small as well until the early 1990s, when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP--Indian People's Party) emerged as a serious contender for national leadership. The BJP advocated a blend of Hindu nationalism that inserted religious issues into the heart of national political debates, unlike the secular ideology that officially dominated Indian political thought after independence. In the early 1990s, however, the Congress, after having entered its second century of dominance over the Indian political landscape, continued to hold on to power with a middle-of-the-road message and smaller majorities. The federal structure of India, embodied in the constitution of 1951, attempts to strike a balance between a strong central government and the autonomous governments of the nation-sized states, each with a distinct culture and deep historical roots, that make up the union. A formidable array of powers at the center makes it possible for the central government to intervene in state issues; these powers include control over the military, the presence of an appointed governor to monitor affairs within each state, and the ability of the president to suspend state-level legislatures in times of internal disorder and declare direct President's Rule. In theory, these powers should come into play rarely because the regular administration of the states resides with elected assemblies and chief ministers appointed through parliamentary procedures. State governments have extensive powers over almost all of their internal affairs. The framers of the national constitution constructed a series of checks and balances among the legislative, executive, and judicial branches at the center, and between the center and the states, designed to provide national security while allowing a maximum of state autonomy within the diversified union. The Indian political system has proven to be flexible and durable, but major internal conflicts have threatened the constitution. In practice, the elected office of the nation's president has gravitated toward the formal and ritual aspects of executive power, while the office of the prime minister, backed up by a majority in Parliament, the cabinet, national security forces, and the bureaucracy of the Indian Administrative Service, has wielded the actual power. The national Parliament has not developed an independent committee structure and critical tradition that could stand against the force of the executive branch. The judiciary, while remaining independent and at times crucial in determining national policy, has stayed in the background and is subject to future change through constitutional amendments. The constitution itself has been subject to numerous amendments since its adoption in 1950. By August 1996, the constitution had been amended eighty times. National politics have become contests to set up the appointment of the prime minister, who then has considerable power to interfere directly or through a cooperative president in all aspects of national life. The most drastic example of this power occurred in 1975, when Indira Gandhi implemented the constitutional provision for a declaration of Emergency, suspending civil rights for eighteen months, using Parliament as a tool for eliminating opposition, and ruling with the aid of a small circle of advisers. The more common form of executive interference has been the suspension of state legislatures under a variety of pretexts and the implementation of President's Rule. This typically has occurred when opposition parties have captured state legislatures and set in motion policies unfavorable to the prime minister's party. After Indira Gandhi's assassination in 1984, her successors engaged in such overt acts of interference less often. The main opposition to the national executive comes from the states, in a variety of legal and extralegal struggles for regional autonomy. Most of the states have developed specific political identities based on forms of ethnicity that claim a long historical past. The most common identifying characteristic is language. Agitation in what became the state of Andhra Pradesh led the way in the 1950s, resulting in the reorganization of state boundaries along linguistic lines. Agitations in the state of Tamil Nadu in the 1960s resulted in domination of the state by parties dedicated officially to Tamil nationalism. In the northeast, regional struggles have coalesced around tribal identities, leading to the formation of a number of small states based on dominant tribal groupings. Farther south, in Kerala and West Bengal, communist parties have upheld the banner of regionalism by capturing state assemblies and implementing radical socialist programs against the wishes of the central government. The regional movements most threatening to national integration have occurred in the northwest. The state of Punjab was divided by the Indian government twice after independence--Haryana and Himachal Pradesh were sliced off--before it achieved a Sikh majority population in what remained of Punjab. That majority allowed the Sikh-led Akali Dal (Eternal Party) to capture the state assembly in the early 1980s. By then radical separatist elements were determined to fight for an independent Sikh Punjab. The result was an army attack on Sikh militants occupying the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Indira Gandhi's assassination by her Sikh bodyguards, both in 1984, and a ten-year internal security struggle that has killed thousands. In India's state of Jammu and Kashmir (often referred to as Kashmir), where Muslims constitute the majority of the population, regional struggle takes a different religious form and has created intense security problems that keep bilateral relations with Pakistan, which also lays claim to Kashmir, in a tense mode. The central government usually has been able to defuse regional agitations by agreeing to redefinition of state boundaries or by guaranteeing differing degrees of regional autonomy, including acquiescence in the control of the state government by regional political parties. This strategy defused the original linguistic agitations through the 1970s, and led to the resolution of the destructive political and ethnic crises in Assam in the mid-1980s. When national security interests came into play, however, as in Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir, the central government did not hesitate to use force. In the mid-1990s, India remains a strong unified nation, with a long history of constitutional government and democracy, but at any moment there are half a dozen regional political agitations underway and a dozen guerrilla movements in different parts of the country advocating various types of official recognition or outright independence based on ethnic affiliation. The unity of the country as a whole has never been seriously threatened by these movements. Because the benefits of union within India have outweighed the advantages of independence for most people within each state, there have always been moderate elements within the states willing to make deals with the central government, and security forces have proven capable of repressing any armed struggle at the regional level. In addition, state-level opposition, whether in the legislatures or in the streets, has been an effective means of preventing massive interference from New Delhi in the day-to-day lives of citizens, and thus has provided a crucial check that has preserved the democratic system and the constitution. One of the most serious challenges to India's internal security and democratic traditions has come from so-called communal disorders, or riots, based on ethnic cleavages. The most typical form is a religious riot, mostly between Hindus and Muslims, although some of these disturbances also occur between different castes or linguistic groups. Most of these struggles start with neighborhood squabbles of little significance, but rapidly escalate into mob looting and burning, street fighting, and violent intervention by the police or paramilitary forces. Religious ideology has played only a small part in these events. Instead, the pressures of urban life in overcrowded, poorer neighborhoods, combined with competition for limited economic opportunities, create an environment in which ethnic differences become convenient labels for defining enemies, and criminal behavior becomes commonplace. Whether ignited by a street accident or a major political event, passions in these areas may be directed into mob action. However, after the catastrophe of independence (when hundreds of thousands in North India died during the partition of India and Pakistan and at least 12 million became refugees), and because the pattern of rioting has continued annually in various cities, a culture of distrust has grown up among a sizable minority of Hindus and Muslims. This distrust has manifested itself in the nationwide agitations fomented by elements of the BJP and communal Hindu parties in the early 1990s. It reached a peak in December 1992 with the dramatic destruction of the Babri Masjid, a mosque in Ayodhya (in Uttar Pradesh), and communal riots and bombings in major cities throughout India in early 1993. In this manner, the frictions of daily life in an overcrowded, poor nation have had a major impact on the national political agenda. The internal conflict between Hindus and Muslims has received some of its stimulus since 1947 from the international conflict between India and Pakistan. One of the great tragedies of the freedom struggle was the relentless polarization of opinion between the Congress, which came to represent mostly Hindus, and the All-India Muslim League (Muslim League--see Glossary), which eventually stood behind a demand for a separate homeland for a Muslim majority. This division, encouraged under British rule by provisions for separate electorates for Muslims, led to the partition of Pakistan from India and the outbreak of hostilities over Kashmir. Warfare between India and Pakistan occurred in 1947, 1965, and 1971; the last conflict led to the independence of Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) and a major strategic victory by India. The perception of Pakistan as an enemy nation has overshadowed all other Indian foreign policy considerations because neither country has relinquished claims over Kashmir, and a series of border irritations continue to bedevil attempts at rapprochement. In the late 1980s, tensions over large-scale military maneuvers almost led to war, and regular fighting over glacial wastelands in Kashmir continues to keep the pressure high. An added dimension emerged in 1987 when Pakistan publicly admitted that it possessed nuclear weapons capability, matching Indian nuclear capabilities demonstrated in 1974. In the mid-1990s, both nations continue to devote a large percentage of their military budgets to developing or to purchasing advanced weaponry, which is mostly aimed at each other--a serious drain of resources needed for economic growth. Nehru and the early leadership of independent India had envisioned a nation at peace with the rest of the world, in keeping with Gandhian ideals and socialist goals. Under Nehru's guidance, India distanced itself from Cold War politics and played a major part in the Nonaligned Movement (see Glossary). Until the early 1960s, India spent relatively little on national defense and enjoyed an excellent relationship with the United States, a relationship that peaked in John F. Kennedy's presidency. India's strategic position changed after China defeated the Indian army in the border war of 1962 and war with Pakistan occurred in 1965. During this period, the situation became more precarious because India had opponents on two fronts. In addition, Pakistan began to receive substantial amounts of military assistance from the United States, ostensibly to support anticommunism, but it was no secret that most of the weapons purchased with United States aid were a deterrent projected against India. Under these circumstances, India began to move closer to the Soviet Union, purchasing outright large amounts of military hardware or making agreements to produce it indigenously. Relations between the United States and India reached a low point in 1971 during the Bangladesh war of independence, when a United States naval force entered the Bay of Bengal to show support for Pakistan although doing nothing to forestall its defeat. This display of force, which could not be opposed by India or the Soviet Union, served only to strain the relationship between India and the United States and heightened Cold War tensions in South Asia. During the 1970s, as the United States and China improved relations and China became closer in turn to Pakistan, India's strategic position became more entwined with Cold War issues, and the Soviet connection became even more important. These international postures contrasted dramatically with the increasing importance to India of American scientific and economic links, which were strengthened by the increasing emigration of Indian citizens to North America. The overall result, however, was India's weaker international situation in the view of some Americans. During the 1980s, then, India was still officially a nonaligned nation but in fact found itself deeply embedded in Cold War strategy. India's reaction to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan was a disquieting feature of Indian foreign policy, in that India decried the Soviet military presence but did nothing against it. Continued United States support for Pakistan, plus the buildup of United States strike forces on the small island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, heightened tensions. It was no coincidence, therefore, that the 1980s witnessed a major expansion of Indian naval forces, with the addition of two aircraft carriers, a submarine fleet, and major surface ships, including transport craft. But although the Indian buildup made the United States unhappy, India's technological capacities remained inferior to those of the United States Navy, and the Indian navy was never a large threat to United States interests. Instead, the growth of the Indian navy had major implications for the regional balance of power within South Asia. The Indian navy could potentially create a second front against Pakistan should major hostilities recur. India's military buildup allowed it to intervene in low-intensity conflicts throughout South Asia. From 1987 to 1990, the Indian Peace Keeping Force of more than 60,000 personnel was active in Sri Lanka and became embroiled in a fruitless war against Tamil separatist guerrillas. And, in 1988 Indian forces briefly intervened in Maldives to prevent a coup. Regular border problems with Bangladesh after 1971, the Indian annexation of Sikkim in 1975, and the 1989 closure of the border with Nepal over economic disagreements all added up to the picture of a big country bullying its smaller neighbors, a vision Indian leaders took great pains to dispel. Thus, even though the country officially remained at peace during the 1980s, India's growing military power and the intersecting problems of regional dominance and Cold War ambivalence drove an ambitious foreign policy. The Indian strategic position changed dramatically in the early 1990s. The end of the Cold War, and then the disintegration of the Soviet Union itself, deprived India of a great ally but also put a stop to many of the worldwide tensions that had relentlessly pulled India into global alignments. When the United States cut off military aid to Pakistan in 1990, it defused one of the most intractable barriers to good relations with India. Then, in 1992, the Persian Gulf War against Iraq brought India grudgingly into an alignment with both Pakistan and the United States, a connection strengthened in 1994 when troops from all three nations cooperated in Somalia under the aegis of the United Nations. The possession of nuclear weapons by Pakistan and India immersed them in a familiar scenario of mutually assured destruction and made it more problematic for India, despite its military superiority, to overrun Pakistan. Thus, in the mid-1990s, despite continuing hostility over Kashmir, which intensified as the internal situation there disintegrated in the 1990s, the long-term possibilities for official peace between the two countries remained good. Threats from other South Asian nations were negligible. Issues with China were unresolved but not very significant. No other country in the world presented a strategic threat. As budgetary problems beset the government in the mid-1990s, therefore, the Indian military began cutbacks. The military also expanded contacts with a variety of other nations, including Russia and the United States. India hence has entered a period of relative security and multilateral contacts quite different from its twenty-five-year Cold War immersion. India is a complex geographic, historical, religious, social, economic, and political entity. India is one of the oldest human civilizations and yet displays no cultural features common to all its members. It is one of the richest nations in history, but most of its people are among the poorest in the world. Its ideology rests on some of the most sublime concepts of humanism and nonviolence, but deep-seated discrimination and violent responses are daily news. It has one of the world's most stable political structures, but that structure is constantly in crisis. The nation is seeking a type of great power status, but no one is sure what that involves. India, in the end, defies easy analysis. The most notable event that occurred in India after the manuscript for this book was completed in the summer of 1995 was the nationwide general elections for the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament, held in April and May 1996. The elections were held in the wake of a US$18 million bribery scandal and resignations involving seven cabinet members and numerous others. Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, leader of the ruling Congress (I), was accused of accepting substantial bribes. Lal Krishna Advani, head of the BJP, the leading opposition party, was arrested for his alleged acceptance of bribes. For many voters, this scandal was the culmination of scandals and corruption associated for years with old-guard politicians. The world's largest democracy went to the polls, except in Jammu and Kashmir, over three days between April 27 and May 7 with nearly 14,700 candidates from 522 parties running for 543 of the 545 Lok Sabha seats (the other two seats are filled with Anglo-Indians appointed by the president). Some 16,900 others vied for 914 seats in six state and union territory assembly elections. The candidates were as diverse as ever, with a plethora of Backward Class candidates rising to challenge high-caste hopefuls. Prominent among them was Janata Dal Party candidate Laloo Prasad Yadev, the chief minister of Bihar, who ran on an anti-Brahman caste platform. Phoolan Devi, a former convicted outlaw, who became world-famous as India's "Bandit Queen," also successfully ran for office. One highly favored potential candidate who decided not to run was Sonia Gandhi, widow of Rajiv Gandhi, daughter-in-law of Indira Gandhi, and granddaughter-in-law of Jawaharlal Nehru. She resisted the honor amidst tensions between herself and Rao and, in the minds of some observers, ended the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty while sealing the fate of the Congress (I). Some 60 percent of India's 590 million voters turned out, but failed to elect a majority government. The BJP, which had tried to tone down its Hindu nationalist rhetoric, won with its allies 194, or 37 percent, of the seats announced on May 10. The Congress (I) won 136, or 25 percent, of the seats. The National Front-Left Front won 110 seats (21 percent), with the remaining ninety-four seats (17 percent) going to unaligned regional parties, independents, and others. The Congress, which had held national power for all but four years since 1947, received the lowest votes ever as many of its traditional Muslim and low-caste constituents defected to other parties and high-caste voters sided with the BJP. After thirteen days in office as the head of a BJP minority government, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee resigned on May 28, three days before a vote of no confidence would have brought down his government. He was succeeded as India's eleventh prime minister by the chief minister of Karnataka, the Janata Dal's Haradanahalli (H.D.) Deve Gowda, who headed a minority coalition with thirteen parties--the United Front--made up of some members of the National Front, the Left Front, and regional parties. Deve Gowda, a sixty-three-year-old civil engineer of middle-class, lower-caste farmer background, proclaimed the United Front as representative of India's great diversity and reaffirmed his commitment to modern India's secular heritage. Although the Congress is not part of the left-center coalition, the United Front is dependent on it for survival. The United Front sought Congress and bipartisan support by declaring that the economic reforms started by the Congress were "irreversible" and committing itself to continued reforms and attracting foreign investment. Despite the Congress's electoral debacle, the party continued to be an important behind-the-scenes force in the new government. Former Prime Minister Rao's legal problems led him to resign as president of the Congress in September 1996. His successor, Sitaram Kesri, pledged to continue backing the coalition. Because of continuing unrest in Jammu and Kashmir, long-awaited special elections for six Lok Sabha seats were held under tight security between May 7 and 30. The central government's Election Commission proclaimed that the elections were "relatively free and fair" despite the efforts of militants and separatists to sabotage them. There were widespread reports, however, that Indian security forces had coerced people into voting. In September state-level elections were held in Jammu and Kashmir for the first time in nine years. Farooq Abdullah's National Conference party won the violence-prone contest. In foreign affairs, India and Pakistan continued to seek ways to reduce tensions between the two nations. Deve Gowda offered conciliatory signs to Benazir Bhutto, his counterpart in Islamabad, as the two sides moved toward high-level talks. Despite the opposition of the United States and the withdrawal of technical support from Russia, in April 1996 India completed its own design of a 7.5-ton cryogenic engine capable of launching rockets with 2,500-kilogram payloads. Such a development was a major technological advance for Indian science and gave India the potential to move into the company of the other space-exploring nations. India continued to maintain its stand in regard to nuclear weapons proliferation and in August 1996 refused to ratify the United Nations-sponsored Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty unless the treaty required the destruction of the world's existing nuclear weapons within a prescribed period. To concur with the treaty as it stood, some Indian observers felt, would limit the country's sovereignty. Meanwhile, several senior active-duty and retired military and foreign servicers proposed that India should formally declare itself a nuclear-weapons state and give a "no-first-use" assurance. October 1, 1996 James Heitzman and Robert L. Worden

India Chapter 1. Historical Setting THOSE "WHO WEAR COTTON CLOTHES, use the decimal system, enjoy the taste of [curried] chicken, play chess, or roll dice, and seek peace of mind or tranquility through meditation," writes historian Stanley Wolpert, "are indebted to India." India's deep-rooted civilization may appear exotic or even inscrutable to casual foreign observers, but a perceptive individual can see its evolution, shaped by a wide range of factors: extreme climatic conditions, a bewildering diversity of people, a host of competing political overlords (both local and outsiders), enduring religious and philosophical beliefs, and complex linguistic and literary developments that led to the flowering of regional and pan-Indian culture during the last three millennia. The interplay among a variety of political and socioeconomic forces has created a complex amalgam of cultures that continue amidst conflict, compromise, and adaptation. "Wherever we turn," says Wolpert, "we find . . . palaces, temples, mosques, Victorian railroad stations, Buddhist stupas, Mauryan pillars; each century has its unique testaments, often standing incongruously close to ruins of another era, sometimes juxtaposed one atop another, much like the ruins of Rome, or Bath." India's "great cycle of history," as Professor Hugh Tinker put it, entails repeating themes that continue to add complexity and diversity to the cultural matrix. Throughout its history, India has undergone innumerable episodes involving military conquests and integration, cultural infusion and assimilation, political unification and fragmentation, religious toleration and conflict, and communal harmony and violence. A few other regions in the world also can claim such a vast and differentiated historical experience, but Indian civilization seems to have endured the trials of time the longest. India has proven its remarkable resilience and its innate ability to reconcile opposing elements from many indigenous and foreign cultures. Unlike the West, where modern political developments and industrialization have created a more secular worldview with redefined roles and values for individuals and families, India remains largely a traditional society, in which change seems only superficial. Although India is the world's largest democracy and the seventh-most industrialized country in the world, the underpinnings of India's civilization stem primarily from its own social structure, religious beliefs, philosophical outlook, and cultural values. The continuity of those time-honed traditional ways of life has provided unique and fascinating patterns in the tapestry of contemporary Indian civilization. Antecedents

India Harappan Culture The earliest imprints of human activities in India go back to the Paleolithic Age, roughly between 400,000 and 200,000 B.C. Stone implements and cave paintings from this period have been discovered in many parts of the South Asia (see fig. 1). Evidence of domestication of animals, the adoption of agriculture, permanent village settlements, and wheel-turned pottery dating from the middle of the sixth millennium B.C. has been found in the foothills of Sindh and Baluchistan (or Balochistan in current Pakistani usage), both in present-day Pakistan. One of the first great civilizations--with a writing system, urban centers, and a diversified social and economic system--appeared around 3,000 B.C. along the Indus River valley in Punjab (see Glossary) and Sindh. It covered more than 800,000 square kilometers, from the borders of Baluchistan to the deserts of Rajasthan, from the Himalayan foothills to the southern tip of Gujarat (see fig. 2). The remnants of two major cities--Mohenjo-daro and Harappa--reveal remarkable engineering feats of uniform urban planning and carefully executed layout, water supply, and drainage. Excavations at these sites and later archaeological digs at about seventy other locations in India and Pakistan provide a composite picture of what is now generally known as Harappan culture (2500-1600 B.C.). The major cities contained a few large buildings including a citadel, a large bath--perhaps for personal and communal ablution--differentiated living quarters, flat-roofed brick houses, and fortified administrative or religious centers enclosing meeting halls and granaries. Essentially a city culture, Harappan life was supported by extensive agricultural production and by commerce, which included trade with Sumer in southern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq). The people made tools and weapons from copper and bronze but not iron. Cotton was woven and dyed for clothing; wheat, rice, and a variety of vegetables and fruits were cultivated; and a number of animals, including the humped bull, were domesticated. Harappan culture was conservative and remained relatively unchanged for centuries; whenever cities were rebuilt after periodic flooding, the new level of construction closely followed the previous pattern. Although stability, regularity, and conservatism seem to have been the hallmarks of this people, it is unclear who wielded authority, whether an aristocratic, priestly, or commercial minority. By far the most exquisite but most obscure Harappan artifacts unearthed to date are steatite seals found in abundance at Mohenjo-daro. These small, flat, and mostly square objects with human or animal motifs provide the most accurate picture there is of Harappan life. They also have inscriptions generally thought to be in the Harappan script, which has eluded scholarly attempts at deciphering it. Debate abounds as to whether the script represents numbers or an alphabet, and, if an alphabet, whether it is proto-Dravidian or proto-Sanskrit (see Languages of India, ch. 4). The possible reasons for the decline of Harappan civilization have long troubled scholars. Invaders from central and western Asia are considered by some historians to have been the "destroyers" of Harappan cities, but this view is open to reinterpretation. More plausible explanations are recurrent floods caused by tectonic earth movement, soil salinity, and desertification. Vedic Aryans A series of migrations by Indo-European-speaking seminomads took place during the second millennium B.C. Known as Aryans, these preliterate pastoralists spoke an early form of Sanskrit, which has close philological similarities to other Indo-European languages, such as Avestan in Iran and ancient Greek and Latin. The term Aryan meant pure and implied the invaders' conscious attempts at retaining their tribal identity and roots while maintaining a social distance from earlier inhabitants. Although archaeology has not yielded proof of the identity of the Aryans, the evolution and spread of their culture across the Indo-Gangetic Plain is generally undisputed (see Principal Regions, ch. 2). Modern knowledge of the early stages of this process rests on a body of sacred texts: the four Vedas (collections of hymns, prayers, and liturgy), the Brahmanas and the Upanishads (commentaries on Vedic rituals and philosophical treatises), and the Puranas (traditional mythic-historical works). The sanctity accorded to these texts and the manner of their preservation over several millennia--by an unbroken oral tradition--make them part of the living Hindu tradition (see Themes in Indian Society, ch. 5). These sacred texts offer guidance in piecing together Aryan beliefs and activities. The Aryans were a pantheistic people, following their tribal chieftain or raja, engaging in wars with each other or with other alien ethnic groups, and slowly becoming settled agriculturalists with consolidated territories and differentiated occupations. Their skills in using horse-drawn chariots and their knowledge of astronomy and mathematics gave them a military and technological advantage that led others to accept their social customs and religious beliefs (see Science and Technology, ch. 6). By around 1,000 B.C., Aryan culture had spread over most of India north of the Vindhya Range and in the process assimilated much from other cultures that preceded it (see The Roots of Indian Religion, ch. 3). The Aryans brought with them a new language, a new pantheon of anthropomorphic gods, a patrilineal and patriarchal family system, and a new social order, built on the religious and philosophical rationales of varnashramadharma. Although precise translation into English is difficult, the concept varnashramadharma, the bedrock of Indian traditional social organization, is built on three fundamental notions: varna (originally, "color," but later taken to mean social class--see Glossary), ashrama (stages of life such as youth, family life, detachment from the material world, and renunciation), and dharma (duty, righteousness, or sacred cosmic law). The underlying belief is that present happiness and future salvation are contingent upon one's ethical or moral conduct; therefore, both society and individuals are expected to pursue a diverse but righteous path deemed appropriate for everyone based on one's birth, age, and station in life (see Caste and Class, ch. 5). The original three-tiered society--Brahman (priest; see Glossary), Kshatriya (warrior), and Vaishya (commoner)--eventually expanded into four in order to absorb the subjugated people--Shudra (servant)--or even five, when the outcaste peoples are considered (see Varna, Caste, and Other Divisions, ch. 5). The basic unit of Aryan society was the extended and patriarchal family. A cluster of related families constituted a village, while several villages formed a tribal unit. Child marriage, as practiced in later eras, was uncommon, but the partners' involvement in the selection of a mate and dowry and bride-price were customary. The birth of a son was welcome because he could later tend the herds, bring honor in battle, offer sacrifices to the gods, and inherit property and pass on the family name. Monogamy was widely accepted although polygamy was not unknown, and even polyandry is mentioned in later writings. Ritual suicide of widows was expected at a husband's death, and this might have been the beginning of the practice known as sati in later centuries, when the widow actually burnt herself on her husband's funeral pyre. Permanent settlements and agriculture led to trade and other occupational differentiation. As lands along the Ganga (or Ganges) were cleared, the river became a trade route, the numerous settlements on its banks acting as markets. Trade was restricted initially to local areas, and barter was an essential component of trade, cattle being the unit of value in large-scale transactions, which further limited the geographical reach of the trader. Custom was law, and kings and chief priests were the arbiters, perhaps advised by certain elders of the community. An Aryan raja, or king, was primarily a military leader, who took a share from the booty after successful cattle raids or battles. Although the rajas had managed to assert their authority, they scrupulously avoided conflicts with priests as a group, whose knowledge and austere religious life surpassed others in the community, and the rajas compromised their own interests with those of the priests.

India Kingdoms and 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 and 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. 3; Political Issues, ch. 8). The Mauryan Empire By the end of the sixth century B.C., India's northwest was integrated into the Persian Achaemenid Empire and became one of its satrapies. This integration marked the beginning of administrative contacts between Central Asia and India. Although Indian accounts to a large extent ignored Alexander the Great's Indus campaign in 326 B.C., Greek writers recorded their impressions of the general conditions prevailing in South Asia during this period. Thus, the year 326 B.C. provides the first clear and historically verifiable date in Indian history. A two-way cultural fusion between several Indo-Greek elements--especially in art, architecture, and coinage--occurred in the next several hundred years. North India's political landscape was transformed by the emergence of Magadha in the eastern Indo-Gangetic Plain. In 322 B.C., Magadha, under the rule of Chandragupta Maurya, began to assert its hegemony over neighboring areas. Chandragupta, who ruled from 324 to 301 B.C., was the architect of the first Indian imperial power--the Mauryan Empire (326-184 B.C.)--whose capital was Pataliputra, near modern-day Patna, in Bihar. Situated on rich alluvial soil and near mineral deposits, especially iron, Magadha was at the center of bustling commerce and trade. The capital was a city of magnificent palaces, temples, a university, a library, gardens, and parks, as reported by Megasthenes, the third-century B.C. Greek historian and ambassador to the Mauryan court. Legend states that Chandragupta's success was due in large measure to his adviser Kautilya, the Brahman author of the Arthashastra (Science of Material Gain), a textbook that outlined governmental administration and political strategy. There was a highly centralized and hierarchical government with a large staff, which regulated tax collection, trade and commerce, industrial arts, mining, vital statistics, welfare of foreigners, maintenance of public places including markets and temples, and prostitutes. A large standing army and a well-developed espionage system were maintained. The empire was divided into provinces, districts, and villages governed by a host of centrally appointed local officials, who replicated the functions of the central administration. Ashoka, grandson of Chandragupta, ruled from 269 to 232 B.C. and was one of India's most illustrious rulers. Ashoka's inscriptions chiseled on rocks and stone pillars located at strategic locations throughout his empire--such as Lampaka (Laghman in modern Afghanistan), Mahastan (in modern Bangladesh), and Brahmagiri (in Karnataka)--constitute the second set of datable historical records. According to some of the inscriptions, in the aftermath of the carnage resulting from his campaign against the powerful kingdom of Kalinga (modern Orissa), Ashoka renounced bloodshed and pursued a policy of nonviolence or ahimsa, espousing a theory of rule by righteousness. His toleration for different religious beliefs and languages reflected the realities of India's regional pluralism although he personally seems to have followed Buddhism (see Buddhism, ch. 3). Early Buddhist stories assert that he convened a Buddhist council at his capital, regularly undertook tours within his realm, and sent Buddhist missionary ambassadors to Sri Lanka. Contacts established with the Hellenistic world during the reign of Ashoka's predecessors served him well. He sent diplomatic-cum-religious missions to the rulers of Syria, Macedonia, and Epirus, who learned about India's religious traditions, especially Buddhism. India's northwest retained many Persian cultural elements, which might explain Ashoka's rock inscriptions--such inscriptions were commonly associated with Persian rulers. Ashoka's Greek and Aramaic inscriptions found in Kandahar in Afghanistan may also reveal his desire to maintain ties with people outside of India. After the disintegration of the Mauryan Empire in the second century B.C., South Asia became a collage of regional powers with overlapping boundaries. India's unguarded northwestern border again attracted a series of invaders between 200 B.C. and A.D. 300. As the Aryans had done, the invaders became "Indianized" in the process of their conquest and settlement. Also, this period witnessed remarkable intellectual and artistic achievements inspired by cultural diffusion and syncretism. The Indo-Greeks, or the Bactrians, of the northwest contributed to the development of numismatics; they were followed by another group, the Shakas (or Scythians), from the steppes of Central Asia, who settled in western India. Still other nomadic people, the Yuezhi, who were forced out of the Inner Asian steppes of Mongolia, drove the Shakas out of northwestern India and established the Kushana Kingdom (first century B.C.-third century A.D.). The Kushana Kingdom controlled parts of Afghanistan and Iran, and in India the realm stretched from Purushapura (modern Peshawar, Pakistan) in the northwest, to Varanasi (Uttar Pradesh) in the east, and to Sanchi (Madhya Pradesh) in the south. For a short period, the kingdom reached still farther east, to Pataliputra. The Kushana Kingdom was the crucible of trade among the Indian, Persian, Chinese, and Roman empires and controlled a critical part of the legendary Silk Road. Kanishka, who reigned for two decades starting around A.D. 78, was the most noteworthy Kushana ruler. He converted to Buddhism and convened a great Buddhist council in Kashmir. The Kushanas were patrons of Gandharan art, a synthesis between Greek and Indian styles, and Sanskrit literature. They initiated a new era called Shaka in A.D. 78, and their calendar, which was formally recognized by India for civil purposes starting on March 22, 1957, is still in use.

India The Deccan and the South During the Kushana Dynasty, an indigenous power, the Satavahana Kingdom (first century B.C.-third century A.D.), rose in the Deccan in southern India. The Satavahana, or Andhra, Kingdom was considerably influenced by the Mauryan political model, although power was decentralized in the hands of local chieftains, who used the symbols of Vedic religion and upheld the varnashramadharma. The rulers, however, were eclectic and patronized Buddhist monuments, such as those in Ellora (Maharashtra) and Amaravati (Andhra Pradesh). Thus, the Deccan served as a bridge through which politics, trade, and religious ideas could spread from the north to the south. Farther south were three ancient Tamil kingdoms--Chera (on the west), Chola (on the east), and Pandya (in the south)--frequently involved in internecine warfare to gain regional supremacy. They are mentioned in Greek and Ashokan sources as lying at the fringes of the Mauryan Empire. A corpus of ancient Tamil literature, known as Sangam (academy) works, including Tolkappiam, a manual of Tamil grammar by Tolkappiyar, provides much useful information about their social life from 300 B.C. to A.D. 200. There is clear evidence of encroachment by Aryan traditions from the north into a predominantly indigenous Dravidian culture in transition. Dravidian social order was based on different ecoregions rather than on the Aryan varna paradigm, although the Brahmans had a high status at a very early stage. Segments of society were characterized by matriarchy and matrilineal succession--which survived well into the nineteenth century--cross-cousin marriage, and strong regional identity. Tribal chieftains emerged as "kings" just as people moved from pastoralism toward agriculture, sustained by irrigation based on rivers, small-scale tanks (as man-made ponds are called in India) and wells, and brisk maritime trade with Rome and Southeast Asia. Discoveries of Roman gold coins in various sites attest to extensive South Indian links with the outside world. As with Pataliputra in the northeast and Taxila in the northwest (in modern Pakistan), the city of Madurai, the Pandyan capital (in modern Tamil Nadu), was the center of intellectual and literary activities. Poets and bards assembled there under royal patronage at successive concourses and composed anthologies of poems, most of which have been lost. By the end of the first century B.C., South Asia was crisscrossed by overland trade routes, which facilitated the movements of Buddhist and Jain missionaries and other travelers and opened the area to a synthesis of many cultures (see Jainism, ch. 3). The Classical Age

India Gupta and Harsha The Classical Age refers to the period when most of North India was reunited under the Gupta Empire (ca. A.D. 320-550). Because of the relative peace, law and order, and extensive cultural achievements during this period, it has been described as a "golden age" that crystallized the elements of what is generally known as Hindu culture with all its variety, contradiction, and synthesis. The golden age was confined to the north, and the classical patterns began to spread south only after the Gupta Empire had vanished from the historical scene. The military exploits of the first three rulers--Chandragupta I (ca. 319-335), Samudragupta (ca. 335-376), and Chandragupta II (ca. 376-415)--brought all of North India under their leadership. From Pataliputra, their capital, they sought to retain political preeminence as much by pragmatism and judicious marriage alliances as by military strength. Despite their self-conferred titles, their overlordship was threatened and by 500 ultimately ruined by the Hunas (a branch of the White Huns emanating from Central Asia), who were yet another group in the long succession of ethnically and culturally different outsiders drawn into India and then woven into the hybrid Indian fabric. Under Harsha Vardhana (or Harsha, r. 606-47), North India was reunited briefly, but neither the Guptas nor Harsha controlled a centralized state, and their administrative styles rested on the collaboration of regional and local officials for administering their rule rather than on centrally appointed personnel. The Gupta period marked a watershed of Indian culture: the Guptas performed Vedic sacrifices to legitimize their rule, but they also patronized Buddhism, which continued to provide an alternative to Brahmanical orthodoxy. The most significant achievements of this period, however, were in religion, education, mathematics, art, and Sanskrit literature and drama. The religion that later developed into modern Hinduism witnessed a crystallization of its components: major sectarian deities, image worship, devotionalism, and the importance of the temple. Education included grammar, composition, logic, metaphysics, mathematics, medicine, and astronomy. These subjects became highly specialized and reached an advanced level. The Indian numeral system--sometimes erroneously attributed to the Arabs, who took it from India to Europe where it replaced the Roman system--and the decimal system are Indian inventions of this period. Aryabhatta's expositions on astronomy in 499, moreover, gave calculations of the solar year and the shape and movement of astral bodies with remarkable accuracy. In medicine, Charaka and Sushruta wrote about a fully evolved system, resembling those of Hippocrates and Galen in Greece. Although progress in physiology and biology was hindered by religious injunctions against contact with dead bodies, which discouraged dissection and anatomy, Indian physicians excelled in pharmacopoeia, caesarean section, bone setting, and skin grafting (see Science and Technology, ch. 6). The Southern Rivals When Gupta disintegration was complete, the classical patterns of civilization continued to thrive not only in the middle Ganga Valley and the kingdoms that emerged on the heels of Gupta demise but also in the Deccan and in South India, which acquired a more prominent place in history. In fact, from the mid-seventh to the mid-thirteenth centuries, regionalism was the dominant theme of political or dynastic history of South Asia. Three features, as political scientist Radha Champakalakshmi has noted, commonly characterize the sociopolitical realities of this period. First, the spread of Brahmanical religions was a two-way process of Sanskritization of local cults and localization of Brahmanical social order. Second was the ascendancy of the Brahman priestly and landowning groups that later dominated regional institutions and political developments. Third, because of the seesawing of numerous dynasties that had a remarkable ability to survive perennial military attacks, regional kingdoms faced frequent defeats but seldom total annihilation. Peninsular India was involved in an eighth-century tripartite power struggle among the Chalukyas (556-757) of Vatapi, the Pallavas (300-888) of Kanchipuram, and the Pandyas (seventh through the tenth centuries) of Madurai. The Chalukya rulers were overthrown by their subordinates, the Rashtrakutas, who ruled from 753 to 973. Although both the Pallava and Pandya kingdoms were enemies, the real struggle for political domination was between the Pallava and Chalukya realms. Despite interregional conflicts, local autonomy was preserved to a far greater degree in the south where it had prevailed for centuries. The absence of a highly centralized government was associated with a corresponding local autonomy in the administration of villages and districts. Extensive and well-documented overland and maritime trade flourished with the Arabs on the west coast and with Southeast Asia. Trade facilitated cultural diffusion in Southeast Asia, where local elites selectively but willingly adopted Indian art, architecture, literature, and social customs. The interdynastic rivalry and seasonal raids into each other's territory notwithstanding, the rulers in the Deccan and South India patronized all three religions--Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism. The religions vied with each other for royal favor, expressed in land grants but more importantly in the creation of monumental temples, which remain architectural wonders. The cave temples of Elephanta Island (near Bombay, or Mumbai in Marathi), Ajanta, and Ellora (in Maharashtra), and structural temples of Kanchipuram (in Tamil Nadu) are enduring legacies of otherwise warring regional rulers. By the mid-seventh century, Buddhism and Jainism began to decline as sectarian Hindu devotional cults of Shiva and Vishnu vigorously competed for popular support. Although Sanskrit was the language of learning and theology in South India, as it was in the north, the growth of the bhakti (devotional) movements enhanced the crystallization of vernacular literature in all four major Dravidian languages: Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Kannada; they often borrowed themes and vocabulary from Sanskrit but preserved much local cultural lore. Examples of Tamil literature include two major poems, Cilappatikaram (The Jewelled Anklet) and Manimekalai (The Jewelled Belt); the body of devotional literature of Shaivism and Vaishnavism--Hindu devotional movements; and the reworking of the Ramayana by Kamban in the twelfth century. A nationwide cultural synthesis had taken place with a minimum of common characteristics in the various regions of South Asia, but the process of cultural infusion and assimilation would continue to shape and influence India's history through the centuries.

India The Delhi Sultanate The Coming of Islam Islam was propagated by the Prophet Muhammad during the early seventh century in the deserts of Arabia. Less than a century after its inception, Islam's presence was felt throughout the Middle East, North Africa, Spain, Iran, and Central Asia. Arab military forces conquered the Indus Delta region in Sindh in 711 and established an Indo-Muslim state there. Sindh became an Islamic outpost where Arabs established trade links with the Middle East and were later joined by teachers or sufis (see Glossary), but Arab influence was hardly felt in the rest of South Asia (see Islam, ch. 3). By the end of the tenth century, dramatic changes took place when the Central Asian Turkic tribes accepted both the message and mission of Islam. These warlike people first began to move into Afghanistan and Iran and later into India through the northwest. Mahmud of Ghazni (971-1030), who was also known as the "Sword of Islam," mounted seventeen plundering expeditions between 997 and 1027 into North India, annexing Punjab as his eastern province. The invaders' effective use of the crossbow while at a gallop gave them a decisive advantage over their Indian opponents, the Rajputs. Mahmud's conquest of Punjab foretold ominous consequences for the rest of India, but the Rajputs appear to have been both unprepared and unwilling to change their military tactics, which ultimately collapsed in the face of the swift and punitive cavalry of the Afghans and Turkic peoples. In the thirteenth century, Shams-ud-Din Iletmish (or Iltutmish; r. 1211-36), a former slave-warrior, established a Turkic kingdom in Delhi, which enabled future sultans to push in every direction; within the next 100 years, the Delhi Sultanate extended its sway east to Bengal and south to the Deccan, while the sultanate itself experienced repeated threats from the northwest and internal revolts from displeased, independent-minded nobles. The sultanate was in constant flux as five dynasties rose and fell: Mamluk or Slave (1206-90), Khalji (1290-1320), Tughluq (1320-1413), Sayyid (1414-51), and Lodi (1451-1526). The Khalji Dynasty under Ala-ud-Din (r. 1296-1315) succeeded in bringing most of South India under its control for a time, although conquered areas broke away quickly. Power in Delhi was often gained by violence--nineteen of the thirty-five sultans were assassinated--and was legitimized by reward for tribal loyalty. Factional rivalries and court intrigues were as numerous as they were treacherous; territories controlled by the sultan expanded and shrank depending on his personality and fortunes. Both the Quran and sharia (Islamic law) provided the basis for enforcing Islamic administration over the independent Hindu rulers, but the sultanate made only fitful progress in the beginning, when many campaigns were undertaken for plunder and temporary reduction of fortresses. The effective rule of a sultan depended largely on his ability to control the strategic places that dominated the military highways and trade routes, extract the annual land tax, and maintain personal authority over military and provincial governors. Sultan Ala-ud-Din made an attempt to reassess, systematize, and unify land revenues and urban taxes and to institute a highly centralized system of administration over his realm, but his efforts were abortive. Although agriculture in North India improved as a result of new canal construction and irrigation methods, including what came to be known as the Persian wheel, prolonged political instability and parasitic methods of tax collection brutalized the peasantry. Yet trade and a market economy, encouraged by the free-spending habits of the aristocracy, acquired new impetus both inland and overseas. Experts in metalwork, stonework, and textile manufacture responded to the new patronage with enthusiasm.

India Southern Dynasties The sultans' failure to hold securely the Deccan and South India resulted in the rise of competing southern dynasties: the Muslim Bahmani Sultanate (1347-1527) and the Hindu Vijayanagar Empire (1336-1565). Zafar Khan, a former provincial governor under the Tughluqs, revolted against his Turkic overlord and proclaimed himself sultan, taking the title Ala-ud-Din Bahman Shah in 1347. The Bahmani Sultanate, located in the northern Deccan, lasted for almost two centuries, until it fragmented into five smaller states in 1527. The Bahmani Sultanate adopted the patterns established by the Delhi overlords in tax collection and administration, but its downfall was caused in large measure by the competition and hatred between deccani (domiciled Muslim immigrants and local converts) and paradesi (foreigners or officials in temporary service). The Bahmani Sultanate initiated a process of cultural synthesis visible in Hyderabad, where cultural flowering is still expressed in vigorous schools of deccani architecture and painting. Founded in 1336, the empire of Vijayanagar (named for its capital Vijayanagar, "City of Victory," in present-day Karnataka) expanded rapidly toward Madurai in the south and Goa in the west and exerted intermittent control over the east coast and the extreme southwest. Vijayanagar rulers closely followed Chola precedents, especially in collecting agricultural and trade revenues, in giving encouragement to commercial guilds, and in honoring temples with lavish endowments. Added revenue needed for waging war against the Bahmani sultans was raised by introducing a set of taxes on commercial enterprises, professions, and industries. Political rivalry between the Bahmani and the Vijayanagar rulers involved control over the Krishna-Tunghabadhra river basin, which shifted hands depending on whose military was superior at any given time. The Vijayanagar rulers' capacity for gaining victory over their enemies was contingent on ensuring a constant supply of horses--initially through Arab traders but later through the Portuguese--and maintaining internal roads and communication networks. Merchant guilds enjoyed a wide sphere of operation and were able to offset the power of landlords and Brahmans in court politics. Commerce and shipping eventually passed largely into the hands of foreigners, and special facilities and tax concessions were provided for them by the ruler. Arabs and Portuguese competed for influence and control of west coast ports, and, in 1510, Goa passed into Portuguese possession. The city of Vijayanagar itself contained numerous temples with rich ornamentation, especially the gateways, and a cluster of shrines for the deities. Most prominent among the temples was the one dedicated to Virupaksha, a manifestation of Shiva, the patron-deity of the Vijayanagar rulers. Temples continued to be the nuclei of diverse cultural and intellectual activities, but these activities were based more on tradition than on contemporary political realities. (However, the first Vijayanagar ruler--Harihara I--was a Hindu who converted to Islam and then reconverted to Hinduism for political expediency.) The temples sponsored no intellectual exchange with Islamic theologians because Muslims were generally assigned to an "impure" status and were thus excluded from entering temples. When the five rulers of what was once the Bahmani Sultanate combined their forces and attacked Vijayanagar in 1565, the empire crumbled at the Battle of Talikot. The Mughal Era

India The Mughals In the early sixteenth century, descendants of the Mongol, Turkish, Iranian, and Afghan invaders of South Asia--the Mughals--invaded India under the leadership of Zahir-ud-Din Babur. Babur was the great-grandson of Timur Lenk (Timur the Lame, from which the Western name Tamerlane is derived), who had invaded India and plundered Delhi in 1398 and then led a short-lived empire based in Samarkand (in modern-day Uzbekistan) that united Persian-based Mongols (Babur's maternal ancestors) and other West Asian peoples. Babur was driven from Samarkand and initially established his rule in Kabul in 1504; he later became the first Mughal ruler (1526-30). His determination was to expand eastward into Punjab, where he had made a number of forays. Then an invitation from an opportunistic Afghan chief in Punjab brought him to the very heart of the Delhi Sultanate, ruled by Ibrahim Lodi (1517-26). Babur, a seasoned military commander, entered India in 1526 with his well-trained veteran army of 12,000 to meet the sultan's huge but unwieldy and disunited force of more than 100,000 men. Babur defeated the Lodi sultan decisively at Panipat (in modern-day Haryana, about ninety kilometers north of Delhi). Employing gun carts, moveable artillery, and superior cavalry tactics, Babur achieved a resounding victory. A year later, he decisively defeated a Rajput confederacy led by Rana Sangha. In 1529 Babur routed the joint forces of Afghans and the sultan of Bengal but died in 1530 before he could consolidate his military gains. He left behind as legacies his memoirs (Babur Namah ), several beautiful gardens in Kabul, Lahore, and Agra, and descendants who would fulfill his dream of establishing an empire in Hindustan. When Babur died, his son Humayun (1530-56), also a soldier, inherited a difficult task. He was pressed from all sides by a reassertion of Afghan claims to the Delhi throne, by disputes over his own succession, and by the Afghan-Rajput march into Delhi in 1540. He fled to Persia, where he spent nearly ten years as an embarrassed guest at the Safavid court. In 1545 he gained a foothold in Kabul, reasserted his Indian claim, defeated Sher Khan Sur, the most powerful Afghan ruler, and took control of Delhi in 1555. Humayun's untimely death in 1556 left the task of further imperial conquest and consolidation to his thirteen-year-old son, Jalal-ud-Din Akbar (r. 1556-1605). Following a decisive military victory at the Second Battle of Panipat in 1556, the regent Bayram Khan pursued a vigorous policy of expansion on Akbar's behalf. As soon as Akbar came of age, he began to free himself from the influences of overbearing ministers, court factions, and harem intrigues, and demonstrated his own capacity for judgment and leadership. A "workaholic" who seldom slept more than three hours a night, he personally oversaw the implementation of his administrative policies, which were to form the backbone of the Mughal Empire for more than 200 years. He continued to conquer, annex, and consolidate a far-flung territory bounded by Kabul in the northwest, Kashmir in the north, Bengal in the east, and beyond the Narmada River in the south--an area comparable in size to the Mauryan territory some 1,800 years earlier (see fig. 3). Akbar built a walled capital called Fatehpur Sikri (Fatehpur means Fortress of Victory) near Agra, starting in 1571. Palaces for each of Akbar's senior queens, a huge artificial lake, and sumptuous water-filled courtyards were built there. The city, however, proved short-lived, perhaps because the water supply was insufficient or of poor quality, or, as some historians believe, Akbar had to attend to the northwest areas of his empire and simply moved his capital for political reasons. Whatever the reason, in 1585 the capital was relocated to Lahore and in 1599 to Agra. Akbar adopted two distinct but effective approaches in administering a large territory and incorporating various ethnic groups into the service of his realm. In 1580 he obtained local revenue statistics for the previous decade in order to understand details of productivity and price fluctuation of different crops. Aided by Todar Mal, a Rajput king, Akbar issued a revenue schedule that the peasantry could tolerate while providing maximum profit for the state. Revenue demands, fixed according to local conventions of cultivation and quality of soil, ranged from one-third to one-half of the crop and were paid in cash. Akbar relied heavily on land-holding zamindars (see Glossary). They used their considerable local knowledge and influence to collect revenue and to transfer it to the treasury, keeping a portion in return for services rendered. Within his administrative system, the warrior aristocracy (mansabdars ) held ranks (mansabs ) expressed in numbers of troops, and indicating pay, armed contingents, and obligations. The warrior aristocracy was generally paid from revenues of nonhereditary and transferrable jagirs (revenue villages). An astute ruler who genuinely appreciated the challenges of administering so vast an empire, Akbar introduced a policy of reconciliation and assimilation of Hindus (including Maryam al-Zamani, the Hindu Rajput mother of his son and heir, Jahangir), who represented the majority of the population. He recruited and rewarded Hindu chiefs with the highest ranks in government; encouraged intermarriages between Mughal and Rajput aristocracy; allowed new temples to be built; personally participated in celebrating Hindu festivals such as Dipavali, or Diwali, the festival of lights; and abolished the jizya (poll tax) imposed on non-Muslims. Akbar came up with his own theory of "rulership as a divine illumination," enshrined in his new religion Din-i-Ilahi (Divine Faith), incorporating the principle of acceptance of all religions and sects. He encouraged widow marriage, discouraged child marriage, outlawed the practice of sati, and persuaded Delhi merchants to set up special market days for women, who otherwise were secluded at home (see Veiling and the Seclusion of Women, ch. 5). By the end of Akbar's reign, the Mughal Empire extended throughout most of India north of the Godavari River. The exceptions were Gondwana in central India, which paid tribute to the Mughals, and Assam, in the northeast. Mughal rule under Jahangir (1605-27) and Shah Jahan (1628-58) was noted for political stability, brisk economic activity, beautiful paintings, and monumental buildings. Jahangir married the Persian princess whom he renamed Nur Jahan (Light of the World), who emerged as the most powerful individual in the court besides the emperor. As a result, Persian poets, artists, scholars, and officers--including her own family members--lured by the Mughal court's brilliance and luxury, found asylum in India. The number of unproductive, time-serving officers mushroomed, as did corruption, while the excessive Persian representation upset the delicate balance of impartiality at the court. Jahangir liked Hindu festivals but promoted mass conversion to Islam; he persecuted the followers of Jainism and even executed Guru (see Glossary) Arjun Das, the fifth saint-teacher of the Sikhs (see Sikhism, ch. 3). Nur Jahan's abortive schemes to secure the throne for the prince of her choice led Shah Jahan to rebel in 1622. In that same year, the Persians took over Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, an event that struck a serious blow to Mughal prestige. Between 1636 and 1646, Shah Jahan sent Mughal armies to conquer the Deccan and the northwest beyond the Khyber Pass. Even though they demonstrated Mughal military strength, these campaigns consumed the imperial treasury. As the state became a huge military machine, whose nobles and their contingents multiplied almost fourfold, so did its demands for more revenue from the peasantry. Political unification and maintenance of law and order over wide areas encouraged the emergence of large centers of commerce and crafts--such as Lahore, Delhi, Agra, and Ahmadabad--linked by roads and waterways to distant places and ports. The world-famous Taj Mahal was built in Agra during Shah Jahan's reign as a tomb for his beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal. It symbolizes both Mughal artistic achievement and excessive financial expenditures when resources were shrinking. The economic position of peasants and artisans did not improve because the administration failed to produce any lasting change in the existing social structure. There was no incentive for the revenue officials, whose concerns primarily were personal or familial gain, to generate resources independent of dominant Hindu zamindars and village leaders, whose self-interest and local dominance prevented them from handing over the full amount of revenue to the imperial treasury. In their ever-greater dependence on land revenue, the Mughals unwittingly nurtured forces that eventually led to the break-up of their empire. The last of the great Mughals was Aurangzeb (r. 1658-1707), who seized the throne by killing all his brothers and imprisoning his own father. During his fifty-year reign, the empire reached its utmost physical limit but also witnessed the unmistakable symptoms of decline. The bureaucracy had grown bloated and excessively corrupt, and the huge and unwieldy army demonstrated outdated weaponry and tactics. Aurangzeb was not the ruler to restore the dynasty's declining fortunes or glory. Awe-inspiring but lacking in the charisma needed to attract outstanding lieutenants, he was driven to extend Mughal rule over most of South Asia and to reestablish Islamic orthodoxy by adopting a reactionary attitude toward those Muslims whom he had suspected of compromising their faith. Aurangzeb was involved in a series of protracted wars--against the Pathans in Afghanistan, the sultans of Bijapur and Golkonda in the Deccan, and the Marathas in Maharashtra. Peasant uprisings and revolts by local leaders became all too common, as did the conniving of the nobles to preserve their own status at the expense of a steadily weakening empire. The increasing association of his government with Islam further drove a wedge between the ruler and his Hindu subjects. Aurangzeb forbade the building of new temples, destroyed a number of them, and reimposed the jizya. A puritan and a censor of morals, he banned music at court, abolished ceremonies, and persecuted the Sikhs in Punjab. These measures alienated so many that even before he died challenges for power had already begun to escalate. Contenders for the Mughal throne fought each other, and the short-lived reigns of Aurangzeb's successors were strife-filled. The Mughal Empire experienced dramatic reverses as regional governors broke away and founded independent kingdoms. The Mughals had to make peace with Maratha rebels, and Persian and Afghan armies invaded Delhi, carrying away many treasures, including the Peacock Throne in 1739.

India The Marathas The tale of the Marathas' rise to power and their eventual fall contains all the elements of a thriller: adventure, intrigue, and romanticism. Maratha chieftains were originally in the service of Bijapur sultans in the western Deccan, which was under siege by the Mughals. Shivaji Bhonsle (1627-80), a tenacious and fierce fighter recognized as the "father of the Maratha nation," took advantage of this conflict and carved out his own principality near Pune, which later became the Maratha capital. Adopting guerrilla tactics, he waylaid caravans in order to sustain and expand his army, which soon had money, arms, and horses. Shivaji led a series of successful assaults in the 1660s against Mughal strongholds, including the major port of Surat. In 1674 he assumed the title of "Lord of the Universe" at his elaborate coronation, which signaled his determination to challenge the Mughal forces as well as to reestablish a Hindu kingdom in Maharashtra, the land of his origin. Shivaji's battle cries were swaraj (translated variously as freedom, self-rule, independence), swadharma (religious freedom), and goraksha (cow protection). Aurangzeb relentlessly pursued Shivaji's successors between 1681 and 1705 but eventually retreated to the north as his treasury became depleted and as thousands of lives had been lost either on the battlefield or to natural calamities. In 1717 a Mughal emissary signed a treaty with the Marathas confirming their claims to rule in the Deccan in return for acknowledging the fictional Mughal suzerainty and remission of annual taxes. Yet the Marathas soon captured Malwa from Mughal control and later moved east into Orrisa and Bengal; southern India also came under their domain. Recognition of their political power finally came when the Mughal emperor invited them to act as auxiliaries in the internal affairs of the empire and still later to help the emperor in driving the Afghans out of Punjab. The Marathas, despite their military prowess and leadership, were not equipped to administer the state or to undertake socioeconomic reform. Pursuing a policy characterized by plunder and indiscriminate raids, they antagonized the peasants. They were primarily suited for stirring the Maharashtrian regional pride rather than for attracting loyalty to an all-India confederacy. They were left virtually alone before the invading Afghan forces, headed by Ahmad Shah Abdali (later called Ahmad Shah Durrani), who routed them on the blood-drenched battlefield at Panipat in 1761. The shock of defeat hastened the break-up of their loosely knit confederacy into five independent states and extinguished the hope of Maratha dominance in India. The Sikhs The Afghan defeat of the Maratha armies accelerated the breakaway of Punjab from Delhi and helped the founding of Sikh overlordship in the northwest. Rooted in the bhakti movements that developed in the second century B.C. but swept across North India during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Sikh religion appealed to the hard-working peasants. The Sikh khalsa (army of the pure) rose up against the economic and political repressions in Punjab toward the end of Aurangzeb's rule. Guerrilla fighters took advantage of the political instability created by the Persian and Afghan onslaught against Delhi, enriching themselves and expanding territorial control. By the 1770s, Sikh hegemony extended from the Indus in the west to the Yamuna in the east, from Multan in the south to Jammu in the north. But the Sikhs, like the Marathas, were a loose, disunited, and quarrelsome conglomerate of twelve kin-groups. It took Ranjit Singh (1780-1839), an individual with modernizing vision and leadership, to achieve supremacy over the other kin-groups and establish his kingdom in which Sikhs, Hindus, and Muslims lived together in comparative equality and increasing prosperity. Ranjit Singh employed European officers and introduced strict military discipline into his army before expanding into Afghanistan, Kashmir, and Ladakh.

India The Coming of the Europeans The quest for wealth and power brought Europeans to Indian shores in 1498 when Vasco da Gama, the Portuguese voyager, arrived in Calicut (modern Kozhikode, Kerala) on the west coast. In their search for spices and Christian converts, the Portuguese challenged Arab supremacy in the Indian Ocean, and, with their galleons fitted with powerful cannons, set up a network of strategic trading posts along the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf. In 1510 the Portuguese took over the enclave of Goa, which became the center of their commercial and political power in India and which they controlled for nearly four and a half centuries. Economic competition among the European nations led to the founding of commercial companies in England (the East India Company, founded in 1600) and in the Netherlands (Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie--the United East India Company, founded in 1602), whose primary aim was to capture the spice trade by breaking the Portuguese monopoly in Asia. Although the Dutch, with a large supply of capital and support from their government, preempted and ultimately excluded the British from the heartland of spices in the East Indies (modern-day Indonesia), both companies managed to establish trading "factories" (actually warehouses) along the Indian coast. The Dutch, for example, used various ports on the Coromandel Coast in South India, especially Pulicat (about twenty kilometers north of Madras), as major sources for slaves for their plantations in the East Indies and for cotton cloth as early as 1609. (The English, however, established their first factory at what today is known as Madras only in 1639.) Indian rulers enthusiastically accommodated the newcomers in hopes of pitting them against the Portuguese. In 1619 Jahangir granted them permission to trade in his territories at Surat (in Gujarat) on the west coast and Hughli (in West Bengal) in the east. These and other locations on the peninsula became centers of international trade in spices, cotton, sugar, raw silk, saltpeter, calico, and indigo. English company agents became familiar with Indian customs and languages, including Persian, the unifying official language under the Mughals. In many ways, the English agents of that period lived like Indians, intermarried willingly, and a large number of them never returned to their home country. The knowledge of India thus acquired and the mutual ties forged with Indian trading groups gave the English a competitive edge over other Europeans. The French commercial interest--Compagnie des Indes Orientales (East India Company, founded in 1664)--came late, but the French also established themselves in India, emulating the precedents set by their competitors as they founded their enclave at Pondicherry (Puduchcheri) on the Coramandel Coast. In 1717 the Mughal emperor, Farrukh-siyar (r. 1713-19), gave the British--who by then had already established themselves in the south and the west--a grant of thirty-eight villages near Calcutta, acknowledging their importance to the continuity of international trade in the Bengal economy. As did the Dutch and the French, the British brought silver bullion and copper to pay for transactions, helping the smooth functioning of the Mughal revenue system and increasing the benefits to local artisans and traders. The fortified warehouses of the British brought extraterritorial status, which enabled them to administer their own civil and criminal laws and offered numerous employment opportunities as well as asylum to foreigners and Indians. The British factories successfully competed with their rivals as their size and population grew. The original clusters of fishing villages (Madras and Calcutta) or series of islands (Bombay) became headquarters of the British administrative zones, or presidencies as they generally came to be known. The factories and their immediate environs, known as the White-town, represented the actual and symbolic preeminence of the British--in terms of their political power--as well as their cultural values and social practices; meanwhile, their Indian collaborators lived in the Black-town, separated from the factories by several kilometers. The British company employed sepoys--European-trained and European-led Indian soldiers--to protect its trade, but local rulers sought their services to settle scores in regional power struggles. South India witnessed the first open confrontation between the British and the French, whose forces were led by Robert Clive and François Dupleix, respectively. Both companies desired to place their own candidate as the nawab, or ruler, of Arcot, the area around Madras. At the end of a protracted struggle between 1744 and 1763, when the Peace of Paris was signed, the British gained an upper hand over the French and installed their man in power, supporting him further with arms and lending large sums as well. The French and the British also backed different factions in the succession struggle for Mughal viceroyalty in Bengal, but Clive intervened successfully and defeated Nawab Siraj-ud-daula in the Battle of Plassey (Palashi, about 150 kilometers north of Calcutta) in 1757. Clive found help from a combination of vested interests that opposed the existing nawab: disgruntled soldiers, landholders, and influential merchants whose commercial profits were closely linked to British fortunes. Later, Clive defeated the Mughal forces at Buxar (Baksar, west of Patna in Bihar) in 1765, and the Mughal emperor (Shah Alam, r. 1759-1806) conferred on the company administrative rights over Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa, a region of roughly 25 million people with an annual revenue of 40 million rupees (for current value of the rupee--see Glossary). The imperial grant virtually established the company as a sovereign power, and Clive became the first British governor of Bengal. Besides the presence of the Portuguese, Dutch, British, and French, there were two lesser but noteworthy colonial groups. Danish entrepreneurs established themselves at several ports on the Malabar and Coromandel coasts, in the vicinity of Calcutta and inland at Patna between 1695 and 1740. Austrian enterprises were set up in the 1720s on the vicinity of Surat in modern-day southeastern Gujarat. As with the other non-British enterprises, the Danish and Austrian enclaves were taken over by the British between 1765 and 1815. The British Empire in India

India Company Rule, 1757-1857 A multiplicity of motives underlay the British penetration into India: commerce, security, and a purported moral uplift of the people. The "expansive force" of private and company trade eventually led to the conquest or annexation of territories in which spices, cotton, and opium were produced. British investors ventured into the unfamiliar interior landscape in search of opportunities that promised substantial profits. British economic penetration was aided by Indian collaborators, such as the bankers and merchants who controlled intricate credit networks. British rule in India would have been a frustrated or half-realized dream had not Indian counterparts provided connections between rural and urban centers. External threats, both real and imagined, such as the Napoleonic Wars (1796-1815) and Russian expansion toward Afghanistan (in the 1830s), as well as the desire for internal stability, led to the annexation of more territory in India. Political analysts in Britain wavered initially as they were uncertain of the costs or the advantages in undertaking wars in India, but by the 1810s, as the territorial aggrandizement eventually paid off, opinion in London welcomed the absorption of new areas. Occasionally the British Parliament witnessed heated debates against expansion, but arguments justifying military operations for security reasons always won over even the most vehement critics. The British soon forgot their own rivalry with the Portuguese and the French and permitted them to stay in their coastal enclaves, which they kept even after independence in 1947 (see National Integration, this ch.). The British, however, continued to expand vigorously well into the 1850s. A number of aggressive governors-general undertook relentless campaigns against several Hindu and Muslim rulers. Among them were Richard Colley Wellesley (1798-1805), William Pitt Amherst (1823-28), George Eden (1836-42), Edward Law (1842-44), and James Andrew Brown Ramsay (1848-56; also known as the Marquess of Dalhousie). Despite desperate efforts at salvaging their tottering power and keeping the British at bay, many Hindu and Muslim rulers lost their territories: Mysore (1799, but later restored), the Maratha Confederacy (1818), and Punjab (1849). The British success in large measure was the result not only of their superiority in tactics and weapons but also of their ingenious relations with Indian rulers through the "subsidiary alliance" system, introduced in the early nineteenth century. Many rulers bartered away their real responsibilities by agreeing to uphold British paramountcy in India, while they retained a fictional sovereignty under the rubric of Pax Britannica. Later, Dalhousie espoused the "doctrine of lapse" and annexed outright the estates of deceased princes of Satara (1848), Udaipur (1852), Jhansi (1853), Tanjore (1853), Nagpur (1854), and Oudh (1856). European perceptions of India, and those of the British especially, shifted from unequivocal appreciation to sweeping condemnation of India's past achievements and customs. Imbued with an ethnocentric sense of superiority, British intellectuals, including Christian missionaries, spearheaded a movement that sought to bring Western intellectual and technological innovations to Indians. Interpretations of the causes of India's cultural and spiritual "backwardness" varied, as did the solutions. Many argued that it was Europe's mission to civilize India and hold it as a trust until Indians proved themselves competent for self-rule. The immediate consequence of this sense of superiority was to open India to more aggressive missionary activity. The contributions of three missionaries based in Serampore (a Danish enclave in Bengal)--William Carey, Joshua Marshman, and William Ward--remained unequaled and have provided inspiration for future generations of their successors. The missionaries translated the Bible into the vernaculars, taught company officials local languages, and, after 1813, gained permission to proselytize in the company's territories. Although the actual number of converts remained negligible, except in rare instances when entire groups embraced Christianity, such as the Nayars in the south or the Nagas in the northeast, the missionary impact on India through publishing, schools, orphanages, vocational institutions, dispensaries, and hospitals was unmistakable. The British Parliament enacted a series of laws, among which the Regulating Act of 1773 stood first, to curb the company traders' unrestrained commercial activities and to bring about some order in territories under company control. Limiting the company charter to periods of twenty years, subject to review upon renewal, the 1773 act gave the British government supervisory rights over the Bengal, Bombay, and Madras presidencies. Bengal was given preeminence over the rest because of its enormous commercial vitality and because it was the seat of British power in India (at Calcutta), whose governor was elevated to the new position of governor-general. Warren Hastings was the first incumbent (1773-85). The India Act of 1784, sometimes described as the "half-loaf system," as it sought to mediate between Parliament and the company directors, enhanced Parliament's control by establishing the Board of Control, whose members were selected from the cabinet. The Charter Act of 1813 recognized British moral responsibility by introducing just and humane laws in India, foreshadowing future social legislation, and outlawing a number of traditional practices such as sati and thagi (or thugee, robbery coupled with ritual murder). As governor-general from 1786 to 1793, Charles Cornwallis (the Marquis of Cornwallis), professionalized, bureaucratized, and Europeanized the company's administration. He also outlawed private trade by company employees, separated the commercial and administrative functions, and remunerated company servants with generous graduated salaries. Because revenue collection became the company's most essential administrative function, Cornwallis made a compact with Bengali zamindars, who were perceived as the Indian counterparts to the British landed gentry. The Permanent Settlement system, also known as the zamindari system, fixed taxes in perpetuity in return for ownership of large estates; but the state was excluded from agricultural expansion, which came under the purview of the zamindars. In Madras and Bombay, however, the ryotwari (peasant) settlement system was set in motion, in which peasant cultivators had to pay annual taxes directly to the government. Neither the zamindari nor the ryotwari systems proved effective in the long run because India was integrated into an international economic and pricing system over which it had no control, while increasing numbers of people subsisted on agriculture for lack of other employment. Millions of people involved in the heavily taxed Indian textile industry also lost their markets, as they were unable to compete successfully with cheaper textiles produced in Lancashire's mills from Indian raw materials. Beginning with the Mayor's Court, established in 1727 for civil litigation in Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras, justice in the interior came under the company's jurisdiction. In 1772 an elaborate judicial system, known as adalat, established civil and criminal jurisdictions along with a complex set of codes or rules of procedure and evidence. Both Hindu pandits (see Glossary) and Muslim qazis (sharia court judges) were recruited to aid the presiding judges in interpreting their customary laws, but in other instances, British common and statutory laws became applicable. In extraordinary situations where none of these systems was applicable, the judges were enjoined to adjudicate on the basis of "justice, equity, and good conscience." The legal profession provided numerous opportunities for educated and talented Indians who were unable to secure positions in the company, and, as a result, Indian lawyers later dominated nationalist politics and reform movements. Education for the most part was left to the charge of Indians or to private agents who imparted instruction in the vernaculars. But in 1813, the British became convinced of their "duty" to awaken the Indians from intellectual slumber by exposing them to British literary traditions, earmarking a paltry sum for the cause. Controversy between two groups of Europeans--the "Orientalists" and "Anglicists"--over how the money was to be spent prevented them from formulating any consistent policy until 1835 when William Cavendish Bentinck, the governor-general from 1828 to 1835, finally broke the impasse by resolving to introduce the English language as the medium of instruction. English replaced Persian in public administration and education. The company's education policies in the 1830s tended to reinforce existing lines of socioeconomic division in society rather than bringing general liberation from ignorance and superstition. Whereas the Hindu English-educated minority spearheaded many social and religious reforms either in direct response to government policies or in reaction to them, Muslims as a group initially failed to do so, a position they endeavored to reverse. Western-educated Hindu elites sought to rid Hinduism of its much criticized social evils: idolatry, the caste system, child marriage, and sati. Religious and social activist Ram Mohan Roy (1772-1833), who founded the Brahmo Samaj (Society of Brahma) in 1828, displayed a readiness to synthesize themes taken from Christianity, Deism, and Indian monism, while other individuals in Bombay and Madras initiated literary and debating societies that gave them a forum for open discourse. The exemplary educational attainments and skillful use of the press by these early reformers enhanced the possibility of effecting broad reforms without compromising societal values or religious practices. The 1850s witnessed the introduction of the three "engines of social improvement" that heightened the British illusion of permanence in India. They were the railroads, the telegraph, and the uniform postal service, inaugurated during the tenure of Dalhousie as governor-general. The first railroad lines were built in 1850 from Howrah (Haora, across the Hughli River from Calcutta) inland to the coalfields at Raniganj, Bihar, a distance of 240 kilometers. In 1851 the first electric telegraph line was laid in Bengal and soon linked Agra, Bombay, Calcutta, Lahore, Varanasi, and other cities. The three different presidency or regional postal systems merged in 1854 to facilitate uniform methods of communication at an all-India level. With uniform postal rates for letters and newspapers--one-half anna and one anna, respectively (sixteen annas equalled one rupee)--communication between the rural and the metropolitan areas became easier and faster. The increased ease of communication and the opening of highways and waterways accelerated the movement of troops, the transportation of raw materials and goods to and from the interior, and the exchange of commercial information. The railroads did not break down the social or cultural distances between various groups but tended to create new categories in travel. Separate compartments in the trains were reserved exclusively for the ruling class, separating the educated and wealthy from ordinary people. Similarly, when the Sepoy Rebellion was quelled in 1858, a British official exclaimed that "the telegraph saved India." He envisaged, of course, that British interests in India would continue indefinitely.

India The British Raj, 1858-1947 Sepoy Rebellion, 1857-59 On May 10, 1857, Indian soldiers of the British Indian Army, drawn mostly from Muslim units from Bengal, mutinied in Meerut, a cantonment eighty kilometers northeast of Delhi. The rebels marched to Delhi to offer their services to the Mughal emperor, and soon much of north and central India was plunged into a year-long insurrection against the British. The uprising, which seriously threatened British rule in India, has been called many names by historians, including the Sepoy Rebellion, the Great Mutiny, and the Revolt of 1857; many people in South Asia, however, prefer to call it India's first war of independence. Undoubtedly, it was the culmination of mounting Indian resentment toward British economic and social policies over many decades. Until the rebellion, the British had succeeded in suppressing numerous riots and "tribal" wars or in accommodating them through concessions, but two events triggered the violent explosion of wrath in 1857. First, was the annexation in 1856 of Oudh, a wealthy princely state that generated huge revenue and represented a vestige of Mughal authority. The second was the British blunder in using cartridges for the Lee-Enfield rifle that were allegedly greased with animal fat, which was offensive to the religious beliefs of Muslim and Hindu sepoys. The rebellion soon engulfed much of North India, including Oudh and various areas once under the control of Maratha princes. Isolated mutinies also occurred at military posts in the center of the subcontinent. Initially, the rebels, although divided and uncoordinated, gained the upper hand, while the unprepared British were terrified, and even paralyzed, without replacements for the casualties. The civil war inflicted havoc on both Indians and British as each vented its fury on the other; each community suffered humiliation and triumph in battle as well, although the final outcome was victory for the British. The last major sepoy rebels surrendered on June 21, 1858, at Gwalior (Madhya Pradesh), one of the principal centers of the revolt. A final battle was fought at Sirwa Pass on May 21, 1859, and the defeated rebels fled into Nepal. The spontaneous and widespread rebellion later fired the imagination of the nationalists who would debate the most effective method of protest against British rule. For them, the rebellion represented the first Indian attempt at gaining independence. This interpretation, however, is open to serious question.

India Post-Rebellion Developments The civil war was a major turning point in the history of modern India. In May 1858, the British exiled Emperor Bahadur Shah II (r. 1837-57) to Burma, thus formally liquidating the Mughal Empire. At the same time, they abolished the British East India Company and replaced it with direct rule under the British crown. In proclaiming the new direct-rule policy to "the Princes, Chiefs, and Peoples of India," Queen Victoria (who was given the title Empress of India in 1877) promised equal treatment under British law, but Indian mistrust of British rule had become a legacy of the 1857 rebellion. Many existing economic and revenue policies remained virtually unchanged in the post-1857 period, but several administrative modifications were introduced, beginning with the creation in London of a cabinet post, the secretary of state for India. The governor-general (called viceroy when acting as the direct representative of the British crown), headquartered in Calcutta, ran the administration in India, assisted by executive and legislative councils. Beneath the governor-general were the provincial governors, who held power over the district officials, who formed the lower rungs of the Indian Civil Service. For decades the Indian Civil Service was the exclusive preserve of the British-born, as were the superior ranks in such other professions as law and medicine. The British administrators were imbued with a sense of duty in ruling India and were rewarded with good salaries, high status, and opportunities for promotion. Not until the 1910s did the British reluctantly permit a few Indians into their cadre as the number of English-educated Indians rose steadily. The viceroy announced in 1858 that the government would honor former treaties with princely states and renounced the "doctrine of lapse," whereby the East India Company had annexed territories of rulers who died without male heirs. About 40 percent of Indian territory and between 20 and 25 percent of the population remained under the control of 562 princes notable for their religious (Islamic, Sikh, Hindu, and other) and ethnic diversity. Their propensity for pomp and ceremony became proverbial, while their domains, varying in size and wealth, lagged behind sociopolitical transformations that took place elsewhere in British-controlled India. A more thorough reorganization was effected in the constitution of army and government finances. Shocked by the extent of solidarity among Indian soldiers during the rebellion, the government separated the army into the three presidencies (see Company Armies, ch. 10). British attitudes toward Indians shifted from relative openness to insularity and xenophobia, even against those with comparable background and achievement as well as loyalty. British families and their servants lived in cantonments at a distance from Indian settlements. Private clubs where the British gathered for social interaction became symbols of exclusivity and snobbery that refused to disappear decades after the British had left India. In 1883 the government of India attempted to remove race barriers in criminal jurisdictions by introducing a bill empowering Indian judges to adjudicate offenses committed by Europeans. Public protests and editorials in the British press, however, forced the viceroy, George Robinson, Marquis of Ripon (who served from 1880 to 1884), to capitulate and modify the bill drastically. The Bengali Hindu intelligentsia learned a valuable political lesson from this "white mutiny": the effectiveness of well-orchestrated agitation through demonstrations in the streets and publicity in the media when seeking redress for real and imagined grievances. The Independence Movement

India Origins of the Congress and the Muslim League The decades following the Sepoy Rebellion were a period of growing political awareness, manifestation of Indian public opinion, and emergence of Indian leadership at national and provincial levels. Ominous economic uncertainties created by British colonial rule and the limited opportunities that awaited the ever-expanding number of Western-educated graduates began to dominate the rhetoric of leaders who had begun to think of themselves as a "nation," despite fissures along the lines of region, religion, language, and caste. Inspired by the suggestion made by A.O. Hume, a retired British civil servant, seventy-three Indian delegates met in Bombay in 1885 and founded the Indian National Congress (Congress--see Glossary). They were mostly members of the upwardly mobile and successful Western-educated provincial elites, engaged in professions such as law, teaching, and journalism. They had acquired political experience from regional competition in the professions and from their aspirations in securing nomination to various positions in legislative councils, universities, and special commissions. At its inception, the Congress had no well-defined ideology and commanded few of the resources essential to a political organization. It functioned more as a debating society that met annually to express its loyalty to the Raj and passed numerous resolutions on less controversial issues such as civil rights or opportunities in government, especially the civil service. These resolutions were submitted to the viceroy's government and, occasionally, to the British Parliament, but the Congress's early gains were meager. Despite its claim to represent all India, the Congress voiced the interests of urban elites; the number of participants from other economic backgrounds remained negligible. By 1900, although the Congress had emerged as an all-India political organization, its achievement was undermined by its singular failure to attract Muslims, who had by then begun to realize their inadequate education and underrepresentation in government service. Muslim leaders saw that their community had fallen behind the Hindus. Attacks by Hindu reformers against religious conversion, cow killing, and the preservation of Urdu in Arabic script deepened their fears of minority status and denial of their rights if the Congress alone were to represent the people of India. For many Muslims, loyalty to the British crown seemed preferable to cooperation with Congress leaders. Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817-98) launched a movement for Muslim regeneration that culminated in the founding in 1875 of the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh (renamed Aligarh Muslim University in 1921). Its objective was to educate wealthy students by emphasizing the compatibility of Islam with modern Western knowledge. The diversity among India's Muslims, however, made it impossible to bring about uniform cultural and intellectual regeneration. Sir George Curzon, the governor-general (1899-1905), ordered the partition of Bengal in 1905. He wanted to improve administrative efficiency in that huge and populous region, where the Bengali Hindu intelligentsia exerted considerable influence on local and national politics. The partition created two provinces: Eastern Bengal and Assam, with its capital at Dhaka (then spelled Dacca), and West Bengal, with its capital at Calcutta (which also served as the capital of British India). An ill-conceived and hastily implemented action, the partition outraged Bengalis. Not only had the government failed to consult Indian public opinion but the action appeared to reflect the British resolve to "divide and rule." Widespread agitation ensued in the streets and in the press, and the Congress advocated boycotting British products under the banner of swadeshi (home-made--see Glossary). The Congress-led boycott of British goods was so successful that it unleashed anti-British forces to an extent unknown since the Sepoy Rebellion. A cycle of violence, terrorism, and repression ensued in some parts of the country. The British tried to mitigate the situation by announcing a series of constitutional reforms in 1909 and by appointing a few moderates to the imperial and provincial councils. In 1906 a Muslim deputation met with the viceroy, Gilbert John Elliot (1905-10), seeking concessions from the impending constitutional reforms, including special considerations in government service and electorates. The All-India Muslim League (Muslim League--see Glossary) was founded the same year to promote loyalty to the British and to advance Muslim political rights, which the British recognized by increasing the number of elective offices reserved for Muslims in the India Councils Act of 1909. The Muslim League insisted on its separateness from the Hindu-dominated Congress, as the voice of a "nation within a nation." In what the British saw as an additional goodwill gesture, in 1911 King-Emperor George V (r. 1910-36) visited India for a durbar (a traditional court held for subjects to express fealty to their ruler), during which he announced the reversal of the partition of Bengal and the transfer of the capital from Calcutta to a newly planned city to be built immediately south of Delhi, which became New Delhi. War, Reforms, and Agitation World War I began with an unprecedented outpouring of loyalty and goodwill toward the British, contrary to initial British fears of an Indian revolt. India contributed generously to the British war effort, by providing men and resources. About 1.3 million Indian soldiers and laborers served in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, while both the Indian government and the princes sent large supplies of food, money, and ammunition. But disillusionment set in early. High casualty rates, soaring inflation compounded by heavy taxation, a widespread influenza epidemic, and the disruption of trade during the war escalated human suffering in India. The prewar nationalist movement revived as moderate and extremist groups within the Congress submerged their differences in order to stand as a unified front. The Congress even succeeded in forging a temporary alliance with the Muslim League--the Lucknow Pact, or Congress-League Scheme of Reforms--in 1916, over the issues of devolution of political power and the future of Islam in the Middle East. The British themselves adopted a "carrot and stick" approach in recognition of India's support during the war and in response to renewed nationalist demands. In August 1917, Edwin Montagu, the secretary of state for India, made the historic announcement in Parliament that the British policy for India was "increasing association of Indians in every branch of the administration and the gradual development of self-governing institutions with a view to the progressive realization of responsible government in India as an integral part of the British Empire." The means of achieving the proposed measure were later enshrined in the Government of India Act of 1919, which introduced the principle of a dual mode of administration, or dyarchy, in which both elected Indian legislators and appointed British officials shared power. The act also expanded the central and provincial legislatures and widened the franchise considerably. Dyarchy set in motion certain real changes at the provincial level: a number of noncontroversial or "transferred" portfolios--such as agriculture, local government, health, education, and public works--were handed over to Indians, while more sensitive matters such as finance, taxation, and maintaining law and order were retained by the provincial British administrators. The positive impact of reform was seriously undermined in 1919 by the Rowlatt Acts, named after the recommendations made the previous year to the Imperial Legislative Council by the Rowlatt Commission, which had been appointed to investigate "seditious conspiracy." The Rowlatt Acts, also known as the Black Acts, vested the viceroy's government with extraordinary powers to quell sedition by silencing the press, detaining political activists without trial, and arresting any suspected individuals without a warrant. No sooner had the acts come into force in March 1919--despite opposition by Indian members on the Imperial Legislative Council--than a nationwide cessation of work (hartal ) was called by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948). Others took up his call, marking the beginning of widespread--although not nationwide--popular discontent. The agitation unleashed by the acts culminated on April 13, 1919, in Amritsar, Punjab. The British military commander, Brigadier Reginald E.H. Dyer, ordered his soldiers to fire at point-blank range into an unarmed and unsuspecting crowd of some 10,000 men, women, and children. They had assembled at Jallianwala Bagh, a walled garden, to celebrate a Hindu festival without prior knowledge of the imposition of martial law. A total of 1,650 rounds were fired, killing 379 persons and wounding 1,137 in the episode, which dispelled wartime hopes and goodwill in a frenzy of postwar reaction.

India Mahatma Gandhi That India opted for an entirely original path to solving this crisis and obtaining swaraj (independence) was due largely to Gandhi, commonly known as "Mahatma" (or Great Soul) or, as he himself preferred, "Gandhiji" (an honorific term for Gandhi). A native of Gujarat who had been educated in Britain, he was an obscure and unsuccessful provincial lawyer. Gandhi had accepted an invitation in 1893 to represent indentured Indian laborers in South Africa, where he stayed on for more than twenty years, emerging ultimately as the voice and conscience of thousands who had been subjected to blatant racial discrimination. He returned to India in 1915, virtually a stranger to public life but "fired with a religious vision of a new India, whose swaraj . . . would [be] a moral reformation of a whole people which would either convert the British also or render their Raj impossible by Indian withdrawal of support for it and its modern values," according to historian Judith M. Brown. Gandhi's ideas and strategies of nonviolent civil disobedience (satyagraha--see Glossary), first applied during his South Africa days, initially appeared impractical to many educated Indians. In Gandhi's own words, "Civil disobedience is civil breach of unmoral statutory enactments," but as he viewed it, it had to be carried out nonviolently by withdrawing cooperation with the corrupt state. Observers realized Gandhi's political potential when he used the satyagraha during the anti-Rowlatt Acts protests in Punjab. In 1920, under Gandhi's leadership, the Congress was reorganized and given a new constitution, whose goal was swaraj. Membership in the party was opened to anyone prepared to pay a token fee, and a hierarchy of committees--from district, to province, to all-India--was established and made responsible for discipline and control over a hitherto amorphous and diffuse movement. During his first nationwide satyagraha, Gandhi urged the people to boycott British education institutions, law courts, and products (in favor of swadeshi ); to resign from government employment; to refuse to pay taxes; and to forsake British titles and honors. The party was transformed from an elite organization to one of mass national appeal. Although Gandhi's first nationwide satyagraha was too late to influence the framing of the new Government of India Act of 1919, the magnitude of disorder resulting from the movement was unparalleled and presented a new challenge to foreign rule. Gandhi was forced to call off the campaign in 1922 because of atrocities committed against police. However, the abortive campaign marked a milestone in India's political development. For his efforts, Gandhi was imprisoned until 1924. On his release from prison, he set up an ashram (a rural commune), established a newspaper, and inaugurated a series of reforms aimed at the socially disadvantaged within Hindu society, the rural poor, and the Untouchables (see Changes in the Caste System, ch. 5). His popularity soared in Indian politics as he reached the hearts and minds of ordinary people, winning support for his causes as no one else had ever done before. By his personal and eclectic piety, his asceticism, his vegetarianism, his espousal of Hindu-Muslim unity, and his firm belief in ahimsa, Gandhi appealed to the loftier Hindu ideals. For Gandhi, moral regeneration, social progress, and national freedom were inseparable. Emerging leaders within the Congress--Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel, Rajendra Prasad, C. Rajagopalachari, Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad, Subhas Chandra Bose, and Jaya-prakash (J.P.) Narayan--accepted Gandhi's leadership in articulating nationalist aspirations but disagreed on strategies for wresting more concessions from the British. The Indian political spectrum was further broadened in the mid-1920s by the emergence of both moderate and militant parties, such as the Swaraj Party (sometimes referred to as the Swarajist Party), the Mahasabha Party (literally, great council; an orthodox Hindu communal party), the Unionist Party, the Communist Party of India, and the Socialist Independence for India League. Regional political organizations also continued to represent the interests of non-Brahmans in Madras, Mahars in Maharashtra, and Sikhs in Punjab. The Congress, however, kept itself aloof from competing in elections. As voices inside and outside the Congress became more strident, the British appointed a commission in 1927, under Sir John Simon, to recommend further measures in the constitutional devolution of power. The British failure to appoint an Indian member to the commission outraged the Congress and others, and, as a result, they boycotted it throughout India, carrying placards inscribed "Simon, Go Back." In 1929 the Congress responded by drafting its own constitution under the guidance of Motilal Nehru (Jawaharlal's father) demanding full independence (purna swaraj ) by 1930; the Congress went so far as to observe January 26, 1930, as the first anniversary of the first year of independence. Gandhi reemerged from his long seclusion by undertaking his most inspired campaign, a march of about 400 kilometers from his commune in Ahmadabad to Dandi, on the coast of Gujarat between March 12 and April 6, 1930. At Dandi, in protest against extortionate British taxes on salt, he and thousands of followers illegally but symbolically made their own salt from sea water. Their defiance reflected India's determination to be free, despite the imprisonment of thousands of protesters. For the next five years, the Congress and government were locked in conflict and negotiations until what became the Government of India Act of 1935 could be hammered out. But by then, the rift between the Congress and the Muslim League had become unbridgeable as each pointed the finger at the other acrimoniously. The Muslim League disputed the claim by the Congress to represent all people of India, while the Congress disputed the Muslim League's claim to voice the aspirations of all Muslims. The 1935 act, the voluminous and final constitutional effort at governing British India, articulated three major goals: establishing a loose federal structure, achieving provincial autonomy, and safeguarding minority interests through separate electorates. The federal provisions, intended to unite princely states and British India at the center, were not implemented because of ambiguities in safeguarding the existing privileges of princes. In February 1937, however, provincial autonomy became a reality when elections were held; the Congress emerged as the dominant party with a clear majority in five provinces and held an upper hand in two, while the Muslim League performed poorly.

India Political Impasse and Independence The Congress neither acknowledged the Muslim League's performance, albeit poor, in the elections nor deigned to form a coalition government with the League, a situation that led to the collapse of negotiations and mutual trust between the leaders. Mohammad Ali Jinnah, a Western-educated Muslim lawyer, took over the presidency of the moribund Muslim League and galvanized it into a national force under the battle cry of "Islam in danger." Jinnah doubted the motives of Gandhi and Nehru and accused them of practicing Hindu chauvinism. He relentlessly attacked the Congress-led ministries, accusing them of casteism, corruption, and nepotism. Skillfully, he succeeded in unifying various regional Islamic organizations and factions in Punjab and Bengal under the umbrella of the Muslim League. Electoral gains by the Congress in 1937 were rendered ephemeral as its leaders ordered provincial ministries to resign in November 1939, when the viceroy (Victor Alexander John Hope, Marquis of Linlithgow--1936-43) declared India's entrance into World War II without consulting Indian leaders. Jinnah and the Muslim League welcomed the Congress withdrawal from government as a timely opportunity and observed a day of thanksgiving on December 22, 1939. Jinnah persuaded the participants at the annual Muslim League session in Lahore in 1940 to adopt what later came to be known as the Pakistan Resolution, demanding the division of India into two separate sovereign states, one Muslim, the other Hindu. Although the idea of Pakistan had been introduced as early as 1930 at Allahabad, very few had responded to it. However, the volatile political climate, the personal hostilities between the leaders, and the opportunism of Jinnah transformed the idea of Pakistan into a popular demand. Between 1940 and 1942, the Congress launched two abortive agitations against the British, and 60,000 Congress members were arrested, including Gandhi and Nehru. Unlike the uncooperative and belligerent Congress, the Muslim League supported the British during World War II (see The Indian Military under the British Raj, ch. 10). Belated but perhaps sincere British attempts to accommodate the demands of the two rival parties, while preserving the unitary state in India, seemed unacceptable to both as they alternately rejected whatever proposal was put forward during the war years. As a result, a three-way impasse settled in: the Congress and the Muslim League doubted British motives in handing over power to Indians, while the British struggled to retain some hold on India while offering to give greater autonomy. The Congress wasted precious time denouncing the British rather than allaying Muslim fears during the highly charged election campaign of 1946. Even the more mature Congress leaders, especially Gandhi and Nehru, failed to see how genuinely afraid the Muslims were and how exhausted and weak the British had become in the aftermath of the war. When it appeared that the Congress had no desire to share power with the Muslim League at the center, Jinnah declared August 16, 1946, Direct Action Day, which brought communal rioting and massacre in many places in the north. Partition seemed preferable to civil war. On June 3, 1947, Viscount Louis Mountbatten, the viceroy (1947) and governor-general (1947-48), announced plans for partition of the British Indian Empire into the nations of India and Pakistan, which itself was divided into east and west wings on either side of India (see fig. 4). At midnight, on August 15, 1947, India strode to freedom amidst ecstatic shouting of "Jai Hind" (roughly, Long Live India), when Nehru delivered a memorable and moving speech on India's "tryst with destiny." Independent India

India National Integration The euphoria of independence was short-lived as partition brought disastrous consequences for India in the wake of communal conflict. Partition unleashed untold misery and loss of lives and property as millions of Hindu and Muslim refugees fled either Pakistan or India. Both nations were also caught up in a number of conflicts involving the allocation of assets, demarcation of boundaries, equitable sharing of water resources, and control over Kashmir. At the same time, Indian leaders were faced with the stupendous task of national integration and economic development. When the British relinquished their claims to paramountcy, the 562 independent princely states were given the option to join either of the two nations. A few princely states readily joined Pakistan, but the rest--except Hyderabad (the largest of the princely states with 132,000 square kilometers and a population of more than 14 million), Jammu and Kashmir (with 3 million inhabitants), and Junagadh (with a population of 545,000)--merged with India. India successfully annexed Hyderabad and Junagadh after "police actions" and promises of privileges to the rulers. The Hindu maharajah of predominantly Muslim Jammu and Kashmir remained uncommitted until armed tribesmen and regular troops from Pakistan infiltrated his domain, inducing him to sign the Instrument of Accession to India on October 27, 1947. Pakistan refused to accept the legality of the accession, and, as a result, war broke out (see The Experience of Wars, ch. 10). Kashmir remains a source of friction between the neighbors (see South Asia, ch. 9). The assassination of Mahatma Gandhi on January 30, 1948, in New Delhi, by a Hindu extremist opposed to Gandhi's openness to Muslims ended the tenuous celebration of independence and deepened the hatred and mutual suspicion in Hindu-Muslim relations. Economic backwardness was one of the serious challenges that India faced at independence. Under three successive five-year plans, inaugurated between 1951 and 1964 under Nehru's leadership, India produced increasing amounts of food. Although food production did not allow self-sufficiency until fiscal year (FY--see Glossary) 1984, India has emerged as the nation with the seventh largest gross national product (GNP--see Glossary) in the world (see Industry, ch. 6; Production, ch. 7). Linguistic regionalism eventually reached a crisis stage and undermined the Congress' attempts at nation building. Whereas in the early 1920s, the Congress had deemed that the use of regional vernaculars in education and administration would facilitate the governance of the country, partition made the leaders, especially Nehru, realize how quickly such provincial or subnational interests would dismantle India's fragile unity (see Diversity, Use, and Policy, ch. 4). However, in the face of widespread agitation for linguistic separation of states, beginning with the Telangana Movement in 1953, in 1956 Nehru reluctantly accepted the recommendations of the States Reorganisation Commission, and the number of states grew by reorganization along linguistic lines. The states became the loci for democratization of political processes at district levels, for expression of regional culture and popular demands against a national culture and unity, for economic development at strategic localities in the rural areas, and for proliferation of opposition parties that ended the possibility of a pan-Indian two-party system (see Political Parties, ch. 8). Nehru's Legacy Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964), India's first prime minister, was the chief architect of domestic and foreign policies between 1947 and 1964. Born into a wealthy Kashmiri Brahman family and educated at Oxford, Nehru embodied a synthesis of ideals: politically an ardent nationalist, ideologically a pragmatic socialist, and secular in religious outlook, Nehru possessed a rare combination of intellect, breadth of vision, and personal charisma that attracted support throughout India. Nehru's appreciation for parliamentary democracy coupled with concerns for the poor and underprivileged enabled him to formulate policies that often reflected his socialist leanings. Both as prime minister and as Congress president, Nehru pushed through the Indian Parliament, dominated by members of his own party, a series of legal reforms intended to emancipate Hindu women and bring equality. These reforms included raising the minimum marriageable age from twelve to fifteen, empowering women to divorce their husbands and inherit property, and declaring illegal the ruinous dowry system (see Life Passages, ch. 5). The threat of escalating violence and the potential for "red revolution" across the country seemed daunting in the face of the country's growing population, unemployment, and economic inequality. Nehru induced Parliament to pass a number of laws abolishing absentee landlordism and conferring titles to land on the actual cultivators who could document their right to occupancy. Under his direction, the central Planning Commission allocated resources to heavy industries, such as steel plants and hydroelectric projects, and to revitalizing cottage industries. Whether producing sophisticated defense matériel or manufacturing everyday consumer goods, industrial complexes emerged across the country, accompanied by the expansion of scientific research and teaching at universities, institutes of technology, and research centers (see Education, ch. 2; Science and Technology, ch. 6). Nehru demonstrated tremendous enthusiasm for India's moral leadership, especially among the newly independent Asian and African nations, in a world polarized by Cold War ideology and threatened by nuclear weapons. His guiding principles were nationalism, anticolonialism, internationalism, and nonalignment. He attained international prestige during his first decade in office, but after the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956--when New Delhi tilted toward Moscow--criticisms grew against his inconsistency in condemning Western but not communist aggression. In dealing with Pakistan, Nehru failed to formulate a consistent policy and was critical of the improving ties between Pakistan and the United States; mutual hostility and suspicion persisted as a result (see United States, ch. 9). Despite attempts at improving relations with China, based on his much-publicized five principles (Panch Shila--see Glossary)--territorial integrity and sovereignty, nonaggression, noninterference, equality and cooperation, and peaceful coexistence--war with China erupted in 1962. The war was a rude awakening for Nehru, as India proved ill-equipped and unprepared to defend its northern borders. At the conclusion of the conflict, the Chinese forces were partially withdrawn and an unofficial demilitarized zone was established, but India's prestige and self-esteem had suffered. Physically debilitated and mentally exhausted, Nehru suffered a stroke and died in office in May 1964. His legacy of a democratic, federal, and secular India continues to survive in spite of attempts by later leaders to establish either an autocratic or a theocratic state.

India The Rise of Indira Gandhi Nehru's long tenure in office gave continuity and cohesion to India's domestic and foreign policies, but as his health deteriorated, concerns over who might inherit his mantle or what might befall India after he left office frequently surfaced in political circles. After his death, the Congress Caucus, also known as the Syndicate, chose Lal Bahadur Shastri as prime minister in June 1964. A mild-mannered person, Shastri adhered to Gandhian principles of simplicity of life and dedication to the service of the country. His short period of leadership was beset with three major crises: widespread food shortages, violent anti-Hindi demonstrations in the state of Madras (as Tamil Nadu was then called) that were quelled by the army, and the second war with Pakistan over Kashmir. Shastri's premiership was cut short when he died of a heart attack on January 11, 1966, the day after having signed the Soviet-brokered Tashkent Declaration. The agreement required both sides to withdraw all armed personnel by February 26, 1966, to the positions they had held prior to August 5, 1965, and to observe the cease-fire line. Indira Gandhi held a cabinet portfolio as minister of information and broadcasting in Shastri's government. She was the only child of Nehru, who was also her mentor in the nationalist movement. The Syndicate selected her as prime minister when Shastri died in 1966 even though her eligibility was challenged by Morarji Desai, a veteran nationalist and long-time aspirant to that office. The Congress "bosses" were apparently looking for a leading figure acceptable to the masses, who could command general support during the next general election but who would also acquiesce to their guidance. Hardly had Indira Gandhi begun in office than she encountered a series of problems that defied easy solutions: Mizo tribal uprisings in the northeast; famine, labor unrest, and misery among the poor in the wake of rupee devaluation; and agitation in Punjab for linguistic and religious separatism. In the fourth general election in February 1967, the Congress majority was greatly reduced when it secured only 54 percent of the parliamentary seats, and non-Congress ministries were established in Bihar, Kerala, Orissa, Madras, Punjab, and West Bengal the next month. A Congress-led coalition government collapsed in Uttar Pradesh, while in April Rajasthan was brought under President's Rule--direct central government rule (see The Executive, ch. 8). Seeking to eradicate poverty, Mrs. Gandhi pursued a vigorous policy in 1969 of land reform and placed a ceiling on personal income, private property, and corporate profits. She also nationalized the major banks, a bold step amidst a growing rift between herself and the party elders. The Congress expelled her for "indiscipline" on November 12, 1969, an action that split the party into two factions: the Congress (O)--for Organisation--under Desai, and the Congress (R)--for Requisition--under Gandhi. She continued as prime minister with support from communists, Sikhs, and regional parties. Gandhi campaigned fiercely on the platform "eliminate poverty" (garibi hatao ) during the fifth general election in March 1971, and the Congress (R) gained a large majority in Parliament against her former party leaders whose slogan was "eliminate Indira" (Indira hatao ). India's decisive victory over Pakistan in the third war over Kashmir in December 1971, and Gandhi's insistence that the 10 million refugees from Bangladesh be sent back to their country generated a national surge in her popularity, later confirmed by her party's gains in state elections in 1972. She had firmly established herself at the pinnacle of power, overcoming challenges from the Congress (O), the Supreme Court, and the state chief ministers in the early 1970s. The more solidified her monopoly of power became, the more egregious was her intolerance of criticisms, even when they were deserved. As head of her party and the government, Gandhi nominated and removed the chief ministers at will and frequently reshuffled the portfolios of her own cabinet members. Ignoring their obligations to their constituencies, party members competed with each other in parading their loyalty to Gandhi, whose personal approval alone seemed crucial to their survival. In August 1971, Gandhi signed the twenty-year Treaty of Peace, Friendship, and Cooperation with the Soviet Union because ties with the United States, which had improved in Nehru's later years, had eroded (see Russia, ch. 9). Neither Gandhi's consolidation of power, nor her imperious style of administration, nor even her rhetoric of radical reforms was enough to meet the deepening economic crisis spawned by the enormous cost of the 1971 war. A huge additional outlay was needed to manage the refugees, the crop failures in 1972 and 1973, the skyrocketing world oil prices in 1973-74, and the overall drop in industrial output despite a surplus of scientifically and technically trained personnel. No immediate sign of economic recovery or equity was visible despite a loan obtained from the International Monetary Fund (IMF--see Glossary) in 1974. Both Gandhi's office and character came under severe tests, beginning with railroad employee strikes, national civil disobedience advocated by J.P. Narayan, defeat of her party in Gujarat by a coalition of parties calling itself the Janata Morcha (People's Front), an all-party, no-confidence motion in Parliament, and, finally, a writ issued by the Allahabad High Court invalidating her 1971 election and making her ineligible to occupy her seat for six years. What had once seemed a remote possibility took place on June 25, 1975: the president declared an Emergency and the government suspended civil rights. Because the nation's president, Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed (1974-77), and Gandhi's own party members in Parliament were amenable to her personal influence, Gandhi had little trouble in pushing through amendments to the constitution that exonerated her from any culpability, declaring President's Rule in Gujarat and Tamil Nadu where anti-Indira parties ruled, and jailing thousands of her opponents. In her need to trust and confide in someone during this extremely trying period, she turned to her younger son, Sanjay, who became an enthusiastic advocate of the Emergency. Under his watchful eyes, forced sterilization as a means of birth control was imposed on the poor, increased numbers of urban squatters and slum dwellers in Delhi were evicted in the name of beautification projects, and disgruntled workers were either disciplined or their wages frozen. The Reign of Terror, as some called it, continued until January 18, 1977, when Gandhi suddenly relaxed the Emergency, announced the next general election in March, and released her opponents from prison. With elections only two months away, both J.P. Narayan and Morarji Desai reactivated the multiparty front, which campaigned as the Janata Party and rode anti-Emergency sentiment to secure a clear majority in the Lok Sabha (House of the People), the lower house of Parliament (see The Legislature, ch. 8). Desai, a conservative Brahman, became India's fourth prime minister (1977-79), but his government, from its inception, became notorious for its factionalism and furious internal competition. As it promised, the Janata government restored freedom and democracy, but its inability to effect sound reforms or ameliorate poverty left people disillusioned. Desai lost the support of Janata's left-wing parties by the early summer of 1979, and several secular and liberal politicians abandoned him altogether, leaving him without a parliamentary majority. A no-confidence motion was about to be introduced in Parliament in July 1979, but he resigned his office; Desai's government was replaced by a coalition led by Chaudhury Charan Singh (prime minister in 1979-80). Although Singh's life-long ambition had been to become prime minister, his age and inefficiency were used against him, and his attempts at governing India proved futile; new elections were announced in January 1980. Gandhi and her party, renamed Congress (I)--I for Indira--campaigned on the slogan "Elect a Government That Works!" and regained power. Sanjay Gandhi was elected to the Lok Sabha. Unlike during the Emergency, when India registered significant economic and industrial progress, Gandhi's return to power was hindered by a series of woes and tragedies, beginning with Sanjay's death in June 1980 while attempting to perform stunts in his private airplane. Secessionist forces in Punjab and in the northeast and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in December 1979 consumed her energy. She began to involve the armed forces in resolving violent domestic conflicts between 1980 and 1984. In May 1984, Sikh extremists occupied the Golden Temple in Amritsar, converting it into a haven for terrorists. Gandhi responded in early June when she launched Operation Bluestar, which killed and wounded hundreds of soldiers, insurgents, and civilians (see Insurgent Movements and External Subversion, ch. 10). Guarding against further challenges to her power, she removed the chief ministers of Jammu and Kashmir and Andhra Pradesh just months before her assassination by her Sikh bodyguards on October 31, 1984. The news of Indira Gandhi's assassination plunged New Delhi and other parts of India into anti-Sikh riots for three days; several thousand Sikhs were killed. Rajiv Gandhi When Rajiv Gandhi, Indira's eldest son, reluctantly consented to run for his brother's vacant Lok Sabha seat in 1980, and when he later took over the leadership of the Congress youth wing, becoming prime minister was the last thing on his mind; equally, his mother had her own misgivings about whether Rajiv would bravely "take the brutalities and the ruthlessness of politics." Yet on the day Indira was assassinated, Rajiv was sworn in as prime minister at the age of forty. He brought into politics energy, enthusiasm, and vision--qualities badly needed to lead the divided country. Moreover, his looks, personal charm, and reputation as "Mr. Clean" were assets that won him many friends in India and abroad, especially in the United States. Rajiv also had a clear mandate to rule the country with an overwhelming majority in Parliament. Rajiv seemed to have understood the magnitude of the most critical and urgent problems that faced the nation when he assumed office. As Paul H. Kreisberg, a former United States foreign service officer, put it, Rajiv was faced with an unenviable four-pronged challenge: resolving political and religious violence in Punjab and the northeast; reforming the demoralized Congress (I), which was often identified with the interests of the upper and upper-middle classes; reenergizing the sagging economy in terms of productivity and budget control; and reducing tensions with neighbors, especially Pakistan and Sri Lanka. As Rajiv tackled these issues with singular determination, there was optimism and hope about the future of India. Between 1985 and 1987, temporary calm was restored by accommodating demands for regional control in the northeast and by granting more concessions to Punjab. Although Rajiv acknowledged the gradual attrition of the Congress, he was unwilling to relinquish control of the leadership, tolerate "cliques," or conduct new elections for offices at the state and district levels. Economic reforms and incentives to private investors were introduced by easing government tax rates and licensing requirements, but officials manipulated the rules and frequently accepted bribes. These innovative measures also came under attack from business leaders, who for many years had controlled both markets and prices with little regard for quality. When the Ministry of Finance began its own investigation of tax and foreign-exchange evasion amounting to millions of dollars, many of India's leading families, including Rajiv's political allies, were found culpable. Despite these hindrances, Rajiv's fascination with electronics and telecommunications resulted in revamping the antiquated telephone systems to meet public demands. Collaboration with the United States and several European governments and corporations brought more investment in research in electronics and computer software. India's perennial, see-sawing tensions with Pakistan, whose potential nuclear-weapons capacity escalated concerns in the region, were ameliorated when the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC--see Glossary) was inaugurated in December 1985. Both nations signed an agreement in 1986 promising that neither would launch a first strike at the other's nuclear facilities. However, sporadic conflicts persist along the cease-fire line in Kashmir (see South Asia, ch. 9). Relations with Sri Lanka degenerated because of unresolved Sinhalese-Tamil controversies and continued guerrilla warfare by Tamil militants, under the leadership of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, who had bases in Tamil Nadu. Beginning in 1987, India's attempt to disarm and subdue the Tigers through intervention of the Indian Peace Keeping Force proved disastrous as thousands of Indian soldiers and Tamil militants were killed or wounded (see Peacekeeping Operations, ch. 10). Rajiv Gandhi's performance in the middle of his term in office was best summed up, as Kreisberg put it, as "good intentions, some progress, frequently weak implementation, and poor politics." Two major scandals, the "Spy" and the "Bofors" affairs, tarnished his reputation. In January 1985, Gandhi confirmed in Parliament the involvement of top government officials, their assistants, and businessmen in "a wide-ranging espionage network." The ring reportedly infiltrated the prime minister's office as early as 1982 when Indira was in power and sold defense and economic intelligence to foreign diplomats at the embassies of France, Poland and other East European countries, and the Soviet Union. Although more than twenty-four arrests were made and the diplomats involved were expelled, the Spy scandal remained a lingering embarrassment to Rajiv's administration. In 1986 India purchased US$1.3 billion worth of artillery pieces from the Swedish manufacturer A.B. Bofors, and months later a Swedish radio report remarked that Bofors had won the "biggest" export order by bribing Indian politicians and defense personnel. The revelation caught the nation's attention immediately because of the allegations that somehow Rajiv Gandhi and his friends were connected with the deal. When Vishwanath Pratap (V.P.) Singh, as minister of defence, investigated the alleged kickbacks, he was forced to resign, and he became Rajiv's Janata political rival. Despite relentless attacks and criticisms in the media as well as protests and resignations from cabinet members, Rajiv adamantly denied any role in the affair. But when he called parliamentary elections in November 1989, two months ahead of schedule, the opposition alliance, the National Front, vigorously campaigned on "removing corruption and restoring the dignity of national institutions," as did another opposition party, Janata Dal. Rajiv and his party won more seats in the election than any other party, but, being unable to form a government with a clear majority or a mandate, he resigned on November 29. Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by Sri Lankan terrorists on May 21, 1991, near Madras. The Gandhi era, as future events would prove, was over, at least for the near term (see Political Parties, ch. 8). The literature on Indian history in the English language alone is exhaustive as demonstrated in South Asian Civilizations: A Bibliographic Synthesis by Maureen L.P. Patterson. The most commonly used text is the two-volume A History of India by Romila Thapar (volume 1) and Percival Spear (volume 2). Monographs, such as Stanley Wolpert's A New History of India and Hermann Kulke and Dietmar Rothermund's A History of India, cover major epochs. Critical works by Gregory L. Possehl (The Harappan Civilization ), A.L. Basham (The Wonder That Was India ), Kallidaikurchi Aiyah Nilakanta Sastri (History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar ), and Burton Stein (Peasant, State, and Society in Medieval South India ) offer valuable insights as well as theoretical foundations for understanding India prior to Mughal rule. Essays in The Cambridge Economic History of India, edited by Tapan Raychaudhuri and Irfan Habib, provide a full account of life in India from the twelfth to the eighteenth centuries. The Mughal Empire, by John Richards, a volume in The New Cambridge History of India , reflects the current discussion on the dynamic nature and quality of the rulers; Irfan Habib's An Atlas of Mughal Empire and The Agrarian System of Mughal India, 1556-1707 focus on the administrative and economic aspects of the empire. Bamber Gascoigne's The Great Mughals has photographs along with texts from original sources. Several scholars have written about British activities from the mid-eighteenth century to independence and have incorporated new data garnered from various state archives and family histories as well as vernacular sources; their works reflect a deviation from the conventional approach of focusing on governor-generals or viceroys. They include C.A. Bayly's Rulers, Townsmen, and Bazaars, Robin Jeffrey's People, Princes, and Paramount Power , Judith M. Brown's Modern India: The Origins of an Asian Democracy , and Sumit Sarkar's Modern India, 1885-1947. The nationalist movement also has generated numerous histories, both authoritative and controversial. Anil Seal's The Emergence of Indian Nationalism was followed by a group representing the "Cambridge School" whose critical examination of the background of personalities and the issues that dominated Indian politics has spawned much discussion. The literature on Mahatma Gandhi has increased over the decades. His An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth is a leading source for the first half of his life, while Joan V. Bondurant's The Conquest of Violence and Erick H. Erikson's Gandhi's Truth offer probing insights into his strategies and personality. Postindependence India has been portrayed variously depending on the writer's ideology, use of sources, and analysis. Sarvepalli Gopal's Jawaharlal Nehru and Zaheer Masani's Indira Gandhi provide lucid accounts of the period from the perspectives of the prime ministers. Scathing criticism from the view of the common man is found in Dilip Hiro's Inside India Today and Arun Shourie's Symptoms of Fascism. Pupul Jayakar's Indira Gandhi: A Biography presents a balanced view. Although a critical biography on Rajiv Gandhi has yet to appear, a number of works, such as Rajiv Gandhi: Life and Message by Arun Bhattacharjee and Rajiv Gandhi and Parliament edited by C.K. Jain, provide valuable insights. (For further information and complete citations, see Bibliography.)

India Chapter 2. Geographic and Demographic Setting INDIA IS A COUNTRY of great diversity with a wide range of landform types, including major mountain ranges, deserts, rich agricultural plains, and hilly jungle regions. Indeed, the term Indian subcontinent aptly describes the enormous extent of the earth's surface that India occupies, and any attempt to generalize about its physiography is inaccurate. Diversity is also evident in the geographical distribution of India's ethnic and linguistic groups. In ancient times, the major river valleys of the Indo-Gangetic Plain of South Asia were among the great cradles of civilization in Asia, as were the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in West Asia and the Huang He (Yellow River) in East Asia. As a result of thousands of years of cultural and political expansion and amalgamation, contemporary India has come to include many different natural and cultural regions. The Himalayas (and the nations of Nepal and Bhutan) form India's northern frontier with China. Pakistan borders India to the west and Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) to the east. Although both were formerly part of the British Indian Empire, India and Pakistan became separate countries in 1947 and East Pakistan became independent Bangladesh in 1971. The boundaries of the Indian polity are not fully demarcated because of regional ethnic and political disputes and are the source of occasional tensions. When the 1991 national census was taken, India's population was approximately 846.3 million. The annual population growth rate from 1981 to 1991 was 2 percent. Accounting for only 2.4 percent of the world's landmass, India is home to 16 percent of the world's population. Every sixth person in the world in the early 1990s was an Indian. It is generally assumed that India's population will surpass the 1 billion mark some time before the next census in 2001. In July 1995, the population was estimated at 936.5 million. Some 38 percent of all Indians were officially listed as living below the poverty line in fiscal year (FY--see Glossary) 1991. This number represented an increase from the low mark of 26 percent in FY 1989, but the rise was believed to be only temporary by some observers. Although government-sponsored health clinics are widely available in the mid-1990s, their emphasis is on curative techniques rather than preventive medicine. However, the lack of such basic amenities as safe, potable water for much of the population is indicative of the severity of health problems. This situation has traditionally led most Indians to have large families as their only form of insurance against sickness and for their care in old age. Although family planning programs are becoming integrated with the programs of urban and rural health clinics, no official birth control programs have widespread support. The severity of the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) epidemic in India has become increasingly apparent to health specialists, but local awareness of the causes of and ways to prevent the spread of AIDS is growing slowly. Although many public schools are inadequate, improvements to the education system overall have been substantial since 1947. In the mid-1990s, however, only about 50 percent of children between the ages of six and fourteen are enrolled in schools. The goal of compulsory and free primary and middle school education is embodied in the Indian constitution but has been elusive. The National Policy on Education of 1986 sought to institutionalize universal primary education by setting 1990 as a target date for the education of all children up to eleven years of age. The ability of India's education system to meet this goal has been constrained by lack of adequate financial resources. Important achievements have been made, however, with implementation of the nonformal education system and adult education programs. Whereas public education is generally below standard, education standards in private schools are very high. There also are high standards among the elite institutions in the higher education system.

India Geography Principal Regions India's total land mass is 2,973,190 square kilometers and is divided into three main geological regions: the Indo-Gangetic Plain, the Himalayas, and the Peninsula region (see fig. 5). The Indo-Gangetic Plain and those portions of the Himalayas within India are collectively known as North India. South India consists of the peninsular region, often termed simply the Peninsula. On the basis of its physiography, India is divided into ten regions: the Indo-Gangetic Plain, the northern mountains of the Himalayas, the Central Highlands, the Deccan or Peninsular Plateau, the East Coast (Coromandel Coast in the south), the West Coast (Konkan, Kankara, and Malabar coasts), the Great Indian Desert (a geographic feature known as the Thar Desert in Pakistan) and the Rann of Kutch, the valley of the Brahmaputra in Assam, the northeastern hill ranges surrounding the Assam Valley, and the islands of the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal.

India Indo-Gangetic Plain In social and economic terms, the Indo-Gangetic Plain is the most important region of India. The plain is a great alluvial crescent stretching from the Indus River system in Pakistan to the Punjab Plain (in both Pakistan and India) and the Haryana Plain to the delta of the Ganga (or Ganges) in Bangladesh (where it is called the Padma). Topographically the plain is homogeneous, with only floodplain bluffs and other related features of river erosion and changes in river channels forming important natural features. Two narrow terrain belts, collectively known as the Terai, constitute the northern boundary of the Indo-Gangetic Plain. Where the foothills of the Himalayas encounter the plain, small hills known locally as ghar (meaning house in Hindi) have been formed by coarse sands and pebbles deposited by mountain streams. Groundwater from these areas flows on the surface where the plains begin and converts large areas along the rivers into swamps. The southern boundary of the plain begins along the edge of the Great Indian Desert in the state of Rajasthan and continues east along the base of the hills of the Central Highlands to the Bay of Bengal (see fig. 1). The hills, varying in elevation from 300 to 1,200 meters, lie on a general east-west axis. The Central Highlands are divided into northern and southern parts. The northern part is centered on the Aravalli Range of eastern Rajasthan. In the northern part of the state of Madhya Pradesh, the Malwa Plateau comprises the southern part of the Central Highlands and merges with the Vindhya Range to the south. The main rivers that flow through the southern part of the plain--the Narmada, the Tapti, and the Mahanadi--delineate North India from South India (see Rivers, this ch.). Some geographers subdivide the Indo-Gangetic Plain into three parts: the Indus Valley (mostly in Pakistan), the Punjab (divided between India and Pakistan) and Haryana plains, and the middle and lower Ganga. These regional distinctions are based primarily on the availability of water. By another definition, the Indo-Gangetic Plain is divided into two drainage basins by the Delhi Ridge; the western part consists of the Punjab Plain and the Haryana Plain, and the eastern part consists of the Ganga-Brahmaputra drainage systems. This divide is only 300 meters above sea level, contributing to the perception that the Indo-Gangetic Plain appears to be continuous between the two drainage basins. The Punjab Plain is centered in the land between five rivers: the Jhelum, the Chenab, the Ravi, the Beas, and the Sutlej. (The name Punjab comes from the Sanskrit pancha ab, meaning five waters or rivers.) Both the Punjab and Haryana plains are irrigated with water from the Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej rivers. The irrigation projects emanating from these rivers have led to a decrease in the flow of water reaching the lower drainage areas in the state of Punjab in India and the Indus Valley in Pakistan. The benefits that increased irrigation has brought to farmers in the state of Haryana are controversial in light of the effects that irrigation has had on agricultural life in the Punjab areas of both India and Pakistan. The middle Ganga extends from the Yamuna River in the west to the state of West Bengal in the east. The lower Ganga and the Assam Valley are more lush and verdant than the middle Ganga. The lower Ganga is centered in West Bengal from which it flows into Bangladesh and, after joining the Jamuna (as the lower reaches of the Brahmaputra are known in Bangladesh), forms the delta of the Ganga. The Brahmaputra (meaning son of Brahma) rises in Tibet (China's Xizang Autonomous Region) as the Yarlung Zangbo River, flows through Arunachal Pradesh and Assam, and then crosses into Bangladesh. Average annual rainfall increases moving west to east from approximately 600 millimeters in the Punjab Plain to 1,500 millimeters around the lower Ganga and Brahmaputra. The Himalayas The Himalayas, the highest mountain range in the world, extend along the northern frontiers of Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, and Burma. They were formed geologically as a result of the collision of the Indian subcontinent with Asia. This process of plate tectonics is ongoing, and the gradual northward drift of the Indian subcontinent still causes earthquakes (see Earthquakes, this ch.). Lesser ranges jut southward from the main body of the Himalayas at both the eastern and western ends. The Himalayan system, about 2,400 kilometers in length and varying in width from 240 to 330 kilometers, is made up of three parallel ranges--the Greater Himalayas, the Lesser Himalayas, and the Outer Himalayas--sometimes collectively called the Great Himalayan Range. The Greater Himalayas, or northern range, average approximately 6,000 meters in height and contain the three highest mountains on earth: Mount Everest (8,796 meters) on the China-Nepal border; K2 (8,611 meters, also known as Mount Godwin-Austen, and in China as Qogir Feng) in an area claimed by India, Pakistan, and China; and Kanchenjunga (8,598 meters) on the India-Nepal border. Many major mountains are located entirely within India, such as Nanda Devi (7,817 meters) in the state of Uttar Pradesh. The snow line averages 4,500 to 6,000 meters on the southern side of the Greater Himalayas and 5,500 to 6,000 on the northern side. Because of climatic conditions, the snow line in the eastern Himalayas averages 4,300 meters, while in the western Himalayas it averages 5,800 meters. The Lesser Himalayas, located in northwestern India in the states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, in north-central India in the state of Sikkim, and in northeastern India in the state of Arunachal Pradesh, range from 1,500 to 5,000 meters in height. Located in the Lesser Himalayas are the hill stations of Shimla (Simla) and Darjiling (Darjeeling). During the colonial period, these and other hill stations were used by the British as summer retreats to escape the intense heat of the plains. It is in this transitional vegetation zone that the contrasts between the bare southern slopes and the forested northern slopes become most noticeable. The Outer or Southern Himalayas, averaging 900 to 1,200 meters in elevation, lie between the Lesser Himalayas and the Indo-Gangetic Plain. In Himachal Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, this southernmost range is often referred to as the Siwalik Hills. It is possible to identify a fourth, and northernmost range, known as the Trans-Himalaya. This range is located entirely on the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau, north of the great west-to-east trending valley of the Yarlung Zangbo River. Although the Trans-Himalaya Range is divided from the Great Himalayan Range for most of its length, it merges with the Great Himalayan Range in the western section--the Karakoram Range--where India, Pakistan, and China meet. The southern slopes of each of the Himalayan ranges are too steep to accumulate snow or support much tree life; the northern slopes generally are forested below the snow line. Between the ranges are extensive high plateaus, deep gorges, and fertile valleys, such as the vales of Kashmir and Kulu. The Himalayas serve a very important purpose. They provide a physical screen within which the monsoon system operates and are the source of the great river systems that water the alluvial plains below (see Climate, this ch.). As a result of erosion, the rivers coming from the mountains carry vast quantities of silt that enrich the plains. The area of northeastern India adjacent to Burma and Bangladesh consists of numerous hill tracts, averaging between 1,000 and 2,000 meters in elevation, that are not associated with the eastern part of the Himalayas in Arunachal Pradesh. The Naga Hills, rising to heights of more than 3,000 meters, form the watershed between India and Burma. The Mizo Hills are the southern part of the northeastern ranges in India. The Garo, Khasi, and Jaintia hills are centered in the state of Meghalaya and, isolated from the northeastern ranges, divide the Assam Valley from Bangladesh to the south and west.

India The Peninsula The Peninsula proper is an old, geologically stable region with an average elevation between 300 and 1,800 meters. The Vindhya Range constitutes the main dividing line between the geological regions of the Indo-Gangetic Plain and the Peninsula. This range lies north of the Narmada River, and when viewed from there, it is possible to discern the prominent escarpments that rise between 800 and 1,400 meters. The Vindhya Range defines the north-central and northwestern boundary of the Peninsula, and the Chota Nagpur Plateau of southern Bihar forms the northeastern boundary. The uplifting of the plateau of the central Peninsula and its eastward tilt formed the Western Ghats, a line of hills running from the Tapti River south to the tip of the Peninsula. The Eastern Ghats mark the eastern end of the plateau; they begin in the hills of the Mahanadi River basin and converge with the Western Ghats at the Peninsula's southern tip. The interior of the Peninsula, south of the Narmada River, often termed the Deccan Plateau or simply the Deccan (from the Sanskrit daksina, meaning south), is a series of plateaus topped by rolling hills and intersected by many rivers. The plateau averages roughly 300 to 750 meters in elevation. Its major rivers--the Godavari, the Krishna, and the Kaveri--rise in the Western Ghats and flow eastward into the Bay of Bengal. The coastal plain borders the plateau. On the northwestern side, it is characterized by tidal marshes, drowned valleys, and estuaries; and in the south by lagoons, marshes, and beach ridges. Coastal plains on the eastern side are wider than those in the west; they are focused on large river deltas that serve as the centers of human settlement. Offshore Islands India's offshore islands, constituting roughly one-quarter of 1 percent of the nation's territory, lie in two groups located off the east and west coasts. The northernmost point of the union territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands lies 1,100 kilometers southeast of Calcutta. Situated in the Bay of Bengal in a chain stretching some 800 kilometers, the Andaman Islands comprise 204 islands and islets, and their topography is characterized by hills and narrow valleys. Although their location is tropical, the climate of the islands is tempered by sea breezes; rainfall is irregular. The Nicobar Islands, which are south of the Andaman Islands, comprise nineteen islands, some with flat, coral-covered surfaces and others with hills. The islands have a nearly equatorial climate, heavy rainfall, and high temperatures. The union territory of Lakshadweep (the name means 100,000 islands) in the Arabian Sea, comprises--from north to south--the Amindivi, Laccadive, Cannanore, and Minicoy islands. The islands, only ten of which are inhabited, are spread throughout an area of approximately 77,000 square kilometers. The islands are low-lying coral-based formations capable of limited cultivation.

India Coasts and Borders India has 7,000 kilometers of seacoast and shares 14,000 kilometers of land frontier with six nations: Pakistan, China, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, and Burma. India claims a twelve-nautical-mile territorial sea and an exclusive economic zone of 200 nautical miles. The territorial seas total 314,400 square kilometers. In the mid-1990s, India had boundary disagreements with Pakistan, China, and Bangladesh; border distances are therefore approximations. The partition of India in 1947 established two India-Pakistan frontiers: one on the west and one on the east (East Pakistan became Bangladesh in 1971). Disputes over the state of Jammu and Kashmir led to hostilities between India and Pakistan in 1947. The January 1, 1949, cease-fire arranged by the United Nations (UN) divided control of Kashmir. India controls Jammu, the Vale of Kashmir, and the capital, Srinagar, while Pakistan controls the mountainous area to the northwest. Neither side accepts a divided Kashmir as a permanent solution. India regards as illegal the 1963 China-Pakistan border agreement, which ceded to China a portion of Pakistani-controlled Kashmir. The two sides also dispute the Siachen Glacier near the Karakoram Pass. Further India-Pakistan hostilities in the 1965 war were settled through the Soviet-brokered Tashkent Declaration. In 1968 an international tribunal settled the dispute over the Rann of Kutch, a region of salt flats that is submerged for six months of the year in the state of Gujarat. The following year, a new border was demarcated that recognized Pakistan's claim to about 10 percent of the area. In 1992 India completed fencing most of the 547-kilometer-long section of the boundary between the Indian state of Punjab and the Pakistani province of Punjab. This measure was undertaken because of the continuing unrest in the region caused by both ethnic and religious disputes among the local Indian population and infiltrators from both sides of the frontier. The more rugged terrain north of Punjab along the entire cease-fire line between India and Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir continues to be subject to infiltration and local strife (see Political Issues, ch. 8; South Asia, ch. 9; Insurgent Movements and External Subversion, ch. 10). The 2,000-kilometer-long border with China has eastern, central, and western sections. In the western section, the border regions of Jammu and Kashmir have been the scene of conflicting claims since the nineteenth century. China has not accepted India's definitions of the boundary and has carried out defense and economic activities in parts of eastern Kashmir since the 1950s. In the 1960s, China finished construction of a motor road across Aksai Chin (a region under dispute between India and China), the main transportation route linking China's Xinjiang-Uygur Autonomous Region and Tibet. In the eastern section, the China-India boundary follows the McMahon Line laid down in 1914 by Sir Arthur Henry McMahon, the British plenipotentiary to a conference of Indian, British, and Chinese representatives at Simla (now known as Shimla, Himachal Pradesh). The Simla Convention, as the agreement is known, set the boundary between India and Tibet. Although the British and Tibetan representatives signed the agreement on July 3, 1914, the Chinese delegate declined to sign. The line agreed to by Britain and Tibet generally follows the crest of the eastern Himalayas from Bhutan to Burma. It serves as a legal boundary, although the Chinese have never formally accepted it. China continued to claim roughly the entire area of Arunachal Pradesh south of the McMahon Line in the early 1990s. In 1962 China and India fought a brief border war in this region, and China occupied certain areas south of the line for several months (see Nehru's Legacy, ch 1; The Experience of Wars, ch. 10). India and China took a major step toward resolving their border disputes in 1981 by opening negotiations on the issue. Agreements and talks held in 1993 and 1995 eased tensions along the India-China border (see China, ch. 9). Sikkim, which became an Indian state in 1975, forms the small central section of India's northern border and lies between Nepal and Bhutan. India's border with Bangladesh is essentially the same as it was before East Pakistan became Bangladesh in 1971. Some minor disputes continued to occur over the size and number of the numerous enclaves each country had on either side of the border. These enclaves were established during the period from 1661 to 1712 during fighting between the Mughal Empire and the principality of Cooch Behar. This complex pattern of enclaves was preserved by the British administration and passed on intact to India and Pakistan. The 1,300-kilometer frontier with Burma has been delimited but not completely demarcated. On March 10, 1967, the Indian and Burmese governments signed a bilateral treaty delimiting the boundary in detail. India also has a maritime boundary with Burma in the area of the northern Andaman Islands and Burma's Coco Islands in the Bay of Bengal. India's borders with Nepal and Bhutan have remained unchanged since the days of British rule. In 1977 India signed an accord with Indonesia demarcating the entire maritime boundary between the two countries. One year earlier, a similar accord was signed with the Maldives. Rivers The country's rivers are classified as Himalayan, peninsular, coastal, and inland-drainage basin rivers. Himalayan rivers are snow fed and maintain a high to medium rate of flow throughout the year. The heavy annual average rainfall levels in the Himalayan catchment areas further add to their rates of flow. During the monsoon months of June to September, the catchment areas are prone to flooding. The volume of the rain-fed peninsular rivers also increases. Coastal streams, especially in the west, are short and episodic. Rivers of the inland system, centered in western Rajasthan state, are few and frequently disappear in years of scant rainfall. The majority of the South Asia's major rivers flow through broad, shallow valleys and drain into the Bay of Bengal. The Ganga River basin, India's largest, includes approximately 25 percent of the nation's area; it is bounded by the Himalayas in the north and the Vindhya Range to the south. The Ganga has its source in the glaciers of the Greater Himalayas, which form the frontier between India and Tibet in northwestern Uttar Pradesh. Many Indians believe that the legendary source of the Ganga, and several other important Asian rivers, lies in the sacred Mapam Yumco Lake (known to the Indians as Manasarowar Lake) of western Tibet located approximately 75 kilometers northeast of the India-China-Nepal tripoint. In the northern part of the Ganga River basin, practically all of the tributaries of the Ganga are perennial streams. However, in the southern part, located in the states of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, many of the tributaries are not perennial. The Brahmaputra has the greatest volume of water of all the rivers in India because of heavy annual rainfall levels in its catchment basin. At Dibrugarh the annual rainfall averages 2,800 millimeters, and at Shillong it averages 2,430 millimeters. Rising in Tibet, the Brahmaputra flows south into Arunachal Pradesh after breaking through the Great Himalayan Range and dropping rapidly in elevation. It continues to fall through gorges impassable by man in Arunachal Pradesh until finally entering the Assam Valley where it meanders westward on its way to joining the Ganga in Bangladesh. The Mahanadi, rising in the state of Madhya Pradesh, is an important river in the state of Orissa. In the upper drainage basin of the Mahanadi, which is centered on the Chhattisgarh Plain, periodic droughts contrast with the situation in the delta region where floods may damage the crops in what is known as the rice bowl of Orissa. Hirakud Dam, constructed in the middle reaches of the Mahanadi, has helped in alleviating these adverse effects by creating a reservoir. The source of the Godavari is northeast of Bombay (Mumbai in the local Marathi language) in the state of Maharashtra, and the river follows a southeasterly course for 1,400 kilometers to its mouth on the Andhra Pradesh coast. The Godavari River basin area is second in size only to the Ganga; its delta on the east coast is also one of the country's main rice-growing areas. It is known as the "Ganga of the South," but its discharge, despite the large catchment area, is moderate because of the medium levels of annual rainfall, for example, about 700 millimeters at Nasik and 1,000 millimeters at Nizamabad. The Krishna rises in the Western Ghats and flows east into the Bay of Bengal. It has a poor flow because of low levels of rainfall in its catchment area--660 millimeters annually at Pune. Despite its low discharge, the Krishna is the third longest river in India. The source of the Kaveri is in the state of Karnataka, and the river flows southeastward. The waters of the river have been a source of irrigation since antiquity; in the early 1990s, an estimated 95 percent of the Kaveri was diverted for agricultural use before emptying into the Bay of Bengal. The delta of the Kaveri is so mature that the main river has almost lost its link with the sea, as the Kollidam, the distributary of the Kaveri, bears most of the flow. The Narmada and the Tapti are the only major rivers that flow into the Arabian Sea. The Narmada rises in Madhya Pradesh and crosses the state, passing swiftly through a narrow valley between the Vindhya Range and spurs of the Satpura Range. It flows into the Gulf of Khambhat (or Cambay). The shorter Tapti follows a generally parallel course, between eighty kilometers and 160 kilometers to the south of the Narmada, flowing through the states of Maharashtra and Gujarat on its way into the Gulf of Khambhat. Harnessing the waters of the major rivers that flow from the Himalayas is an issue of great concern in Nepal, India, and Bangladesh. Issues of flood control, drought prevention, hydroelectric power generation, job creation, and environmental quality--but also traditional lifestyles and cultural continuities--are at stake as these countries grapple with the political realities, both domestic and international, of altering the flow of the Ganga and Brahmaputra. Although India, Nepal, and Bangladesh seek to alleviate problems through cooperation over Himalayan rivers, irrigation projects altering the flow of Punjab-area rivers are likely to continue to be an irritant between India and Pakistan--countries between which cooperation is less likely to occur--in the second half of the 1990s. Internally, large dam projects, such as one on the Narmada River, are also controversial (see Development Programs, ch. 7).

India Climate The Himalayas isolate South Asia from the rest of Asia. South of these mountains, the climate, like the terrain, is highly diverse, but some geographers give it an overall, one-word characterization--violent. What geographers have in mind is the abruptness of change and the intensity of effect when change occurs--the onset of the monsoon rains, sudden flooding, rapid erosion, extremes of temperature, tropical storms, and unpredictable fluctuations in rainfall. Broadly speaking, agriculture in India is constantly challenged by weather uncertainty. It is possible to identify seasons, although these do not occur uniformly throughout South Asia. The Indian Meteorological Service divides the year into four seasons: the relatively dry, cool winter from December through February; the dry, hot summer from March through May; the southwest monsoon from June through September when the predominating southwest maritime winds bring rains to most of the country; and the northeast, or retreating, monsoon of October and November. The southwest monsoon blows in from sea to land. The southwest monsoon usually breaks on the west coast early in June and reaches most of South Asia by the first week in July (see fig. 6). Because of the critical importance of monsoon rainfall to agricultural production, predictions of the monsoon's arrival date are eagerly watched by government planners and agronomists who need to determine the optimal dates for plantings. Theories about why monsoons occur vary. Conventionally, scientists have attributed monsoons to thermal changes in the Asian landmass. Contemporary theory cites other factors--the barrier of the Himalayas and the sun's northward tilt (which shifts the jet stream north). The hot air that rises over South Asia during April and May creates low-pressure areas into which the cooler, moisture-bearing winds from the Indian Ocean flow.These circumstances set off a rush of moisture-rich air from the southern seas over South Asia. The southwest monsoon occurs in two branches. After breaking on the southern part of the Peninsula in early June, the branch known as the Arabian Sea monsoon reaches Bombay around June 10, and it has settled over most of South Asia by late June, bringing cooler but more humid weather. The other branch, known as the Bay of Bengal monsoon, moves northward in the Bay of Bengal and spreads over most of Assam by the first week of June. On encountering the barrier of the Great Himalayan Range, it is deflected westward along the Indo-Gangetic Plain toward New Delhi. Thereafter the two branches merge as a single current bringing rains to the remaining parts of North India in July. The withdrawal of the monsoon is a far more gradual process than its onset. It usually withdraws from northwest India by the beginning of October and from the remaining parts of the country by the end of November. During this period, the northeast winds contribute to the formation of the northeast monsoon over the southern half of the Peninsula in October. It is also known as the retreating monsoon because it follows in the wake of the southwest monsoon. The states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Kerala receive most of their rainfall from the northeast monsoon during November and December. However, 80 percent of the country receives most of its rainfall from the southwest monsoon from June to September. South Asia is subject to a wide range of climates--from the subfreezing Himalayan winters to the tropical climate of the Coromandel Coast and from the damp, rainy climate in the states of Assam and West Bengal to the arid Great Indian Desert. Based on precipitation and temperature, experts define seven climatic regions: the Himalayas, Assam and West Bengal, the Indo-Gangetic Plain, the Western Ghats and coast, the Deccan (the interior of the Peninsula south of the Narmada River), and the Eastern Ghats and coast (see fig. 7). In the Himalayan region, climate varies with altitude. At about 2,000 meters, the average summer temperature is near 18°C; at 4,500 meters, it is rarely above 0°C. In the valleys, summer temperatures reach between 32°C and 38°C. The eastern Himalayas receive as much as 1,000 to 2,000 millimeters more precipitation than do the Western Himalayas, and floods are common. Assam and West Bengal are extremely wet and humid. The southeastern part of the state of Meghalaya has the world's highest average annual rainfall, some 10,900 millimeters. The Indo-Gangetic Plain has a varied climatic pattern. Rainfall and temperature ranges vary significantly between the eastern and western extremes (see table 2, Appendix). In the Peninsula region, the Western Ghats and the adjoining coast receive heavy rains during the southwest monsoon. Rainfall in the peninsular interior averages about 650 millimeters a year, although there is considerable variation in different localities and from year to year. The Eastern Ghats receive less rainfall than the western coast. Rainfall there ranges between 900 and 1,300 millimeters annually. The northern Deccan region, bounded by the Western Ghats, the Vindhya Range and the Narmada River to the north, and the Eastern Ghats, receives most of its annual rainfall during the summer monsoon season. The southern Deccan area is in a "rain shadow" and receives only fifty to 1,000 millimeters of rainfall a year. Temperature ranges are wide--from some 15°C to 38°C--making this one of India's most comfortable climatic areas. Throughout most of non-Himalayan India, the heat can be oppressive and sometimes, such as was experienced in 1994 and 1995, literally can be a killer. Hot, relatively dry weather is the norm before the southwest monsoons, which, along with heavy rains and high humidity, bring cloud cover that lowers temperatures slightly. Temperatures reach the upper 30s°C and can reach as high as 48°C during the day in the premonsoon months.

India Earthquakes India has experienced some of the world's most devastating earthquakes. Some 19,000 people died in Kangra District, northeastern Himachal Pradesh, in April 1905, and more than 30,000 died in Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh in September 1993. Although resulting in less extensive loss of life, major earthquakes occurred in Assam in 1950 (more than 1,500 killed) and in Uttarkashi District, Uttar Pradesh, in 1991 (1,600 killed). Data as of September 1995

History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 Principal sites of the Indus Civilization. The European scholars who reconstructed early Indian history in the 19th century regarded it as essentially static and Indian society as concerned only with things spiritual. Indologists, such as the German Max Müller, relied heavily on the Sanskritic tradition and saw Indian society as an idyllic village culture emphasizing qualities of passivity, meditation, and otherworldliness. In sharp contrast was the approach of the British historian James Mill and the utilitarians, who condemned Indian culture as irrational and inimical to human progress. Mill first formulated a periodization of Indian history into Hindu, Muslim, and British periods, a scheme that, while still commonly used, is now controversial. During the 19th century, direct contact with Indian institutions through administration, together with the utilization of new evidence from recently deciphered inscriptions, numismatics, and local archives, provided fresh insights. Nationalist Indian historians of the early 20th century tended to exaggerate the glory of the past but nevertheless introduced controversy into historical interpretation, which in turn resulted in more precise studies of Indian institutions. In recent decades, historians have reconstructed in greater detail the social, economic, and cultural history of the subcontinent.

A major change in the interpretation of Indian history has been a questioning of an older notion of Oriental despotism as the determining force. Arising out of a traditional European perspective on Asia, this image of despotism grew to vast proportions in the 19th century and provided an intellectual justification for colonialism and imperialism. Its deterministic assumptions clouded the understanding of early interrelationships among Indian political forms, economic patterns, and social structures. A considerable change is noticeable during this period in the role of institutions. Clan-based societies had assemblies, whose political role changed with the transformation of tribe into state and with oligarchic and monarchical governments. Centralized imperialism, which was attempted in the Mauryan Period (c. 325–185 BC), gave way gradually to decentralized administration and to what has been called feudalistic pattern in the Post-Gupta Period—i.e., from the 7th century AD. Although the village as an administrative and social unit remained constant, its relationship with the mainstream of history varied. The concept of divine kingship was known but rarely taken seriously, the claim to the status of the caste of royalty becoming more important. Because conformity to the social order had precedence over allegiance to the state, the idea of representation found expression not so much in political institutions as in caste and village assemblies. The pendulum of politics swung from large to small kingdoms, with the former attempting to establish empires—the sole successful attempt being that of the Mauryan. Thus, true centralization was rare, because local forces often determined historical events. Although imperial or near-imperial periods were marked by attempts at the evolution of uniform cultures, the periods of smaller kingdoms (often referred to as the Dark Ages by earlier historians) were more creative at the local level and witnessed significant changes in society and religion. It was also these small kingdoms that often boasted the most elaborate and impressive monuments. The major economic patterns were those relating to land and to commerce. The transition from tribal to peasant society was a continuing process, with the gradual clearing of wasteland and the expansion of the village economy based on plow agriculture. Recognition of the importance of land revenue coincided with the emergence of the imperial system in the 4th century BC; and from this period onward, although the imperial structure did not last long, land revenue became central to the administration and income of the state. Frequent mentions of individual ownership, references to crown lands, numerous land grants to religious and secular grantees in the Post-Gupta Period, and detailed discussion in legal sources of the rights of purchase, bequest, and sale of land all clearly indicate that private ownership of land existed. Much emphasis has been laid on the state control of the irrigation system; yet a systematic study of irrigation in India reveals that it was generally privately controlled and that it serviced small areas of land. When the state built canals, they were mainly in the areas of the winter and summer monsoons and where village assemblies played a dominant part in revenue and general administration, as, for example, in the Cola (Chola) kingdom of South India. The urban economy was crucial to the rise of civilization in the Indus Valley (c. 2600–2000 BC). Later, the 1st millennium BC saw an urban civilization in the Ganges Valley and still later in coastal South India. The emergence of towns was based on administrative needs, the requirements of trade, and pilgrimage centres. In the 1st millennium AD, when commerce expanded to include trade with western Asia, the eastern Mediterranean, and Central and Southeast Asia, revenue from trade contributed substantially to the economies of the participating kingdoms, as indeed Indian religion and culture played a significant part in the cultural evolution of Central and Southeast Asia. Gold coins were issued for the first time by the Kusanas and in large quantity by the Guptas; both kingdoms were active in foreign trade. Gold was imported from Central Asia and Rome and later perhaps from eastern Africa because, in spite of India's recurring association with gold, its sources were limited. Expanding trade encouraged the opening up of new routes, and this, coupled with the expanding village economy, led to a marked increase of knowledge about the subcontinent during the Post-Mauryan Period. With increasing trade, guilds became more powerful in the towns. Members of the guilds participated in the administration, were associated with politics, and controlled the development of trade through merchant embassies sent to places as far afield as Rome and China. Not least, guilds and merchant associations held envied and respectable positions as donors of religious institutions. The structure of Indian society was characterized by caste. The distinguishing features of a caste society were endogamous kinship groups (jati) arranged in a hierarchy of ritual ranking, based on notions of pollution and purity, with an intermeshing of service relationships and an adherence to geographic location. There was some coincidence between caste and access to economic resources. Although ritual hierarchy was unchanging, there appears to have been mobility within the framework. Migrations of peoples both within the subcontinent and from outside encouraged social mobility and change. The nucleus of the social structure was the family, with the pattern of kinship relations varying from region to region. In the more complex urban structure, occupational guilds occasionally took on jati functions, and there was a continual emergence of new social and professional groups. Religion in early Indian history did not constitute a monolithic force. Even when the royalty attempted to encourage certain religions, the idea of a state religion was absent. In the main, there were three levels of religious expression. The most widespread was the worship of local cult deities vaguely associated with major deities, as seen in fertility cults, in the worship of mother goddesses, in the Sakta-Sakti cult, and in Tantrism. Less widespread but popular, particularly in the urban areas, were the more puritanical sects of Buddhism and Jainism and the bhakti tradition of Hinduism. A third level included classical Hinduism and more abstract levels of Buddhism and Jainism, with an emphasis on the major deities in the case of the first and on the teachings of the founders in the case of the latter two. It was this level, endorsed by affluent patronage, that provided the base for the initial institutionalization of religion. But the three levels were not isolated; the shadow of the third fell over the first two, the more homely rituals and beliefs of which often crept into the third. This was the case particularly with Hinduism, the very flexibility of which was largely responsible for its survival. Forms of Buddhism, ranging from an emphasis on the constant refinement of doctrine, on the one hand, to an incorporation of magical fertility cults in its beliefs, on the other, faded out toward the end of this period. Sanskrit literature and the building of Hindu and Buddhist temples and sculpture both reached apogees in this period. Although literary works in Sanskrit continued to be written and temples were built in later periods, the achievement was never again as inspiring.

History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 Principal sites of the Indus Civilization. The European scholars who reconstructed early Indian history in the 19th century regarded it as essentially static and Indian society as concerned only with things spiritual. Indologists, such as the German Max Müller, relied heavily on the Sanskritic tradition and saw Indian society as an idyllic village culture emphasizing qualities of passivity, meditation, and otherworldliness. In sharp contrast was the approach of the British historian James Mill and the utilitarians, who condemned Indian culture as irrational and inimical to human progress. Mill first formulated a periodization of Indian history into Hindu, Muslim, and British periods, a scheme that, while still commonly used, is now controversial. During the 19th century, direct contact with Indian institutions through administration, together with the utilization of new evidence from recently deciphered inscriptions, numismatics, and local archives, provided fresh insights. Nationalist Indian historians of the early 20th century tended to exaggerate the glory of the past but nevertheless introduced controversy into historical interpretation, which in turn resulted in more precise studies of Indian institutions. In recent decades, historians have reconstructed in greater detail the social, economic, and cultural history of the subcontinent.

A major change in the interpretation of Indian history has been a questioning of an older notion of Oriental despotism as the determining force. Arising out of a traditional European perspective on Asia, this image of despotism grew to vast proportions in the 19th century and provided an intellectual justification for colonialism and imperialism. Its deterministic assumptions clouded the understanding of early interrelationships among Indian political forms, economic patterns, and social structures. A considerable change is noticeable during this period in the role of institutions. Clan-based societies had assemblies, whose political role changed with the transformation of tribe into state and with oligarchic and monarchical governments. Centralized imperialism, which was attempted in the Mauryan Period (c. 325–185 BC), gave way gradually to decentralized administration and to what has been called feudalistic pattern in the Post-Gupta Period—i.e., from the 7th century AD. Although the village as an administrative and social unit remained constant, its relationship with the mainstream of history varied. The concept of divine kingship was known but rarely taken seriously, the claim to the status of the caste of royalty becoming more important. Because conformity to the social order had precedence over allegiance to the state, the idea of representation found expression not so much in political institutions as in caste and village assemblies. The pendulum of politics swung from large to small kingdoms, with the former attempting to establish empires—the sole successful attempt being that of the Mauryan. Thus, true centralization was rare, because local forces often determined historical events. Although imperial or near-imperial periods were marked by attempts at the evolution of uniform cultures, the periods of smaller kingdoms (often referred to as the Dark Ages by earlier historians) were more creative at the local level and witnessed significant changes in society and religion. It was also these small kingdoms that often boasted the most elaborate and impressive monuments. The major economic patterns were those relating to land and to commerce. The transition from tribal to peasant society was a continuing process, with the gradual clearing of wasteland and the expansion of the village economy based on plow agriculture. Recognition of the importance of land revenue coincided with the emergence of the imperial system in the 4th century BC; and from this period onward, although the imperial structure did not last long, land revenue became central to the administration and income of the state. Frequent mentions of individual ownership, references to crown lands, numerous land grants to religious and secular grantees in the Post-Gupta Period, and detailed discussion in legal sources of the rights of purchase, bequest, and sale of land all clearly indicate that private ownership of land existed. Much emphasis has been laid on the state control of the irrigation system; yet a systematic study of irrigation in India reveals that it was generally privately controlled and that it serviced small areas of land. When the state built canals, they were mainly in the areas of the winter and summer monsoons and where village assemblies played a dominant part in revenue and general administration, as, for example, in the Cola (Chola) kingdom of South India. The urban economy was crucial to the rise of civilization in the Indus Valley (c. 2600–2000 BC). Later, the 1st millennium BC saw an urban civilization in the Ganges Valley and still later in coastal South India. The emergence of towns was based on administrative needs, the requirements of trade, and pilgrimage centres. In the 1st millennium AD, when commerce expanded to include trade with western Asia, the eastern Mediterranean, and Central and Southeast Asia, revenue from trade contributed substantially to the economies of the participating kingdoms, as indeed Indian religion and culture played a significant part in the cultural evolution of Central and Southeast Asia. Gold coins were issued for the first time by the Kusanas and in large quantity by the Guptas; both kingdoms were active in foreign trade. Gold was imported from Central Asia and Rome and later perhaps from eastern Africa because, in spite of India's recurring association with gold, its sources were limited. Expanding trade encouraged the opening up of new routes, and this, coupled with the expanding village economy, led to a marked increase of knowledge about the subcontinent during the Post-Mauryan Period. With increasing trade, guilds became more powerful in the towns. Members of the guilds participated in the administration, were associated with politics, and controlled the development of trade through merchant embassies sent to places as far afield as Rome and China. Not least, guilds and merchant associations held envied and respectable positions as donors of religious institutions. The structure of Indian society was characterized by caste. The distinguishing features of a caste society were endogamous kinship groups (jati) arranged in a hierarchy of ritual ranking, based on notions of pollution and purity, with an intermeshing of service relationships and an adherence to geographic location. There was some coincidence between caste and access to economic resources. Although ritual hierarchy was unchanging, there appears to have been mobility within the framework. Migrations of peoples both within the subcontinent and from outside encouraged social mobility and change. The nucleus of the social structure was the family, with the pattern of kinship relations varying from region to region. In the more complex urban structure, occupational guilds occasionally took on jati functions, and there was a continual emergence of new social and professional groups. Religion in early Indian history did not constitute a monolithic force. Even when the royalty attempted to encourage certain religions, the idea of a state religion was absent. In the main, there were three levels of religious expression. The most widespread was the worship of local cult deities vaguely associated with major deities, as seen in fertility cults, in the worship of mother goddesses, in the Sakta-Sakti cult, and in Tantrism. Less widespread but popular, particularly in the urban areas, were the more puritanical sects of Buddhism and Jainism and the bhakti tradition of Hinduism. A third level included classical Hinduism and more abstract levels of Buddhism and Jainism, with an emphasis on the major deities in the case of the first and on the teachings of the founders in the case of the latter two. It was this level, endorsed by affluent patronage, that provided the base for the initial institutionalization of religion. But the three levels were not isolated; the shadow of the third fell over the first two, the more homely rituals and beliefs of which often crept into the third. This was the case particularly with Hinduism, the very flexibility of which was largely responsible for its survival. Forms of Buddhism, ranging from an emphasis on the constant refinement of doctrine, on the one hand, to an incorporation of magical fertility cults in its beliefs, on the other, faded out toward the end of this period. Sanskrit literature and the building of Hindu and Buddhist temples and sculpture both reached apogees in this period. Although literary works in Sanskrit continued to be written and temples were built in later periods, the achievement was never again as inspiring.

History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > C. 1500–c. 500 BC > Early Vedic Period In addition to the archaeological legacy discussed above, there remains from this period the earliest literary record of Indian culture, the Vedas. Composed in archaic, or Vedic, Sanskrit, generally dated between 1500 and 800 BC, and transmitted orally, the Vedas comprise four major texts—the Rig- (Rg-), Sama-, Yajur-, and Atharvavedas. Of these, the Rigveda is believed to be the earliest. The texts consist of hymns, charms, spells, and ritual observations current among the Indo-European-speaking people known as Aryans (from the Sanskrit arya, “noble”), who entered India from the Iranian regions.

Theories concerning the origins of the Aryans, whose language is also called Aryan, relate to the question of what has been called the Indo-European homeland. In the 17th and 18th centuries AD, European scholars who first studied Sanskrit were struck by the similarity in its syntax and vocabulary to Greek and Latin. This resulted in the theory that there had been a common ancestry for these and other related languages, which came to be called the Indo-European group of languages. This, in turn, resulted in the notion that the Indo-European-speaking people had had a common homeland from which they had migrated to various parts of Asia and Europe. The theory stirred unlimited speculation, which continues today, regarding the original homeland and the date of the dispersal from it. The study of Vedic India is still beset by “the Aryan problem,” which often clouds the genuine search for historical insight into this period. That there was a migration of Indo-European speakers, possibly in waves, dating from the 2nd millennium BC, is clear from archaeological and epigraphic evidence in western Asia. Mesopotamia witnessed the arrival, in about 1760 BC, of the Kassites, who introduced the horse and the chariot and bore Indo-European names. A treaty from about 1400 BC between the Hittites, who had arrived in Anatolia at about the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC, and the Mitanni empire invoked four deities—Indara, Uruvna, Mitira, and the Nasatyas (names that occur in the Rigveda as Indra, Varuna, Mitra, and the Asvins). An inscription at BoYazköy in Anatolia of about the same date contains Indo-European technical terms pertaining to the training of horses, which suggests cultural origins in Central Asia or the southern Russian steppes. Clay tablets dating to about 1400 BC, written at Tell El-Amarna in Akkadian cuneiform, mention names of princes that are also Indo-European. Nearer India, the Iranian Plateau was subject to a similar migration. Comparison of Iranian Aryan literature with the Vedas reveals striking correspondences. Possibly a branch of the Iranian Aryans migrated to northern India and settled in the Sapta Sindhu region, extending from the Kabul River in the north to the Sarasvati and Upper Ganges-Yamuna Doab in the south. The Sarasvati, the sacred river at the time, is thought to have dried up during the later Vedic Period. Conceived as a goddess, it was personified in later Hinduism as the inventor of spoken and written Sanskrit and the consort of Brahma, promulgator of the Vedas. It was in the Sapta Sindhu region that the majority of the hymns of the Rigveda were composed. The Rigveda is divided into 10 mandalas (books), of which the 10th is believed to be somewhat later than the others. Each mandala consists of a number of hymns, and most mandalas are ascribed to priestly families. The texts include invocations to the gods, ritual hymns, battle hymns, and narrative dialogues. The 9th mandala is a collection of all the hymns dedicated to soma, the unidentified hallucinogenic juice that was drunk on ritual occasions. Few events of political importance are related in the hymns. Perhaps the most impressive is a description of the battle of the 10 chiefs or kings: when Sudas, the king of the preeminent Bharatas of southern Punjab, replaced his priest Visvamitra with Vasistha, Visvamitra organized a confederacy of 10 tribes, including the Puru, Yadu, Turvasas, Anu, and Druhyu, which went to war against Sudas. The Bharatas survived and continued to play an important role in historical tradition. In the Rigveda, the head of a clan is called the raja; this term has commonly been translated as “king,” but recent scholarship suggests “chief” as more appropriate in this early context. If such a distinction is recognized, the entire corpus of Vedic literature can be interpreted as recording the gradual evolution of the concept of kingship from earlier clan organization. Among the clans there is little distinction between Aryan and non-Aryan, but the hymns refer to a people, called the dasas, who are said to have had an alien language and a dark complexion and to worship strange gods. Some dasas were rich in cattle and lived in fortified places (pur) that were often attacked by the god Indra. In addition to the dasas, there were the wealthy Panis, who were hostile and stole cattle. The Early Vedic was the period of transition from nomadic pastoralism to settled village communities intermixing pastoral and agrarian economies. Cattle were initially the dominant commodity, as indicated by the use of the word gotra (“cowpen”) to signify the endogamous kinship group and gavisti (“searching for cows”) to denote war. A patriarchal extended family structure gave rise to the practice of niyoga (“levirate”), which permitted a widow to marry her husband's brother. A community of families constituted a grama. The term vis is generally interpreted to mean “clan.” Clan assemblies appear to have been frequent in the early stages. Various categories of assemblies are mentioned, such as vidatha, samiti, and sabha, although the precise distinctions among these categories are not clear. The clan also gathered for the yajña, the Vedic sacrifice conducted by the priest, whose ritual actions ensured prosperity and imbued the chief with valour. The chief was primarily a war leader with responsibility for protecting the clan, for which function he received a bali (“tribute”). Punishment was exacted according to a principle resembling the wergild (“man payment”) of ancient Germanic law, whereby the social rank of a wronged or slain man determined the compensation due him or his survivors.

History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > C. 1500–c. 500 BC > Early Vedic Period In addition to the archaeological legacy discussed above, there remains from this period the earliest literary record of Indian culture, the Vedas. Composed in archaic, or Vedic, Sanskrit, generally dated between 1500 and 800 BC, and transmitted orally, the Vedas comprise four major texts—the Rig- (Rg-), Sama-, Yajur-, and Atharvavedas. Of these, the Rigveda is believed to be the earliest. The texts consist of hymns, charms, spells, and ritual observations current among the Indo-European-speaking people known as Aryans (from the Sanskrit arya, “noble”), who entered India from the Iranian regions.

Theories concerning the origins of the Aryans, whose language is also called Aryan, relate to the question of what has been called the Indo-European homeland. In the 17th and 18th centuries AD, European scholars who first studied Sanskrit were struck by the similarity in its syntax and vocabulary to Greek and Latin. This resulted in the theory that there had been a common ancestry for these and other related languages, which came to be called the Indo-European group of languages. This, in turn, resulted in the notion that the Indo-European-speaking people had had a common homeland from which they had migrated to various parts of Asia and Europe. The theory stirred unlimited speculation, which continues today, regarding the original homeland and the date of the dispersal from it. The study of Vedic India is still beset by “the Aryan problem,” which often clouds the genuine search for historical insight into this period. That there was a migration of Indo-European speakers, possibly in waves, dating from the 2nd millennium BC, is clear from archaeological and epigraphic evidence in western Asia. Mesopotamia witnessed the arrival, in about 1760 BC, of the Kassites, who introduced the horse and the chariot and bore Indo-European names. A treaty from about 1400 BC between the Hittites, who had arrived in Anatolia at about the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC, and the Mitanni empire invoked four deities—Indara, Uruvna, Mitira, and the Nasatyas (names that occur in the Rigveda as Indra, Varuna, Mitra, and the Asvins). An inscription at BoYazköy in Anatolia of about the same date contains Indo-European technical terms pertaining to the training of horses, which suggests cultural origins in Central Asia or the southern Russian steppes. Clay tablets dating to about 1400 BC, written at Tell El-Amarna in Akkadian cuneiform, mention names of princes that are also Indo-European. Nearer India, the Iranian Plateau was subject to a similar migration. Comparison of Iranian Aryan literature with the Vedas reveals striking correspondences. Possibly a branch of the Iranian Aryans migrated to northern India and settled in the Sapta Sindhu region, extending from the Kabul River in the north to the Sarasvati and Upper Ganges-Yamuna Doab in the south. The Sarasvati, the sacred river at the time, is thought to have dried up during the later Vedic Period. Conceived as a goddess, it was personified in later Hinduism as the inventor of spoken and written Sanskrit and the consort of Brahma, promulgator of the Vedas. It was in the Sapta Sindhu region that the majority of the hymns of the Rigveda were composed. The Rigveda is divided into 10 mandalas (books), of which the 10th is believed to be somewhat later than the others. Each mandala consists of a number of hymns, and most mandalas are ascribed to priestly families. The texts include invocations to the gods, ritual hymns, battle hymns, and narrative dialogues. The 9th mandala is a collection of all the hymns dedicated to soma, the unidentified hallucinogenic juice that was drunk on ritual occasions. Few events of political importance are related in the hymns. Perhaps the most impressive is a description of the battle of the 10 chiefs or kings: when Sudas, the king of the preeminent Bharatas of southern Punjab, replaced his priest Visvamitra with Vasistha, Visvamitra organized a confederacy of 10 tribes, including the Puru, Yadu, Turvasas, Anu, and Druhyu, which went to war against Sudas. The Bharatas survived and continued to play an important role in historical tradition. In the Rigveda, the head of a clan is called the raja; this term has commonly been translated as “king,” but recent scholarship suggests “chief” as more appropriate in this early context. If such a distinction is recognized, the entire corpus of Vedic literature can be interpreted as recording the gradual evolution of the concept of kingship from earlier clan organization. Among the clans there is little distinction between Aryan and non-Aryan, but the hymns refer to a people, called the dasas, who are said to have had an alien language and a dark complexion and to worship strange gods. Some dasas were rich in cattle and lived in fortified places (pur) that were often attacked by the god Indra. In addition to the dasas, there were the wealthy Panis, who were hostile and stole cattle. The Early Vedic was the period of transition from nomadic pastoralism to settled village communities intermixing pastoral and agrarian economies. Cattle were initially the dominant commodity, as indicated by the use of the word gotra (“cowpen”) to signify the endogamous kinship group and gavisti (“searching for cows”) to denote war. A patriarchal extended family structure gave rise to the practice of niyoga (“levirate”), which permitted a widow to marry her husband's brother. A community of families constituted a grama. The term vis is generally interpreted to mean “clan.” Clan assemblies appear to have been frequent in the early stages. Various categories of assemblies are mentioned, such as vidatha, samiti, and sabha, although the precise distinctions among these categories are not clear. The clan also gathered for the yajña, the Vedic sacrifice conducted by the priest, whose ritual actions ensured prosperity and imbued the chief with valour. The chief was primarily a war leader with responsibility for protecting the clan, for which function he received a bali (“tribute”). Punishment was exacted according to a principle resembling the wergild (“man payment”) of ancient Germanic law, whereby the social rank of a wronged or slain man determined the compensation due him or his survivors.

History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > The beginning of the historical period, c. 500–150 BC (Left) India c. 500 BC and (right) Asoka's empire at its greatest extent, c. 250 BC. For this phase of Indian history a variety of historical sources are available. The Buddhist canon, pertaining to the period of the Buddha (c. 6th–5th century BC) and later, is invaluable as a cross-reference for the Brahmanic sources. This also is true, though to a more limited extent, of Jaina sources. In the 4th century BC there are secular writings on political economy and accounts of foreign travelers. The most important sources, however, are inscriptions of the 3rd century BC.

History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > The beginning of the historical period, c. 500–150 BC > Pre-Mauryan states (Left) India c. 500 BC and (right) Asoka's empire at its greatest extent, c. 250 BC. Buddhist writings and other sources from the beginning of this period mention 16 major states (mahajanapada) dominating the northern part of the subcontinent. A few of these, such as Gandhara, Kamboja, Kuru-Pañcala, Matsya, Kasi, and Kosala, continued from the earlier period and are mentioned in Vedic literature. The rest were new states, either freshly created from declining older ones or new areas coming into importance, such as Avanti, Asvaka, Surasena, Vatsa, Cedi, Malla, Vrjji, Magadha, and Anga. The mention of so many new states in the eastern Ganges Valley is attributable in part to the eastern focus of the sources and is partly the antecedent to the increasing preeminence of the eastern regions. (See map, India c. 500 BC.)

History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > The beginning of the historical period, c. 500–150 BC > Pre-Mauryan states > Location Gandhara lay astride the Indus and included the districts of Peshawar and the lower Swat and Kabul valleys. For a while its independence was terminated by its inclusion as one of the 22 satrapies of the Achaemenian Empire of Persia (c. 519 BC). Its major role as the channel of communication with Iran and Central Asia continued, as did its trade in woolen goods. Kamboja adjoined Gandhara. Originally regarded as a land of Aryan speakers, Kamboja soon lost its important status, ostensibly because its people did not follow the sacred Brahmanic rites—a situation that was to occur extensively in the north as the result of the intermixing of peoples and cultures through migration and trade. Kamboja became a trading centre for horses imported from Central Asia.

The Kekayas, Madras, and Usinaras, who had settled in the region between Gandhara and the Beas River, were described as descendants of the Anu tribe. The Matsyas occupied an area to the southwest of Delhi. The Kuru-Pañcala, still dominant in the Ganges-Yamuna Doab, were extending their control southward and eastward; the Kuru capital had reportedly been moved from Hastinapura to Kausambi when the former was devastated by a great flood, which excavations show to have occurred about the 9th century BC. The Mallas lived in eastern Uttar Pradesh. Avanti arose in the Ujjain-Narmada Valley region, with its capital at Mahismati; during the reign of King Pradyota, there was a matrimonial alliance with the royal family at Kausambi. Surasena had its capital at Mathura, and the tribe claimed descent from the Yadu clan. A reference to the Sourasenoi in later Greek writings is often identified with the Surasena, and the city of Methora with Mathura. The Vatsa state emerged from Kausambi. The Cedi state (in Bundelkhand) lay on the route to the Deccan. South of the Vindhyas, on the Godavari River, Asvaka continued to thrive. The mid-Ganges Valley was dominated by Kasi and Kosala. Kasi maintained close affiliations with its eastern neighbours, and its capital was later to acquire renown as the sacred city of Varanasi (Benares). Kasi and Kosala were continually at war over the control of the Ganges; in the course of the conflict, Kosala extended its frontiers to the north and the south, ultimately coming to comprise Uttar (northern) and Daksina (southern) Kosala. The new states of Magadha (Patna and Gaya districts) and Anga (north of the delta) were also interested in controlling the river and soon made their presence felt. The conflict eventually drew in the Vrjji state (Besar and Muzaffarpur district). For a while, Videha (modern Tirhut), with its capital at Mithila, also remained powerful. References to the states of the northern Deccan appear to repeat statements from sources of the earlier period, suggesting that there had been little further exchange between the regions. History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > The beginning of the historical period, c. 500–150 BC > Pre-Mauryan states > Political systems The political system in these states was either monarchical or a type of representative government that variously has been called republican or oligarchic. The fact that representation in these latter states' assemblies was limited to members of the ruling clan makes the term oligarchy, or even chiefdom, preferable. Sometimes within the state itself there was a gradual change from monarchy to oligarchy, as in the case of Vaisali, the nucleus of the Vrjji state. Apart from the major states there also were many smaller oligarchies, such as those of the Koliyas, Moriyas, Jñatrkas, Sakyas, and Licchavis. The Jñatrkas and Sakyas are especially remembered as the tribes to which Mahavira (the founder of Jainism) and Gautama Buddha, respectively, belonged. The Licchavis eventually became extremely powerful. The oligarchies comprised either a single clan or a confederacy of clans. The elected chief or the president (ganapati, ganarajya) functioned with the assistance of a council of elders probably selected from the Ksatriya families. The most important institution was the sovereign general assembly, or parisad, to the meetings of which members were summoned by kettledrum. Precise rules governed the seating arrangement, the agenda, and the order of speaking and debate that terminated in a decision. A distinction was maintained between the families represented and the others. The broad authority of the parisad included the election of important functionaries. An occasional lapse into hereditary office on the part of the chief may account for the tendency toward monarchy among these states. The divisiveness of factions was a constant threat to the political system. The institutional development within these oligarchies suggests a stabilized agrarian economy. Sources mention wealthy householders (gahapatis) employing slaves and hired labourers to work on their lands. The existence of gahapatis suggests the breaking up of clan ownership of land and the emergence of individual holdings. An increase in urban settlements and trade is evident not only from references in the literary sources but also from the introduction of two characteristics of urban civilization—a script and coinage. Evidence for the script dates at least to the 3rd century. The most widely used script was Brahmi, which is germane to most Indian scripts used subsequently. A variant during this period was Kharosti, used only in northwestern India and derived from the Aramaic of western Asia. The most commonly spoken languages were Prakrit, which had its local variations in Sauraseni (from which Pali evolved), and Magadhi, in which the Buddha preached. Sanskrit, the more cultured language as compared with Prakrit, was favoured by the educated elite. Panini's grammar, the Astadhyayi, and Yaska's etymological work, the Nirukta, suggest considerable sophistication in the development of Sanskrit.

History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > The beginning of the historical period, c. 500–150 BC > Pre-Mauryan states > Economy Silver bent bar coins and silver and copper punch-marked coins came into use in the 5th century BC. It is not clear whether the coins were issued by a political authority or were the legal tender of moneyers. The gradual spread in the same period of a characteristic type of luxury ware, which has come to be known as the northern black polished ware, is an indicator of expanding trade. One main trade route followed the Ganges River and crossed the Indo-Gangetic watershed and the Punjab to Taxila and beyond. Another extended from the Ganges Valley via Ujjain and the Narmada valley to the western coast or, alternatively, southward to the Deccan. The route to the Ganges delta became more popular, increasing maritime contact with ports on the eastern coast of India. The expansion of trade and consequently of towns resulted in an increase in the number of artisans and merchants; some eventually formed guilds (sreni), each of which tended to inhabit a particular part of a town. The guild system encouraged specialization of labour and the hereditary principle in professions, which was also a characteristic of caste functioning. Gradually some of the guilds acquired caste status. The practice of usury encouraged the activity of financiers, some of whom formed their own guilds and found that investment in trade proved increasingly lucrative. The changed economy is evident in the growth of cities and of an urban culture in which such distinctions as pura (walled settlement), durga (fortified town), nigama (market centre), nagara (town), and mahanagara (city) became increasingly important.

History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > The beginning of the historical period, c. 500–150 BC > Pre-Mauryan states > Religion These changing features of social and economic life were linked to religious and intellectual changes. Orthodox traditions maintained in certain sections of Vedic literature were questioned by teachers referred to in the Upanishads and Aranyakas and by others whose speculations and philosophy are recorded in other texts. There was a sizable heterodox tradition current in the 6th century BC, and speculation ranged from idealism to materialism. The Ajivikas and the Carvakas, among the smaller sects, were popular for a time, as were the materialist theories of the Buddha's contemporary, Ajita Kesakambalin. Even though such sects did not sustain an independent religious tradition, the undercurrent of their teachings cropped up time and again in the later religious trends that emerged in India.

Of all these sects, only two, Jainism and Buddhism, acquired the status of major religions. The former remained within the Indian subcontinent; the latter spread to Central Asia, China, Japan, and Southeast Asia. Both religions were founded in the 6th–5th centuries BC; Mahavira gave shape to earlier ideas of the Nirgranthas (an earlier name for the Jainas) and formulated Jainism (the teachings of the Jina, or Conqueror, Mahavira), and the Buddha (the Enlightened One) preached a new doctrine. There were a number of similarities among these two sects. Religious rituals were essentially congregational. Monastic orders (the sangha) were introduced with monasteries organized on democratic lines and initially accepting persons from all strata of life. Such monasteries were dependent on their neighbourhoods for material support. Some of the monasteries developed into centres of education. The functioning of monks in society was greater, however, among the Buddhist orders. Wandering monks, preaching and seeking alms, gave the religions a missionary flavour. The recruitment of nuns signified a special concern for the status of women. Both religions questioned Brahmanical orthodoxy and the authority of the Vedas. Both were opposed to the sacrifice of animals, and both preached nonviolence. Both derived support in the main from the Ksatriya ruling clans, wealthy gahapatis, and the mercantile community; because trade and commerce did not involve killing, the principle of ahimsa (nonviolence) could be observed in these activities. The Jainas participated widely as the middlemen in financial transactions and in later centuries became the great financiers of western India. While both religions disapproved in theory of the inequality of castes, neither directly attacked the assumptions of caste society; even so, they were able to secure a certain amount of support from lower caste groups, which was enhanced by the borrowing of rituals and practices from popular local cults. The patronage of women, especially those of royal families, was to become a noticeable feature.

History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > The beginning of the historical period, c. 500–150 BC > Pre-Mauryan states > Magadhan ascendancy (Left) India c. 500 BC and (right) Asoka's empire at its greatest extent, c. 250 BC. Political activity in the 6th–5th centuries BC centred on the control of the Ganges Valley. The states of Kasi, Kosala, Magadha, and the Vrjjis battled for this control for a century until Magadha emerged victorious. Magadha's success was due in part to the political ambition of its king, Bimbisara. He conquered Anga, which gave him access to the Ganges delta—a valuable asset in terms of the nascent maritime trade. Bimbisara's son Ajatasatru implemented his father's intentions within about 30 years. Ajatasatru strengthened the defenses of the Magadhan capital, Rajagrha, and built a small fort on the Ganges at Pataligrama, which was to become the famous capital Pataliputra (Patna). He then attacked and annexed Kasi and Kosala. He still had to subdue the confederacy of the Vrjji state, and this turned out to be a protracted affair lasting 16 years. Ultimately the Vrjjis, including the important Licchavi clan, were overthrown, having been weakened by a minister of Ajatasatru, who was able to sow dissension in the confederacy.

Get the full article with a FREE Trial The success of Magadha was not solely attributable to the ambition of Bimbisara and Ajatasatru. Magadha had an excellent geographic location controlling the lower Ganges and thus drew revenue from both the fertile plain and the river trade. Access to the delta also brought in lucrative profits from the eastern coastal trade. Neighbouring forests provided timber for building and elephants for the army. Above all, rich deposits of iron ore gave Magadha a lead in technology. Bimbisara had been one of the earliest Indian kings to emphasize efficient administration, and the beginnings of an administrative system took root. Rudimentary notions of land revenue developed. Each village had a headman who was responsible for collecting taxes and another set of officials who supervised the collection and conveyed the revenue to the royal treasury. But the full understanding of the utilization of land revenue as a major source of state income was yet to come. The clearing of land continued apace, but it is likely that the agrarian settlements were small, because literary references to journeys from one town to another mention long stretches of forest paths. After the death of Ajatasatru (c. 459 BC) and a series of ineffectual rulers, Sisunaga founded a new dynasty, which lasted for about half a century until ousted by Mahapadma Nanda. The Nandas are universally described as being of low origin, perhaps Sudras. Despite these rapid dynastic changes, Magadha retained its position of strength. The Nandas continued the earlier policy of expansion. They are proverbially connected with wealth, probably because they realized the importance of regular collections of land revenue.

History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > The beginning of the historical period, c. 500–150 BC > Pre-Mauryan states > Campaigns of Alexander the Great The northwestern part of India witnessed the campaign of Alexander of Macedon, who in 327 BC, in pursuing his campaign to the eastern extremities of the Achaemenian Empire, entered Gandhara. He campaigned successfully across the Punjab as far as the Beas River, where his troops refused to continue fighting. The vast army of the Nandas is referred to in Greek sources, and some historians have suggested that Alexander's Greek soldiers may have mutinied out of fear of this army. The campaign of Alexander made no impression on the Indian mind, for there are no references to it in Indian sources. The most significant outcome of his campaign was that some of his Greek companions, such as Onesicritus, Aristobulus, and his admiral Nearchus, recorded their impressions of India. Later Greek and Roman authors such as Strabo and Arrian, as well as Pliny and Plutarch, incorporated much of this material into their writings. However, some of the accounts are fanciful and make for better fiction than history. Alexander established a number of Greek settlements, which provided an impetus for the development of trade and communication with western Asia. Most valuable to historians was a reference to Alexander's meeting the young prince Sandrocottos, a name identified in the 18th century as Candra Gupta, which provides a chronological landmark in early Indian history.

History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > The beginning of the historical period, c. 500–150 BC > The Mauryan empire (Left) India c. 500 BC and (right) Asoka's empire at its greatest extent, c. 250 BC. The accession (dated to c. 325–c. 321 BC) of Candra Gupta (Chandragupta) Maurya is significant in Indian history because it inaugurated the first Indian empire. The Mauryan dynasty was to rule almost the entire subcontinent (except the area south of present-day Karnataka), as well as substantial parts of present-day Afghanistan.

History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > The beginning of the historical period, c. 500–150 BC > The Mauryan empire > Candra Gupta Maurya Candra Gupta overthrew the Nanda power in Magadha and then campaigned in central and northern India. Greek sources report that he engaged in a conflict in 305 BC in the trans-Indus region with Seleucus I (Nicator), one of Alexander's generals, who, on the death of Alexander, had founded the Seleucid dynasty in Iran. The result was a treaty by which Seleucus ceded the trans-Indus provinces to the Maurya and the latter presented him with 500 elephants. A marriage alliance is mentioned, but no details are recorded.

History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > The beginning of the historical period, c. 500–150 BC > The Mauryan empire > Bindusara The second Mauryan emperor was Bindusara, who came to the throne about 297 BC. Greek sources refer to him as Amitrochates, the Greek for the Sanskrit amitraghata, the “destroyer of foes.” This name perhaps reflects a successful campaign in the Deccan, Candra Gupta having already conquered northern India. Bindusara's campaign stopped in the vicinity of Karnataka, probably because the territories of the extreme south, such as those of the Colas, Pandyas, and Ceras, were well-disposed in their relations toward the Mauryas.

The treaty ushered in an era of friendly relations between the Mauryas and the Seleucids, with exchanges of envoys. One among them, Megasthenes, left his observations in the form of a book, the Indica. Although the original has been lost, extensive quotations from it survive in the works of the later Greek writers Strabo, Diodorus, and Arrian. A major treatise on political economy in Sanskrit is the Artha-sastra of Kautilya (or Canakya, as he is sometimes called). Kautilya, it is believed, was prime minister to Candra Gupta Maurya, although this view has been contested. In describing an ideal government, Kautilya indicates contemporary assumptions of political and economic theory, and the description of the functioning of government occasionally tallies with present-day knowledge of actual conditions derived from other sources. The date of origin of the Artha-sastra remains problematic, with suggested dates ranging from the 4th century BC to the 3rd century AD. Most authorities agree that the kernel of the book was originally written during the early Mauryan Period but that much of the existing text is post-Mauryan. According to Jaina sources, Candra Gupta became a Jaina toward the end of his reign. He abdicated in favour of his son Bindusara, became an ascetic, and traveled with a group of Jaina monks to South India, where he died in the orthodox Jaina manner by deliberate slow starvation. History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > The beginning of the historical period, c. 500–150 BC > The Mauryan empire > Bindusara The second Mauryan emperor was Bindusara, who came to the throne about 297 BC. Greek sources refer to him as Amitrochates, the Greek for the Sanskrit amitraghata, the “destroyer of foes.” This name perhaps reflects a successful campaign in the Deccan, Candra Gupta having already conquered northern India. Bindusara's campaign stopped in the vicinity of Karnataka, probably because the territories of the extreme south, such as those of the Colas, Pandyas, and Ceras, were well-disposed in their relations toward the Mauryas.

History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > The beginning of the historical period, c. 500–150 BC > The Mauryan empire > Asoka and his successors Bindusara was succeeded by his son Asoka, either directly in 272 BC or, after an interregnum of four years, in 268 BC (some historians say c. 265 BC). Asoka's reign is comparatively well documented. He issued a large number of edicts, which were inscribed in many parts of the empire and were composed in Prakrit, Greek, and Aramaic, depending on the language current in a particular region. Greek and Aramaic inscriptions are limited to Afghanistan and the trans-Indus region. The first major event in Asoka's reign, which he describes in an edict, was a campaign against Kalinga in 260 BC. The suffering that resulted caused him to reevaluate the notion of conquest by violence, and gradually he was drawn to the Buddhist religion. About 12 years after his accession, he began issuing edicts at regular intervals. In one he referred to five Greek kings who were his neighbours and contemporaries and to whom he sent envoys—these were Antiochus II Theos of Syria, the grandson of Seleucus I Nicator; Ptolemy II Philadelphus of Egypt; Antigonus II Gonatas of Macedonia; Magas of Cyrene; and Alexander (of either Epirus or Corinth). This reference has become the bedrock of Mauryan chronology. Local tradition asserts that he had contacts with Khotan and Nepal. Close relations with Tissa, the king of Sri Lanka, were furthered by the fact that Mihinda, Asoka's son (or his younger brother according to some sources), was the first Buddhist missionary on the island. Asoka ruled for 37 years. After his death a political decline set in, and half a century later the empire was reduced to the Ganges Valley alone. Tradition asserts that Asoka's son Kunala ruled in Gandhara. Epigraphic evidence indicates that his grandson Dasaratha ruled in Magadha. Some historians have suggested that his empire was bifurcated. In 185 BC the last of the Mauryas, Brhadratha, was assassinated by his Brahman commander in chief, Pusyamitra, who founded the Sunga dynasty.

History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > The beginning of the historical period, c. 500–150 BC > The Mauryan empire > Financial base for the empire The Mauryan achievement lay in the ability to weld the diverse parts of the subcontinent into a single political unit and to maintain an imperial system for almost 100 years. The financial base for an imperial system was provided by income from land revenue and, to a lesser extent, from trade. The gradual expansion of the agrarian economy and improvements in the administrative machinery for collecting revenue increased the income from land revenue. This is confirmed by both the theories of Kautilya and the account of Megasthenes; Kautilya maintained that the state should organize the clearing of wasteland and settle it with villages of Sudra cultivators. It is likely that some 150,000 persons deported from Kalinga by Asoka after the campaign were settled in this manner. Megasthenes writes that there were no slaves in India, yet Indian sources speak of various categories of slaves called dasas, the most commonly used designation being dasa-bhrtaka (slaves and hired labourers). It is likely that there was no large-scale slavery for production, although slaves were used on the land, in the mines, and in the guilds, along with the hired labour. Domestic slavery was common, however.

The nature of land revenue has been a subject of controversy. Some scholars maintain that the state was the sole owner of the land, while others contend that there was private and individual ownership as well. References to private ownership would seem to be too frequent to be ignored. There also are references to the crown lands, the cultivation of which was important to the economy. Two types of taxes were levied—one on the amount of land cultivated and the other on the produce of the land. The state maintained irrigation in limited areas and in limited periods. By and large, irrigation systems were privately controlled by cultivators and landowners. There is no support for a thesis that control of the hydraulic machinery was crucial to the political control of the country. Another source of income, which acquired increasing importance, was revenue from taxes levied on both internal and foreign trade. The attempt at improved political administration helped to break the economic isolation of various regions. Roads built to ensure quick communication with the local administration History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > The beginning of the historical period, c. 500–150 BC > The Mauryan empire > Mauryan society According to Megasthenes, Mauryan society comprised seven occupational groups: philosophers, farmers, soldiers, herdsmen, artisans, magistrates, and councillors. He defined these groups as endogamous and the professions as hereditary, which has led to their being considered as castes. The philosophers included a variety of priests, monks, and religious teachers; they formed the smallest group but were the most respected, were exempt from taxation, and were the only ones permitted to marry into the other groups. The farmers were the largest group. The soldiers were very well paid, and, if Pliny's figures for the army are correct—9,000 elephants, 30,000 cavalry, and 600,000 infantry—their support must have required a considerable financial outlay. The mention of herdsmen as a socioeconomic group suggests that, although the agrarian economy was expanding and had become central to the state income, pastoralism continued to play an important economic role. The artisans probably represented a major section of the urban population. The listing of magistrates and councillors as distinct groups is evidence of a large and recognizable administrative personnel.

History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > The beginning of the historical period, c. 500–150 BC > The Mauryan empire > Mauryan government The Mauryan government was organized around the king. Asoka saw his role as essentially paternal: “All men are my children.” He was anxious to be in constant touch with public opinion, and to this end he traveled extensively throughout his empire and appointed a special category of officers to gauge public opinion. His edicts indicate frequent consultations with his ministers, the ministerial council being a largely advisory body. The offices of the sannidhatr (treasurer), who kept the account, and the samahartr (chief collector), who was responsible for revenue records, formed the hub of the revenue administration. Each administrative department, with its superintendents and subordinate officials, acted as a link between local administration and the central government. Kautilya believed that a quarter of the total income should be reserved for the salaries of the officers. That the higher officials expected to be handsomely paid is clear from the salaries suggested by Kautilya and from the considerable difference between the salary of a clerk (500 panas) and that of a minister (48,000 panas). Public works and grants absorbed another large percentage of state income.

The empire was divided into four provinces, each under a prince or a governor. Local officials were probably selected from among the local populace, because no method of impersonal recruitment to administrative office is mentioned. Once every five years, the emperor sent officers to audit the provincial administrations. Some categories of officers in the rural areas, such as the rajjukas (surveyors), combined judicial functions with assessment duties. Fines constituted the most common form of punishment, although capital punishment was imposed in extreme cases. Provinces were subdivided into districts and these again into smaller units. The village was the basic unit of administration and has remained so throughout the centuries. The headman continued to be an important official, as did the accountant and the tax collector (sthanika and gopa, respectively). For the larger units, Kautilya suggests the maintenance of a census. Megasthenes describes a committee of 30 officials, divided into six subcommittees, who looked after the administration of Pataliputra. The most important single official was the city superintendent (nagaraka), who had virtual control over all aspects of city administration. Centralization of the government should not be taken to imply a uniform level of development throughout the empire. Some areas, such as Magadha, Gandhara, and Avanti, were under closer central control than others, such as the Karnataka, where possibly the Mauryan system's main concern was to extract resources without embedding itself in the region.

History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > The beginning of the historical period, c. 500–150 BC > The Mauryan empire > Asoka's edicts It was against this background of imperial administration and a changing socioeconomic framework that Asoka issued edicts that carried his message concerning the idea and practice of dhamma, the Prakrit form of the Sanskrit dharma, a term that defies simple translation. It carries a variety of meanings depending on the context, such as universal law, social order, piety, or righteousness; the Buddhists frequently used it with reference to the teachings of the Buddha. This, in part, coloured the earlier interpretation of Asoka's use of the word to mean that he was propagating Buddhism. Until his inscriptions were deciphered in 1837, Asoka was practically unknown except in the Buddhist chronicles of Sri Lanka—the Mahavamsa and Dipavamsa—and the works of the northern Buddhist tradition—the Divyavadana and the Asokavadana—where he is extolled as a Buddhist emperor par excellence whose sole ambition was the expansion of Buddhism. Most of these traditions were preserved outside India in Sri Lanka, Central Asia, and China. Even after the edicts were deciphered, it was believed that they corroborated the assertions of the Buddhist sources, because in some of the edicts Asoka avowed his personal support of Buddhism. More recent analyses suggest, however, that, although he was personally a Buddhist, as his edicts addressed to the Buddhist sangha (order) attest, the majority of the edicts in which he attempted to define dhamma do not suggest that he was merely preaching Buddhism. Asoka addressed his edicts to the entire populace, inscribing them on rock surfaces or on specially erected and finely polished sandstone pillars, in places where people were likely to congregate. It has been suggested that the idea of issuing such decrees was borrowed from the Achaemenian emperors, especially from Darius, but the tone and content of Asoka's edicts are quite different. Although the pillars, with their animal capitals, have also been described as imitations of Achaemenian pillars, there is sufficient originality in style to distinguish them as fine examples of Mauryan imperial art. (The official emblem of India since 1947 is based on the four-lion capital of the pillar at Sarnath near VaIanasi.) The carvings contrast strikingly with the numerous small gray terra-cotta figures found at urban sites, which are clearly expressions of Mauryan popular art. Asoka defines the main principles of dhamma as nonviolence, tolerance of all sects and opinions, obedience to parents, respect for the Brahmans and other religious teachers and priests, liberality toward friends, humane treatment of servants, and generosity toward all. These suggest a general ethic of behaviour to which no religious or social group could object. They also could act as a focus of loyalty to weld together the diverse strands that made up the empire. Interestingly, the Greek versions of these edicts translate dhamma as eusebeia (piety), and no mention is made in the inscriptions of the teachings of the Buddha, which would be expected if Asoka had been propagating Buddhism. His own activities under the impact of dhamma included attention to the welfare of his subjects, the building of roads and rest houses, the planting of medicinal herbs, the establishment of centres for tending the sick, a ban on animal sacrifices, and the curtailing of killing animals for food. He also instituted a body of officials known as the dhamma-mahamattas, who served the dual function of propagating the dhamma and keeping the emperor in touch with public opinion. History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > The beginning of the historical period, c. 500–150 BC > The Mauryan empire > Mauryan decline Some historians maintain that the disintegration of the Mauryan empire was an aftermath of Asoka's policies and actions and that his pro-Buddhist policy caused a revolt among the Brahmans. The edicts do not support such a contention. It has also been said that Asoka's insistence on nonviolence resulted in the emasculation of the army, which was consequently unable to meet the threat of invaders from the northwest. There is, however, no indication that Asoka deliberately ignored the military wing of his administration, despite his emphasis on nonviolence. Other explanations for the decline of the empire appear more plausible. Among these is the idea that there may have been a weakening of the economy which acted as an economic pressure on the empire. It has been thought that the silver currency of the Mauryas was debased as a result of this pressure. The expense required for the army and the bureaucracy must have tied up a substantial part of the income. It is equally possible that the expansion of agriculture did not keep pace with the expansion of the empire, and, because many areas were nonagricultural, the revenue from the agrarian economy may not have been sufficient for the maintenance of the empire. It is extremely difficult to compute the population of the empire, but, on a purely impressionistic basis, a figure of approximately 50 million can be suggested. For a population of mixed agriculturalists and others to support an empire of this size would have been extremely difficult without intensive exploitation of resources. Recent excavations at urban sites show a distinct improvement in material prosperity in the post-Mauryan levels. This may be attributable to an increase in trade, but the income from trade was unlikely to have been sufficient to supplement fully the land revenue in financing the empire. It has been argued that the Mauryan bureaucracy at the higher levels tended to be oppressive. This may have been true during the reigns of the first two emperors, from which the evidence is cited, but oppression is unlikely to have occurred during Asoka's reign, because he was responsible for a considerable decentralization at the upper levels and for continual checks and inspections. A more fundamental weakness lay in the process of recruitment, which was probably arbitrary, with the hierarchy of officials locally recruited.

History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > The beginning of the historical period, c. 500–150 BC > The concept of the state Allegiance presupposes a concept of statehood. A number of varying notions had evolved by this time to explain the evolution of the state. Some theorists pursued the thread of the Vedic monarchies, in which the clan chief became the king and was gradually invested with divinity. An alternative set of theories arising out of Buddhist and Jaina thought ignored the idea of divinity and assumed instead that, in the original state of nature, all needs were effortlessly provided but that slowly a decline set in and man became evil, developing desires, which led to the notions of private property and of family and finally to immoral behaviour. In this condition of chaos, the people gathered together and decided to elect one among them (the mahasammata, or “great elect”) in whom they would invest authority to maintain law and order. Thus, the state came into being. Later theories retained the element of a contract between a ruler and the people. Brahmanic sources held that the gods appointed the ruler and that a contract of dues was concluded between the ruler and the people. Also prevalent was the theory of matsyanyaya, which proposes that in periods of chaos, when there is no ruler, the strong devour the weak, just as in periods of drought big fish eat little fish. Thus, the need for a ruler was viewed as absolute. The existence of the state was primarily dependent on two factors: danda (authority) and dharma (in its sense of the social order—i.e., the preservation of the caste structure). The Artha-sastra, moreover, refers to the seven limbs (saptanga) of the state as the king, administration, territory, capital, treasury, coercive authority, and allies. However, the importance of the political notion of the state gradually began to fade, partly because of a decline of the political tradition of the republics and the proportional dominance of the monarchical system, in which loyalty was directed to the king. The emergence of the Mauryan empire strengthened the political notion of monarchy. The second factor was that the dharma, in the sense of the social order, demanded a far greater loyalty than did the rather blurred idea of the state. The king's duty was to protect dharma, and, as long as the social order remained intact, anarchy would not prevail. Loyalty to the social order, which was a fundamental aspect of Indian civilization, largely accounts for the impressive continuity of the major social institutions over many centuries. However, it also deflected loyalty from the political notion of the state, which might otherwise have permitted more frequent empires and a greater political consciousness. After the decline of the Mauryas, the reemergence of an empire was to take many centuries.

History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > 150 BC–AD 300 The disintegration of the Mauryan empire gave rise to a number of small kingdoms, whose regional affiliations were often to be repeated in subsequent centuries. The Punjab and Kashmir were drawn into the orbit of Central Asian politics. The lower Indus Valley became a passage for movements from the north to the west. The Ganges Valley assumed a largely passive role except when faced with campaigns from the northwest. In the northern Deccan there arose the first of many important kingdoms that were to serve as the bridge between the north and the south. Kalinga was once more independent. In the extreme south, the prestige and influence of the Cera, Cola, and Pandya kingdoms continued unabated. Yet in spite of political fragmentation, this was a period of economic prosperity, resulting partly from a new source of income—trade, both within the subcontinent and with distant places in Central Asia, China, the eastern Mediterranean, and Southeast Asia.

History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > 150 BC–AD 300 > Rise of small kingdoms in the north In the adjoining area held by the Seleucids, Diodotus, the Greek governor of Bactria, rose in rebellion against the Seleucid king Antiochus and declared his independence, which was recognized by Antiochus about 250 BC. Parthia also declared its independence. History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > 150 BC–AD 300 > Rise of small kingdoms in the north > Indo-Greek rulers A later Bactrian king, Demetrius (reigned c. 190–c. 167 BC), took his armies into the Punjab and finally down the Indus Valley and gained control of northwestern India. This introduced what has come to be called Indo-Greek rule. The chronology of the Indo-Greek rulers is based largely on numismatic evidence. Their coins were, at the start, imitations of Greek issues, but they gradually acquired a style of their own, characterized by excellent portraiture. The legend was generally inscribed in Greek, Brahmi, and Kharosti. The best-known of the Indo-Greek kings was Menander, known to Indian sources as Milinda (reigned 155–130 BC). He is featured in the Buddhist text Milinda-pañha (“Questions of Milinda”), written in the form of a dialogue between the king and the Buddhist philosopher Nagasena, as a result of which the king is converted to Buddhism. Menander controlled Gandhara and Punjab, although his coins have been found farther south. According to one theory, he may have attacked the Sungas in the Yamuna region and attempted to extend his control into the Ganges Valley, but, if he did so, he failed to annex the area. Meanwhile, in Bactria, the descendants of the line of Eucratides, who had branched off from the original Bactrian line, now began to take an interest in Gandhara and finally annexed Kabul and the kingdom of Taxila (Taksasila). An important Prakrit inscription at Besnagar (Bhilsa district) of the late 2nd century BC, inscribed at the instance of Heliodorus, a Greek envoy of Antialcidas of Taxila, records his devotion to the Vaisnava Vasudeva sect.

History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > 150 BC–AD 300 > Rise of small kingdoms in the north > Central Asian rulers The Bactrian control of Taxila was disturbed by an intrusion of the Scythians, known in Indian sources as the Sakas. They had attacked the kingdom of Bactria and subsequently moved into India. The determination of the Han rulers of China to keep the Central Asian nomadic tribes (the Hsiung-nu, Wu-sun, and Yüeh-chih) out of China forced these nomadic tribes in their search for fresh pastures to migrate southward and westward; a branch of the Yüeh-chih, the Ta Yüeh-chih, moved farthest west to the Aral Sea, and this displaced the existing Sakas, who poured into Bactria and Parthia. The Parthian king Mithradates II tried to hold them back, but after his death (88 BC) they swept through Parthia and continued into the Indus Valley; among the early Saka kings was Maues, or Moga (1st century BC), who ruled over Gandhara. The Sakas moved southward under pressure from the Pahlavas (Parthians), who ruled briefly in northwestern India toward the end of the 1st century BC, the reign of Gondophernes being remembered. At Mathura, the Saka rulers of note were Rajuvala and Sodasa. Ultimately the Sakas settled in western India and Malava and came into conflict with the kingdoms of the northern Deccan and the Ganges Valley—particularly during the reigns of Nahapana, Castana, and Rudradaman—in the first two centuries AD. Rudradaman's fame is recorded in a lengthy Sanskrit inscription at Junagadh, dating to 150. Kujula Kadphises, the Yüeh-chih chief, conquered northern India in the 1st century AD. He was succeeded by his son Vima, after whom came Kaniska, the most powerful among the Kusana kings, as the dynasty came to be called. The date of Kaniska's accession is controversial, ranging from 78 to 248. The generally accepted date of 78 is also the basis for an era presumably started by the Sakas and used in addition to the Gregorian calendar by the present Indian government; the era, possibly commemorating Kaniska's accession, was widely used in Malava, Ujjain, Nepal, and Central Asia. The Kusana kingdom was essentially oriented to the north, with its capital at Purusapura (near modern Peshawar), although it extended southward as far as Sañci and into the Ganges Valley as far as Varanasi. Mathura was the most important city in the southern part of the kingdom. Kaniska's ambitions included control of Central Asia, which, if not directly under the Kusanas, did come under their influence. The recently discovered inscriptions from Gilgit further attest such Central Asian connections. Kaniska's successors failed to maintain Kusana power. The southern areas were the first to break away, and, by the middle of the 3rd century, the Kusanas were left virtually with only Gandhara and Kashmir. By the end of the century, they were reduced to vassalage by the Sasanian king of Persia. Not surprisingly, administrative and political nomenclature in northern India at this time reflected that of western and Central Asia. The Persian term for the governor of a province, khshathrapavan, as used by the Achaemenians, was Hellenized into “satrap” and widely used by these dynasties. Its Sanskrit form was ksatrapa. The governors of higher status came to be called maha-ksatrapa; they frequently issued inscriptions reflecting whatever era they chose to follow, and they minted their own coins, indicating a more independent status than is generally associated with governors. Imperial titles also were taken by the Indo-Greeks, such as basileus basileon (“king of kings”), similar to the Persian shahanshah, of which the later Sanskrit form was maharaiadhiraja. A title of Central Asian derivation was the daivaputra of the Kusanas, which is believed to have come originally from the Chinese “son of heaven,” emphasizing the divinity of kingship.

History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > 150 BC–AD 300 > Rise of small kingdoms in the north > Oligarchies and kingdoms Occupying the watershed between the Indus and Ganges valleys, Punjab and Rajasthan were the nucleus of a number of oligarchies, or tribal republics whose local importance rose and fell in inverse proportion to the rise and fall of larger kingdoms. According to numismatic evidence, the most important politically were the Audambaras, Arjunayanas, Malavas, Yaudheyas, Sibis, Kunindas, Trigartas, and Abhiras. The Arjunayanas had their base in the present Bharatpur-Alwar region. The Malavas appear to have migrated from the Punjab to the Jaipur area, perhaps after the Indo-Greek invasions; they are associated with the Malava era, which has been identified with the Vikrama era, also known as the Krta era and dating to 58 BC. It is likely that southern Rajasthan as far as the Narmada River and the Ujjain district was named Malwa after the Malavas. Yaudheya evidence is scattered over many parts of the Punjab and the adjoining areas of Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, but during this period their stronghold appears to have been the Rohtak district, north of Delhi; the frequent use of the term gana (“group”) on Yaudheya coins indicates an adherence to the tribal tradition. References to Saivite deities, especially Karttikeya or Skanda, the legendary son of Siva, are striking. The Sibis also migrated from the Punjab to Rajasthan and settled at Madhyamika (near Chitor, modern Chittaugarh). Coins of the Kunindas locate them in the Shiwalik Hills between the Yamuna and the Beas rivers. The Trigartas have been associated with the Chamba region of the upper Ravi River, but they also may have inhabited the area of Jalandhava in the plains. The Abhiras lived in scattered settlements in various parts of western and central India as far as the Deccan. Most of these tribes claimed descent from the ancient lineages of the Puranas, and some of them were later connected with the rise of Rajput dynasties. In addition to the oligarchies, there were small monarchical states, such as Ayodhya, Kausambi, and the scattered Naga kingdoms, the most important of which was the one at Padmavati (Gwalior). Ahicchatra (the Bareilly district of Uttar Pradesh) was ruled by kings who bore names ending in the suffix -mitra.

History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > 150 BC–AD 300 > Rise of small kingdoms in the north > The Sunga kingdom Magadha was the nucleus of the Sunga kingdom, which succeeded the Mauryan. The kingdom extended westward to include Ujjain and Vidisa. The Sungas came into conflict with Vidarbha and with the Yavanas, who probably were Bactrian Greeks attempting to move into the Ganges Valley. (The word yavana derives from the Prakrit yona, suggesting that the Ionians were the first Greeks with whom the Persians and Indians came into contact. In later centuries the name Yavana was applied to all peoples coming from western Asia and the Mediterranean, which included the Romans, Persians, and Arabs). The Sunga dynasty lasted for about one century and was then overthrown by the Brahman minister Vasudeva, who founded the Kanva dynasty, which lasted 45 years and following which the Magadha area faded out of importance until the 4th century AD.

History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > 150 BC–AD 300 > Rise of small kingdoms in the north > The Sunga kingdom Magadha was the nucleus of the Sunga kingdom, which succeeded the Mauryan. The kingdom extended westward to include Ujjain and Vidisa. The Sungas came into conflict with Vidarbha and with the Yavanas, who probably were Bactrian Greeks attempting to move into the Ganges Valley. (The word yavana derives from the Prakrit yona, suggesting that the Ionians were the first Greeks with whom the Persians and Indians came into contact. In later centuries the name Yavana was applied to all peoples coming from western Asia and the Mediterranean, which included the Romans, Persians, and Arabs). The Sunga dynasty lasted for about one century and was then overthrown by the Brahman minister Vasudeva, who founded the Kanva dynasty, which lasted 45 years and following which the Magadha area faded out of importance until the 4th century AD.

History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > 150 BC–AD 300 > Rise of small kingdoms in the north > The Andhras and their successors The Andhras are listed among the tribal peoples in the Mauryan empire. Possibly they rose to being local officials and then, on the disintegration of the empire, gradually became independent rulers of the northwestern Deccan. It cannot be ascertained for certain whether the Andhras arose in the Andhra region (i.e., the Krishna-Godavari deltas) and moved up to the northwestern Deccan or whether their settling in the delta gave it their name. There is also controversy as to whether the dynasty became independent at the end of the 3rd century BC or at the end of the 1st century BC. Their alternative name, Satavahana, is presumed to be the family name, whereas Andhra was probably that of the tribe. It is likely that Satavahana power was established during the reign of Satakarni I, with the borders of the kingdom reaching across the northern Deccan; subsequent to this the Satavahanas suffered an eclipse in the 1st century AD, when they were forced out of the northern Deccan by the Sakas and settled in Andhra. In the 2nd century AD, the Satavahanas reestablished their power in the northwestern Deccan, as evidenced by Saka coins from this region overstruck with the name Gautamiputra Satakarni. That the Andhras did not control Malava and Ujjain is clear from the claim of the Saka king Rudradaman to these regions. The last of the important Andhra kings was Yajñasri Satakarni, who ruled at the end of the 2nd century AD and asserted his authority over the Sakas. The 3rd century saw the decline of Satavahana power, as the kingdom broke into small pockets of control under various branches of the family.

The Satavahana feudatories then rose to power. The Abhiras were the successors in the Nashik area. The Iksvakus succeeded in the Krishna-Guntur region. The Cutu dynasty in Kuntala (southern Maharashtra) had had close connections with the Satavahanas. The Bodhis ruled briefly in the northwestern Deccan. The Brhatphalayanas came to power at the end of the 3rd century in the Masulipatam area. In these regions the Satavahana pattern of administration continued; many of the rulers had matronymics (names derived from that of the mother or a maternal ancestor); many of the royal inscriptions record donations made to Buddhist monks and monasteries, often by princesses, and also land grants to Brahmans and the performance of Vedic sacrifices by the rulers. History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > 150 BC–AD 300 > Southern Indian kingdoms (Left) India c. 500 BC and (right) Asoka's empire at its greatest extent, c. 250 BC. Significant, historically attested contact between the north and the Tamil regions can be reasonably dated to the Mauryan Period. Evidence on the early history of the south consists of the epigraphs of the region, the Tamil cankam literature, and archaeological data.

Inscriptions in Brahmi (recently read as Tamil Brahmi) date to between the 2nd century BC and the 4th century AD. Most of the inscriptions record donations made by royalty or by merchants and artisans to Buddhist and Jaina monks. These are useful in corroborating evidence from the cankam literature, a collection of a large number of poems in classical Tamil, that, according to tradition, were recited at three assemblies of poets held at Madurai. Included in this literature are the so-called Eight Anthologies (Ettutogai) and Ten Idylls (Pattuppattu). The grammatical work Tolkappiyam also is said to be of the same period. The literature probably belongs to the same period as the inscriptions, although some scholars suggest an earlier date. The historical authenticity of sections of the cankam literature has been confirmed by archaeological evidence. Tamilakam, the abode of the Tamils, was defined in cankam literature as approximately equivalent to the area south of modern Madras. Tamilakam was divided into 13 nadus (districts), of which the region of Madurai was the most important as the core of the Tamil speakers. The three major chiefdoms of Tamilakam were those of the Pandyas (Madurai), the Ceras (Cheras; Malabar Coast and the hinterland), and the Colas (Cholas; Thanjavur and the Kaveri valley). The inscriptions of the Pandyas, recording royal grants and other grants made by local citizens, date to the 2nd century BC. The chief Neduñjeliyan (early 3rd century AD) is celebrated by the poets of the cankam as the victor in campaigns against the Ceras and the Colas. Cera inscriptions of the 2nd century AD referring to the Irrumporai clan have been found near Karur (Tiruchchirapalli district), identified with the Korura of Ptolemy. Cankam literature mentions the names of Cera chiefs who have been dated to the 1st century AD. Among them, Nedunjeral Adan is said to have attacked the Yavana ships and held the Yavana traders to ransom. His son Senguttuvan, much eulogized in the poems, also is mentioned in the context of Gajabahu's rule in Sri Lanka, which can be dated to either the first or last quarter of the 2nd century AD, depending on whether he was the earlier or the later Gajabahu. Karikalan (late 2nd century AD) is the best known of the early Cola chiefs and was to become almost a kind of eponymous ancestor to many families of the south claiming Cola descent. The early capital was at Uraiyur, in an area that stretched from the Vaigai River in the south to Tondaimandalam in the north. The three chiefdoms were frequently at war; in addition there were often hostilities with Sri Lanka. Mention is also made of the ruler of Tondaimandalam with its capital at Kanchipuram. There is also frequent mention of the minor chieftains, the Vel, who ruled small areas in many parts of the Tamil country. Ultimately all the chiefdoms suffered at the hands of the Kalvar, or Kalabras, who came from the border to the north of Tamilakam and were described as evil rulers, but they were overthrown in the 5th century AD, with the rise of the Calukyas (Chalukyas) and Pallavas. Cankam literature reflects the indigenous cultural tradition as well as elements of the intrusion of the northern Sanskritic tradition, which by now was beginning to come into contact with these areas, some of which were in the process of change from chiefdoms to kingdoms. In poems praising the chiefs, heroism in raids and gift-giving are hailed as the main virtues. The predominant economy remained pastoral-cum-agrarian, with an increasing emphasis on agriculture. The Tamil poems divide the land into five ecological zones, or tinais. Among the poems that make reference to social stratification, one uses the word kudi (“group”) to denote caste. Each village had its sabha, or council, for administering local affairs, an institution that was to remain a fixture of village life. Religious observance consisted primarily in conducting sacrifices to various deities, among whom Murugan was preeminent. Trade with the Yavanas and with the northern parts of the subcontinent provided considerable economic momentum for the South Indian states. Given the terrain of the peninsula and the agricultural technology of the time, large agrarian-based kingdoms like those of northern India were not feasible, although the cultivation of rice provided a base for economic change. Inevitably, trade played more than a marginal role, and overseas trade became a major economic activity. Almost as soon as the Roman trade began to decline, the Southeast Asian trade commenced; in subsequent centuries this became the focus of maritime interest.

History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > 150 BC–AD 300 > Contacts with the West Sources from the 1st millennium BC often mention trade between western Asia and the western coast of India. Hebrew texts refer to the port of Ophir, sometimes identified with Sopara, on the west coast. Babylonian builders used Indian teak and cedar in the 7th and 6th centuries BC. The Buddhist Jataka literature mentions trade with Baveru (Babylon). After the decline of Babylon, Arab merchants from southern Arabia apparently continued the trade, probably supplying goods to Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean. The discovery of the regular seasonal monsoon winds, enabling ships to drive a straight course across the Arabian Sea, made a considerable difference to shipping and navigation on the route from western Asia to India. Unification of the Mediterranean and western Asian world at the turn of the Christian era under the Roman Empire brought Roman trade into close contact with India—overland with northern India and by sea with peninsular India. The emperor Augustus received two embassies—almost certainly trade missions—from India in 25–21 BC. The Periplus Maris Erythraei (“Circumnavigation of the Erythrean [i.e., Red] Sea”), an anonymous Greek travel book written in the 1st century AD, lists a series of ports along the Indian coast, including Muziris (Cranganore), Colchi (Korkai), Poduca, and Sopatma. An excavation at Arikamedu (near Pondicherry) revealed a Roman trading settlement of this period, and elsewhere, too, the presence of Roman pottery, beads, intaglios, lamps, glass, and coins point to a continuous occupation, resulting even in imitations of some Roman items. It would seem that textiles were prepared to Roman specification and exported from such settlements. Graffiti on pottery found at a port in the Red Sea indicates the presence of Indian traders. Large hoards of Roman coins substantiate other evidence. The coins are mainly of the emperors Augustus (ruled 27 BC–AD 14), Tiberius (ruled 14–37), and Nero (ruled 54–68). Their frequency suggests that the Romans paid for the trade in gold coins. Many are overstruck with a bar, which may indicate that they were used as bullion in India; certainly, Pliny complained that the Indian luxury trade was depleting the Roman treasury. The coins are found most often in trading centres or near the sources of semiprecious stones, especially quartz and beryl. Cankam literature attests the prosperity of Yavana merchants trading in towns such as Kaveripattinam (in the Kaveri delta). The Periplus lists the major exports of India as pepper, precious stones, pearls, tortoise shells, ivory, spikenard and malabathrum (aromatic plants), and silk and other textiles. For these the Romans traded glass, copper, tin, lead, realgar (a red pigment), orpiment (a gold pigment), antimony, and wine, or else they paid in gold coins. The maritime trade routes from the Indian ports were primarily to the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, from where they went overland to the eastern Mediterranean and to Egypt, but Indian merchants also ventured out to Southeast Asia seeking spices and semiprecious stones. River valleys and the Mauryan roads were the chief routes within India. Greek sources refer to a royal highway built by the Mauryas, connecting Taxila with Pataliputra and terminating at Tamralipti, the main port in the Ganges delta. On the western coast the major port of Bhrgukaccha (modern Bharuch) was connected with the Ganges Valley via Rajasthan or, alternatively, Ujjain. From the Narmada valley there were routes going into the northwestern Deccan and continuing along rivers flowing eastward to various parts of the peninsula. Goods were transported mainly in caravans of oxen and donkeys, but only in the dry seasons, the rains creating impossible conditions for travel. Coastal and river shipping was clearly cheaper than overland transport. The main northern route connected Taxila with Kabul and Qandahar and from there branched off in various directions, mainly linking up with routes across Persia to the Black Sea ports and the eastern Mediterranean. The route connecting China with Bactria via Central Asia, which would shortly become famous as the Silk Road, linked the oases of Kashgar, Yarkand, Khotan, Miran, Kucha, Karashahr, and Turfan, in all of which Indian merchants established trading stations. The Central Asian route brought Chinese goods in large quantities into the Indian and west Asian markets. It is thought that the prosperity resulting from this trade enabled the Kusanas to issue the first Indian gold coins. Another consequence was the popularity of horsemanship.

History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > 150 BC–AD 300 > Contacts with the West Sources from the 1st millennium BC often mention trade between western Asia and the western coast of India. Hebrew texts refer to the port of Ophir, sometimes identified with Sopara, on the west coast. Babylonian builders used Indian teak and cedar in the 7th and 6th centuries BC. The Buddhist Jataka literature mentions trade with Baveru (Babylon). After the decline of Babylon, Arab merchants from southern Arabia apparently continued the trade, probably supplying goods to Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean. The discovery of the regular seasonal monsoon winds, enabling ships to drive a straight course across the Arabian Sea, made a considerable difference to shipping and navigation on the route from western Asia to India. Unification of the Mediterranean and western Asian world at the turn of the Christian era under the Roman Empire brought Roman trade into close contact with India—overland with northern India and by sea with peninsular India. The emperor Augustus received two embassies—almost certainly trade missions—from India in 25–21 BC. The Periplus Maris Erythraei (“Circumnavigation of the Erythrean [i.e., Red] Sea”), an anonymous Greek travel book written in the 1st century AD, lists a series of ports along the Indian coast, including Muziris (Cranganore), Colchi (Korkai), Poduca, and Sopatma. An excavation at Arikamedu (near Pondicherry) revealed a Roman trading settlement of this period, and elsewhere, too, the presence of Roman pottery, beads, intaglios, lamps, glass, and coins point to a continuous occupation, resulting even in imitations of some Roman items. It would seem that textiles were prepared to Roman specification and exported from such settlements. Graffiti on pottery found at a port in the Red Sea indicates the presence of Indian traders. Large hoards of Roman coins substantiate other evidence. The coins are mainly of the emperors Augustus (ruled 27 BC–AD 14), Tiberius (ruled 14–37), and Nero (ruled 54–68). Their frequency suggests that the Romans paid for the trade in gold coins. Many are overstruck with a bar, which may indicate that they were used as bullion in India; certainly, Pliny complained that the Indian luxury trade was depleting the Roman treasury. The coins are found most often in trading centres or near the sources of semiprecious stones, especially quartz and beryl. Cankam literature attests the prosperity of Yavana merchants trading in towns such as Kaveripattinam (in the Kaveri delta). The Periplus lists the major exports of India as pepper, precious stones, pearls, tortoise shells, ivory, spikenard and malabathrum (aromatic plants), and silk and other textiles. For these the Romans traded glass, copper, tin, lead, realgar (a red pigment), orpiment (a gold pigment), antimony, and wine, or else they paid in gold coins. The maritime trade routes from the Indian ports were primarily to the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, from where they went overland to the eastern Mediterranean and to Egypt, but Indian merchants also ventured out to Southeast Asia seeking spices and semiprecious stones. River valleys and the Mauryan roads were the chief routes within India. Greek sources refer to a royal highway built by the Mauryas, connecting Taxila with Pataliputra and terminating at Tamralipti, the main port in the Ganges delta. On the western coast the major port of Bhrgukaccha (modern Bharuch) was connected with the Ganges Valley via Rajasthan or, alternatively, Ujjain. From the Narmada valley there were routes going into the northwestern Deccan and continuing along rivers flowing eastward to various parts of the peninsula. Goods were transported mainly in caravans of oxen and donkeys, but only in the dry seasons, the rains creating impossible conditions for travel. Coastal and river shipping was clearly cheaper than overland transport. The main northern route connected Taxila with Kabul and Qandahar and from there branched off in various directions, mainly linking up with routes across Persia to the Black Sea ports and the eastern Mediterranean. The route connecting China with Bactria via Central Asia, which would shortly become famous as the Silk Road, linked the oases of Kashgar, Yarkand, Khotan, Miran, Kucha, Karashahr, and Turfan, in all of which Indian merchants established trading stations. The Central Asian route brought Chinese goods in large quantities into the Indian and west Asian markets. It is thought that the prosperity resulting from this trade enabled the Kusanas to issue the first Indian gold coins. Another consequence was the popularity of horsemanship.

History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > 150 BC–AD 300 > Society and culture > Guilds The social institution most closely related to commercial activity was the sreni, or guild, through which trade was channeled. The guilds were registered with the town authority, and the activities of guild members followed strict guidelines called the sreni-dharma. The more wealthy guilds employed slaves and hired labourers in addition to their own artisans, though the percentage of such slaves appears to have been small. Guilds had their own seals and insignia. They often made lavish donations to Buddhist and Jaina monasteries, and some of the finest Buddhist monuments of the period resulted from such patronage. In some areas, such as the Deccan, members of the royal family invested money with a particular guild, and the accruing interest became a regular donation to the Buddhist sangha. This must also have enhanced the political prestige of the guild.

History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > 150 BC–AD 300 > Society and culture > Finance Increasing reliance on money in commerce greatly augmented the role of the financier and banker. Sometimes the wealthier guilds offered financial services, but the more usual source of money was the merchant financier (sresthin). Coinage proliferated in the various kingdoms, and minting attained a high level of craftsmanship. The most widely used coins were the gold dinaras and suvarnas, based on the Roman denarius (124 grains); a range of silver coins, such as the earlier karsapana (or pana; 57.8 grains) and the satamana; an even wider range of copper coins, such as the masa (9 grains), kakani (2.25 grains), and a variety of unspecified standards; and other coins issued in lead and potin, particularly in western India. Usury was an accepted part of the banker's trade, with 15 percent being the typical interest rate, although this varied according to the enterprise for which the money was borrowed. Expanding trade also introduced a multiplicity of weights and measures.

History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > 150 BC–AD 300 > Society and culture > Impact of trade Foreign trade probably had its greatest economic impact in the south, but the interchange of ideas appears to have been more substantial in the north. This latter effect may have been attributable to the north's longer association with western Asia and the colonial Hellenic culture. Greek, along with Aramaic, was widely spoken in Afghanistan and was doubtless understood in Taxila. The spurt of geographic studies in the Mediterranean produced works with extensive descriptions of the trade with India; these included Strabo's Geography, Ptolemy's Geography, Pliny's Natural History, and the Periplus Maris Erythraei. The most obvious and visible impact occurred in Gandhara art, which depicted Indian themes influenced by Hellenistic and Roman styles, an attractive hybrid that influenced the development of Buddhist iconography. The more prized among objects were the ivory carvings that reached Afghanistan from Central India.

History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > 150 BC–AD 300 > Society and culture > Religious patronage If art remains are an index to patronage, then Buddhism seems to have been the most favoured religion, followed by Saivism and the Bhagavata cult. Buddhist centres generally comprised a complex of three structures—the monastery (vihara), the hall of worship (caitya), and the sacred tumulus (stupa)—all of which were freestanding structures in the north but were initially rock-cut monuments in the Deccan. The Jainas found more patrons in the Deccan. Literary sources of the period mention Hindu temples, but none of comparable antiquity have been found. Apart from the Gandhara style of sculpture, a number of indigenous centres in other parts of India, such as Mathura, Karli, Nagarjunakonda, and Amaravati, portrayed Buddhist legends in a variety of local stones. The more popular medium was terra-cotta, by then changed from gray to red, depicting not only ordinary men and women and animal figures but also large numbers of mother goddesses, indicating the continued popular worship of these deities. The practice of Buddhism was itself undergoing change. Affluent patronage endowed the large monasteries with land and slaves. Association with royalty gave Buddhism access to power. Under the proselytizing consciousness that had gradually evolved, Buddhist monks traveled as missionaries to Central Asia and China, western Asia, and Southeast Asia. New situations inevitably led to the need for new ideas, as is most clearly seen in the contact of Buddhism with Christianity and Zoroastrianism in Central Asia. Arguments over the original teaching of the Buddha had already resulted in a series of councils called to clarify the doctrine. The two main sects were the Theravada, centred at Kausambi, which compiled the Pali canon on Buddhist teachings, and the Sarvastivaha, which arose at Mathura, spread northward, and finally established itself in Central Asia, using Sanskrit as the language for preserving the Buddhist tradition. A fourth council, held in Kashmir during the reign of Kaniska, ratified the separation of the two main schools of Buddhism—the Mahayana (Greater Vehicle) and the Hinayana (Lesser Vehicle). The impressive dominance of Buddhism did not arise without hostility from the patrons of other religions. Jainism had by now also split into two groups—the Digambara (Sky-Clad—i.e., naked), the more orthodox, and the Svetambara (White-Clad), the more liberal. The Jainas were not as widespread as the Buddhists, their main centres being in western India, Kalinga for a brief period, and the Mysore (modern Karnataka) and Tamil country. Brahmanism also underwent changes with the gradual fading out of some of the Vedic deities. The two major gods were Vishnu (Visnu) and Siva, around whom there emerged a monotheistic trend perhaps best expressed in the Vaisnava Bhagavadgita, which most authorities would date to the 1st century BC. The doctrine of karma and rebirth, emphasizing the influence of actions performed either in this life or in former lives on present and future lives, became central to Hindu belief and influenced both religious and social notions. Vedic sacrifices were not discontinued but gradually became symbols of such ceremonial occasions as royal consecrations. Sacrificial ritual was beginning to be replaced by the practice of bhakti, a form of personal devotion whereby the worshiper shares in the grace of the deity.

History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > 150 BC–AD 300 > Society and culture > Literature Popular epics, such as the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, were injected with didactic sections on religion and morality and elevated to the status of sacred literature. Their heroes, Krishna (Krsna) and Rama, were incorporated into Vaisnavism as avatars (avataras; incarnations) of Vishnu. The concept of incarnations was useful in subsuming local deities and cults. The epics also served as a treasury of stories, which provided themes and characters for countless poems and plays. The works of the dramatist Bhasa, notably Svapnavasavadatta and Pratijñayaugandharayana, were foundational to the Sanskrit drama. Asvaghosa, another major dramatist who wrote in Sanskrit, based his works on Buddhist themes. The popularity of drama necessitated the writing of a work on dramaturgy, the Natya-sastra (“Treatise on Dramatic Art”) of the sage-priest Bharata. The composition of Dharma-sastras (treatises on sacred duties), among which the most often quoted is ascribed to Manu, became important in a period of social flux in which traditional social law and usage were important as precedent. A commentary on the earlier Sanskrit grammar of Panini was provided by the Mahabhasya of Patañjali, timely because even the non-Indian dynasties of the north and west made extensive use of Sanskrit. Of the sciences, astronomy and medicine were foremost, both reflecting the interchange of ideas with western Asia. Two basic medical treatises, composed by Caraka and Susruta, date to this period. History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > 150 BC–AD 300 > Society and culture > Assimilation of foreigners The presence of foreigners, most of whom settled in Indian cities and adopted Indian habits and behaviour in addition to religion, became a problem for social theorists because the newcomers had to be fitted into caste society. It was easier to accommodate a group rather than an individual into the social hierarchy, because the group could be given a jati status. Technically, conversion to Hinduism was difficult because one had to be born into a particular caste, and it was karma that determined one's caste. The theoretical definition of caste society continued as before, and the four varnas were referred to as the units of society. The assimilation of local cults demanded the assimilation of cult priests, who had to be accommodated within the Brahmanic hierarchy. The Greeks and the Sakas, clearly of non-Indian origin and initially the ruling group, were referred to as “fallen Ksatriyas.” The Vaisya and Sudra groups did not pose such a serious problem, because their vague definition gave them social mobility. It is likely that in such periods of social change some lower-caste groups may have moved up the ladder of social hierarchy.

History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > AD 300–750 > Northern India > The Guptas The Gupta empire at the end of the 4th century. Historians once regarded the Gupta Period (c. 320–540) as the Classical Age of India, the period during which the norms of Indian literature, art, architecture, and philosophy were established. It was also thought to have been an age of material prosperity, particularly among the urban elite, and of renascent Hinduism. Some of these assumptions have been questioned by more extensive studies of the post-Mauryan, pre-Gupta period. Archaeological evidence from the earlier Kusana levels suggests greater material prosperity, to such a degree that some historians argue for an urban decline in the Gupta Period. Much of Gupta literature and art derived from that of earlier periods, and renascent Hinduism is probably more correctly dated to the post-Gupta time. The Gupta realm, although less extensive than that of the Mauryas, did encompass the northern half and central parts of the subcontinent. The Gupta Period also has been called an imperial age, but the administrative centralization so characteristic of an imperial system is less apparent than during the Mauryan Period. The Guptas, a comparatively unknown family, came from either Magadha or eastern Uttar Pradesh. The third king, Candra Gupta I (Chandragupta I), took the title of maharajadhiraja. He married a Licchavi princess—an event celebrated in a series of gold coins. It has been suggested that, if the Guptas ruled in Prayaga (modern Allahabad in eastern Uttar Pradesh), the marriage alliance may have added Magadha to their domain. The Gupta era began in 320, but it is not clear whether this date commemorated the accession of Candra Gupta or the assumption of the status of independence. Candra Gupta appointed his son Samudra Gupta to succeed him about 330, according to a long eulogy to Samudra Gupta inscribed on a pillar at Allahabad. The coins of an obscure prince, Kacha, suggest that there may have been contenders for the throne. Samudra Gupta's campaigns took him in various directions and resulted in many conquests. Not all the conquered regions were annexed, but the range of operations established the military prowess of the Guptas. Samudra Gupta acquired Pataliputra, which was to become the Gupta capital. Proceeding down the eastern coast, he also conquered the states of Daksinapatha but reinstated the vanquished rulers. Among those he rendered subservient were the rulers of Aryavarta, various forest chiefs, the northern oligarchies, and border states in the east, in addition to Nepal. More distant domains brought within Samudra Gupta's orbit were regarded as subordinate; these comprised the “king of kings” of the northwest, the Sakas, the Murundas, and the inhabitants of “all the islands,” including Sinhala (Sri Lanka), all of which are listed in the inscription at Allahabah. It would seem that the campaign extended Gupta power in northern and eastern India and virtually eliminated the oligarchies and the minor kings of central India and the Ganges Valley. The identity of the islands remains problematic, as they could either have been the ones close to India or those of Southeast Asia, with which communication had increased. The Ganges Valley and central India were the areas under direct administrative control. The campaign in the eastern coastal areas may have been prompted by the desire to acquire the trading wealth of these regions. The grim image of Samudra Gupta as a military conqueror is ameliorated, however, by references to his love of poetry and by coins on which he is depicted playing the lyre. Samudra Gupta was succeeded about 380 by his son Candra Gupta II, though there is some evidence that there may have been an intermediate ruler. Candra Gupta II's major campaign was against the Saka rulers of Ujjain, the success of which was celebrated in a series of silver coins. Gupta interest lay not merely in the political control of the west but in the wealth the area derived from trade with western and southeastern Asia. Gupta territory adjoining the northern Deccan was secured through a marriage alliance with the Vakataka dynasty, the successors of the Satavahanas in the area. Although Candra Gupta II took the title of Vikramaditya (Sun of Valour), his reign is associated more with cultural and intellectual achievements than with military campaigns. His Chinese contemporary, Fa-hsien, a Buddhist monk, traveled in India and left an account of his impressions. Administratively, the Gupta kingdom was divided into provinces called desa or bhukti, and these in turn into smaller units, the pradesa or visaya. The provinces were governed by kumaramatyas, high imperial officers or members of the royal family. A decentralization of authority is evident from the composition of the municipal board (adhisthana-adhikarana), which consisted of the guild president (nagara-sresthin), the chief merchant (sarthavaha), and representatives of the artisans and of the scribes. During this period the term samanta, which originally meant neighbour, was beginning to be applied to intermediaries who had been given grants of land or to conquered feudatory rulers. There was also a noticeable tendency for some of the higher administrative offices to become hereditary. The lack of firm control over conquered areas led to their resuming independence. The repeated military action that this necessitated may have strained the kingdom's resources. The first hint of a fresh invasion from the northwest comes in the reign of Candra Gupta's son and successor, Kumara Gupta (c. 415–455). The threat was that of the Huns, or Hunas as they are called in Indian sources, a branch of the Hephthalites. Skanda Gupta (c. 455–467), who succeeded Kumara Gupta, and his successors all had to face the full-fledged invasion of the Hunas. Skanda Gupta managed to rally Gupta strength for a while, but after his death the situation deteriorated. Dissensions within the royal family added to the problem. Gupta genealogies of this period show considerable variance in their succession lists. By the mid-6th century, when the dynasty apparently came to an end, the kingdom had dwindled to a small size. Northern India and parts of central India were in the hands of the Hunas. The first Huna king in India was Toramana (early 6th century), whose inscriptions have been found as far south as Eran (Madhya Pradesh). His son Mihirakula, a patron of Saivism, is recorded in Buddhist tradition as uncouth and extremely cruel. The Gupta rulers, together with Yasodharman of Malava, seem to have confronted Mihirakula and forced him back to the north. Ultimately his kingdom was limited to Kashmir and Punjab with its capital at Sakala (Sialkot). Huna power declined after his reign. The coming of the Hunas brought northern India once more into close contact with Central Asia, and a number of Central Asian tribes migrated into India. It has been suggested that the Gurjaras, who gradually spread to various parts of northern India, may be identified with the Khazars of Central Asia. The Huna invasion challenged the stability of the Gupta kingdom, even though the ultimate decline may have been caused by internal factors. A severe blow was the resultant disruption of the Central Asian trade and the decline in the income that northern India had derived from it. Some of the north Indian tribes migrated to other regions, and this movement of peoples effected changes in the social structure of the Post-Gupta Period. The rise of Rajput families and “Ksatriya” dynasties (see below The Rajputs) are associated by some scholars with tribal chiefs in these new areas.

History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > AD 300–750 > Northern India > Successor states Of the kingdoms that arose as inheritors of the Gupta territory, the most important were those of Valabhi (Saurastra and Kathiawar); Gujarata (originally the area near Jodhpur), believed to be the nucleus of the later Pratihara kingdom; Nandipuri (near Bharuch); Maukhari (Magadha); the kingdom of the later Guptas (in the area between Malava and Magadha); and those of Bengal, Nepal, and Kamarupa (in the Assam Valley). Orissa (Kongoda) was under the Mana and Sailodbhava dynasties before being conquered by Sasanka, king of Gauda (lower Bengal). In the early 7th century, Sasanka annexed a substantial part of the Ganges Valley, where he came into conflict with the Maukharis and the rising Puspabhuti dynasty of Thanesar (north of Delhi).

The Puspabhuti dynasty aspired to imperial status during the reign of Harsa (Harsavardhana). Sthanvisvara (Thanesar) appears to have been a small principality, probably under the suzerainty of the Guptas. Harsa came to the throne in 606 and ruled for 41 years. The first of the major historical biographies in Sanskrit, the Harsacarita (“Deeds of Harsa”), was written by Bana, a celebrated author attached to his court, and contains information on Harsa's early life. A fuller account of the period is given by the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Hsüan-tsang, who traveled through India and stayed for some time at a monastery at Nalanda. Harsa acquired Kannauj (in Farrukhabad district), which became the eponymous capital of his large kingdom. He waged a major but unsuccessful campaign against Pulakesin II, the Calukya king of the northern Deccan, and was confined to the northern half of the subcontinent. Nor was his success spectacular in western India against Valabhl, Nandipurl, and Sindh (lower Indus Valley). In his eastern campaign, however, Harsa met with little resistance (Sasanka having died in 636) and acquired Magadha, Vanga, and Kongoda (Orissa). His alliance with Bhaskaravarman of Kamarupa (Assam) proved helpful. Although Harsa failed to build an empire, his kingdom was of no mean size, and he earned the reputation of being the preeminent ruler of the north. He is remembered as the author of three Sanskrit plays—Ratnavall, Priyadarsika, and Nagananda—the theme of the last indicating his interest in Buddhist thought. The T'ang emperor of China, T'ai Tsung, sent a series of embassies to Harsa, establishing closer ties between the two realms. After the death of Harsa, the kingdom of Kannauj entered a period of decline until the early 8th century, when it revived with the rise of Yasovarman, who is eulogized in the Prakrit poem Gauda-vadha (“The Slaying of [the King of] Gauda”) of Vakpati. Yasovarman came into conflict with Lalitaditya, the king of Kashmir of the Karkota dynasty, and appears to have been defeated. In the 8th century the rising power in western India was that of the Gurjara-Pratihara. The Rajput dynasty of the Guhilla had its centre in Mewar (with Chitor as its base). The Capa family were associated with the city of Anahilapataka (modern Patan) and are involved in early Rajput history. In the Haryana region, the Tomara Rajputs, originally feudatories of the Gurjara-Pratiharas, founded the city of Dhillika (Delhi) in 736. The political pattern of this time reveals the genesis of regionalism and of new political and economic structures. In the early 8th century, a new power base was established briefly with the arrival of the Arabs in Sindh. Inscriptions of the western Indian dynasties speak of controlling the tide of the mleccha, which has been interpreted in this case to mean the Arabs; some Indian sources use the term yavana. The conquest of Sindh marked the easternmost extent of Arab territorial control. A local chronicle from Sindh, the Chach-nama, gives an account of these events. The initial naval expedition met with failure, so the Arabs conducted an overland campaign. The Arab hold on Sindh was loose at first, and the local chiefs remained virtually independent, but by 724 the invaders had established direct rule, with a governor representing the caliph. Arab attempts to advance into Punjab and Kashmir, however, were checked. The Indians did not fully comprehend the magnitude of Arab political and economic ambitions. Along the west coast, the Arabs were seen as familiar traders from western Asia. The possible competition with Indian trade was not realized.

History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > AD 300–750 > The Deccan The Gupta empire at the end of the 4th century. In the Deccan, the Vakataka dynasty was closely tied to the Guptas. With a nucleus in Vidarbha, the founder of the dynasty, Vindhyasakti, extended his power northward as far as Vidisa (near Ujjain). At the end of the 4th century, a collateral line of the Vakatakas was established by Sarvasena in Vatsagulma (Basim, in Akola district), and the northern line helped the southern to conquer Kuntala (southern Maharashtra). The domination of the northern Deccan by the main Vakataka line during this period is clearly established by the matrimonial alliances not only with the Guptas but also with other peninsular dynasties such as the Visnukundins and the Kadambas. The Vakatakas were weakened by attacks from Malava and Kosala in the 5th century. Ultimately, the Calukyas of Vatapi (Badami) ended their rule. Of the myriad ruling families of the Deccan between the 4th and 7th centuries—including the Nalas, the Kalacuris, the Gangas, and the Kadambas—the most significant were the Calukyas (Chalukyas), who are associated with Vatapi (Bijapur district) in the 6th century AD. The Calukyas controlled large parts of the Deccan for two centuries. There were many branches of the family, the most important of which were the Eastern Calukyas, ruling at Pistapura (Pithapuram in the Godavari delta) in the early 7th century; the Calukyas of Vemulavada (near Karimnagar, Andhra Pradesh); and the renascent later Calukyas of Kalyani (between the Bhima and Godavari rivers), who rose to power in the 10th century. Calukya power reached its zenith during the reign of Pulakesin II (610–642), a contemporary of Harsa (see above Successor states). The early years of Pulakesin's reign were taken up with a civil war, after which he had to reconquer lost territories and reestablish his control over recalcitrant feudatories. Pulakesin then campaigned successfully in the south against the Kadambas, the Alupas, and the Gangas. Leading his armies north, he defeated the Latas, Malavas, and Gurjaras. Pulakesin's final triumph in the north was the victory over Harsa of Kannauj. Pulakesin then turned his attention to the eastern Deccan and conquered southern Kosala, Kalinga, Pistapuram, and the Visnukundin kingdom. He started the collateral branch of the Eastern Calukyas based at Pistapuram with his younger brother Visnuvardhana as the first king. Pulakesin then launched another major campaign against the powerful South Indian kingdom of the Pallavas, in which he defeated their king Mahendravarman I, inaugurating a Calukya-Pallava conflict that was to continue for many centuries. Pulakesin II sent an embassy to the court of the Persian king Khosrow II. Good relations between the Persians and the Indians of the Deccan were of great advantage to the Zoroastrians of Persia, who, fleeing from the Islamic persecution in subsequent centuries, sought asylum in India and settled along the west coast of the Deccan. Their descendants today constitute the Parsi community. Control over both coasts enhanced the Calukya king's already firm hold on the Deccan. The major river valleys of the plateau—the Narmada, Tapi (Tapti), Godavari with its tributaries, and Krishna—were in Calukya hands, as were the valuable routes in the valleys. This amounted to control of the west coast trade with western Asia and the Kalinga and Andhra trade on the east coast with Southeast Asia. The centuries-long conflict between the northern and the southern Deccan, of which the Calukya-Pallava conflict was but a facet, also had geographic, political, and economic causes. Any South Indian power seeking to expand would inevitably try to move up the east coast, which was not only the most fertile area of the peninsula but was also wealthy from the income of trade with Southeast Asia. Therefore, control of the northern Deccan required control of the east coast as well. With the major maritime activity gradually concentrating on Southeast Asian trade, in which even the west coast had a large share, the control of both coasts was of considerable economic advantage. It was along the east coast, therefore, that the conflict between the two regions often erupted. The next 100 years of Calukya power witnessed the continuation of this conflict, weakening both contenders. Ultimately, in the mid-8th century, a feudatory of the Calukyas, Dantidurga of the Rastrakuta family, rose to importance and established himself in place of the declining Calukya dynasty. The Eastern Calukyas, who had managed to avoid involvement in the conflict, survived longer and came into conflict with the Rastrakutas. Another branch of the Calukyas established itself at Lata in the mid-7th century and played a prominent role in obstructing the Arab advance.

History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > AD 300–750 > Southern India The southern part of the peninsula split into many kingdoms, each fighting for supremacy. Cera power relied mainly on a flourishing trade with western Asia. The Colas retired into insignificance in the Uraiyur (Tiruchchirappalli) area. The Pandyas were involved in fighting the rising power of the Pallavas, and occasionally they formed alliances with the Deccan kingdoms. The origin of the Pallava dynasty is obscure. It is not even clear whether the early Pallavas of the 3rd century AD were the ancestors of the later Pallavas of the 6th century, who are sometimes distinguished by the title “imperial.” It would seem, though, that their place of origin was Tondaimandalam, with its centre at Kanchipuram (ancient Kañci). Prakrit copperplate charters issued by the early kings from Kanchipuram often mention places just to the north in Andhra Pradesh, suggesting that the dynasty may have migrated to the Kanchipuram area. The Sanskrit and Tamil epigraphic records of the later kings of the dynasty indicate that the later Pallavas became dominant in the 6th century after a successful attack against the Kalabhras, which extended their territory as far south as the Kaveri River. The Pallavas reached their zenith during the reign of Mahendravarman I (c. 600–630), a contemporary of Harsa and Pulakesin II. Among the sources of the period, Hsüan-tsang's account serves as a connecting link, as he traveled through the domains of all three kings. The struggle for Vengi between the Pallavas and the Calukyas became the immediate pretext for a long, drawn-out war, which began with the defeat of the Pallavas. Apart from his campaigns, Mahendravarman was a writer and artist of some distinction. The play associated with him, Mattavilasaprahasana, treats in a farcical manner the idiosyncrasies of Buddhist and Saiva ascetics. Mahendravarman's successor, Narasimhavarman I Mahamalla (c. 630–668), avenged the Pallava defeat by capturing Vatapi. He sent two naval expeditions from Mahabalipur (Mamallapuram) to Sri Lanka to assist the king Manavamma in regaining his throne. Pallava naval interests laid the foundation for extensive reliance on the navy by the succeeding dynasty, the Colas. Toward the end of the 8th century, the Gangas and the Pandyas joined coalitions against the Pallavas. As the Calukyas declined under pressure from the Rastrakutas, the Pandyas gradually took on the Pallavas and, by the mid-9th century, advanced as far as Kumbakonam. This defeat was avenged, but, by the end of the 9th century, Pallava power had ceased to be significant.

History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > AD 300–750 > Society and culture Some of the Pallava kings took an interest in the Alvars and Nayanars, the religious teachers who preached a new form of Vaisnavism and Saivism based on the bhakti cult. Among the Saivas were Appar (who is said to have converted Mahendravarman from Jainism) and Manikkavacakar. Among the Vaisnavas were Nammalvar and a woman teacher, Andal. The movement aimed at preaching a popular Hinduism, in which Tamil was preferred to Sanskrit, and emphasized the role of the peripatetic teacher. Women were encouraged to participate in the congregations. The Tamil devotional cult and similar movements elsewhere were in a sense competitive with Buddhism and Jainism, both of which suffered a gradual decline in most areas. Jainism found a foothold in Karnataka, Rajasthan, and Gujarat. Buddhism flourished in eastern India, with major monastic centres at Nalanda, Vikramasila, and Paharpur that attracted vast numbers of students from India and abroad. Tibetan and eastern Indian cults, particularly the Tantric cults, influenced the development of Vajrayana (Thunderbolt Vehicle) Buddhism. The widespread Sakti cult associated with Hindu practice was based on the notion that the male can be activated only by union with the female. Thus the gods were given consorts—Laksmi and Sri for Vishnu, and Parvati, Kali, and Durga for Siva—and ritual was directed toward the worship of the mother goddess. Much of the ritual was derived from the earlier fertility cults and local rites and beliefs that were assimilated into Hinduism. During the same period, orthodox Brahmanism received encouragement, especially from the royal families. Learned Brahmans were given endowments of land. The performance of Vedic sacrifices for purposes of royal legitimacy gave way to the keeping of genealogies, which the Brahmans now controlled. The new Brahmanism acquired a locality and an institution in the form of the temple. The earliest remains of a Hindu temple, discovered at Sanchi, date to the Gupta Period. These extremely simple structures consisted of a shrine room, called a garbhagrha (“womb house,” or sanctum sanctorum), which contained an image of the deity and opened onto a porch. Over the centuries, additional structures were added until the temple complexes covered many acres. In the peninsula, the early rock-cut temples imitated Buddhist models. Although the Calukyas did introduce freestanding temples, most of their patronage extended to rock-cut monuments. The Pallavas also began with rock-cut temples, as at Mahabalipur, but, when they took to freestanding temples, they produced the most impressive examples of their time. As temples and monasteries became larger and more complex, the decorative arts of mural painting and sculpture flourished. Early examples of mural painting occur at Bagh (Dhar district) and Sittanavasal (Pudukkottai district), and the tradition reached its apogee in the murals at Ajanta (Aurangabad district) during the Vakataka and Calukya periods. The fashion for murals in Buddhist monasteries spread from India to Afghanistan and Central Asia and ultimately to China. Equally impressive was the Buddhist sculpture at Sarnath, in Uttar Pradesh. It is possible that the proliferation of Buddhist images led to the depiction of Hindu deities in iconic form. Temples were richly endowed with wealth and land, and the larger institutions could accommodate colleges of higher learning (ghatika and matha), primarily for priests. These colleges became responsible for much of the formal education, and inevitably the use of Sanskrit became widespread. There was an appreciable development of Hindu philosophy, which now recognized six major schools: Nyaya, Vaisesika, Samkhya, Yoga, Mimamsa, and Vedanta. Indicative of the growing domination of Brahmanic intellectual life, the ancient Puranas were now written substantially in their present form under Brahmanic influence. The flowering of classical Sanskrit literature is indicated by the plays and poems of Kalidasa (Abhijñanasakuntala, Malavikagnimitra, Vikramorvasiya, Raghuvamsa, Meghaduta), although Kalidasa's precise date is uncertain. In the south, the propagation of Sanskrit resulted in the Kiratarjuniya, an epic written by Bharavi (7th century); in Dandin's Dasakumaracarita, a collection of popular stories (6th century); and in Bhavabhuti's play Malatimadhava. Tamil literature flourished as well, as evidenced by two didactic works, the Tirukkural and Naladiyar, and by the more lyrical Silappadikaram and Manimekhalai, two Tamil epics. Representing a less common genre of literature in the Gupta Period was the Kama-sutra of Vatsyayana, a manual on the art of love. This was a collation and revision of earlier texts and displays a remarkable sophistication and urbanity. It was a period of literary excellence, though in the other arts such levels of excellence came later. Not all the achievements can be associated with the Gupta dynasty. The monasteries and temples were centres of formal learning, and the guilds were centres of technical knowledge. The mixture of the theoretical and practical, however, sometimes occurred, as in the case of medicine, particularly veterinary science. Advances in metallurgy are attested in such objects as the Sultanganj Buddha and a famous iron pillar now at Mehrauli (Delhi). Gold and silver coins of the Gupta Period exhibit a refinement that was not to be surpassed for many centuries. Mathematics was particularly advanced, probably more so than anywhere in the world at the time. Indian numerals were later borrowed by the Arabs and introduced to Europe as Arabic numerals. The use of the cipher and the decimal system is confirmed by inscriptions. With advances in mathematics there was comparable progress in astronomy. Aryabhata, writing in AD 499, calculated  (pi) to 3.1416 and the solar year to 365.3586… days and stated that the Earth was spherical and rotated on its axis. That European astronomy was also known is suggested by the 6th-century astronomer Varahamihira, who mentions the Romaka Siddhanta (School of Rome) among the five major schools of astronomy. Legal texts and commentaries were abundant—the better known being those of Yajñavalkya, Narada, Brhaspati, and Katyayana. Earlier texts relating to social problems and property rights received particular attention. The Post-Gupta Period saw considerable and lasting social change, which resulted not only from outside influences but also from the interaction of the elite Sanskritic culture with more parochial non-Sanskritic cultures. The expanding village economy opened up new areas geographically, and the increasing importance of guilds in the towns indicated fresh perspectives on social life. These activities also incorporated new groups and cultures into the existing norms of Indian society.

History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > 750–c. 1200 > Northern India > The tripartite struggle The 8th century saw a struggle for control over the central Ganges Valley, focusing on Kannauj, among the Gurjara-Pratihara, the Rastrakuta, and the Pala dynasties. The Pratiharas rose to power in the Avanti-Jalaor region and used western India as a base. The Calukyas fell about 753 to one of their own feudatories, the Rastrakutas under Dantidurga, who established a dynasty. The Rastrakuta interest in Kannauj probably centred on the trade routes from the Ganges Valley. This was the first occasion on which a power based in the Deccan made a serious bid for a pivotal position in northern India. From the east the Palas also participated in the competition. They are associated with Pundravardhana (Bogra district), and their first ruler, Gopala (c. 750–770), included Vanga in his kingdom and gradually extended his control to the whole of Bengal. Vatsaraja, a Pratihara ruler who came to the throne about 778, controlled eastern Rajasthan and Malava. His ambition to take Kannauj brought him into conflict with the Pala king, Dharmapala (c. 770–810), who had by this time advanced up the Ganges Valley. The Rastrakuta king Dhruva (c. 780–793) attacked each in turn and claimed to have defeated them. This initiated the so-called tripartite struggle. Dharmapala soon retook Kannauj and put his nominee on the throne. The Rastrakutas were preoccupied with problems in the south. Vatsaraja's successor, Nagabhata II (c. 793–833), reorganized Pratihara power, attacked Kannauj, and for a short while reversed the situation. However, soon afterward he was defeated by the Rastrakuta king Govinda III (793–814), who in turn had to face a confederacy of southern powers that kept him involved in Deccan politics, leaving northern India to the Pratiharas and Palas. Bhoja I (c. 836–885) revived the power of the Pratiharas by bringing Kalañjara (Banda district), and possibly Kannauj as well, under Pratihara control. Bhoja's plans to extend the kingdom, however, were thwarted by the Palas and the Rastrakutas. More serious conflict with the latter ensued during the reign of Krishna II (c. 878–914). An Arab visitor to western India, the merchant Sulayman, referred to the kingdom of Juzr (which is generally identified as Gurjara) and its strong and able ruler, who may have been Bhoja. Of the successors of Bhoja, the only one of significance was Mahipala (c. 908–942), whose relationship with the earlier king remains controversial. Rajasekhara, a renowned poet at his court, implies that Mahipala restored the kingdom to its original power, but this may be an exaggeration. By the end of the 10th century, the Pratihara feudatories—Cauhans (Cahamanas), Candellas (Chandelas), Guhilas, Kalacuris, Paramaras, and Caulukyas (also called Solankis)—were asserting their independence, although the last of the Pratiharas survived until 1027. Meanwhile Devapala (c. 810–850) was reasserting Pala authority in the east and, he claimed, in the northern Deccan. The end of the 9th century, however, saw the decline of the Pala kingdom, with feudatories in Kamarupa (modern Assam) and Utkala (Orissa) taking independent titles. Pala power revived during the reign of Mahipala (c. 988–1038), although its stronghold now was Bihar rather than Bengal. Further attempts to recover the old Pala territories were made by Ramapala, but Pala power gradually declined. There was a brief revival of power in Bengal under the Sena dynasty (c. 1070–1289). In the Rastrakuta kingdom, Amoghavarsa (c. 814–878) faced a revolt of officers and feudatories but managed to survive and reassert Rastrakuta power despite intermittent rebellions. Campaigns in the south against Vengi and the Gangas kept Amoghavarsa preoccupied and prevented him from participating in northern politics. The Rastrakuta capital was moved to Manyakheta (Malkhed, in Andhra Pradesh), doubtlessly to facilitate southern involvements, which clearly took on more important dimensions at this time. Sporadic campaigns against the Pratiharas, the Eastern Calukyas, and the Colas, the new power of the south, continued (see below The Colas). Indra III (914–927) captured Kannauj, but, with mounting political pressures from the south, his control over the north was inevitably short-lived. The reign of Krishna III (c. 939–968) saw a successful campaign against the Colas, a matrimonial alliance with the Gangas, and the subjugation of Vengi. Rastrakuta power declined suddenly, however, after the reign of Indra, and this was fully exploited by the feudatory Taila. Taila II (973–997), who traced his ancestry to the earlier Calukyas of Vatapi, ruled a small part of Bijapur. Upon the weakening of Rastrakuta power, he defeated the king, declared his independence, and founded what has come to be called the Later Calukya dynasty. The kingdom included southern Karnataka, Konkan, and the territory as far north as the Godavari. By the end of the 10th century, the Later Calukyas clashed with the ambitious Colas. The Calukyas' capital was subsequently moved north to Kalyani (in Bidar). Campaigns against the Colas took a more serious turn during the reign of Somesvara I (1043–68), with alternating defeat and victory. The Later Calukyas, however, by and large retained control over the western Deccan despite the hostility of the Colas and of their own feudatories. In the middle of the 12th century, however, a feudatory, Bijjala (1156–67) of the Kalacuri dynasty, usurped the throne at Kalyani. The last of the Calukya rulers, Somesvara IV (1181–c. 1189), regained the throne for a short period, after which he was overthrown by a feudatory of the Yadava dynasty. On the periphery of the large kingdoms were the smaller states such as Nepal, Kamarupa, Kashmir, and Utkala (Orissa) and lesser dynasties such as the Silaharas in Maharashtra. Nepal had freed itself from Tibetan suzerainty in the 8th century but remained a major trade route to Tibet. Kamarupa, with its capital at Pragjyotisapura (near Gauhati), was one of the centres of the Tantric cult. In 1253 a major part of Kamarupa was conquered by the Ahoms, a Shan (Myanmar) people. Politics in Kashmir were dominated by turbulent feudatories seeking power. By the 11th century Kashmir was torn between rival court factions, and the oppression by Harsa accentuated the suffering of the people. Smaller states along the Himalayan foothills managed to survive without becoming too embroiled in the politics of the plains.

History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > 750–c. 1200 > Northern India > The Rajputs In Rajasthan and central India there arose a number of small kingdoms ruled by dynasties that came to be called the Rajputs (from Sanskrit raja-putra: “son of a king”). The name was assumed by royal families that claimed Ksatriya status and linked their lineage either with the Suryavamsi or the Candravamsi, the royal lineages of the itihasa-purana tradition, or else with the Agnikula (Fire lineage) based on a lesser myth in which the eponymous ancestor arises out of the sacrificial fire. The four major Rajput dynasties—Pratihara, Paramara, Cauhan, and Caulukya—claimed Agnikula lineage. The references in Rajput genealogies to supernatural ancestry suggest either an obscure origin—perhaps from semi-Hinduized local tribes who gradually acquired political and economic status—or else a non-Indian (probably Central Asian) origin. The Caulukyas of Gujarat had three branches: one ruling Mattamayura (the Malava-Cedi region), one established on the erstwhile kingdom of the Capas at Anahilapataka (Patan), and the third at Bhrgukaccha (Bharuch) and Lata in the coastal area. By the 11th century they were using Gujarat as a base and attempting to annex neighbouring portions of Rajasthan and Avanti. Kumarapala (c. 1143–72) was responsible for consolidating the kingdom. He is also believed to have become a Jaina and to have encouraged Jainism in western India. Hemacandra, an outstanding Jaina scholar noted for his commentaries on political treatises, was a well-known figure at the Caulukya court. Many of the Rajput kingdoms had Jaina statesmen, ministers, and even generals, as well as Jaina traders and merchants. By the 14th century, however, the Caulukya kingdom had declined. Adjoining the kingdom of the Caulukyas was that of the Paramaras in Malava, with minor branches in the territories just to the north (Mount Abu, Banswara, Cungarpur, and Bhinmal). The Paramaras emerged as feudatories of the Rastrakutas and rose to eminence during the reign of Bhoja. An attack by the Caulukyas weakened the Paramaras in 1143. Although the dynasty was later re-established, it remained weak. In the 13th century the Paramaras were threatened by both rising Yadava power in the Deccan and the Turkish kingdom at Delhi (see below The coming of the Turks); the latter conquered the Paramaras in 1305. The Kalacuris of Tripuri (near Jabalpur) also began as feudatories of the Rastrakutas, becoming a power in central India in the 11th century during the reigns of Gangeyadeva and his son Laksmikarna, when attempts were made to conquer territories as far afield as Utkala (Orissa), Bihar, and the Ganges-Yamuna Doab. Here they came into conflict with the Turkish governor of the Punjab, who had extended his territory as far as Varanasi. To the west, there were conflicts with Bhoja Paramara, and the Kalacuris declined at the end of the 12th century. The Candellas, whose kingdom comprised mainly Bundelkhand (Jejakabhukti), were feudatories of the Pratiharas. Among the important rulers was Dhanga (c. 950–1008), who issued a large number of inscriptions and was generous in donations to Jaina and Hindu temples. Dhanga's grandson Vidyadhara (1017–29), often described as the most powerful of the Candella kings, extended the kingdom as far as the Chambal and Narmada rivers. This brought him into direct conflict with Mahmud of Ghazna, when the latter swept down from Afghanistan in a series of raids. But the ensuing battles were indecisive. The Candellas also had to face the attacks of the Cauhans, who were in turn being harassed by the Turks. The Turkish kingdom at Delhi encroached into Bundelkhand, but the Candellas survived until the 16th century as minor chieftains. The Gahadavalas rose to importance in Varanasi and extended their kingdom up the Ganges-Yamuna Doab including Kannauj. The king Jayacandra (12th century) is mentioned in the poem Prthviraja-raso of Candbardai, in which his daughter, the princess Sanyogita, elopes with the Cauhan king Prthviraja. Jayacandra died in battle against the Turkish leader, Muhammad of Ghur, and his kingdom was annexed. Inscriptional records associate the Cauhans with Lake Sakambhari and its environs (Sambhar Salt Lake in Jaipur district). Cauhan politics were largely campaigns against the Caulukyas and the Turks. In the 11th century the Cauhans founded the city of Ajayameru (Ajmer) in the southern part of their kingdom, and in the 12th they captured Dhillika (Delhi) from the Tomaras and annexed some Tomara territory along the Yamuna River. Prthviraja III has come down both in folk and historical literature as the Cauhan king who resisted the Turkish attacks in the first battle at Tarain (Taraori) in 1191. Prthviraja, however, was defeated at a second battle in the same place in 1192; the defeat ushered in Turkish rule in northern India.

History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > 750–c. 1200 > Northern India > The coming of the Turks The establishment of Turkish power in India is initially tied up with politics in the Punjab. The Punjab was ruled by Jayapala of the Hindu Shahiya dynasty, which had in the 9th century wrested the Kabul Valley and Gandhara from a Turkish Shahiya. Political and economic relations were extremely close between the Punjab and Afghanistan. Afghanistan in turn was closely involved with Central Asian politics. Sebüktigin, a Turk, was appointed governor of Ghazna in 977. He attacked the Hindu Shahiyas and advanced as far as Peshawar. His son Mahmud succeeded to the Ghazna principality in 998. Mahmud went to war with the Shahiya dynasty and almost every year until his death in 1030 led raids against the rich temple towns in northern and western India, using the wealth obtained from the raids to finance successful campaigns in Central Asia and build an empire there. He acquired a reputation as an iconoclast as well as a patron of culture and was responsible for sending to India the scholar al-Biruni, whose study Ta'rikh al-Hind is a source of valuable information. Mahmud left his governors in the Punjab with a rather loose control over the region.

In the 12th century the Ghurid Turks were driven out of Khorasan and later out of Ghazna by the Khwarezm-Shahs. Inevitably the Ghurids sought their fortune in northern India, where the conflict between the Ghaznavids and the local rulers provided an excellent opportunity. Muhammad of Ghur advanced into the Punjab and captured Lahore in 1185. Victory in the second battle of Tarain consolidated Muhammad's success, and he left his general Qutb-ud-Din Aybak in charge of his Indian possessions. Muhammad was assassinated in 1206 on his way back to Afghanistan. Qutb-ud-Din remained in India and declared himself sultan of Delhi, the first of the Mamluk (Slave) dynasty.

History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > 750–c. 1200 > The Deccan and the south In the northern Deccan the decline of the Later Calukyas brought about the rise of their feudatories, among them the Yadava dynasty (also claiming descent from the Yadu tribe) based at Devagiri (Daulatabad), whose kingdom (Seunadesa) included the Khandesh (now divided into Dhule and Jalgaon), the Nashik, and the Ahmadnagar districts. The kingdom expanded during the reign of Simhana (c. 1210–47), who campaigned against the Hoysala in northern Karnataka, against the lesser chiefs of the western coast, and against the Kakatiya kingdom in the eastern Deccan. Turning northward, Simhana attacked the Paramaras and the Caulukyas. The Yadavas, however, facing the Turks to the north and the powerful Hoysalas to the south, declined in the early 14th century.

In the eastern Deccan the Kakatiya dynasty was based in the Nalgonda and Warangal areas (modern Andhra Pradesh state) and survived until the Turkish attack in the 14th century. The Eastern Calukyas ruled in the Godavari River delta, and in the 13th century their fortunes were tied to those of the Colas. The Eastern Gangas, ruling in Kalinga, came into conflict with the Turks advancing down the Ganges River valley to the delta during the 13th century. History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > 750–c. 1200 > The Deccan and the south > The Colas The Colas (Cholas) were by far the most important dynasty in the subcontinent at this time, although their activities mainly affected the peninsula and Southeast Asia. The nucleus of Cola power during the reign of Vijayalaya in the late 9th century was Thanjavur, from which the Colas spread northward, annexing in the 10th century what remained of Pallava territory. To the south they came up against the Pandyas. Cola history can be reconstructed in considerable detail because of the vast number of lengthy inscriptions issued not only by the royal family but also by temple authorities, village councils, and trade guilds. Parantaka I (907–953) laid the foundation of the kingdom. He took the northern boundary up to Nellore (Andhra Pradesh), where his advance was stopped by a defeat at the hands of the Rastrakuta king Krishna III. Parantaka was more successful in the south, where he defeated both the Pandyas and the Gangas. He also launched an abortive attack on Sri Lanka. For 30 years after his death, there was a series of overlapping reigns that did not strengthen the Cola position. There then followed two outstanding rulers who rapidly reinstated Cola power and ensured the kingdom its supremacy. These were Rajaraja I and Rajendra.

Rajaraja (985–1014) began establishing power with attacks against the Pandyas and Illamandalam (Sri Lanka). Northern Sri Lanka became a province of the Cola kingdom. A campaign against the Gangas and Calukyas extended the Cola boundary north to the Tungabhadra River. On the eastern coast the Colas battled with the Calukyas for the possession of Vengi. A marriage alliance gave the Colas an authoritative position, but Vengi remained a bone of contention. A naval campaign led to the conquest of the Maldive Islands, the Malabar Coast, and northern Sri Lanka, all of which were essential to the Cola control over trade with Southeast Asia and with Arabia and East Africa. These were the transit areas, ports of call for the Arab traders and ships to Southeast Asia and China, which were the source of the valuable spices sold at a high profit to Europe. Rajaraja I's son Rajendra participated in his father's government from 1012, succeeded him two years later, and ruled until 1044. To the north he annexed the Raichur Doab and moved into Manyakheta in the heart of Calukya territory. A revolt against Mahinda V of Sri Lanka gave Rajendra the excuse to conquer southern Sri Lanka as well. In 1021–22 the now-famous northern campaign was launched. The Cola army campaigned along the east coast as far as Bengal and then north to the Ganges River—almost the exact reverse of Samudra Gupta's campaign to Kanchipuram in the 4th century AD. The most spectacular campaign, however, was a naval campaign against the Srivijaya kingdom in Southeast Asia in 1025. The reason for the assault on Srivijaya and neighbouring areas appears to have been the interference with Indian shipping and mercantile interests seeking direct trading connections with South China. The Cola victory reinstated these connections, and throughout the 11th century Cola trading missions visited China.

History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > 750–c. 1200 > The Deccan and the south > The Hoysalas and Pandyas The succession after Rajendra is confused until the emergence of Kulottunga I (1070–1122), but his reign was the last of any significance. The 12th and 13th centuries saw a gradual decline in Cola power, accelerated by the rise of the Hoysalas to the west and the Pandyas to the south. The Hoysalas began as hill chieftains northwest of Dorasamudra (modern Halebid), feudatory to the Calukyas. Visnuvardhana consolidated the kingdom in the 12th century. The Hoysalas were involved in conflict with the Yadava kingdom, which was seeking to expand southward, particularly during the reign of Ballala II (1173–1220). Hostilities also developed with the Colas to the east. The armies of the Turks eroded the Hoysala kingdom until, in the 14th century, it gave way to the Vijayanagara empire. In the 13th century the Pandyas became the dominant power in the south, but their supremacy was brief because they were attacked in the 14th century by Turkish armies. Information on the dynasty is supplemented by the colourful account of Marco Polo, who visited the region in 1288 and 1293.

History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > 750–c. 1200 > Society and culture Apart from the political events of the time, a common development in the subcontinent was the recognizable decentralization of administration and revenue collection. From the Cola kingdom there are long inscriptions on temple walls referring to the organization and functioning of village councils. Villages that had been donated to Brahmans had councils called the sabha; in the non-Brahman villages the council was called the ur. Eligibility qualifications generally relating to age and ownership of property were indicated, along with procedural rules. The council was divided into various committees in charge of the different aspects of village life and administration. Among the responsibilities of the council was the collection of revenue and the supervision of irrigation. References to village bodies and local councils also occur in inscriptions from other regions. A more recent view held by some historians, which has been much contested, holds that the Cola state was a segmentary state with control decreasing from the centre outward and a ritual hierarchy that determined the relations between the centre and the units of the territory. The nature of the state during this period has been the subject of widespread discussion among historians.

In the Deccan, the rise and fall of dynasties was largely the result of the feudatory pattern of political relationships. The same held true of northern India and is seen both in the rise of various Rajput dynasties and in their inability to withstand the Turkish invasions. There is considerable controversy among historians as to whether it would be accurate to describe the feudatory pattern as feudalism per se. Some argue that, although it was not identical to the classic example of feudalism in western Europe, there are sufficient similarities to allow the use of the term. Others contend that the dissimilarities are substantial, such as the apparent absence of an economic contract involving king, vassal, and serf. In any event, the patterns of land relations, politics, and culture changed considerably, and the major characteristic of the change consists of forms of decentralization. The commonly used term for a feudatory was samanta, which designated either a conquered ruler or a secular official connected with the administration who had been given a grant of land in lieu of a salary and who had asserted ownership over the land and gradually appropriated rights of ruling the area. There were various categories of samantas. As long as a ruler was in a feudatory status, he called himself samanta and acknowledged his overlord in official documents and charters. Independent status was indicated by the elimination of the title of samanta and the inclusion instead of royal titles such as maharaja and maharaiadhiraja. The feudatory had certain obligations to the ruler. Although virtually in sole control administratively and fiscally over the land granted to him, he nevertheless had to pay a small percentage of the revenue to the ruler and maintain a specified body of troops for him. He was permitted the use of certain symbols of authority on formal occasions and was required, if called upon, to give his daughter in marriage to his suzerain. These major administrative and economic changes, although primarily concerning fiscal arrangements and revenue organization, also had their impact on politics and culture. The grantees or intermediaries in a hierarchy of grants were not merely secular officials but were often Brahman beneficiaries who had been given grants of land in return for religious services rendered to the state. The grants were frequently so lucrative that the Brahmans could marry into the families of local chiefs, which explains the presence of Brahman ancestors in the genealogies of the period. History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > 750–c. 1200 > Society and culture > The economy Cultivation was still carried out by the peasants, generally Sudras, who remained tied to the land. Since the revenue was now to be paid not to the king but to the samanta, the peasants naturally began to give more attention to his requirements. Although the samantas copied the life-style of the royal court, often to the point of setting up miniature courts in imitation of the royal model, the system also encouraged parochial loyalties and local cultural interests. One manifestation of this local involvement was a sudden spurt of historical literature such as Bilhana's Vikramankadevacarita, the life of the Calukya king Vikramaditya VI, and Kalhana's Rajatarangini, a history of Kashmir.

The earlier decline in trade was gradually reversed in this period, with trade centres emerging in various parts of the subcontinent. Some urban centres developed from points of exchange for agrarian produce, whereas others were involved in long-distance trade. In some cases, traders from elsewhere settled in India, such as the Arabs on the Malabar Coast; in other cases Indian traders went to distant lands. Powerful trading guilds could enjoy political and military support, as was the case during the Cola monarchy. Even the rich Hindu temples of South India invested their money in trade. Pala contacts were mainly with Srivijaya, and trade was combined with Buddhist interests. The monasteries at Nalanda and Vikramasila maintained close relations. By now eastern India was the only region with a sizable Buddhist presence. The traditional trade routes were still used, and some kingdoms drew their revenue from such routes as those along the Aravalli Range, Malava, and the Chambal and Narmada valleys. Significantly, the major technological innovation, the introduction of the sakia (Persian wheel), or araghatta, as an aid to irrigation in northern India, pertains to agrarian life and not to urban technology. History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > 750–c. 1200 > Society and culture > Social mobility Historians once believed that the Post-Gupta Period brought greater rigidity in the caste structure and that this rigidity was partially responsible for the inability of Indians to face the challenge of the Turks. This view is now being modified. The distinctions, particularly between the Brahmans and the other castes, were in theory sharper, but in practice it now appears that social restrictions were not so rigid. Brahmans often lived off the land and founded dynasties. Most of the groups claiming Ksatriya status had only recently acquired it. The conscious reference to being Ksatriya, a characteristic among Rajputs, is a noticeable feature in Post-Gupta politics. The fact that many of these dynasties were of obscure origin suggests some social mobility: a person of any caste, having once acquired political power, could also acquire a genealogy connecting him with the traditional lineages and conferring Ksatriya status. A number of new castes, such as the Kayasthas (scribes) and Khatris (traders), are mentioned in the sources of this period. According to the Brahmanic sources, they originated from intercaste marriages, but this is clearly an attempt at rationalizing their rank in the hierarchy. Many of these new castes played a major role in society. The hierarchy of castes did not have a uniform distribution throughout the country. But the preeminent position of the Brahman was endorsed not merely by the fact that many had lands and investments but also by the fact that they controlled education. Formal learning was virtually restricted to the institutions attached to the temples. Technical knowledge was available in the various artisan guilds. Hierarchy existed, however, even among the Brahmans; some Brahman castes, who had perhaps been tribal priests before being assimilated into the Sanskritic tradition, remained ordinary village priests catering to the day-to-day religious functions.

History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > 750–c. 1200 > Society and culture > Religion The local nucleus of the new culture led to a large range of religious expression, from the powerful temple religion of Brahmanism to a widespread popular bhakti religion and even more widespread fertility cults. The distinctions between the three were not clearly demarcated in practice; rites and concepts from each flowed into the other. The formal worship of Vishnu and Siva had the support of the elite. Temples dedicated to Vaisnava and Saiva deities were the most numerous. But also included were some of the chief deities connected with the fertility cult, and the mother goddesses played an important role. The Puranas had been rewritten to incorporate popular religion. Now the Upapuranas were written to record rites and worship of more localized deities. Among the more popular incarnations of Vishnu was Krishna, who, as the cowherd deity, accommodated pastoral and erotic themes in worship. The love of Krishna and Radha was expressed in sensitive and passionate poetry.

The introduction of the erotic theme in Hinduism was closely connected with the fertility cult and Tantrism. The latter, named after its scriptures, the Tantras, influenced both Hindu and Buddhist ritual. Tantrism, as practiced by the elite, represented the conversion of a widespread folk religion into a sophisticated one. The emphasis on the mother goddess, related to that expressed in the Sakti (Shakti) cult, strengthened the status of the female deities. The erotic aspect also was related to the importance of ritual coition in some Tantric rites. The depiction of erotic scenes on temple walls therefore had a magico-religious context. Vajrayana Buddhism, current in eastern India, Nepal, and Tibet, shows evidence of the impact of Tantrism. The goddess Tara emerges as the saviour and is in many ways the Buddhist counterpart of Sakti. Buddhism was on the way out—the Buddha had been incorporated as an avatar of Vishnu—and had lost much of its popular appeal, which had been maintained by the simple habits of the monks. The traditional source of Buddhist patronage had dwindled with declining trade. Jainism, however, managed to maintain some hold in Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Karnataka. The protest aspect of both Buddhism and Jainism, especially the opposition to Brahmanic orthodoxy, had now been taken over by the Tantrists and the bhakti cults. The Tantrists expressed their protest through some rather extreme rites, as also did some of the heretical sects such as the Kalamukhas and Kapalikas. The bhakti cults expressed the more puritanical protest of the urban groups, gradually spreading to the rural areas. Preeminent among the bhakti groups during this period were the Lingayats, or Virasaivas, who were to become a powerful force in Karnataka, and the Pandharpur cult in Maharashtra, which attracted such preachers as Namadeva and Jñanesvara. History > The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 > 750–c. 1200 > Society and culture > Literature and the arts It was also in the matha and the ghatika, attached to the temples, that the influential philosophical debates were conducted in Sanskrit. Foremost among the philosophers were Sankaracarya (9th century), Ramanuja (1017–1137), and Madhva (13th century). The discussions centred on religious problems, such as whether knowledge or devotion was the more effective means of salvation, and problems of metaphysics, including that of the nature of reality. Court literature, irrespective of the region, continued to be composed in Sanskrit, with the many courts competing for the patronage of the poets and the dramatists. There was a revival of interest in earlier literature, generating copious commentaries on prosody, grammar, and technical literature. The number of lexicons increased, perhaps necessitated by the growing use of Sanskrit by non-Sanskrit speakers. Literary style tended to be pedantic and imitative, although there were notable exceptions, such as Jayadeva's lyrical poem on the love of Radha and Krishna, the Gitagovinda. The bhakti teachers preached in the local languages, giving a tremendous fillip to literature in these languages. Adaptations of the Ramayana, Mahabharata, and Bhagavadgita were used regularly by the bhakti teachers. There was thus a gradual breaking away from Sanskrit and Prakrit via the Apabrahmsa (the “crooked language”) and the eventual emergence and evolution of such languages as Kannada, Telugu, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, and Oriya and of the dialects of Bhojpuri, Maithili, and Magadhi. The period was rich in sculpture, in both stone and metal, each region registering a variant style. Western India and Rajasthan emphasized ornateness, with the Jaina temples at Mount Abu attaining a perfection of rococo. Nalanda was the centre of striking but less ornate images in black stone and of Buddhist bronze icons. Central Indian craftsmen used the softer sandstone. In the peninsula the profusely sculptured, rock-cut temples such as the Kailasa at Ellora, enjoying Calukya and Rastrakuta patronage, created a style of their own. The dominant style in the south was that of Cola sculpture, particularly in bronze. The severe beauty and elegance of these bronze images, mainly of Saiva and Vaisnava deities and saints, remains unsurpassed. A new genre of painting that rose to popularity in Nepal, eastern India, and Gujarat was the illustration of Buddhist and Jaina manuscripts with miniature paintings. Temple architecture was divided into three main styles—nagara, dravida, and vasara—which were distinguished by the ground plan of the temple and by the shape of the sikhara (tower) that rose over the garbhagrha (cubical structure) and that became the commanding feature of temple architecture. The North Indian temples conformed to the nagara style, as is seen at Osian (Rajasthan state); Khajuraho (Madhya Pradesh state); and Konarka, Bhubaneshwar, and Puri (Orissa state). The Orissa temples, however, remain nearest to the original archetype. The South Indian, or dravida, style with its commanding gopuram (gateways) can be seen in the Rajarajesvara and the Gangaikondacolapuram temples. The Deccan style, vasara, tended to be an intermixture of the northern and the southern, with early examples at Vatapi, Aihole, and Pattadakal and, later, at Halebid, Belur, and Somnathpur in the vicinity of Mysore. The wealth of the temples made them the focus of attack from plunderers. The question that is frequently posed as to why the Turks so easily conquered northern India and the Deccan has in part to do with what might be called the medieval ethos. A contemporary observed that the Indians had become self-centred and unaware of the world around them. This was substantially true. There was little interest in the politics of neighbouring countries or in their technological achievements. The medieval ethos expressed itself not only in the “feudatory” attitude toward politics and the parochial concerns that became dominant and prevented any effective opposition to the Turks but also in the trappings of chivalry and romanticism that became central to elite activity. It has been generally held that the medieval period of Indian history began with the arrival of the Turks (dated to either AD 1000 or 1206), because the Turks brought with them a new religion, Islam, which changed Indian society at all levels. Yet the fundamental changes that took place around the 8th century, when the medieval ethos was introduced, would seem far more significant as a criterion of change.

History > The early Muslim period > North India under Muslim hegemony, c. 1200–1526 Early Muslim India (c. 1200–c. 1500). The first Muslim raids in the subcontinent were made by Arabs on the western coast and in Sindh during the 7th and 8th centuries, and there had been Muslim trading communities in India at least since that time. The significant and permanent military movement of Muslims into North India, however, dates from the late 12th century and was carried out by a Turkish dynasty that arose indirectly from the ruins of the 'Abbasid caliphate. The road to conquest was prepared by Sultan Mahmud of Ghazna (modern Ghazni in Afghanistan), who conducted more than 20 raids into North India between 1001 and 1027 and established in the Punjab the easternmost province of his large but short-lived empire. Mahmud's raids, though militarily successful, primarily had as their object the taking of plunder rather than conquest.

History > The early Muslim period > North India under Muslim hegemony, c. 1200–1526 > The Delhi sultanate The decline of the Ghaznavids after 1100 was accentuated by the sack of Ghazna by the rival Shansabanis of Ghur in 1150–51. The Ghurids, who inhabited the region between Ghazna and Herat, rose rapidly in power during the last half of the 12th century, partly because of the changing balance of power that resulted from the westward movement of the non-Muslim Karakitai Turks into the area dominated by the Seljuq Turks, who had been the principal power in Iran and parts of Afghanistan during the previous 50 years. The Seljuq defeat in 1141 led to a struggle for power among the Karakitai, the Khwarezm-Shahs, and the Ghurids for control of parts of Central Asia and Iran. By 1152 Ghazna had been captured again by the Ghurid ruler, 'Ala'-ud-Din. After his death the Ghurid territory was partitioned principally between his two nephews, Ghiyas-ud-Din Muhammad and Mu'izz-ud-Din Muhammad ibn Sam, commonly called Muhammad of Ghur. Ghiyas-ud-Din ruled over Ghur from Firuz-Kuh and looked toward Khorasan, while Muhammad of Ghur was established in Ghazna and began to try his luck in India for expansion. The Ghurid invasions of North India were thus part of a Central Asian struggle.

Almost all of North India was, however, already in contact with Ghur through an extensive trade, particularly in horses. The Ghurids were well known as horse breeders. Ghur also had a reputation forsupplying Indian and Turkish slaves to the markets of Central Asia. Muslim merchants and saints had settled much beyond Sindh and the Punjab in a number of towns in what is now Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The Ghurids also were familiar with the fabulous wealth of western and central India. They therefore followed first the southern route into India through the Gumal Pass, with an eye set eventually on Gujarat. It was only after suffering a severe defeat at the hands of the Caulukya army of Gujarat that they turned to the northern route through the Khyber Pass.

History > The early Muslim period > North India under Muslim hegemony, c. 1200–1526 > The Delhi sultanate > The Turkish conquest By 1186 the Ghurids had destroyed the remnants of Ghaznavid power in the northwest and were in a favourable military position to move against the North Indian Rajput powers. The conquest of the Rajputs was not easy, however. The Cauhans (Cahamanasa under Prthviraja defeated Muhammad of Ghur in 1191 at Tarain (Taraori), northwest of Delhi, but his forces returned the following year to defeat and kill the Rajput king on the same battlefield. The victory opened the road to Delhi, which was conquered in 1193 but left in the hands of a tributary Hindu king. Muhammad of Ghur completed his conquests with the occupation of the military outposts of Hansi, Kuhram, Sursuti, and Sirhind and then returned to Ghazna with a large hoard of treasure, leaving his slave and lieutenant, Qutb-ud-Din Aybak, in charge of consolidation and further expansion. Qutb-ud-Din displaced the Cauhan chief and made his headquarters at Delhi in 1193, when he began a campaign of expansion. He was soon in control of Varanasi (Benares; 1194), Badaun, Kannauj (1198–99), and Kalinjar (1202). In the meantime, an obscure adventurer, Ikhtiyar-ud-Din Muhammad Bakhtiyar Khalji of the Ghurid army, conquered Nadia, the capital of the Sena kings of Bengal (1202). Within two years Bakhtiyar embarked upon a campaign to conquer Tibet in order to plunder the treasure of its Buddhist monasteries as well as to gain control of Bengal's traditional trade route leading to Southeast Asian gold and silver mines. The attempt, however, proved disastrous. Bakhtiyar managed to return to Bengal with a few hundred men, and there he died in 1206. The availability of a large number of military adventurers from Central Asia who would follow commanders with reputations for success was one of the important elements in the rapid Ghurid conquest of the major cities and forces of the North Indian plain. Other factors were important as well; better horses contributed to the success of mobile tactics, and the Ghurids also made better use of metal for weapons, armour, and stirrups than did most of their adversaries. Perhaps most important was the tradition of centralized organization and planning, which was conducive to large-scale military campaigns and to the effective organization of postcampaign occupation forces. While the Rajputs probably saw the Ghurids as an equal force competing for paramount power in North India, the Ghurids had in mind the model of the successor states to the 'Abbasid caliphate, the old Iranian Sasanid empire, and particularly the vast centralized empire of Mahmud of Ghazna. Soon, however, the Ghurid possessions were insecure everywhere. In 1205 Sultan Muhammad of Ghur suffered a severe defeat at Andkhvoy (Andkhui) at the hands of the Khwarezm-Shah. News of the defeat precipitated a rebellion by some of the sultan's followers in the Punjab, and, although the rebellion was put down, Muhammad of Ghur was assassinated at Lahore in 1206. The Ghurids at the time held the major towns of the Punjab, of Sindh, and of much of the Gangetic Plain, but almost all the land outside the cities still was subject to some form of control by Hindu chiefs. Even in the Doab (the land between the Ganges and the Yamuna rivers, near Delhi) the Gahadavalas held out against the Turks. Most significantly, the chiefs of Rajasthan had not been permanently subdued.

History > The early Muslim period > North India under Muslim hegemony, c. 1200–1526 > The Delhi sultanate > The early Turkish sultans When Qutb-ud-Din Aybak assumed authority over the Ghurid possessions in India, he moved from the neighbourhood of Delhi to Lahore. There he set up guard against another of Muhammad of Ghur's slaves, Taj-ud-Din Yildiz of Ghazna, who also claimed his former master's Indian possessions. In 1208 Qutb-ud-Din defeated his rival and captured Ghazna but soon was driven out again. He died in 1210 in a polo accident, having made no effort to extend his Indian conquests, but he had managed to establish the foundation of an Indian Muslim state. Qutb-ud-Din was the first ruler in what has become known, perhaps unreasonably, as the Slave dynasty (only he actually attained a freed status after becoming ruler). Slavery was, however, an integral part of the political system. As practiced in eastern Muslim polities of this period, the institution of slavery provided a nucleus of well-trained and loyal military followers (the mamluks) for important political figures; indeed, one of the principal objects of this form of slavery was to train specialists in warfare and government, usually Turks, whose first loyalty would be to their masters. Slave status was honourable and was a principal avenue to wealth and high position for talented individuals whose origins were outside the ruling group. It has been observed that a slave was a better investment than a son, whose claim was not based upon proved efficiency. Yet, slaves with high qualifications could get out of control, and often slaves or former slaves controlled their masters as much as they were controlled by them. The beneficial results for the sultanate of this type of political interaction were that some men of talent had room to rise within the system and thus were less tempted to tear it down and that the responsibilities of government tended to rest in the hands of capable men, whether or not they were the actual rulers. The sultans thus not only kept a close watch over the slave market but also commissioned slave merchants as state agents. Sultan Shams-ud-Din Iltutmish (reigned 1211–36), son-in-law and successor to Aybak, who was himself a mamluk, sent a merchant to Samarkand, Bukhara, and Tirmiz to purchase young slaves on his behalf.

History > The early Muslim period > North India under Muslim hegemony, c. 1200–1526 > The Delhi sultanate > Consolidation of Turkish rule Early Muslim India (c. 1200–c. 1500). During his reign Iltutmish was faced with three problems: defense of his western frontier, control over the Muslim nobles within India, and subjugation of the many Hindu chiefs who still exercised a large measure of independent rule. His relative success in all three areas gives him claim to the title of founder of the independent sultanate of Delhi. His reign opened with a factional dispute in which he and his Delhi-based supporters defeated and killed the rival claimant to the throne, Qutb-ud-Din's son, and put down a revolt by a portion of the Delhi guards. In the west Iltutmish was passive at first and even accepted investiture from his old rival, Yildiz, but when Yildiz was driven from Ghazna into the Punjab by the Khwarezm-Shah in 1215, Iltutmish was able to defeat and capture him at Tarain. Iltutmish might have faced a threat himself from the Khwarezm-Shah had it not been for Genghis Khan's attack upon the latter. Again Iltutmish waited while refugees, including the heir to the Khwarezm-Shahi throne, poured into the Punjab and while Nasir-ud-Din Qabacha, another of Muhammad of Ghur's former slaves, maintained a perilous hold on Lahore and Multan. Iltutmish's political talents were pushed to the maximum as he tried desperately to avoid a direct confrontation with the armies of Genghis Khan. He refused aid to the Khwarezm heir against the Mongols and yet would not attempt to capture him. Fortunately, the Mongols were content to send raiding parties into the Salt Range, which Iltutmish wisely ignored, and eventually the Khwarezm-Shah prince fled from India after causing enormous destruction within Qabacha's domains. Thus, Iltutmish's cause was advanced, and in 1228 he was able to drive Qabacha from Multan and Uch and, by establishing his frontier east of the Beas River, to avoid a direct confrontation with the Mongols. He was not able to gain effective control of the western Punjab, however, largely because the area was subject to raids by hill tribes.

In the east in 1225, Iltutmish launched a successful campaign against Ghiyas-ud-Din 'Iwaz Khalji, one of Bhaktiyar Khalji's lieutenants, who had assumed sovereign authority in Lakhnauti (Bengal) and was encroaching upon the province of Bihar. 'Iwaz Khalji was defeated and slain in 1226, and in 1229 Iltutmish invaded Bengal and slew Balka, the last of the Khalji chiefs to claim independent power. Iltutmish's campaigns in Rajasthan and central and western India were ultimately less successful, although he temporarily captured Ranthambhor (1226), Mandor (Mandawar; 1227), and Gwalior (1231) and plundered Bhilsa and Ujjain in Malwa (1234–35). His generals suffered defeats, however, at the hands of the Cauhans of Bundi, the Caulukyas of Gujarat, and the Candellas (Chandelas) of Narwar. By 1236, the year Iltutmish died, the sultanate of Delhi was established as clearly the largest and most powerful of a number of competing states in North India. Owing to Iltutmish's able leadership, Delhi was no longer subordinate to Ghazna, nor was it to remain simply a frontier outpost; it was to become, rather, a proud centre of Muslim power and culture in India. Iltutmish made clear, however, to what extent Islam and Islamic law (Shari'ah) could determine the contour of politics and culture in the overwhelmingly non-Islamic Indian environment. Early in his reign, a party of theologians approached him with the plea that the infidel Hindus be forced, in accordance with Islamic law, to accept Islam or face death. On behalf of the sultan, his wazir (vizier) told the divines that this was impractical, since the Muslims were as few as grains of salt in a dish of food. Despite the Islamic proscription against women rulers, Iltutmish nominated his daughter Raziyya (Raziyyat-ud-Din) to be his successor. By refusing shelter to the Muslim Jalal ad-Din Mingburnu (the last Khwarezm-Shah) against the pagan Genghis Khan, he politely asserted that the Turkish power in Delhi, even though a sequel to a Central Asian social and political struggle, was no longer to involve itself in the power politics of countries of the Islamic East. Iltutmish legitimated his ambition by obtaining a letter of investiture from the caliph, whose name appeared in Hindi on the bullion currency so that the people on the streets might perceive the nature of the new regime. Iltutmish seems to have enjoyed support among his nobles and advisers for his assertion that the legal structure of the state in India should not be based strictly on Islamic law. Gradually, a judicious balance between the dictates of Shari'ah and the needs of the time emerged as a distinctive feature of the Turkish rule. The Muslim constituency, however, could not adjust to the idea of being ruled by a woman, and Raziyya (reigned 1236–40) fairly quickly succumbed to powerful nobles (the Shamsi), who once had been Iltutmish's slaves. Still, the new state had enough internal momentum to survive severe factional disputes during the 10 years following Iltutmish's death, when four of Iltutmish's children or grandchildren were in turn raised to the throne and deposed. This momentum was maintained largely through the efforts of Iltutmish's personal slaves, who came to be known as the Forty (Chihilgan), a political faction whose membership was characterized by talent and by loyalty to the family of Iltutmish. The political situation had changed by 1246, when Ghiyas-ud-Din Balban, a junior member of the Forty, had gained enough power to attain a controlling position within the administration of the newest sultan, Nasir-ud-Din Mahmud (reigned 1246–66). Balban, acting first as na'ib (“deputy”) to the sultan and later as sultan (reigned 1266–87), was the most important political figure of his time. The period was characterized by almost continuous struggles to maintain Delhi's position against the revived power of the Hindu chiefs (principally Rajputs) and by vigilance against the strife-ridden but still dangerous Mongols in the west. Even in the central regions of the state, sultanate rule was sometimes challenged by discontented Muslim nobles. During the first 10 years of Mahmud's reign, Balban's campaigns against the Hindu chiefs were only partially successful. By 1266, when he assumed the sultanate, his military strategy was to work outward from the capital. First, he cleared the forests of Mewatis; then he restored order in the Doab and Oudh and suppressed a revolt in the Badaun and Amroha districts with particular viciousness. Having established the security of his home territory, Balban then chose to consolidate his rule over the provincial governors rather than to embark upon expeditions against Hindu territories. Thus, he reacted vigorously and effectively against an attempt to establish an independent state in Bengal in the 1280s. Balban sought to raise the prestige of the institution of the sultanate through the use of ceremony, the strict administration of justice, and the formulation of a despotic view of the relationship between ruler and subject. Probably the most significant aspect of his reign was this elevation of the position of the sultan, which made possible the reorganization and strengthening of the army and the imposition of a tighter administrative apparatus. Iltutmish had enforced the centre's control over the nobles in the districts (iqta's, wilayahs) by subjecting them to periodic transfers. Balban's government began to investigate what was actually collected and spent within the iqta'. He appointed a new category of officials, the khwajas, to estimate both the income of the iqta' holders and the expenses they incurred in maintaining their troops. Any surplus (fawazil) was to be remitted to the sultan's treasury. Balban's policy of consolidation, the success of which owed much to the death or incapacity of most of the Forty and to the lack of rival claimants to the throne, strengthened sultanate rule so that his successors could undertake a number of successful expansionist campaigns after 1290.

History > The early Muslim period > North India under Muslim hegemony, c. 1200–1526 > The Delhi sultanate > The Khaljis Balban's immediate successors, however, were unable to manage either the administration or the factional conflicts between the old Turkish nobility and the new forces, led by the Khaljis; after a struggle between the two factions, Jalal-ud-Din Firuz Khalji assumed the sultanate in 1290. During his short reign (1290–96), Jalal-ud-Din suppressed a revolt by some of Balban's officers, led an unsuccessful expedition against Ranthambhor, and defeated a substantial Mongol force on the banks of the Sind River. In 1296 he was assassinated by his ambitious nephew and successor, 'Ala'-ud-Din Khalji.

The Khaljis were not recognized by the older nobility as coming from pure Turkish stock (although they were Turks), and their rise to power was aided by impatient outsiders, some of them Indian-born Muslims, who might expect to enhance their positions if the hold of the followers of Balban and the Forty were broken. To some extent, then, the Khalji usurpation was a move toward the recognition of a shifting balance of power, attributable both to the developments outside the territory of the Delhi sultanate, in Central Asia and Iran, and to the changes that followed the establishment of Turkish rule in northern India. In large measure, the dislocation in the regions beyond the northwest assured the establishment of an independent Delhi sultanate and its subsequent consolidation. The eastern steppe tribes' movements to the west not only ended the threat to Delhi from the rival Turks in Ghazna and Ghur but also forced a number of the Central Asian Muslims to migrate to Hindustan. Almost all the high nobles, including the famous Forty in the 13th century, were of Central Asian origin; many of them were slaves purchased from the Central Asian bazaars. The same phenomenon also led to the destabilization of the core of the Turkish Mamluks. With the Mongol plunder of Central Asia and eastern Iran, many more members of the political and religious elite of these regions were thrown into North India, where they were admitted into various levels of the military and administrative cadre by the early Delhi sultans.

History > The early Muslim period > North India under Muslim hegemony, c. 1200–1526 > The Delhi sultanate > Centralization and expansion Early Muslim India (c. 1200–c. 1500). During the reign of 'Ala'-ud-Din Khalji (1296–1316), the sultanate briefly assumed the status of an empire. In order to achieve his goals of centralization and expansion, 'Ala'-ud-Din needed money, a loyal and reasonably subservient nobility, and an efficient army under his personal control. He had earlier, in 1292, partly solved the problem of money when he conducted a lucrative raid into Bhilsa in central India. Using that success to build his position and a fresh army, he led a brilliant and unauthorized raid on the fabulously wealthy Devagiri (modern Daulatabad), the capital of the Yadavas, in the Deccan early in 1296. The wealth of Devagiri not only financed his usurpation but provided a good foundation for his state-building plans. 'Ala'-ud-Din already had the support of many of the disaffected Turkish nobles, and now he was able to purchase the support of more with both money and promotion.

History > The early Muslim period > North India under Muslim hegemony, c. 1200–1526 > The Delhi sultanate > Taxation and distribution of revenue resources Centralization and heavy agrarian taxation were the principal features of 'Ala'-ud-Din's rule. The sultan and his nobles depended in the 13th century largely on tribute extorted from the subjugated local potentates and on plunder from the unpacified areas. The sultanate thus had no stable economic base; the nobles were often in debt for large sums of money to the moneylenders of Delhi. 'Ala'-ud-Din Khalji altered the situation radically, implementing the principles of the iqta' (revenue district) and the kharaj (land tax) in their classic sense. The iqta', formerly loosely used to mean a transferable revenue assignment to a noble, now combined the two functions of collection and distribution of the sultan's claim to the bulk of the surplus agrarian product in the form of kharaj. 'Ala'-ud-Din imposed a land tax set at half the produce (in weight or value) on each individual peasant's holding, regardless of size. It was to be supplemented by a house and cattle tax. The revenue resources so created, divided into iqta's, or different territorial units, were distributed among the nobles. But the nobles had no absolute control of their iqta's. They had to submit accounts of their income and expenditure and send the balances to the sultan's treasury. The sultan had prepared an estimate of the produce of each locality by measuring the land. A set of officers in each iqta', separate from the assignee, ensured the sultan's control over it. The khalisa, the territory whose revenues accrued directly to the sultan's own treasury, was expanded significantly, enabling the sultan to pay a much larger number of his soldiers and cavalry troops in cash. Through these measures the sultan struck hard at all the others—his officials and the local rural potentates—who shared economic and political power with him. The magnitude and mechanism of agrarian taxation enabled the sultan to achieve two important objectives: (1) to ensure supplies at low prices to grain carriers, and (2) to fill the state granaries with a buffer stock, which, linked with his famous price regulations, came as a solution to the critical financial problem of maintaining a large standing army. Following their occupation of Afghanistan, the Chagatai Mongols began to penetrate well beyond the Punjab, necessitating a comprehensive defense program for the sultanate, including the capital, Delhi, which underwent a two-month siege in 1303. Besides fortifying the capital and supplying the frontier towns and forts with able commanders, marshaling a large army was the task of the hour. Further, the vast expenditure was to be financed by means of the existing resources of the state. 'Ala'-ud-Din planned to compensate for the low cash payments to his soldiers by a policy of market control. The policy enhanced the purchasing power of the soldiers and enabled them to live in tolerable comfort.

History > The early Muslim period > North India under Muslim hegemony, c. 1200–1526 > The Delhi sultanate > Expansion and conquests The result of 'Ala'-ud-Din's reforms and his energetic rule was that the sultanate expanded rapidly and was subject to a more unified and efficient direction than during any other period. 'Ala'-ud-Din began his expansionist activities with the subjugation of Gujarat in 1299. Next he moved against Rajasthan and then captured Ranthambhor (1301), Chitor (1303), and Mandu (1305), later adding Siwan (1308) and Jalor (1312). The campaigns in Rajasthan opened the road for further raids into South India. These raids were intended to result not in occupation of the land but rather in the formal recognition by Hindu kings of 'Ala'-ud-Din's supremacy and in the collection of huge amounts of tribute and booty, which were used to finance his centralizing activities in the north. 'Ala'-ud-Din's lieutenant Malik Kafur again subdued the Yadava kingdom of Devagiri in 1307 and two years later added the Kakatiya kingdom of Telingana. In 1310–11 Malik Kafur plundered the Pandya kingdom in the far south, and in 1313 Devagiri was again defeated and finally annexed to the sultanate. 'Ala'-ud-Din also managed to fend off a series of Mongol attacks—at least five during the decade 1297–1306. After 1306 the invasions subsided, probably as much because of an intensification of internal rivalries as of the lack of Mongol success in India. Ambition, a talent for ruling, and the gold of South India carried 'Ala'-ud-Din a long way, but it is also significant that he was one of the first rulers to deliberately expand political participation within the sultanate government. Not only did he partly open the gates to power for the non-Turkish Muslim nobility—some of whom were even converted Hindus—but he also at least made gestures toward the inclusion of Hindus within the political world he viewed as legitimate. Both 'Ala'-ud-Din and his son married into the families of important Hindu rulers, and several such rulers were received at court and treated with respect.

History > The early Muslim period > North India under Muslim hegemony, c. 1200–1526 > The Delhi sultanate > The urban economy The expansion and centralization of the Khalji sultanate paralleled economic and technological developments of the late 13th and early 14th centuries. Delhi in the 13th century became one of the largest cities in the whole of the Islamic world, and Multan, Lahore, Anhilwara, Kar), Cambay, and Lakhnauti emerged as major urban centres. The repeated Mongol invasions certainly affected the fortunes of some northwestern cities, but on the whole the period was marked by a flourishing urban economy and corresponding expansion in craft production and commerce. Advancements in the textile industry included the introduction of the wooden cotton-gin and the spinning wheel and, reportedly, of the treadle loom and sericulture (the raising of silkworms). In construction technology, cementing lime and vaulted roofing radically changed the face of the city. The production of paper gave rise to increased record keeping in government offices and to widespread use of bills of exchange (hundis). An expanding trade in textiles and horses provided constant nourishment to the economies of these towns. Bengal and Gujarat were the production centres for both coarse cloths and fine fabrics. Since cavalry came to be the mainstay of the political and military system of the Delhi sultans, horses were imported in large numbers beginning in the early years of the 13th century. Earlier in the 12th century the Hindu kings also kept large standing armies that included cavalry. The Turks, however, had far superior horsemen. Iron stirrups and heavy armour, for both horses and horsemen, also came into common use during the period, with significant impact on warfare and military organization. The Battles of Tarain, between Prthviraja III Cauhan and Muhammad of Ghur, were mainly engagements of cavalrymen armed with bows and spears; superior Ghurid tactics were decisive. The Multanis and Khorasanis, in the main, controlled the long-distance overland trade. Trade between the coastal ports and North India was in the hands of Marwaris and Gujaratis, many of whom were Jainas. A measure of commercial expansion was the emergence and increasing role of the dallals, or brokers, who acted as middlemen in transactions for which expert knowledge was required, such as in the sale of horses, slaves, and cattle. 'Ala'-ud-Din Khalji extended a large loan to the Multanis for bringing goods from afar into Delhi. By the mid-13th century, a stable equation between gold and silver was also attained, resulting in a coinage impressive in both quality and volume. North Indian merchants now benefited from the unification of the Central Asian steppes, which, from 1250 until about 1350 (following an initially quite destructive Mongol impact), opened up a new and secure trade route from India to China and the Black Sea. Further, there arose a chain of sea emporia all along the Indian Ocean coast. It was, however, plunder and tribute from Gujarat, the Deccan, eastern and central India, and Rajasthan, combined with regular taxation in the Indo-Gangetic plain, that sustained the economy and the centralizing regime of Delhi.

History > The early Muslim period > North India under Muslim hegemony, c. 1200–1526 > The Delhi sultanate > The Tughluqs Early Muslim India (c. 1200–c. 1500). Within five years after 'Ala'-ud-Din's death (1316), the Khaljis lost their power. The succession dispute resulted in the murder of Malik Kafur by the palace guards and in the blinding of 'Ala'-ud-Din's six-year-old son by Qutb-ud-Din Mubarak Shah, the sultan's third son, who assumed the sultanate (1316–20). Qutb-ud-Din suppressed revolts in Gujarat and Devagiri and conducted another raid on Telingana. He was murdered by his favourite general, a Hindu convert named Khusraw Khan, who had built substantial support among a group of Hindus outside the traditional nobility. Opposition to Khusraw's rule arose immediately, led by Ghazi Malik, the warden of the western marches at Deopalpur, and Khusraw was defeated and slain after four months.

Ghazi Malik, who ascended the throne as Ghiyas-ud-Din Tughluq (reigned 1320–25), had distinguished himself prior to his accession by his successful defense of the frontier against the Mongols. His reign was brief but eventful. He captured Telingana, conducted raids in Jajnagar, and reconquered Bengal, which had been independent under Muslim kings since the death of Balban. While returning from the Bengal campaign, the sultan was killed when a wooden shelter collapsed on him at Afghanpur, near Delhi. Although some historians have argued that Muhammad ibn Tughluq plotted his father's death, the case never has been proved. The reign (1325–51) of Muhammad ibn Tughluq marked both the high point of the sultanate and the beginning of its decline. The period from 1296 to 1335 can be seen as one of nearly continuous centralization and expansion. There were few places in the subcontinent where the sultan's authority could be seriously challenged. Muhammad ibn Tughluq, however, was unable to maintain the momentum of consolidation. By 1351 South India had been lost and much of the North was in rebellion.

History > The early Muslim period > North India under Muslim hegemony, c. 1200–1526 > The Delhi sultanate > Reversal and rebellion Muhammad ibn Tughluq faced serious problems resulting from expansion into South India. Eschewing the Khalji policy of maintaining Hindu tributary states in the South, Muhammad ibn Tughluq, while still a prince, had brought two of the three remaining southern Hindu powers under the direct control of the sultanate, and in 1326–27 he subdued the third (Kampili). Direct Muslim rule in the South, however, did not necessarily signify control from Delhi. In an effort both to settle other Muslim nobles in the South and to maintain his control over them, the sultan made Daulatabad (Devagiri) his second capital in 1327.

Muhammad ibn Tughluq moved to Daulatabad to ensure an effective control over the wealthy and fertile Deccan and Gujarat and possibly also to gain access to the western and southern ports. Gujarat, the Coromandel Coast, and Bengal were the core areas of India's overseas trade. Huge supplies of textiles and other goods, including glass and metal objects manufactured in these regions, were exported to the Middle East, Africa, and East and Southeast Asia in exchange for horses, precious metals, extracted goods, and raw materials. Muhammad ibn Tughluq also planned to face the Mongols by positioning and equipping himself at a safe distance from the northwest. However, no sooner was the sultan established at Daulatabad than trouble broke out in the North, on the western border, and in Bengal. Muhammad ibn Tughluq had to move back to Delhi to crush the rebellions by his nobles. He also was less successful against an invasion by the Mongols, who had come almost to the gates of Delhi. On the other hand, by 1335 the Muslim governor of Ma'bar, the southernmost province of the sultanate, declared his independence and founded the sultanate of Madura while Muhammad ibn Tughluq was busy quelling a rebellion in Lahore. Soon rebellions by Hindu chiefs had resulted in the formation of several new states, the most important of which was Vijayanagar. During the next few years, while the sultan shuttled to and fro in an attempt to put down rebellions in practically every province, he lost control of the rest of his South Indian possessions after successful rebellions in Gulbarga (1339), Warangal (1345–46), and Daulatabad, which led to the founding of the Bahmani kingdom (1347). Muhammad ibn Tughluq spent the last five years of his life trying to suppress yet another rebellion in Gujarat and thus could not make an attempt to regain Daulatabad. Muhammad ibn Tughluq's successor, his cousin Firuz Shah (reigned 1351–88), campaigned in Bengal (1353–54 and 1359), Orissa (1360), Nagarkot (1361), Sindh (1362 and 1366–67), Etawah (1377), and Katehr (1380). Firuz was unable to recover Bengal for the sultanate, and Sindh was no more than a tribute-paying vassal during his reign. Firuz also showed no interest in reconquering the southern provinces. He refused to accept an invitation (c. 1365) from a Bahmani prince to intervene in the politics of the Deccan. Firuz has been noted, in particular, for his conciliatory attitude toward the two main influential Muslim groups of the period—the religious leaders and the nobility. While 'Ala'-ud-Din Khalji had kept religion and religious leaders apart from his political plans and Muhammad ibn Tughluq had incurred the enmity of at least some Sufis because of his refusal to give them what they regarded as proper support, Firuz rewarded Sufis and other religious leaders generously and listened to their counsel. He also created charities to aid poor Muslims, built colleges and mosques, and abolished taxes not recognized by Muslim law. Balban, 'Ala'-ud-Din, and Muhammad ibn Tughluq all had made attempts to check the power of the nobility and the religious leaders; the latter two also had realized the necessity for allowing a certain amount of mobility both into and within the army and civil administration for groups that had come to represent significant and articulated interests. Such a policy also enhanced the power of the sultans over all the nobility, because it removed old nobles and provided grateful new ones. Judging by the revolts during his reign, however, Muhammad ibn Tughluq's policy toward his nobility was too autocratic to succeed. Firuz adopted policies that gave his nobles much more autonomy. The result was that the sultan lost both an important means of leverage and a means of adjusting to new political circumstances. Firuz also made little or no attempt to pay officers in cash (rather than in assignments of land revenue), granted hereditary appointments, and extended the system of revenue farming. All these measures, which reversed policies adopted by one or more of the strong rulers of the previous several decades, tended to decrease Firuz's control over his nobility and over the revenue system.

History > The early Muslim period > North India under Muslim hegemony, c. 1200–1526 > The Delhi sultanate > Society and the state under the Tughluqs The Tughluq rule roughly coincided with an important and interesting development in the Hindu countryside, which, to a degree, was a reaction to 'Ala'-ud-Din Khalji's harsh measures. If, on the one hand, his new policy of taxation cut into the power of the erstwhile ruling chiefs who had escaped regular payment by offering tribute only under military pressure, it meant, on the other, a heavy loss of revenue for the small landlords and village headmen. The latter were also often subjected to severe corporal torture. The power of the Delhi regime, however, suffered an obvious setback after that. The former rural elite began to reappear, consolidated into the great Rajput caste spread over a very large part of northern India. Incorporating such groups as the Cauhans and the Gahadawalas as subcastes and clans, the Rajputs claimed power and perquisites, at least at the local level. The first appearance of the generic term zamindar, which denoted first superior rights over land and its produce and later came to represent the local power-mongers themselves, dates to this period. The new caste cohesion also created a sense of unity between the village elite and the peasantry, which in turn added to their strength; at certain levels, the two classes became virtually undifferentiated.

The Tughluqs thus had to handle the rural classes with care and diplomatic skill. Ghiyas-ud-Din Tughluq modified 'Ala'-ud-Din Khalji's system by exempting the village headmen from paying tax on their cultivation and cattle, but he confirmed the Khalji sultan's injunctions that the headmen were not to levy anything in addition to the existing land tax on the peasantry. As Muhammad ibn Tughluq adopted a stern policy, he provoked rebellion by the rural chiefs and the peasants, but, interestingly, he was also the first Indian ruler in recorded history to advance loans (taccavi) to the villagers for rehabilitation following a disastrous famine. He also proposed a grand scheme for improving cropping patterns and extending cultivation. Firuz Tughluq created the biggest network of canals known in premodern India, wrote off the loans granted earlier to the peasants by Muhammad ibn Tughluq, and, more significantly, enforced a policy of fixed tax, as opposed to the former proportional one, thus guaranteeing in normal times a larger share of surplus to the intermediaries. The desire of the Tughluq sultans for warmer relations with society as a whole was further illustrated by a generally appreciative approach to local social and religious practices. A few Hindus and Jainas had held state positions under the Khaljis; under the Tughluqs, the non-Muslim Indians rose to high and extremely responsible offices, including the governorships of provinces. Muhammad ibn Tughluq was the first Muslim ruler to make planned efforts to induct Hindus into administration. He also conducted several discourses with Indian scholars and saints. Firuz showed keen interest in Indian culture, commissioning Persian translations of some important Sanskrit texts and placing an Asokan pillar in a prominent position on the roof of his palace. While all these developments indicated the sultans' broadly tolerant and catholic policies, they demonstrated at the same time the strength of the locality. What was then emerging was a kind of tacit sharing of power between the local Hindu magnates and the essentially town-based Muslim aristocracy as a crucial source of political stability. Significantly, by the time of the Tughluqs, a theory of Islamic power, different from the universal Islamic theory of state, had also begun to emerge. The Turkish state was, in a formal sense, Islamic. The sultans could not allow open violation of Shari'ah. They appointed Muslim divines ('ulama') to profitable offices and granted revenue-free lands to many of them. But the policy of the state was based increasingly upon the opinion of the sultans and their advisers and not on any religious texts as interpreted by the 'ulama'. In view of practical needs and worldly considerations (jahandari), the sultans supplemented Shari'ah by framing their own state laws (zawabit). These regulations in cases of conflict overrode the universal Muslim law. Accommodation and tolerance afforded a most secure course in such a situation; however, the threat from the locality, as well as from the Muslim nobles in control of the provinces, sometimes compelled the sultans to assert their Islamic connections rather forcefully. By doing so, the sultans also intended to strike a balance between the demands of orthodoxy and the needs of the state. Ghiyas-ud-Din Tughluq's success against Khusraw Khan was presented as the regeneration of Islam in India. Muhammad ibn Tughluq had removed the name of the 'Abbasid caliph from his coins, but when he faced rebellion from every side, he searched for a caliph who could give him some moral authority to deal, at least, with his refractory Muslim officers. Firuz inherited a more difficult situation. Like his predecessor, he obtained a letter of investiture from the caliph. Further, he took several measures to align the state with Sunnite orthodoxy. In addition to giving important concessions to the 'ulama', he banned unorthodox practices, persecuted heretical sects, and refused to exempt the Brahmans from the payment of jizya, on the ground that this was not provided for in the Shari'ah. Muhammad ibn Tughluq's largess toward the Muslim foreigners was legendary. Firuz generously funded pious works within his territory and in other parts of the Islamic world. The Tughluqs did not fare well in the face of an imminent crisis of the central treasury. With the loss of Bengal and the southern provinces, Delhi was disconnected with the important supply lines of its gold and silver. This in turn affected its capacity to import horses and soldiers. Cavalry, the backbone of the sultanate army, was thus severely crippled. Good war horses were extremely expensive; in the mid-14th century an ordinary Central Asian steed cost 100 silver tangas, an exceptional one, 500 silver tangas, while a fine Arabian or Persian racehorse would cost as much as 1,000 to 4,000 silver tangas. The sultans' liberal support of the various holy centres and eminent individuals of the Islamic East also contributed to the shortage of precious metals. In response, Muhammad ibn Tughluq attempted to reduce the weight of his coins and experimented with token currency. His proposed expeditions to Khorasan and the Himalayas were possibly aimed at locating new sources of horses and precious metals. Firuz Tughluq addressed the crisis by withdrawing the practice of cash payment to the soldiers and by building an army from among the huge corps of slaves plundered from throughout the sultanate. The slaves were, however, no match for the mounted archers from the countries beyond the northwest. Thus, Firuz's weak policy toward his nobility, his light hand on the reins of administration, the resultant inefficiency and corruption among his ranks, and, indeed, his predecessor Muhammad ibn Tughluq's failure could be explained only in part in terms of these leaders' personal proclivities. Both were overwhelmed by social and economic circumstances.

History > The early Muslim period > North India under Muslim hegemony, c. 1200–1526 > The Delhi sultanate > Society and the state under the Tughluqs The Tughluq rule roughly coincided with an important and interesting development in the Hindu countryside, which, to a degree, was a reaction to 'Ala'-ud-Din Khalji's harsh measures. If, on the one hand, his new policy of taxation cut into the power of the erstwhile ruling chiefs who had escaped regular payment by offering tribute only under military pressure, it meant, on the other, a heavy loss of revenue for the small landlords and village headmen. The latter were also often subjected to severe corporal torture. The power of the Delhi regime, however, suffered an obvious setback after that. The former rural elite began to reappear, consolidated into the great Rajput caste spread over a very large part of northern India. Incorporating such groups as the Cauhans and the Gahadawalas as subcastes and clans, the Rajputs claimed power and perquisites, at least at the local level. The first appearance of the generic term zamindar, which denoted first superior rights over land and its produce and later came to represent the local power-mongers themselves, dates to this period. The new caste cohesion also created a sense of unity between the village elite and the peasantry, which in turn added to their strength; at certain levels, the two classes became virtually undifferentiated.

The Tughluqs thus had to handle the rural classes with care and diplomatic skill. Ghiyas-ud-Din Tughluq modified 'Ala'-ud-Din Khalji's system by exempting the village headmen from paying tax on their cultivation and cattle, but he confirmed the Khalji sultan's injunctions that the headmen were not to levy anything in addition to the existing land tax on the peasantry. As Muhammad ibn Tughluq adopted a stern policy, he provoked rebellion by the rural chiefs and the peasants, but, interestingly, he was also the first Indian ruler in recorded history to advance loans (taccavi) to the villagers for rehabilitation following a disastrous famine. He also proposed a grand scheme for improving cropping patterns and extending cultivation. Firuz Tughluq created the biggest network of canals known in premodern India, wrote off the loans granted earlier to the peasants by Muhammad ibn Tughluq, and, more significantly, enforced a policy of fixed tax, as opposed to the former proportional one, thus guaranteeing in normal times a larger share of surplus to the intermediaries. The desire of the Tughluq sultans for warmer relations with society as a whole was further illustrated by a generally appreciative approach to local social and religious practices. A few Hindus and Jainas had held state positions under the Khaljis; under the Tughluqs, the non-Muslim Indians rose to high and extremely responsible offices, including the governorships of provinces. Muhammad ibn Tughluq was the first Muslim ruler to make planned efforts to induct Hindus into administration. He also conducted several discourses with Indian scholars and saints. Firuz showed keen interest in Indian culture, commissioning Persian translations of some important Sanskrit texts and placing an Asokan pillar in a prominent position on the roof of his palace. While all these developments indicated the sultans' broadly tolerant and catholic policies, they demonstrated at the same time the strength of the locality. What was then emerging was a kind of tacit sharing of power between the local Hindu magnates and the essentially town-based Muslim aristocracy as a crucial source of political stability. Significantly, by the time of the Tughluqs, a theory of Islamic power, different from the universal Islamic theory of state, had also begun to emerge. The Turkish state was, in a formal sense, Islamic. The sultans could not allow open violation of Shari'ah. They appointed Muslim divines ('ulama') to profitable offices and granted revenue-free lands to many of them. But the policy of the state was based increasingly upon the opinion of the sultans and their advisers and not on any religious texts as interpreted by the 'ulama'. In view of practical needs and worldly considerations (jahandari), the sultans supplemented Shari'ah by framing their own state laws (zawabit). These regulations in cases of conflict overrode the universal Muslim law. Accommodation and tolerance afforded a most secure course in such a situation; however, the threat from the locality, as well as from the Muslim nobles in control of the provinces, sometimes compelled the sultans to assert their Islamic connections rather forcefully. By doing so, the sultans also intended to strike a balance between the demands of orthodoxy and the needs of the state. Ghiyas-ud-Din Tughluq's success against Khusraw Khan was presented as the regeneration of Islam in India. Muhammad ibn Tughluq had removed the name of the 'Abbasid caliph from his coins, but when he faced rebellion from every side, he searched for a caliph who could give him some moral authority to deal, at least, with his refractory Muslim officers. Firuz inherited a more difficult situation. Like his predecessor, he obtained a letter of investiture from the caliph. Further, he took several measures to align the state with Sunnite orthodoxy. In addition to giving important concessions to the 'ulama', he banned unorthodox practices, persecuted heretical sects, and refused to exempt the Brahmans from the payment of jizya, on the ground that this was not provided for in the Shari'ah. Muhammad ibn Tughluq's largess toward the Muslim foreigners was legendary. Firuz generously funded pious works within his territory and in other parts of the Islamic world. The Tughluqs did not fare well in the face of an imminent crisis of the central treasury. With the loss of Bengal and the southern provinces, Delhi was disconnected with the important supply lines of its gold and silver. This in turn affected its capacity to import horses and soldiers. Cavalry, the backbone of the sultanate army, was thus severely crippled. Good war horses were extremely expensive; in the mid-14th century an ordinary Central Asian steed cost 100 silver tangas, an exceptional one, 500 silver tangas, while a fine Arabian or Persian racehorse would cost as much as 1,000 to 4,000 silver tangas. The sultans' liberal support of the various holy centres and eminent individuals of the Islamic East also contributed to the shortage of precious metals. In response, Muhammad ibn Tughluq attempted to reduce the weight of his coins and experimented with token currency. His proposed expeditions to Khorasan and the Himalayas were possibly aimed at locating new sources of horses and precious metals. Firuz Tughluq addressed the crisis by withdrawing the practice of cash payment to the soldiers and by building an army from among the huge corps of slaves plundered from throughout the sultanate. The slaves were, however, no match for the mounted archers from the countries beyond the northwest. Thus, Firuz's weak policy toward his nobility, his light hand on the reins of administration, the resultant inefficiency and corruption among his ranks, and, indeed, his predecessor Muhammad ibn Tughluq's failure could be explained only in part in terms of these leaders' personal proclivities. Both were overwhelmed by social and economic circumstances.

History > The early Muslim period > North India under Muslim hegemony, c. 1200–1526 > The rise of regional states During the 15th and early 16th centuries, no paramount power enjoyed effective control over most of North India and Bengal. Delhi became merely one of the regional principalities of North India, competing with the emerging Rajput and Muslim states. Gujarat, Malwa, and Jaunpur soon became powerful independent states; old and new Rajput states rapidly emerged; and Lahore, Dipalpur, Multan, and parts of Sindh were held by Khizr Khan Sayyid for Timur (and later for himself). Khizr Khan also took over Delhi and a small area surrounding it after the last of the Tughluqs died in 1413, and he founded the dynasty known as the Sayyid. The Sayyids ruled the territory of Delhi until 1451, trying to obtain tribute and recognition of suzerainty from the nearby Rajput rulers and fighting almost continuously against neighbouring states to preserve their kingdom intact. The last Sayyid ruler, 'Ala'-ud-Din 'Alam Shah (reigned 1445–51), peacefully surrendered Delhi to his nominal vassal, the Afghan Bahlul Lodi, and retired to Badaun district, which he retained until his death in 1478. Before he moved to Delhi, Bahlul Lodi had already carved out a kingdom in the Punjab that was larger than that of the Sayyid sultans.

Meanwhile, the neighbouring kingdom of Jaunpur developed into a power equal to Delhi during the reign (1402–40) of Ibrahim Sharqi. Ibrahim's successor, Mahmud, conducted expansionist campaigns against Bengal and Orissa and, in 1452, initiated a conflict with the Lodi sultans of Delhi that lasted at least until the defeat and partial annexation of Jaunpur by Bahlul Lodi in 1479. The lack of unified rule has led some historians to describe the period as one of political anarchy and confusion, in which the inhabitants suffered because there was no strong guiding hand. Such a conclusion is far from certain, however, even for the central areas of the Gangetic Plain, where many battles were fought. In areas where effective regional rule was either restored or developed—as in Rajasthan, Orissa, Bengal, Gujarat, Malwa, Jaunpur, and various smaller states in the North, as well as in the large and small states of the Deccan—the quality of life may well have been comparable or superior to that of earlier centuries for cultivators, townspeople, landholders, and nobles. Although contemporary sources are scarce, the information available does not indicate a significant decline in total cultivation or trade (despite some alteration of trade routes). To the contrary, Gujarat and Bengal, in addition to their fertile tracts and rich handicrafts, carried on a brisk overseas trade. The Gujarati traders had a big role in the trade of the Middle East and Africa; the Chittagong port in Bengal was a flourishing port for trade with China and for the reexport of Chinese goods to other parts of the world.

History > The early Muslim period > North India under Muslim hegemony, c. 1200–1526 > Struggle for supremacy in North India Early Muslim India (c. 1200–c. 1500). These regional states had enough vigour and strength to balance and check the growth of each other's power. With the Lodi conquest of Jaunpur, however, Delhi appeared to reestablish its hegemony over North India. Bahlul (reigned 1451–89) and his two successors, Sikandar (reigned 1489–1517) and Ibrahim (reigned 1517–26), continued intermittently to expand their control over the surrounding territory. Bahlul pacified the Ganges-Yamuna Doab and subdued Etawah, Chandwar, and Rewari. Sikandar completed the pacification of Jaunpur (1493), campaigned into Bihar, and founded the city of Agra in 1504 as a base from which to launch his attempt to control Malwa and Rajasthan.

By the time of Sikandar's death, the Afghans could claim a somewhat uneven control over the Punjab and most of the Gangetic Plain down to Bihar. Still, the question of Lodi hegemony in North India was far from settled. Rana Sanga of Mewar did not simply check the Lodi encroachments into central India but also repulsed a Lodi attempt to invade Mewar and threatened to move toward Bayana and 0gra. Eastern Malwa, including Chanderi (at that time in possession of a Rajput leader, Medini Rai) passed under his overlordship. Rana Sanga defeated the Khalji sultan of Malwa and took him prisoner in Chitor. The rana was thus emerging as another formidable Rajput contender for supremacy in North India. Meanwhile, Babur, a descendant of Timur, was knocking at the gates of India. Ibrahim Lodi was more autocratic than his predecessor, and he was ultimately less able to control his skittish nobility, which had swelled significantly following the immigration into India of a considerable number of Afghans. They tended to see the Lodi sultans as merely first among equals. Ibrahim soon faced an Afghan rebellion in the east under the leadership of his brother Jalal Khan, and, while Ibrahim put down this and other Afghan revolts in the region, the groundwork for the final disaster was laid in the west. Dawlat Khan Lodi, governor of the Punjab, and 'Alam Khan Lodi, Ibrahim's uncle, appealed to Babur, the Mughal ruler of Kabul, to aid them in their attempt to overthrow the sultan. The adventurous Babur was at that time probably thinking only of annexing the Punjab, but, as his previous history had demonstrated, he was quick to take advantage of political opportunities. In 1524 he led an expedition to Lahore and defeated Ibrahim's army. Babur then passed over his Afghan allies and appointed his own officials in the Punjab. After his allies had indignantly left him, he went on to defeat and kill Ibrahim at Panipat, near Delhi, in 1526 (see below The Mughal Empire). The Afghan sultanate underwent a short revival under the Surs in 1540–55, only to be replaced by the Mughals again under Humayun and then Akbar the Great.

History > The early Muslim period > The Muslim states of South India, c. 1350–1680 Early Muslim India (c. 1200–c. 1500). Sultanate rule in most of South India existed for only a few years and was firmly established only in the northern Deccan, with Daulatabad as its centre. The forced withdrawal of the sultanate forces from the Deccan between 1330 and 1347 was partly the result of resistance offered by Hindu chiefs and some Muslim nobles. Members of those two groups established several rebel principalities and the two strongest states of the South—the Muslim-ruled Bahmani kingdom and the Hindu-ruled Vijayanagar empire.

Ma'bar, the first among the rebel states to emerge in South India, was founded at Madurai by the erstwhile Tughluq general Jalal-ud-Din Ahsan Shah in 1335. Lasting barely 45 years, with seven rulers in quick succession, Ma'bar covered the Tamil region between Nellore and Quilon and contributed to the commercial importance of South India by encouraging Muslim traders from the Middle East and even attempting to sponsor an expedition to the Maldives. The Ma'bar wars with the Hoysalas of Karnataka took place in the lower Kaveri region and were fought for control over a series of fortified trading stations between the coast and the interior. The Vijayanagar invasion under Prince Kumara Kampana dealt a severe blow to Ma'bar's commercial importance in 1347; Vijayanagar completed the conquest in 1377–78 under Harihara II.

History > The early Muslim period > The Muslim states of South India, c. 1350–1680 > The Bahmani dynasty A revolt by a group of Muslim nobles against Muhammad ibn Tughluq that began in Daulatabad in 1345 culminated in the foundation of the Bahmani sultanate by Hasan Gangu, who ascended the throne of Daulatabad as 'Ala'-ud-Din Bahman Shah in 1347 and soon moved his capital to the more centrally located Gulbarga on the Deccan Plateau. Much of the political and military history of the Bahmani sultanate can be described as a generally effective attempt to gain control of the Deccan and a less successful effort to expand outward from it. The initial period of consolidation was followed by a much longer period of intermittent warfare against Malwa and Gujarat in the North, Orissa and the Reddi kingdoms of Andhra in the east, and Vijayanagar in the South. The rise of Bahmani, Vijayanagar, and other subregional kingdoms signified a new trend in the political and military history of the region, with the emergence of fortified warrior strongholds under Muslim and Hindu chiefs and advanced military technology, including artillery and heavy cavalry. Control over such strongholds was thus essential to Bahmani's military supremacy. History > The early Muslim period > The Muslim states of South India, c. 1350–1680 > The Bahmani dynasty > Bahmani consolidation of the Deccan Bahman Shah spent most of his reign consolidating a kingdom in the Deccan and strengthening his hold over those Muslim nobles who chose to remain there rather than to join Muhammad ibn Tughluq in North India. He adopted the four territorial divisions (tarafs) established by Muhammad ibn Tughluq for his own administration and established departments and appointed functionaries similar to those of the Delhi sultanate. Working outward from his capital, he was able to establish his authority over the western half of the Deccan Plateau and to impose an annual tribute upon the Hindu state of Warangal, which had also emerged from the breakup of the Deccan portion of the Tughluq empire. Often, however, the tribute was not paid, and a number of wars were fought over the question of whether the Bahmanis could maintain a superior position in relation to their eastern neighbour, including also the Reddi kingdoms of Rajahmundry and Kondavidu, in the following years. Muhammad Shah I (reigned 1358–75), son and successor of Bahman Shah, began the struggle with Vijayanagar that was to outlast the Bahmani sultanate and continue, as a many-sided conflict, into the 17th century. The period 1350–1500 saw at least 10 wars, most of which were concerned with control over the Tungabhadra-Krishna doab. The doab had been an area of contention long before the foundation of either the Bahmani kingdom or Vijayanagar. Claims and counterclaims of victory show that neither side gained effective and lasting control over the doab, and the struggle extended eventually into the Konkan and Andhra regions. In his wars against Vijayanagar and Telingana (Warangal), Muhammad Shah made use of newly organized artillery to defeat an army much larger than his own. His two wars with Vijayanagar gained him little, but his attack on Telingana in 1363 brought him a large indemnity, including the turquoise throne and the town of Golconda with its dependencies; in 1365 his rapid response to a rebellion by the governor of Daulatabad and some Maratha and other chieftains of Berar and Baglana led to a quick victory. The sultan devoted the last 10 years of his reign to consolidating his hold over the territories in his possession. Institutional and geographic consolidation under Muhammad Shah laid a solid foundation for the kingdom. His legacy was soon disturbed, however, when his son and successor, 'Ala'-ud-Din Mujahid (reigned 1375–78), was assassinated by his cousin Da'ud while returning from a campaign in Vijayanagar. Da'ud was in turn murdered by 'Ala'-ud-Din's partisans, who then set Ca'ud's brother Muhammad II (reigned 1378–97) on the throne and blinded Da'ud's son. These political difficulties enabled Vijayanagar to take away part of Goa and other territory along the western coast, but the rest of Muhammad II's reign was peaceful, and the sultan spent much of his time building his court as a centre of culture and learning. Several political and cultural tendencies that emerged at this time had significant effects on the development of the Bahmani state and its successors. Although the state had been organized by a group of dissident nobles from the Delhi sultanate, differences in both the culture and the political affiliation of the nobilities developed, largely because of differences in recruiting patterns. Soon after the foundation of the Bahmani state, large numbers of Arabs, Turks, and particularly Persians began to immigrate to the Deccan, many of them at the invitation of Sultan Muhammad I, and there they had a strong influence on the development of Muslim culture during subsequent generations. The new settlers (afaqis) also had a political effect, as they soon began competing successfully for important positions within the political hierarchy. The original rebels from the Delhi sultanate and their descendants, who came to be called dakhnis (i.e., Deccanis—from the Deccan), thought of themselves as the old nobility and thus resented the success of the newcomers. The situation was comparable to that of the Delhi sultanate, in which a party of entrenched nobles had tried to protect their privileged position against newcomers who were developing claims to power. Thus, the distribution of high offices among Persian newcomers by Sultan Ghiyas-ud-Din (Muhammad II's oldest son, who ruled for about two months) in 1397 was seen as a threat by the old nobles and Turks and was probably a major reason for his assassination. Later, the addition of Hindu converts and Hindus to the nobility complicated the situation further, as it had in the north, but the division between Deccanis and afaqis (hereinafter called newcomers) was most significant and contributed to the disintegration of the Bahmani state. Muhammad II's peaceful reign was followed by a year of succession disputes caused both by party conflicts and by dynastic rivalries. When Muhammad's cousins Ahmad and Firuz finally gained control, Firuz succeeded as Firuz Shah Bahmani. His reign (1397–1422) was a period of notable cultural activity in the Bahmani sultanate, as well as one of continued development of the trend toward wider political participation. Noted for his intelligence and learning, Firuz established on the Bhima River his new capital, Firuzabad, as the greatest centre of Muslim culture in India at a time when the Delhi sultanate was rapidly dissolving. Perhaps in an effort to balance the continuing influx of Persians, as well as to strengthen his own position as a ruler who was above all the nobles and who recognized the realities of political power, Firuz gave a number of high offices to Hindus (Brahmans) and married several Hindu women, including the daughter of the king of Vijayanagar. Thus, the parallel with the earlier development of the Delhi sultanate nobility continued. The fact that Hindus were becoming politically more significant at a time when the military rivalry with Vijayanagar was renewed suggests a political rather than a religious motivation for that rivalry. Firuz stopped an invasion in the north by the Gond raja of Kherla in Madhya Pradesh and conducted two moderately successful campaigns against Vijayanagar. The first brought him a tribute payment and temporary military control over the Raichur doab, while the second ended with his marriage to the Vijayanagar king's daughter and the establishment of an apparently amicable relationship between the two rulers. The peace lasted for only 10 years, however, and a third war (1417–20) ended in a disastrous defeat for Firuz by the united forces of Vijayanagar and Firuz's former allies, the Velama faction of the Reddi ruling group in Andhra. The Vemas of Kondavidu, once hostile, now joined the sultan. Firuz's position was so weakened by the defeat that he was forced to abdicate in favour of his brother Ahmad, who had the support of most of the army. One of the first acts of the new sultan, Shihab-ud-Din Ahmad I (reigned 1422–36), was to move the capital from Gulbarga to Bidar, which was surrounded by more fertile ground and had become more centrally located now that some territory had been gained to the southeast, in Telingana. Perhaps, also, the move signified Ahmad's expansionist ambitions, for in 1425 he defeated and killed the Velama ruler of Warangal and finally annexed most of Telingana, bringing his eastern border to the edge of Orissa. During the next decade, however, rebellions forced Ahmad to allow local chieftains to rule as tributaries throughout much of the area.

History > The early Muslim period > The Muslim states of South India, c. 1350–1680 > The Bahmani dynasty > External and internal rivalries Early Muslim India (c. 1200–c. 1500). Although the Bahmani state had been threatened from the north earlier, it was during Ahmad's reign that conflicts first broke out with the northern neighbours, Malwa and Gujarat. The breakdown of centralized authority within the Delhi sultanate and the consequent rise of provincial kingdoms meant that new rivalries could develop on a regional basis, and the Bahmani sultans found themselves contending with two of the successor states of the Delhi sultanate in an arena where their expansionist ambitions had some chance of success. A border dispute with Malwa led to a Bahmani victory and a short-lived recognition of the chieftainship of Kherla as a Bahmani protectorate. Ahmad I then forged an alliance with another northern neighbour, Khandesh, which acted as a buffer between Bahmani and the kingdoms of Maiwa and Gujarat. On the pretext of giving aid to a Hindu chieftain who had revolted against Gujarat, he sent unsuccessful expeditions into Gujarat in 1429 and 1430. The latter defeat was especially significant, as it partly stemmed from rivalries between the Deccani officers and the newcomers from the Middle East, a friction that appears to have become gradually more intense from this point until the decline of the Bahmani sultanate. Toward the close of his reign, Ahmad I named his eldest son as his successor and gave him full charge of the administration; he parcelled out the provinces (tarafs) among his other sons, exacting from them promises that they would be loyal to the new sultan, 'Ala'-ud-Din Ahmad II (reigned 1436–58). Even though Ahmad II had to face a rebellion by one of his brothers, a precedent was set for a rule of primogeniture, which seemed to alleviate the problem of succession disputes for the rest of the century. Unfortunately for later Bahmani rulers, rivalries among the nobility were to prove just as detrimental to the fortunes of the dynasty as family disputes were in many other dynasties of the period. Ahmad II proved to be a weaker ruler than his father had been, and during his reign the conflicts among the nobles intensified. Two short wars with Vijayanagar in 1436 and 1443–44 were confined to Krishna-Tungabhadra doab and signified little except the arrival of a new power, the Hindu Gajapati king of Orissa, who allied himself with the Bahmani ruler in the second campaign. Perhaps more significant in its ultimate effect was the Bahmani victory over Khandesh in 1438. The force in that campaign was composed exclusively of newcomers, who had convinced the sultan that Deccani treachery had been responsible for the defeat in Gujarat in 1430. The newcomers thereby gained considerable influence with the sultan but at the same time intensified the resentment of the Deccanis, who retaliated in 1446 by massacring a large number of them, with the malleable sultan's tacit permission. Later, when the sultan was convinced that the newcomers had been unjustly killed, he punished many of the responsible Deccanis and promoted the surviving newcomers. During the last years of his reign, Ahmad had to face a rebellion in Telingana led by his son-in-law and supported by the sultan of Malwa. It was at this time that Mahmud Gawan, a newly arrived noble from Persis, displayed his military and diplomatic skills by persuading the rebels to desist and the sultan to pardon them. Under the successors of Ahmad II, Bahmani faced continuous disturbances, such as further rebellion in Telingana and three serious onslaughts by Mahmud Khalji of Malwa, the Gajapati king of Orissa joining the fray by making inroads into the heart of the Bahmani kingdom. Humayun (reigned 1458–61) and Nizam-ud-Din Ahmad III (reigned 1461–63) sought the help of Muhammad Begara of Gujarat against Malwa and warded off the invasions. The most notable personality of the period was Mahmud Gawan, who was a leading administrator during the reigns of Humayun and his son Ahmad III and was wazir (chief minister) under Muhammad III (reigned 1463–82). During Mahmud Gawan's ascendancy, the Bahmani state achieved both its greatest size and greatest degree of centralization, and yet, partly because of the attempts at centralization and partly because of the continuing rivalry between the Deccanis and newcomers, the period ended with Mahmud Gawan's assassination and the rapid dissolution of the effective power of the Bahmani state. After Mahmud Gawan's installation as wazir in 1463, a series of Bahmani campaigns resulted in the subjugation in the west of most of the Konkan, including several forts (e.g., Khelna, Belgaum, and Kolhapur) and the important port of Goa, which was then under Vijayanagar control. This not only guaranteed the safety of Muslim merchants and pilgrims from piratical attacks but also gave Bahmani virtual command over the west coast trade, at least until the arrival of the Portuguese. In the north the frontier with Malwa was maintained more or less as it was, although Bahmani agreed to return Kherla's status as a fief of Malwa. An alliance with Vijayanagar proved effective in defeating Orissa in 1470. Later, campaigns in the east brought some advantages against the rival claimants to the Orissa throne, who sought Bahmani's help against one another. In 1481 Muhammad III, with Mahmud Gawan, succeeded in taking Kondapalli from Saluva Narasimha, the Vijayanagar general, and the sultan quickly marched south as far as Kanchipuram in a show of prowess. As wazir, Mahmud Gawan attempted to enhance the central authority—ostensibly of the crown but possibly his own as well—through a series of administrative reforms and political maneuvers. Up to the 1470s the kingdom had been divided into four provinces, centring around the cities of Daulatabad, Mahur, Bidar, and Gulbarga, respectively. The governors of the four provinces had control over almost all aspects of civil and military administration within their territorial jurisdictions. Administration was thus decentralized from the beginning, but the relative power of the provincial governors as compared with the centre potentially became even greater as the state expanded and each of the four provinces grew larger. To decrease the power of the governors, Mahmud Gawan divided each of the overgrown provinces into two, under separate governors, reduced the military control of the governors by bringing all forts but one in each province directly under the control of the sultan, and tightened central control over the employment and payment of troops within the provinces. In addition, he introduced a system of measurement and valuation of agricultural land and created a large block of crown land within each province. Perhaps the most significant of all of Mahmud Gawan's measures was his policy of balancing important appointments between Deccanis and newcomers in order to reduce disputes among the nobility and to keep himself, as wazir, above party conflicts. Unfortunately for Mahmud Gawan and for the Bahmani dynasty, party strife had developed to such an extent that a group of Deccani nobles—motivated by hostility toward the chief minister as a newcomer, as well as by dislike of his efforts toward centralization—falsified evidence to make Mahmud Gawan appear a traitor and convinced Muhammad III to execute him in 1481. The execution was widely disapproved of by the newcomers and even by some of the Deccani nobles, many of whom sided with Yusuf 'Adil Khan, previously Mahmud Gawan's chief supporter. Most of the newcomers returned to their provinces and refused to come to the capital, and the sultan was left with only the support of the conspirators. When he died in 1482 (of grief over his error in judgment, the chronicles report), the leader of the conspirators, Malik Na'ib, was able to make himself regent for Muhammad's minor son, Shihab-ud-Din Mahmud (reigned 1482–1518).

History > The early Muslim period > The Muslim states of South India, c. 1350–1680 > The Bahmani dynasty > Bahmani decline Mahmud's reign hastened the disintegration of the Bahmani kingdom. An abortive attempt to assassinate Yusuf 'Adil Khan resulted in the Khan's agreement to retire to Bijapur and leave Malik Na'ib and the conspirators in charge at Bidar. Now the lack of institutionalized central power brought group conflicts to the fore. Malik Na'ib, never popular even with a number of the Deccanis, was put to death in 1486 by the Abyssinian governor of Bihar, and the sultan subsequently began to rely on the newcomers for support. An attempt on Mahmud's life in 1487 by a group of Deccanis strengthened the sultan's reliance on the newcomers and led to the slaughter of a great many Deccanis. But by this time it began to become apparent that the power of the sultan was less than that of several of his nobles, and, although he continued to be a valuable pawn for the provincial governors to try to control, his power to rule was nearly gone. The provincial governors and their followers could not be controlled, nor did they believe that maintaining the centralized Bahmani state would any longer be in their best interests. Consequently, the governors were usually unwilling to aid the sultan when he attempted to put down rebellions by other governors or by powerful nobles. One of the first revolts was that of the kotwal (superintendent of police) of Bidar, Qasim Barid, a Turkish noble who defeated the army sent against him by the sultan and then forced Mahmud to make him chief minister of the state. Qasim Barid's attempt to reimpose central authority was opposed by most of the chief nobles, however, who defeated him once and then refused to recognize his authority. Next, Malik Ahmad Nizam-ul-Mulk, the son of Malik Na'ib, began to carve out a territory for himself by conquering Maratha forts along the western coast. He defeated the two armies sent against him by the sultan, whom he forced to recognize his conquests, and in 1490 he assumed a practical independence and established his capital at Ahmadnagar. Yusuf 'Adil Khan of Bijapur and Fath Allah 'Imad-ul-Mulk of Berar had demonstrated their sympathy for Malik Ahmad's activities and soon emulated him. Although the three governors still did not assume the insignia of royalty, it was clear by the end of 1490 that Sultan Mahmud and the chief minister, Qasim Barid, could not command any of them.

History > The early Muslim period > The Muslim states of South India, c. 1350–1680 > Successors to the Bahmani Early Muslim India (c. 1200–c. 1500). During the 1490s the rivalries intensified among the former provincial governors, other high nobles, and Qasim Barid, who was the effective head of the government at the Bahmani capital. Each began to form temporary alliances and to fight battles with other nobles in order to enhance his own position. Gradually the five successor states to the Bahmani sultanate took shape, as lesser nobles were defeated and their territories were incorporated by the provincial governors or retained by Bidar. Bijapur (1490), Ahmadnagar (1490), and later Golconda (1512) emerged as the most successful of these states. Although a Bahmani sultan still remained as a puppet ruler until at least 1538, effective control of the Bidar government passed into the hands of Qasim Barid's son Amir Barid upon his father's death in 1505, thus establishing what proved to be a dynastic claim for the Barid Shahis of Bidar. Ironically, the conflict between Deccanis and newcomers, which had done so much to destroy the unity of the sultanate, was of little importance after 1492. The major rivalry of the next decade was between two newcomers, Qasim Barid and Yusuf 'Adil Khan. (Qasim Barid, however, was supported by the Deccanis of Bidar in his struggle with another Deccani, Malik Ahmad of Ahmadnagar.) The shift resulted from the fact that there were no longer parties of nobles but rather semi-independent states whose rulers were attempting to establish and expand their authority. Political expediency dictated the shifting alliances among these regional chiefs, who were no longer representatives of factional politics but were potential rulers of independent states. The primary goals of territorial integrity and military supremacy offered sufficient rationale for one or the other of these chiefs to seek even the alliance of their traditional enemy Vijayanagar, particularly in the conflicts between Bijapur and Ahmadnagar. One issue that occasionally united the Bahmani successor states was the desire to profit at the expense of Vijayanagar. Sultan Mahmud II proposed in 1501 that a policy of an annual jihad, or holy war, against the Hindu kingdom be adopted by the Muslim nobles. A number of relatively successful raids were undertaken during the next few years, but in 1509 the new ruler of Vijayanagar, Krishna Deva Raya, repulsed the Muslims with substantial losses. Later, the political ambitions of Bijapur and Ahmadnagar prompted a series of successful interventions by Vijayanagar under Rama Raya, a regent who finally usurped the Vijayanagar throne and played a significant role in Deccan politics. The excesses of Rama Raya, carried out on the pretext of assisting Bijapur against Ahmadnagar in their wars, led to a temporary but fruitful coalition among the five successor states and the crushing defeat of Vijayanagar's powerful forces at Talikota (Banihatti) in 1565, which, though it did not destroy the Hindu kingdom, ultimately helped the expansionist ambitions of Bijapur and Golconda (see below The Vijayanagar empire, 1336–1646).

Early Muslim India (c. 1200–c. 1500). During the 16th century the strongest and best organized of the Bahmani successor states was Ahmadnagar, followed by Bijapur and then Golconda. All three were much larger and more important than Berar and Bidar, and all three either began with or soon came to accept the Shi'ite form of Islam (the religion of the Persian newcomers) as the official faith of their rulers. During the 16th century the three major states formed shifting patterns of alliances, which sometimes (both before and after 1565) also included Vijayanagar, while the two smaller Muslim states ranged themselves on one side or the other in order to protect their independence. The goal of military campaigns normally was to humble the adversary without doing irreparable harm, for all three major Muslim states feared the supremacy of any one state, and a tripartite division of territory seemed more likely to insure the continued independence of all. Bijapur and Ahmadnagar were drawn into a series of conflicts over the forts in the Maratha region and the Konkan coast. A treaty between the two in 1571, however, reveals their interest in restoring a balance in the political situation by recognizing the right of Ahmadnagar to annex Berar and Bidar in return for recognition of Bijapur's right to occupy extensive territories in the south, particularly portions of Vijayanagar. Ahmadnagar did not annex Bidar, owing to intervention by Ibrahim Qutb Shah of Golconda, but it did acquire Berar in 1574. Bijapur was unable to take full advantage of the opportunities for expansion to the south during the 1570s because of factional disputes among the nobles, as well as Golconda's interests in the Vijayanagar-controlled areas. Thus, Ahmadnagar managed to retain a slightly superior position. The tide began to turn in the 1580s, however, with the establishment of a stable regency at Bijapur, fortified by a series of marriage alliances with other royal lines in the Deccan and by the political deterioration of Ahmadnagar under the rule of the slightly mad Murtada Nizam Shah. Murtada's murder in 1588, by a son who was more insane than he, set off a chain of events that resulted in simultaneous invasions by Bijapur from the south and by Murtada's brother Burhan, who had the support of the Mughal emperor Akbar, from the north, Burhan defeated the army of Ahmadnagar, recalled the foreign nobles (as the newcomers of Bahmani times were now designated) who had been expelled from the kingdom, and assumed the throne in 1591. Campaigns against Bijapur and against the Portuguese at Chaul (just south of present-day Bombay), as well as a bitter rivalry between the Deccani and foreign nobles, further weakened Ahmadnagar at a time when Akbar's growing interest indicated grave danger. The death of both Burhan and his son in 1595 was followed by increased factionalism and eventually by civil war as rival claimants to the throne were put forward. When one party appealed for aid to the governor of Gujarat, Akbar had an excuse to launch the campaign he had already been planning. The two wars that followed resulted in the Mughal acquisition of Berar, the capture of the ruler of Ahmadnagar, and the defeat and annexation of Khandesh. A group of nobles, however, led by the Abyssinian Malik 'Ambar, raised a member of the royal family to the throne at Daulatabad and continued to fight the Mughals. Golconda, which by the mid-17th century coincided with the Telugu linguistic and cultural region, was built up as a strong state by the Qutb Shahis from 1512. It developed a distinct regional culture with the foundation of Hyderabad in 1590–91 by Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah and evolved a political system to suit the indigenous sociopolitical structure. Golconda enjoyed a high level of economic prosperity owing to the productive agricultural plains of Andhra and the busy trade of such ports as Masulipatam, as well as to the diamond mines near Vijayawada. The Qutb Shahis steadily expanded the area under their control during the 16th century at the expense of the politically fragmented Telugu kings and Nayakas and held their own against the Vijayanagar rulers and the Gajapatis of Orissa. Vijayanagar interests in Andhra and its intervention in Golconda politics through encouragement to the rebel Nayakas under Krishna Deva Raya and his successors ceased after the Talikota debacle in 1565. Consolidation was achieved by Ibrahim Qutb Shah (1550–80) and enhanced under Muhammad Quli early in the 17th century. A conciliatory policy toward the Nayakas, as well as the regime's desire to preserve the Telugu warrior ethos, brought Telugu warrior groups into Golconda's service. Special attention to large-scale irrigation and agriculture, promotion of interregional trade, and administrative centralization were the basic factors in Golconda's stability. In the struggle for control of the Deccan after the decline of the Bahmani sultanate, the two southernmost states, Bijapur and Golconda, ultimately found themselves in the most advantageous position, because they were farthest away from the growing power of the Mughal Empire in North India. The Mughal's southward movement, which began under Akbar (Abu-ul-Fath Jalal-ud-Din Muhammad Akbar; 1556–1605) with a successful onslaught against Ahmadnagar, was to end with the annexation of Bijapur (1686) and Golconda (1687) during the reign of Aurangzeb. During the intervening period, the Mughal presence became increasingly important to the remaining Deccan kings, who struggled to maintain or expand their position within the Deccan while trying to fend off the advancing Mughal arms.

History > The early Muslim period > The Vijayanagar empire, 1336–1646 Early Muslim India (c. 1200–c. 1500). Founded in 1336 in the wake of the rebellions against Tughluq rule in the Deccan, the Hindu Vijayanagar empire lasted for more than two centuries as the dominant power in South India. Its history and fortunes were shaped by the increasing militarization of peninsular politics after the Muslim invasions and the commercialization that made South India a major participant in the trade network linking Europe and East Asia. Urbanization and monetization of the economy were the two other significant developments of the period that brought all the peninsular kingdoms into highly competitive political and military activities in the race for supremacy.

History > The early Muslim period > The Vijayanagar empire, 1336–1646 > Development of the state The kingdom of Vijayanagar was founded by Harihara and Bukka, two of five brothers (surnamed Sangama) who had served in the administrations of both Kakatiya and Kampili before those kingdoms were conquered by the armies of the Delhi sultanate in the 1320s. When Kampili fell in 1327, the two brothers are believed to have been captured and taken to Delhi, where they converted to Islam. They were returned to the Deccan as governors of Kampili for the sultanate with the hope that they would be able to deal with the many local revolts and invasions by neighbouring Hindu kings. They followed a conciliatory policy toward the landholders of the area, many of whom had not accepted Muslim rule, and began a process of consolidation and expansion. Their first campaign was against the neighbouring Hoysala king, Ballala III of Dorasamudra, but it stagnated; after the brothers reconverted to Hinduism under the influence of the sage Vidyaranya and proclaimed their independence from the Delhi sultanate, however, they were able to defeat Ballala and thereby secure their home base. Harihara I (reigned 1336–56) then established his new capital, Vijayanagar, in an easily defensible position south of the Tungabhadra River, where it came to symbolize the emerging medieval political culture of South India. The kingdom's expansion in the first century of its existence made it the first South Indian state to incorporate different linguistic and cultural regions under a single regime, albeit with subregional and local chiefly powers exercising authority as its agents and subordinates.

History > The early Muslim period > The Vijayanagar empire, 1336–1646 > Development of the state > Conquests In 1336 Harihara, with the help of his brothers, held uneasy suzerainty over lands extending from Nellore, on the southeast coast, to Badami, south of Bijapur on the western side of the Deccan. All around him new Hindu kingdoms were rising, the most important of which were the Hoysala kingdom of Ballala and the Andhra confederacy, led by Kapaya Nayaka. However, Ballala's kingdom was disadvantageously situated between the Ma'bar sultanate and Vijayanagar, and two years after Ballala was killed by the sultan in 1343–44, his kingdom had been conquered by Bukka, Harihara's brother, and annexed to Vijayanagar. This was the most important victory of Harihara's reign; the new state now could claim sovereignty from sea to sea, and in 1346 the five brothers attended a great celebration, at which Bukka was made joint ruler and heir. Harihara's brothers made other, less significant conquests of small Hindu kingdoms during the next decade. However, the foundation of the Bahmani sultanate in 1347 created a new and greater danger, and Harihara was forced to lessen his own expansionist activities to meet the threat posed by this powerful and aggressive new state on his northern borders. During Harihara's reign the administrative foundation of the Vijayanagar state was laid. Borrowing from the Kakatiya kings he had served, he created administrative units called stholas, nadus, and simas and appointed officials to collect revenue and to carry on local administration, preferring Brahmans to men of other castes. The income of the state apparently was increased by the reorganization, although centralization probably did not proceed to the stage where salaried officials collected directly for the government in most areas. Rather, most land remained under the direct control of subordinate chiefs or of a hierarchy of local landholders, who paid some revenue and provided some troops for the king. Harihara also encouraged increased cultivation in some areas by allowing lower revenue payments for lands recently reclaimed from the forests.

History > The early Muslim period > The Vijayanagar empire, 1336–1646 > Development of the state > Consolidation Harihara was succeeded by Bukka (I; reigned 1356–77), who during his first decade as king engaged in a number of costly wars against the Bahmani sultans over control of strategic forts in the Krishna-Tungabhadra doab, as well as over the trading emporia of the east and west coasts. The Bahmanis generally prevailed in these encounters and even forced Vijayanagar to pay a tribute in 1359. The major accomplishments of Bukka's reign were the conquest of the short-lived sultanate of Ma'bar (Madurai; 1370) and the maintenance of his kingdom against the threat of decentralization. During Harihara's reign the government of the outlying provinces of the growing state had been entrusted to his brothers—usually to the brother who had conquered that particular territory. By 1357 some of Bukka's nephews had succeeded their fathers as governors of these provinces, and there was a possibility that the state would become less and less centralized as the various branches of the family became more firmly ensconced in their particular domains. Bukka, therefore, removed his nephews and replaced them with his sons and favourite generals so that centralized authority (and his own line of succession) could be maintained. However, the succession of Bukka's son Harihara II (reigned 1377–1404) precipitated a repetition of the same action. A rebellion in the Tamil country at the beginning of his reign probably was aided by the disaffected sons and officers of Bukka's deceased eldest son, Kumara Kampana, who were not ready to acknowledge Harihara's authority. Harihara was able to put down the rebellion and subsequently to replace his cousins with his own sons as governors of the provinces. Thus, the circle of power was narrowed once again. The question of succession to the throne had not been settled, however. On many occasions, the conflict resumed between the king and his lineal descendant, who tried to centralize the state, and the collateral relatives (cousins and brothers), who tried to establish ruling rights over some portion of the kingdom. The temporary confusion that followed the assassination of the Bahmani sultan 'Ala'-ud-Din Mujahid in 1378 gave Harihara the opportunity to recapture Goa and some other western ports and impose his authority southward along the Malabar Coast. During the next decade, pressure increased for expansion against the Reddi kingdom of Kondavidu in the northeast. Prince Devaraya captured Panagal fort and made it a base of operations in the region. The slight gains made in 1390–91 against an alliance of the Velama chieftain of Rajakonda and the Bahmanis were more than offset when the Bahmani sultan besieged Vijayanagar in 1398–99, slaughtered a large number of people, and exacted a promise to pay tribute. The tribute was withheld two years later, however, when Vijayanagar made alliances with the sultans of Malwa and Gujarat. Nevertheless, Harihara's reign was relatively successful, because he expanded the state, maintained internal order, and managed to fend off the Bahmani sultans. The control of ports on both coasts provided opportunities for the acquisition of increased wealth through trade. History > The early Muslim period > The Vijayanagar empire, 1336–1646 > Development of the state > Wars and rivalries Early Muslim India (c. 1200–c. 1500). Harihara II's death in 1404 was followed by a violent succession dispute among his three surviving sons. Only after two of them had been crowned and dethroned was the third, Devaraya I (reigned 1406–22), able to emerge victorious. Continuing instability, however, coupled with the involvement of Vijayanagar and the Bahmani sultanate as backers of different claimants to the throne of Kondavidu, led to further confrontation between the two powers (each joined by various of the rivalrous Telugu chiefs). Sultan Firuz Shah Bahmani supported a Reddi attack on Udayagiri. In a related move, the sultan himself mounted another siege of Vijayanagar city, imposing tributary conditions that included his marriage to Devaraya's daughter. Despite Bahmani successes, Vijayanagar managed to hold Panagal, Nalgonda, and other forts and to regain Udayagiri. The defeat of Firuz Shah in 1419 and the death of his Vema ally led to the eventual partition of Kondavidu between Vijayanagar and the Velamas of Rajakonda, who had switched sides with the Vemas during the protracted struggle. This extensive involvement in Andhra and Telingana—inspired by the ambition to expand farther up the eastern seaboard, which the Bahmanis to the west also sought to control—brought Vijayanagar into conflict for the first time with the kingdom of Orissa to the north. Although a war was temporarily averted, there began a rivalry that was to last more than 100 years. Perhaps Devaraya's most significant achievement was his reorganization of the army. Realizing the value of cavalry and well-trained archers, he imported many horses from Persia and Arabia and hired Turkish bowmen, as well as troopers who were skilled in mounted warfare. Thus, although it appears that he was seldom able to best the Bahmanis in the field, he had begun to narrow the strategic and technological gap between north and south and to build an army that would be better suited to warfare on open plains. The short reigns of Devaraya's two sons, Ramcandra and Vijaya, were disastrous. In a war against the Bahmanis, many temples were destroyed, and Vijaya was forced to pay a huge indemnity. A combined invasion by the king of Orissa and the Velamas of Andhra resulted in the loss of the territories newly gained in the partition of the Reddi kingdom of Kondavidu. Vijaya's son and successor, Devaraya II (reigned 1432–46), reconquered the lost Reddi territories and incorporated them into his kingdom, thus establishing the Krishna River as the northeastern boundary. Wars with the Bahmanis in 1435–36 and 1443–44 over control of Raichur and Mudgal forts in the Krishna-Tungabhadra doab ended inconclusively. Those campaigns, however, led to further improvements in Vijayanagar's military forces when Devaraya II proclaimed that Muslims would be welcome in his service and assigned Muslim archers already in Vijayanagar service to instruct his Hindu troops. Devaraya also levied tribute from Ceylon and campaigned successfully in the Kerala country of the far south, where his victories over local chieftains suggest a process of consolidation. His reign saw both the greatest territorial extension and the greatest centralization of the first period of the history of Vijayanagar. History > The early Muslim period > The Vijayanagar empire, 1336–1646 > Development of the state > Decentralization and loss of territory During the first 40 years after Devaraya's death in 1446, the centralized power of the state declined, and a considerable amount of territory along both coasts was lost to the Bahmani sultans and to the suddenly powerful Gajapati ruler of Orissa. In the 1450s and '60s, Kapilendra (Kapilesvara), the great king of Orissa, together with his son Hamvira, conquered the Reddi kingdom of Rajahmundry and the Vijayanagar province of Kondavidu, captured Warangal and Bidar from the Bahmanis, eventually occupied Udayagiri, and sent a victorious army down the east coast as far south as the Kaveri (modern Cauvery) River, where he was repulsed by the able Vijayanagar general and governor of Chandragiri, Saluva Narasimha. The Orissan raid had a considerable effect upon Vijayanagar. It not only weakened the empire in the east but also indicated that provincial governors might have to fend for themselves if they expected to retain their territories. The fact that Devaraya's son Mallikarjuna (reigned 1446–65) was succeeded by a cousin rather than by his own son was another indication of lessened central control and of the failure of the king and his immediate family to secure their own future, as had been done by many of his ancestors when they removed their cousins from positions of power. The new ruler, Virupaksha (reigned 1465–85), had been a provincial governor. His usurpation was not accepted by many of the provincial governors on the east and west coasts or by the direct descendants of Mallikarjuna, who retired to the banks of the Kaveri and ruled much of the southern part of the kingdom in a semi-independent fashion. Beginning in 1470, the Bahmanis, under the wazir, Mahmud Gawan, began a campaign that succeeded in taking much of the west coast and the northern Carnatic (Karnatic) from Vijayanagar. The loss of Goa and other ports was especially disconcerting, because it cut off not only an important source of trade and state income but the principal source of supply of Middle Eastern horses for the military as well. The death in 1470 of Kapilendra of Orissa temporarily relieved military pressure in the east; but it was Saluva Narasimha (since transferred to Penukonda), rather than Virupaksha, who took advantage of the resultant civil war in Orissa to regain lost territory. He reconquered the Tamil region and became master of the east coast up to Godavari. Bahmani aid to Hamvira, in return for the surrender of all the captured forts in Telingana, drew Narasimha into a war with the sultanate. A two-pronged attack by Muhammad Shah and Mahmud Gawan on Narasimha's territories—Penukonda and the coastal region—and the plunder of Kanchipuram in 1481 were only temporarily successful, for Isvara Nayaka, a Vijayanagar general, recovered the loot from the returning Bahmani forces at Kandukur, and Narasimha recaptured Penukonda after turning back the Bahmani forces.

History > The early Muslim period > The Vijayanagar empire, 1336–1646 > Later dynasties Early Muslim India (c. 1200–c. 1500). Beginning as a small chieftain about 1456, Narasimha had put together a large dominion by 1485 as a result of conquests in the south, as well as campaigns against Orissa; and, although nominally subordinate to Virupaksha, he was performing more extensive military and administrative functions than was his superior. It is not surprising, when Virupaksha was murdered by one of his sons—who was in turn murdered by his brother—that Saluva Narasimha (reigned 1485–90) stepped in to remove the new ruler and to begin his own dynasty. Usurpation was easier than consolidation, however, and Narasimha spent his reign in relatively successful campaigns to reduce his vassals throughout the kingdom to submission and in unsuccessful attempts to stop the encroachment of the king of Orissa. Narasimha also opened new ports on the west coast so that he could revive the horse trade, which had fallen into Bahmani hands, and he generally revitalized the army. By 1490 the process of centralization was begun again, and both internal and external political circumstances soon would combine to create better opportunities than ever before.

History > The early Muslim period > The Vijayanagar empire, 1336–1646 > Later dynasties > Reconsolidation At his death in 1491 following the siege of Udayagiri (and his own imprisonment there) by Orissa, Saluva Narasimha left his kingdom in the hands of his chief minister, Narasa Nayaka, whom he had appointed regent for his two young sons the previous year. The minister, in effect, ruled Vijayanagar from 1490 until his own death in 1503. Court intrigues led to the murder of the elder prince by one of Narasa Nayaka's rivals and to the capture and virtual imprisonment of the younger (officially enthroned as Immadi Narasimha) by Narasa Nayaka in 1492. The usurpation resulted in opposition from provincial governors and chiefs that lasted for the rest of Narasa Nayaka's life. Early in his regency, however, he had the opportunity to take advantage of the beginning of the disintegration of the Bahmani sultanate. He invaded the disputed Tungabhadra-Krishna doab in 1492–93 at the invitation of the Bahmani minister, Qasim Barid, who was trying to subdue the newly independent Yusuf 'Adil Khan of Bijapur. Narasa Nayaka took the strategic forts of Raichur and Mudgal; and, although they were lost again in 1502, the growing disunity of the emerging Muslim polities would provide many similar opportunities in the future.

Narasa Nayaka also campaigned in the south to restore effective control, which had not existed in many areas since the raid from Orissa in 1463–64. He compelled most of the chiefs and provincial governors to recognize his suzerainty in both Tamil country and the Carnatic and nearly restored the old boundaries of the kingdom (some eastern districts were still held by Orissa). By 1503 Narasa had practically completed the process of reconsolidation with which Saluva Narasimha had charged him, although trade restrictions and other impositions by the Portuguese had significantly compromised Vijayanagar's prestige. He also had made virtually certain that his own line rather than that of his old master would continue to rule. It was during the reigns of his sons that Vijayanagar rose to new heights of political power and cultural eminence. Narasa's eldest son and successor, best known as Vira Narasimha (reigned 1503–09), ended the sham of regency. After ordering the by-then grown Immadi Narasimha's murder in 1505, he ascended the throne and inaugurated the Tuluva dynasty, the third dynasty of Vijayanagar. The usurpation again provoked opposition, which the new king spent most of his reign attempting to quell. He was successful except in subduing the rebellious chiefs of Ummattur and Seringapatam in the south and in recovering Goa from the Portuguese, with whom, however, he was able to establish relations to obtain a supply of better horses. By this time the Bahmani wars, in which the successor states had joined, had become a series of annual jihads, or holy wars, maintaining the Bahmani's virtual control over the doab forts.

History > The early Muslim period > The Vijayanagar empire, 1336–1646 > Later dynasties > Growth of power Vira Narasimha was succeeded by his brother Krishna Deva Raya (reigned 1509–29), generally regarded as the greatest of the Vijayanagar kings. During his reign the kingdom became more powerful than ever before, and internal consolidation reached a new peak. Krishna Deva spent the first 10 years of his reign solidly establishing his authority over his subordinate chieftains and governors while fending off invasions from the northeast. In an effort to achieve centralization and effective political control, Krishna Deva Raya appointed Brahmans and capable nonkinsmen as commanders, garrisoned the forts with Portuguese and Muslim mercenary gunners, and recruited foot soldiers from local forest tribes; he also created the rank of lesser chiefs known as Poligars (palaiyakkarars) in the Vijayanagar service. After decisively defeating an invading coalition of Bahmani forces (who by this time were virtually separated into five states) and capturing Raichur fort, Krishna Deva took advantage of a quarrel between Bijapur and the Bahmani ruler to subdue both Gulbarga and Bidar and to restore the imprisoned Bahmani sultan to his throne in 1512. During the same period he conducted a successful campaign to subdue Ummattur in the south, and a new province was established from it. From 1513 to 1520, Krishna Deva campaigned against the Gajapati ruler of Orissa, conquering all that king's territory up to the Godavari and raiding as far as the Orissan capital at Kataka. Orissa then sued for peace, and its king gave his daughter in marriage to Krishna Deva, who consequently returned to Orissa all the conquered territory north of the Krishna River. While Krishna Deva was fighting in the east, Isma'il 'Adil Shah of Bijapur had retaken Raichur fort. In 1520, Krishna Deva decisively defeated Isma'il with some aid from Portuguese gunners and recaptured Raichur. In 1523 he carried the attack further, invading Bijapur and capturing several forts. Krishna Deva razed Gulbarga and once again claimed to have restored the Bahmani sultanate by setting one of the three sons of Mahmud Shah II on the throne. One result of these successful campaigns and of Krishna Deva's subsequent haughty behaviour was to point out vividly to the Muslim rulers the dangers posed by Vijayanagar, so that in years to come they thought more and more of concerted action against that kingdom. Krishna Deva's highly successful reign thus led to increased danger to his realm. During most of his reign, Krishna Deva maintained a mutually advantageous relationship with the increasingly powerful Portuguese, whereby he retained access to trade goods, especially to horses from the Middle East, while the Portuguese were allowed to trade in his dominions. The accounts from this period by the Portuguese travelers Domingos Pais and Duarte Barbosa depict a thriving city and kingdom under a highly venerated and capable ruler. Krishna Deva Raya's scholarship and patronage of Telugu and Sanskrit literature have become symbols of Telugu pride and cultural traditions. About 1524–25, Krishna Deva abdicated and had his young son crowned king. His son died shortly thereafter, however, reportedly poisoned by the jealous former chief minister. Krishna Deva imprisoned the minister and his family and dealt successfully with a serious rebellion three years later—when one of the minister's sons escaped—as well as with Isma'il 'Adil Shah's attempt to take advantage of Krishna Deva's troubles to recoup his position. Krishna Deva's death in 1529 ended the period of the kingdom's greatest military and administrative success.

History > The early Muslim period > The Vijayanagar empire, 1336–1646 > Later dynasties > Renewed decentralization Krishna Deva had passed over his infant son and his young nephew and picked his half brother Achyuta Deva Raya (reigned 1529–42) to succeed him. Following a brief succession dispute, Achyuta Deva Raya was able to reach the capital from Chandragiri, where Krishna Deva had kept him and other princes confined, and to ascend the throne. Although he probably was not as dissolute a ruler as the Portuguese traveler and writer Fernão Nuniz described him to be, the severe challenges he faced made a successful reign difficult. Krishna Deva's death had precipitated renewed attacks by Bijapur, Golconda, and Orissa and a revolt by the king's minister, Saluva Viranarasimha, and the southern chieftains of Ummattur and Tiruvadi. Achyuta dealt successfully with all the enemies until the late 1530s, when he was imprisoned by Rama Raya, the chief minister, with whom he had agreed to share power. Opposition by some of the nobles to Achyuta's imprisonment, combined with a revolt in the south, led to his release and the beginnings of civil war; but the new ruler of Bijapur, Ibrahim 'Adil Shah, after early attempts to create divisiveness in Vijayanagar, arbitrated a settlement between Achyuta and Rama Raya. Under the settlement, Achyuta virtually handed over his sovereignty to the regent, retaining nominal kingship. Achyuta's reign ended with about the same external boundaries of the kingdom as in 1529, but the struggle with Rama Raya plus the activities of other nobles and chieftains weakened the hold of the centre over some of the provinces. The process of decentralization had set in again, but now the strongman who would pull the kingdom together was already on the scene. Rama Raya brought himself to the undisputed pinnacle of power in 1542–43, when he defeated his rival in the succession struggle following Achyuta's death and crowned his own candidate, Achyuta's nephew Sadasiva (reigned 1542–76). After seven or eight years, Rama Raya also assumed royal titles, but from the first Sadasiva was kept under guard, and Rama Raya, together with his brothers Tirumala and Venkatadri, ruled the kingdom. Rama Raya was able to control, although not to subdue entirely, rebellious nobles in the east and the extreme south. He also concluded a treaty with the Portuguese (1546), whose settlements had been expanding and who had caused no small amount of damage to indigenous settlements over the past few years. The treaty was broken in 1558, however, and Rama Raya then exacted tribute in compensation for damage to temples caused by the Portuguese.

History > The early Muslim period > The Vijayanagar empire, 1336–1646 > Later dynasties > Relations with the Muslim states Early Muslim India (c. 1200–c. 1500). Most crucial during the period of Rama Raya's rule, however, were Vijayanagar's relations with the Muslim successor states to the Bahmani sultanate. At least since Krishna Deva Raya's time, Vijayanagar had usually competed on a more than equal basis and in the same system of state rivalries with the five Muslim states. Thus, an invasion from Bijapur was repulsed in 1543; in 1548 Rama Raya aided Burhan Nizam Shah of Ahmadnagar in taking a fort from Bidar, but in 1557 Rama Raya allied himself with Bijapur against the Nizam Shah and Golconda. The result of the last war was a collective treaty, by which any of the four parties, attacked unjustly by another, could call upon the other allies to stop the aggressor. When Husayn Nizam Shah broke the treaty by invading Bijapur in 1560, Vijayanagar and Golconda responded with an attack that resulted not only in Ahmadnagar's loss of the fort of Kalyani to Bijapur but also in an invasion of Bidar and the defeat of its ruler by Rama Raya. Soon, however, the ruler of Golconda, Ibrahim Qutb Shah, allied himself with Ahmadnagar against Bijapur, and Rama Raya allied Vijayanagar with Bijapur to severely defeat the aggressors.

History > The early Muslim period > The Vijayanagar empire, 1336–1646 > Decline of Vijayanagar It is likely that the sultans of Golconda and Ahmadnagar, who had lost much at the hands of Rama Raya, were primarily responsible for the formation of an alliance that destroyed Vijayanagar's power forever. By 1564 at least four of the five sultans (Berar is questionable) had begun their march on Vijayanagar, which resulted early in 1565 in the disastrous defeat of the Vijayanagar forces in the Battle of Talikota (Banihatti) and in the subsequent sack and destruction of much of the city of Vijayanagar. Rama Raya was captured and killed, but his brother Tirumala escaped to the south with the king and much of the royal treasure.

History > The early Muslim period > The Vijayanagar empire, 1336–1646 > Decline of Vijayanagar > Military policies Although Rama Raya's efforts toward centralization were not entirely successful, it was his military policies that ultimately led to disaster. There were rebellions when he replaced many members of the old nobility with relatives and close associates, but they appear to have been no more serious than many another rebellion of previous periods under similar circumstances. Indeed, judging on the basis of the number and size of the military campaigns that Rama Raya was able to launch outside Vijayanagar in later years, it would seem that his internal control was relatively secure. Rama Raya has been criticized for allowing Muslims to hold important positions within his administration, and, although his final defeat at Talikota was at least partly attributable to the defection of two of his Muslim generals, the policy appears to have worked well up to that time. Rama Raya's early experiences as an official at the court of Golconda appear to have given him ideas for improving the Vijayanagar administration and army. As early as 1535 he had hired 3,000 Muslim soldiers from Bijapur, and he later tried to make the Vijayanagar state apparatus more like that of the neighbouring Muslim states. In short, he was building a state that would be as competitive as possible in that time and place. It is likely that at first Vijayanagar's Muslim neighbours took a similar view of state relations and that Vijayanagar was seen as just another competing state. Rama Raya's military successes and his skill in diplomacy, together with his arrogance in the knowledge that Vijayanagar was stronger than any one of the sultanates, led to the Muslim alliance against him. Despite a Muslim historian's claim that the alliance was formed because of Rama Raya's bad treatment of Muslims, there is little evidence to indicate that the principal motives were other than political. Furthermore, the subsequent behaviour of the sultans suggests that once Vijayanagar had been humbled they were willing to return to a system of shifting alliances among all the Deccan powers.

History > The early Muslim period > The Vijayanagar empire, 1336–1646 > Decline of Vijayanagar > Loss of central control The Battle of Talikota did not result in the destruction of the kingdom of Vijayanagar, although the capital city never fully recovered from the ravages it suffered. Rama Raya's brother Tirumala established a new headquarters at Penukonda and attempted to rebuild the army. Much of the south and southeast was lost, however, as the Nayakas of Madura, Tanjore (Thanjavur), and Jinji effectively asserted their independence. Rebellions and banditry arose in many areas. Tirumala appealed to Nizam Shah of Ahmadnagar for aid against a Bijapuri invasion that reached Penukonda. He then joined with Ahmadnagar and Golconda in a campaign against Bijapur. Tirumala accepted the new states of the Nayakas of the south, retained the allegiance of Mysore and Keladi, and appointed his three sons as governors of the three linguistic regions of his kingdom—Telugu, Kannada, and Tamil. In 1570 he had himself crowned and thus officially inaugurated the Aravidu dynasty, the fourth and last dynasty of Vijayanagar.

When Tirumala retired, his son Sriranga I (reigned 1572–85) tried to continue the process of rebuilding while struggling to maintain his place among the Muslim sultanates without any support from the major Telugu houses. An invasion by Bijapur was repulsed with the aid of Golconda, but subsequent invasions by Golconda resulted in the loss of a substantial amount of territory in the east. The Vijayanagar government relocated from Penukonda, which had sustained two sieges, to Chandragiri. Sriranga's difficulties partly stemmed from the lack of aid from his brothers, who ruled their separate regions, and partly from the dissensions of his nobles and the semi-independent status of some of them. Many nobles had apparently decided that it was no longer in their best interests to give full support to the larger state and that, in the absence of overwhelming power, the development of smaller, subregional states was both possible and potentially more profitable. Sriranga died without issue and was succeeded by his younger brother Venkata II (reigned 1585–1614), whose ability and constant activity, combined with a relative dearth of interference by the Muslim sultanates, prevented the further disintegration of centralized authority over the next 28 years. A series of wars between 1580 and 1589 resulted in the reacquisition of some of the territory that had been lost to Golconda in the east and the eventual restoration of the Krishna River as Vijayanagar's northern boundary, but Venkata spent most of his time attempting to retain his hold over his rebellious chieftains and nobles. Most of the east and the Tamil south was in rebellion at one time or another, the most serious threat occurring in 1601, when the Nayakas of Madura, Tanjore, and Jinji came to the aid of the rebellious Lingama Nayaka of Vellore. Venkata defeated the Nayakas and later made Vellore his capital, but his authority was not restored in the far south. The process of decentralization, although halted for a time, could not be reversed. In the northern areas that had been laid waste by invading armies, Venkata undertook a program of restoration by offering lower revenue payments. His tact and firmness led to cordial relations with the Portuguese, who established a Jesuit mission in 1607. The Dutch were permitted to build a factory at Devapattana and a fort at Pulicat, notwithstanding Portuguese opposition to the latter. It would appear that by the time of his death in 1614 Venkata had accomplished enough so that a revival of imperial power and prosperity was possible, but instead rivalries among the nobility rapidly led to further decentralization and to the diminution of the state.

History > The early Muslim period > The Vijayanagar empire, 1336–1646 > Decline of Vijayanagar > Breakup of the empire Early Muslim India (c. 1200–c. 1500). Venkata's nephew and successor, Sriranga II, ruled only four months. He was murdered, along with all but one of the members of his family, by one of the two contending parties of nobles. A long civil war resulted and finally degenerated into a series of smaller wars among a number of contending parties. The surviving member of the dynasty, Rama Deva Raya, finally ascended the throne in 1617. His reign was marked by factional warfare and the constant struggle to maintain a much-truncated kingdom along the eastern coast. Although some chieftains continued to recognize his nominal suzerainty and that of his successor, Venkata III (1630–42), real political power resided at the level of chieftains or provincial governors, who were carving out their own principalities. The fourth Vijayanagar dynasty had become little more than another competing provincial power. Bijapur and Golconda took advantage of the decline in Vijayanagar's strength to make further inroads into the south, while Venkata III's own nephew Sriranga allied himself with Bijapur. Interestingly, it was Venkata who granted the Madraspatna fort to the English as the site for a factory. In 1642 an expedition from Golconda drove the king from his capital at Vellore. Hearing that his uncle was dying, Sriranga deserted Bijapur and had himself crowned. Although he was able to play off Bijapur and Golconda against each other for a time, he could not gain control over the provincial Nayakas, who were by then virtually independent; and, when Bijapur and Golconda finally struck at the same time, Sriranga and the handful of chieftains who came to his aid were powerless to stop them. A last appeal to his Nayakas to come to the defense of Hinduism resulted instead in his defeat by their combined forces in 1645. Meanwhile, Bijapur and Golconda advanced, with the blessings of the Mughal emperor at Delhi, who had suggested that they should partition the Carnatic between themselves. The Nayakas realized the danger too late, and by 1652 the Muslim sultans had completed their conquest of the Carnatic. Sriranga retired to Mysore, where he kept an exile court until his death in 1672.

History > The early Muslim period > The Vijayanagar empire, 1336–1646 > Administration of the empire Vijayanagar was the first South Indian state to have encompassed three major linguistic and cultural regions and to have established a high degree of political unity among them. The administration of the kingdom sporadically achieved a relatively high degree of centralization, although centrifugal tendencies regularly appeared. To the original five rajyas (provinces) held by the Sangama brothers, new ones were added as territories were acquired. Within and among these regions, a complex mosaic of great chiefly houses exercised power to varying degrees, though not with the virtual autonomy that some historians have suggested. The central administration had both a revenue and a military side, but the actual business of raising taxes and troops was mostly the responsibility of the provincial governors and their subordinates. The central government maintained a relatively small body of troops, but it assigned a value to the lands held by the provincial governors and determined the number of troops that were to be supplied from the revenues of each province. This administrative plan led to the development of the nayankara system, in which prominent commanders received land grants and privileged status as Nayakas (local lords or governors). The system, which has been characterized as a kind of military feudalism, worked well enough when the central authority was strong but provided territorial bases for the Nayakas to build semi-independent hereditary holdings in times of imperial weakness. The imperial rulers were aware of the power of the provinces and tried to counter it by appointing members of the royal family as governors of the militarily more important (but not necessarily more lucrative) provinces. On the whole, however, the device was not successful because succession rivalries, as in the Muslim kingdoms to the north, tended to produce filial disloyalty to the throne and even rebellion. Although exact figures are unavailable, the evidence suggests that the level of taxation was close to half of the produce in many areas. Much of the revenue collected did not go to the state, however, because various layers of local landholders took their share first. Although most revenue came from agrarian taxes, commercial and artisan taxes and tributary duties from foreign traders were levied as well. Under Vijayanagar rule, temples, which exhibited such singularly imperial features as huge enclosures and entrance gateways (gopuras), emerged as major political arenas. Monastic organizations (mathas) representing various religious traditions also became focal points of local authority, often closely linked with the Nayaka chieftaincies. A fairly elaborate and specialized administrative infrastructure underlay these diverse local and regional religiopolitical forms. Vijayanagar, the city, was the symbol of vast power and wealth. It was a royal ceremonial and administrative centre and the nexus of trade routes. Foreign travelers and visitors were impressed by the variety and quality of commodities that reached the city, by the architectural grandeur of the palace complex and temples, and by the ceremonial significance of the annual Mahanavami celebrations, at which the Nayakas and other chiefs assembled to pay tributes. Vijayanagar was, to some extent, consciously represented by its sovereigns as the last bastion of Hinduism against the forces of Islam. As with similar Muslim religiopolitical claims, however, this one often appeared to be more rhetorical than real. The shifting patterns of alliances among Vijayanagar and the sultanates, the occasions on which a rival party of nobles or a claimant to the throne of Vijayanagar would enlist the aid of a Muslim sultan, and the employment of both Hindus and Muslims in the sultanates and Vijayanagar suggest that rivalries were more political than religious. The various progressive reforms of the Vijayanagar army suggest also that efforts were made to transform at least one aspect of the state in order to make it more competitive with its Muslim and other rivals.

History > The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 > The significance of Mughal rule Development of the Mughal Empire. The Mughal Empire at its zenith commanded resources unprecedented in Indian history and covered almost the entire subcontinent. From 1556 to 1707, during the heyday of its fabulous wealth and glory, the Mughal Empire was a fairly efficient and centralized organization, with a vast complex of personnel, money, and information dedicated to the service of the emperor and his nobility.

Much of the empire's expansion during this period was attributable to India's growing commercial and cultural contact with the outside world. The 16th and 17th centuries brought the establishment and expansion of European and non-European trading organizations in the subcontinent, principally for the procurement of Indian goods in demand abroad. Indian regions drew close to each other by means of a dense overland and coastal trading network, significantly augmenting the internal surplus of precious metals. With expanded connections to the wider world came also new ideologies and technologies to challenge and enrich the imperial edifice. The empire itself, however, was a purely Indian historical experience. Mughal culture blended Perso-Islamic and regional Indian elements into a distinctive but variegated whole. Although by the early 18th century the regions had begun to reassert their independent positions, the Mughal idiom outlasted imperial central authority. The imperial centre, in fact, came to be controlled by the regions. The trajectory of the Mughal Empire over its first 200 years (1526–1748) thus provides a fascinating illustration of premodern state building in the Indian subcontinent. The individual abilities and achievements of the early Mughals—Babur, Humayun, and later Akbar—largely charted this course. Babur and Humayun struggled against heavy odds to create the Mughal domain, while Akbar, besides consolidating and expanding its frontiers, provided the theoretical framework for a truly Indian state. Picking up the thread of experimentation from the intervening Sur dynasty (1540–56), Akbar attacked narrow-mindedness and bigotry, absorbed Hindus in the high ranks of the nobility, and encouraged the tradition of ruling through the local Hindu landed elites. This tradition continued until the very end of the Mughal Empire, despite the fact that some of Akbar's successors, notably Aurangzeb (1658–1707), had to concede to contrary forces.

History > The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 > The establishment of the Mughal Empire > Babur The foundation of the empire was laid in 1526 by Zahir-ud-Din Muhammad Babur, a Chagatai Turk (so called because his ancestral homeland, the country north of the Amu Darya [Oxus River] in Central Asia, was the heritage of Chagatai Khan, the son of Genghis Khan). Babur was a fifth-generation descendant of Timur on the side of his father and a 14th-generation descendant of Genghis Khan. His idea of conquering India was inspired, to begin with, by the story of the exploits of Timur, who had invaded the subcontinent in 1398. Babur inherited his father's principality in Fergana at a young age in 1494. Soon he was literally a fugitive, in the midst of both an internecine fight among the Timurids and a struggle between them and the rising Uzbeks over the erstwhile Timurid empire in the region. In 1504 he conquered Kabul and Ghazni. In 1511 he recaptured Samarkand, only to realize that, with the Safavids in Iran and the Uzbeks in Central Asia, he should rather turn to the southeast toward India to have an empire of his own. As a Timurid, Babur had an eye on the Punjab, part of which had been Timur's possession. He made several excursions in the tribal habitats there. Between 1519 and 1524, when he invaded Bhera, Sialkot, and Lahore, he showed his definite intention to conquer Hindustan, where the political scene favoured his adventure.

History > The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 > The establishment of the Mughal Empire > Babur > Conquest of Hindustan Having secured the Punjab, Babur advanced toward Delhi, garnering support from many Delhi nobles. He routed two advance parties of Ibrahim Lodi's troops and met the sultan's main army at Panipat. The Afghans fought bravely, but they had never faced new artillery, and their frontal attack was no answer to Babur's superior arrangement of the battle line. Babur's knowledge of western and Central Asian war tactics and his brilliant leadership proved decisive in his victory. He was now the ruler of Hindustan, in control of Delhi and Agra (April 1526). Babur, however, had yet to encounter any of the several Afghans who held important towns in eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, backed by the sultan of Bengal in the east and the Rajputs on the southern borders. The Rajputs under Rana Sanga of Mewar threatened to revive their power in North India. Babur assigned the unconquered territories to his nobles and led an expedition against the rana in person. He crushed the rana's forces at Khanua, near Fatehpur Sikri (March 1527), once again by means of the skillful positioning of troops. Babur then continued his campaigns to subjugate the Rajputs of Chanderi. When Afghan risings turned him to the east, he had to fight, among others, the joint forces of the Afghans and the sultan of Bengal in 1529 at Ghagra near Varanasi. Babur won the battles, but the expedition here, too, like the one on the southern borders, was left unfinished. Developments in Central Asia and Babur's failing health forced him to withdraw. He died near Lahore in December 1530.

History > The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 > The establishment of the Mughal Empire > Babur > Babur's achievements Babur's brief tenure in Hindustan, spent in wars and in his preoccupation with the northwest and Central Asia, did not give him enough time to consolidate fully his conquests in India. Still, discernible in his efforts are the beginnings of the Mughal imperial organization and political culture. He introduced some Central Asian administrative institutions and, significantly, tried to woo the prominent local chiefs. He also established new mints in Lahore and Jaunpur and tried to ensure a safe and secure route from Agra to Kabul. He advised his son and successor, Humayun, to adopt a tolerant religious policy.

History > The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 > The establishment of the Mughal Empire > Humayun Humayun began badly by invading the Hindu principality of Kalinjar in Bundelkhand, which he failed to subdue. Next he became entangled in a quarrel with Sher Khan, the new leader of the Afghans in the east, by unsuccessfully besieging the fortress of Chunar (1532). Thereafter he conquered Malwa and Gujarat, but he could not hold them. Leaving the fortress of Chunar unconquered on the way, Humayun proceeded to Bengal to assist Sultan Mahmud of that province against Sher Khan. He lost touch with Delhi and Agra, and, because his brother Hindal began openly to behave like an independent ruler at Agra, he was obliged to leave Gaur, the capital of Bengal. Negotiations with Sher Khan fell through, and the latter forced Humayun to fight a battle at Chausa, 10 miles southwest of Baksar and a short distance from the Karamnasa River (June 26, 1539), in which Humayun was defeated. He did not feel strong enough to defend Agra, and he retreated to Bilgram near Kannauj, where he fought his last battle with Sher Khan, who had now assumed the title of Sher Shah. Humayun was again defeated and compelled to retreat to Lahore, fleeing from Lahore to Sindh, from Sindh to Rajputana, and from Rajputana back to Sindh. Not feeling secure even in Sindh, he fled (July 1543) to Iran to seek military assistance from its ruler, Shah Tahmasp. The shah agreed to assist him with an army on the condition that Humayun become a Shi'ite Muslim and return Qandahar, an important frontier town and commercial centre, to Iran in the event of his successful acquisition of that fortress. Humayun had no answer to the political and military skill of Sher Shah and had to fight simultaneously on the southern borders to check the sultan of Gujarat, a refuge of the rebel Mughals. Humayun's failure, however, was attributable to inherent flaws in the early Mughal political organization. The armed clans of his nobility owed their first allegiance to their respective chiefs. These chiefs, together with almost all the male members of the royal family, had a claim to sovereignty. There was thus always a lurking fear of the emergence of another centre of power, at least, under one or the other of his brothers. Humayun also fought against the heavy odds of his opponents' rapport with the locality.

History > The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 > The establishment of the Mughal Empire > Sher Shah and his successors During Humayun's exile Sher Shah established a vast and powerful empire and strengthened it with a wise system of administration. He carried out a new and equitable revenue settlement, greatly improved the administration of the districts and the parganas (groups of villages), reformed the currency, encouraged trade and commerce, improved communication, and administered impartial justice. Sher Shah died during the siege of Kalinjar (May 1545), and was succeeded by his son Islam Shah (ruled 1545–53). Islam Shah, preeminently a soldier, was less successful as a ruler than his father. Palace intrigues and insurrections marred his reign. On his death, his young son, Firuz, came to the Sur throne but was murdered by his own maternal uncle, and subsequently the empire fractured into several parts.

History > The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 > The establishment of the Mughal Empire > Restoration of Humayun After his return to Kabul from Iran, Humayun watched the situation in India. He had been preparing since the death of Islam Shah to recover his throne. Following the capture of Qandahar and Kabul from his brothers, he had reasserted his unique royal position and assembled his own nobles. In December 1554 he crossed the Indus and marched to Lahore, which he captured without opposition the following February. Humayun occupied Sirhind and captured Delhi and Agra in July 1555. He thus regained the throne of Delhi after an interval of 12 years, but he did not live long enough to recover the whole of the lost empire; he died as the result of an accident in Shermandal in Delhi (January 1556). His death was concealed for about a fortnight to enable the peaceful accession of his son Akbar, who was at the time away in the Punjab.

History > The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 > The reign of Akbar the Great > Extension and consolidation of the empire Development of the Mughal Empire. Akbar (ruled 1556–1605) was proclaimed emperor amid gloomy circumstances. Delhi and Agra were threatened by Hemu, the Hindu general of the Sur ruler, 'Adil Shah, and Mughal governors were being driven from all parts of northern India. Akbar's hold over a fraction of the Punjab—the only territory in his possession—was disputed by Sikandar Sur and was precarious. There was also disloyalty among Akbar's own followers. The task before Akbar was to reconquer the empire and consolidate it by ensuring control over its frontiers and, moreover, by providing it with a firm administrative machinery. He received unstinting support from the regent, Bayram Khan, until 1560. The Mughal victory at Panipat (November 1556) and the subsequent recovery of Mankot, Gwalior, and Jaunpur demolished the Afghan threat in upper India.

History > The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 > The reign of Akbar the Great > Extension and consolidation of the empire > The early years Until 1560, the administration of Akbar's truncated empire was in the hands of Bayram Khan. Bayram's regency was momentous in the history of India. At its end the Mughal dominion embraced the whole of the Punjab and Multan; the territory of Delhi; the present Uttar Pradesh including Gwalior and as far east as and including Jaunpur; and the present states of Rajasthan, Dholpur, Ajmer, Nagaur, and Jaitaran. Akbar, however, soon became restless under Bayram Khan's tutelage. Influenced by his former nurse, Maham Anaga, and his mother, Hamida Banu Baygam, he was persuaded to dismiss him (March 1560). Four ministers of mediocre ability then followed in quick succession. Although not yet his own master, Akbar took a few momentous steps during this period. He conquered Malwa (1561) and marched rapidly to Sarangpur to punish Adham Khan, the captain in charge of the expedition, for improper conduct. Second, he appointed Shams-ud-Din Muhammad Atgah Khan as prime minister (November 1561). Third, at about the same time, he took possession of Chunar, which had always defied Humayun. The most momentous events of 1562 were Akbar's marriage with a Rajput princess, daughter of Raja Bharmal of Amber, and the conquest of Merta in Rajasthan. The marriage led to a firm alliance between the Mughals and the Rajputs. By the end of June 1562, Akbar freed himself completely from the influence of the harem party, headed by Maham Anaga, her son Adham Khan, and some other ambitious courtiers. The harem leaders murdered the prime minister, Atgah Khan, who was then succeeded by Mun'im Khan. From about the middle of 1562, Akbar took upon himself the great task of shaping his policies, leaving them to be implemented by his agents. He embarked on a policy of conquest, establishing control over Jodhpur, Bhatha (modern Rewa), and the Gakkhar country between the Indus and the Beas in the Punjab. Next he conquered the wild but prosperous region of Gondwana in modern Madhya Pradesh. During this period he removed discrimination against the Hindus by abolishing pilgrimage taxes in 1563 and the hated jizya (poll tax on non-Muslims) in 1564.

History > The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 > The reign of Akbar the Great > Extension and consolidation of the empire > Struggle for firm personal control Akbar thus commanded the entire area of Humayun's Indian possessions. By the mid-1560s he had also developed a new pattern of king-noble relationship that suited the current need of a centralized state to be defended by a nobility of diverse ethnic and religious groups. He insisted on assessing the arrears of the territories under the command of the old Turani clans and, in order to strike a balance in the ruling class, promoted the Persians, the Indian Muslims, and the Rajputs in the imperial service. Akbar placed eminent clan leaders in charge of frontier areas and staffed the civil and finance departments with relatively new non-Turani recruits. The revolts in 1564–74 by the members of the old guard—the Uzbeks, the Mirzas, the Qaqshals, and the Atgah Khails—showed the intensity of their indignance over the change. Utilizing the Muslim orthodoxy's resentment over Akbar's liberal views, they organized their last resistance in 1580. The rebels proclaimed Akbar's half-brother, Mirza Hakim, the ruler of Kabul, and he moved into the Punjab as their king. Akbar crushed the opposition ruthlessly. History > The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 > The reign of Akbar the Great > Extension and consolidation of the empire > Subjugation of Rajasthan Rajasthan occupied a prominent place in Akbar's scheme of conquest; without establishing his suzerainty over that region, he would have no title to the sovereignty of northern India. Rajasthan also bordered on Gujarat, a centre of commerce with the countries of western Asia and Europe. In 1567 Akbar invaded Chitor, the capital of Mewar; in February 1568 the fort fell into his hands. Chitor was constituted a district, and Asaf Khan was appointed its governor. But the western half of Mewar remained in the possession of Rana Udai Singh. Later, Rana Pratap, following his defeat by the Mughals at Haldighat (1576), continued to raid until his death (1597), when his son Amar Singh assumed the mantle. The fall of Chitor and then of Ranthambor (1569) brought almost all of Rajasthan under Akbar's suzerainty.

History > The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 > The reign of Akbar the Great > Extension and consolidation of the empire > Conquest of Gujarat and Bengal Akbar's next objective was the conquest of Gujarat and Bengal, which had connected Hindustan with the trading world of Asia, Africa, and Europe. Gujarat had lately been a haven of the refractory Mughal nobles, and in Bengal and Bihar the Afghans under Da'ud Karrani still posed a serious threat. Akbar conquered Gujarat at his second attempt in 1573 and celebrated by building a lofty victory gate (buland darwaza) at his new capital, Fatehpur Sikri. The conquest of Gujarat pushed the Mughal Empire's frontiers to the sea. Akbar's encounters with the Portuguese aroused his curiosity about their religion and culture. He did not show much interest in what was taking place overseas, but he appreciated the political and commercial significance of bringing the other gateway to his empire's international trade—namely, Bengal—under his firm control. He was in Patna in 1574, and by July 1576 Bengal was a part of the empire, even if some local chiefs continued to agitate for some years more. Later Man Singh, governor of Bihar, also annexed Orissa and thus consolidated the Mughal gains in the east.

History > The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 > The reign of Akbar the Great > Extension and consolidation of the empire > The frontiers On the northwest frontier, Kabul, Qandahar (Kandahar), and Ghazni were not simply strategically significant; these towns linked India through overland trade with Central and western Asia and were crucial for securing horses for the Mughal cavalry. Akbar strengthened his grip over these outposts in the 1580s and '90s. Following Hakim's death and a threatened Uzbek invasion, Akbar brought Kabul under his direct control. To demonstrate his strength, the Mughal army paraded through Kashmir, Baluchistan, Sindh, and the tribal districts of the region. In 1595, before his return, Akbar wrested Qandahar from the Safavids, thus fixing the northwestern frontiers. In the east, Man Singh stabilized the Mughal gains by annexing Orissa, Cooch Behar (Koch Bihar), and a large part of Bengal. Conquest of Kathiawar and later of Asirgarh and northern territory of the Nizam Shahi kingdom of Ahmadnagar ensured a firm command over Gujarat and central India. At Akbar's death in October 1605, the Mughal Empire extended to the entire area north of the Godavari, with the exceptions of Gondwana in central India and Assam in the northeast.

History > The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 > The reign of Akbar the Great > The state and society under Akbar More than for its military victories the empire under Akbar is noted for a sound administrative framework and a coherent policy that gave the Mughal regime a firm footing and sustained it for about 150 years.

History > The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 > The reign of Akbar the Great > The state and society under Akbar > Central, provincial, and local government Akbar's central government consisted of four departments, each presided over by a minister: the prime minister (wakil ); finance minister (dewan, or wazir); paymaster general (mir bakhshi ); and the chief justice and religious official combined (sadr us-sudur). They were appointed, promoted, or dismissed by the emperor, and their duties were well defined. The empire was divided into 15 provinces—Allahabad, Agra, Ayodhya (Avadh), Ajmer, Ahmadabad, Bihar, Bengal, Delhi, Kabul, Lahore, Multan, Malka, Qhandesh, Berar, and Ahmadnagar. Kashmir and Qandahar were districts of the province of Kabul. Sindh, then known as Thatta, was a district in the province of Multan. Orissa formed a part of Bengal. The provinces were not of uniform area or income. There were in each province a governor, a dewan (revenue and finance officer), a bakhshi (military commander), a sadr (religious administrator), and qazi (judge) and agents who supplied information to the central government. Separation of powers among the various officials (in particular, between the governor and the dewan) was a significant operating principle in imperial administration. The provinces were divided into districts (sarkars). Each district had a fowjdar (a military officer whose duties roughly corresponded to those of a collector); a qazi; a kot-wal, who looked after sanitation, police, and administration; a bitikchi (head clerk); and a khazanedar (treasurer). Every town of consequence had a kotwal. The village communities conducted their affairs through pañcayats (councils) and were more or less autonomous units.

History > The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 > The reign of Akbar the Great > The state and society under Akbar > Central, provincial, and local government Akbar's central government consisted of four departments, each presided over by a minister: the prime minister (wakil ); finance minister (dewan, or wazir); paymaster general (mir bakhshi ); and the chief justice and religious official combined (sadr us-sudur). They were appointed, promoted, or dismissed by the emperor, and their duties were well defined. The empire was divided into 15 provinces—Allahabad, Agra, Ayodhya (Avadh), Ajmer, Ahmadabad, Bihar, Bengal, Delhi, Kabul, Lahore, Multan, Malka, Qhandesh, Berar, and Ahmadnagar. Kashmir and Qandahar were districts of the province of Kabul. Sindh, then known as Thatta, was a district in the province of Multan. Orissa formed a part of Bengal. The provinces were not of uniform area or income. There were in each province a governor, a dewan (revenue and finance officer), a bakhshi (military commander), a sadr (religious administrator), and qazi (judge) and agents who supplied information to the central government. Separation of powers among the various officials (in particular, between the governor and the dewan) was a significant operating principle in imperial administration. The provinces were divided into districts (sarkars). Each district had a fowjdar (a military officer whose duties roughly corresponded to those of a collector); a qazi; a kot-wal, who looked after sanitation, police, and administration; a bitikchi (head clerk); and a khazanedar (treasurer). Every town of consequence had a kotwal. The village communities conducted their affairs through pañcayats (councils) and were more or less autonomous units.

History > The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 > The reign of Akbar the Great > The state and society under Akbar > The composition of the Mughal nobility Within the first three decades of Akbar's reign, the imperial elite had grown enormously. As the Central Asian nobles had generally been nurtured on the Turko-Mongol tradition of sharing power with the royalty—an arrangement incompatible with Akbar's ambition of structuring the Mughal centralism around himself—the emperor's principal goal was to reduce their strength and influence. The emperor encouraged new elements to join his service, and Iranians came to form an important block of the Mughal nobility. Akbar also looked for new men of Indian background. Indian Afghans, being the principal opponents of the Mughals, were obviously to be kept at a distance; but the Sayyids of Baraha, the Bukhari Sayyids, and the Kambus among the Indian Muslims were specially favoured for high military and civil positions. More significant was the recruitment of Hindu Rajput leaders into the Mughal nobility. This was a major step, even if not completely new in Indo-Islamic history, leading to a standard pattern of relationship between the Mughal autocracy and local despotism. Each Rajput chief, along with his sons and close relatives, received high rank, pay, perquisites, and an assurance that they could retain their age-old customs, rituals, and beliefs as Hindu warriors. In return, the Rajputs not only publicly expressed their allegiance but also offered active military service to the Mughals and, if called upon to do so, willingly gave daughters in marriage to the emperor or his sons. The Rajput chiefs retained control over their ancestral holdings and additionally, in return for their services, received watans (land assignments outside their homelands) in the empire. The Mughal emperor, however, asserted his right as a “paramount.” He treated the Rajput chiefs as zamindars (landholders), not as rulers. Like all local zamindars, they paid tribute, submitted to the Mughals, and received a patent of office. Akbar thus obtained wide base for Mughal power among hundreds and thousands of Rajput warriors who controlled large and small parcels of the countryside throughout much of his empire. The Mughal nobility came to comprise mainly the Central Asians (Turanis), Iranians (Iranis), Afghans, Indian Muslims of diverse subgroups, and Rajputs. Both historical circumstances and a planned imperial policy contributed to the integration of this complex and heterogeneous ruling class into a single imperial service. The emperor saw to it that no single ethnic or religious group was large enough to challenge his supreme authority.

History > The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 > The reign of Akbar the Great > The state and society under Akbar > Organization of the nobility and the army In order to organize his civil and military personnel, Akbar devised a system of ranks, or mansabs, based on the “decimal” system of army organization used by the early Delhi sultans and the Mongols. The mansabdars (rank-holders) were numerically graded from commanders of 10 to commanders of 5,000. Although they fell under the jurisdiction of the mir bakhshi, each owned direct subordination to the emperor. The mansabdars were generally paid in nonhereditary and transferable jagirs (assignments of land from which they could collect revenues). Over their jagirs, as distinct from those areas reserved for the emperor (khalisa) and his personal army (ahadis), the assignees (jagirdars) normally had no magisterial or military authority. Akbar's insistence on a regular check of the mansabdars' soldiers and their horses signified his desire for a reasonable correlation between his income and obligations. Most jagirdars except the lowest-ranking ones collected the taxes through their personal agents, who were assisted by the local moneylenders and currency dealers in remitting collections by means of private bills of exchange rather than cash shipments.

History > The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 > The reign of Akbar the Great > The state and society under Akbar > Revenue system A remarkable feature of the Mughal system under Akbar was his revenue administration, developed largely under the supervision of his famed Hindu minister Todar Mal. Akbar's efforts to develop a revenue schedule both convenient to the peasants and sufficiently profitable to the state took some two decades to implement. In 1580 he obtained the previous 10 years' local revenue statistics, detailing productivity and price fluctuations, and averaged the produce of different crops and their prices. He also evolved a permanent schedule circle by grouping together the districts having homogeneous agricultural conditions. For measuring land area, he abandoned the use of hemp rope in favour of a more definitive method using lengths of bamboo joined with iron rings. The revenue, fixed according to the continuity of cultivation and quality of soil, ranged from one-third to one-half of production value and was payable in copper coin (dams). The peasants thus had to enter the market and sell their produce in order to meet the assessment. This system, called zabt, applied in North India and in Malwa and parts of Gujarat. The earlier practices (e.g., crop sharing), however, also were in vogue in the empire. The new system encouraged rapid cash nexus and economic expansion. Moneylenders and grain dealers became increasingly active in the countryside.

History > The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 > The reign of Akbar the Great > The state and society under Akbar > Fiscal administration All economic matters fell under the jurisdiction of the wazir, assisted principally by three ministers to look separately after the crown lands, the salary drafts and jagirs, and the records of fiscal transactions. At almost all levels, the revenue and financial administration was run by a cadre of technically proficient officials and clerks drawn mainly from Hindu service castes—Kayasthas and Khatris. More significantly, in local and land revenue administration, Akbar secured support from the dominant rural groups. With the exception of the villages held directly by the peasants, where the community paid the revenue, his officials dealt with the leaders of the communities and the superior landrights holders (zamindars). The zamindar, as one of the most important intermediaries, collected the revenue from the peasants and paid it to the treasury, keeping a portion to himself against his services and zamindari claim over the land.

History > The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 > The reign of Akbar the Great > The state and society under Akbar > Coinage Akbar reformed Mughal currency to make it one of the best known of its time. The new regime possessed a fully functioning trimetallic (silver, copper, and gold) currency, with an open minting system in which anyone willing to pay the minting charges could bring metal or old or foreign coin to the mint and have it struck. All monetary exchanges were, however, expressed in copper coins in Akbar's time. In the 17th century, following the silver influx from the New World, silver rupee with new fractional denominations replaced the copper coin as a common medium of circulation. Akbar's aim was to establish a uniform coinage throughout his empire; some coins of the old regime and regional kingdoms also continued.

History > The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 > The reign of Akbar the Great > The state and society under Akbar > Evolution of a nonsectarian state Mughal society was predominantly non-Muslim. Akbar therefore had not simply to maintain his status as a Muslim ruler but also to be liberal enough to elicit active support from non-Muslims. For that purpose, he had to deal first with the Muslim theologians who, in the face of Brahmanic resilience, were rightly concerned with the community's identity and resisted any effort that could encourage a broader notion of political participation. Akbar began his drive by abolishing both the jizya and the practice of forcibly converting prisoners of war to Islam and by encouraging Hindus as his principal confidants and policy makers. To legitimize his nonsectarian policies, he issued in 1579 a public edict (mahzar) declaring his right to be the supreme arbiter in Muslim religious matters—above the body of religious scholars and jurists. He had by then also undertaken a number of stern measures to reform the administration of religious grants, which were now available to learned and pious men of all religions, not just Islam.

The mahzar was proclaimed in the wake of lengthy discussions that Akbar had held with Muslim divines in his famous religious assembly 'Ibadat-Khanah at Fatehpur Sikri. He soon became dissatisfied with what he considered the shallowness of Muslim learned men and threw open the meetings to non-Muslim religious experts, including Hindu pandits, Jaina and Christian missionaries, and Parsi priests. A comparative study of religions convinced Akbar that there was truth in all of them, but that no one of them possessed absolute truth. He therefore disestablished Islam as the religion of the state and adopted a theory of rulership as a divine illumination incorporating the acceptance of all, irrespective of creed or sect. He repealed discriminatory laws against non-Muslims and amended the personal laws of both Muslims and Hindus so as to provide as many common laws as possible. While Muslim judicial courts were allowed as before, the decision of the Hindu village pañcayats also was recognized. The emperor also created a new order commonly called the Din-i Ilahi (“Divine Faith”), which was modeled on the Muslim mystical Sufi brotherhood. The new order had its own initiation ceremony and rules of conduct to ensure complete devotion to the emperor; otherwise, members were permitted to retain their diverse religious beliefs and practices. It was devised with the object of forging the diverse groups in the service of the state into one cohesive political community.

History > The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 > The reign of Akbar the Great > Akbar in historical perspective Development of the Mughal Empire. By 1600 the Mughals in India had achieved a fairly compact and efficient state system, for which Akbar's genius deserves much credit. However, the Mughal system must be studied in the context of broad historical developments of the 16th and 17th centuries. Long before Akbar's schemes, Sher Shah Sur's short-lived reforms had included demand for cash payment from the peasants, surveys of agricultural lands and of crops grown, and a reliable, standardized, and high-quality coinage. The Sur ruler insisted on a uniform rate for the entire empire, which was certainly a major flaw in contrast to Akbar's consideration for regional variations. It is striking, however, that the chief zabt territories under Akbar were largely made up of the provinces already controlled by Sher Shah.

Another major development of Sher Shah's brief period, namely the building of a network of roads to improve the connections already started by Babur between Hindustan and the great trading routes extending into Central and western Asia via Kabul and Qandahar, foreshadowed in a measure the later imperial edifice and economy. By laying a road between Sonargaon and Attock, the Sur ruler had made a first attempt at bringing the economy of Bengal into closer contact with that of northern India. The expansion under Akbar followed in logical sequence what had already occurred. The network based on Sher Shah's routes had extended considerably by 1600. Agra came to be linked not only to Burhanpur but also to Cambay, Surat, and Ahmadabad. Lahore and Multan were now the gateway to Kabul as well as to the ports of the mouth of the Indus. The link with Sonargaon became a far more secure control over the ports of Bengal. Many other changes initiated in the late 16th century were to be consolidated only later, in conjunction with further political unification.

History > The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 > The empire in the 17th century The Mughal Empire in the 17th century continued its conquest and territorial expansion, with dramatic increase in the numbers, resources, and responsibilities of the Mughal nobles and mansabdars. There were also attempts at tightening imperial control over the local society and economy. The critical relationship between the imperial authority and the zamindars was regularized and generally institutionalized through thousands of sanads (patents) issued by the emperor and his agents. These centralizing measures imposed increasing demands upon both the Mughal officials and the local magnates and therefore generated tensions expressed in various forms of resistance. The century witnessed the rule of the so-called three Great Mughals: Jahangir (ruled 1605–27), Shah Jahan (ruled 1628–58), and Aurangzeb (ruled 1658–1707). The reigns of Jahangir and Shah Jahan are noted for political stability, brisk economic activity, excellence in painting, and magnificent architecture. The empire under Aurangzeb attained its greatest geographic reach; the period, however, also saw the unmistakable symptoms of Mughal decline. Political unification and the establishment of law and order over extensive areas, together with extensive foreign trade and the ostentatious life-styles of the Mughal elites, encouraged the emergence of large centres of commerce and crafts. Lahore, Delhi, Agra, and Ahmadabad, linked by road and waterways to other important towns and the key seaports, were among the leading cities of the world at the time. The Mughal system of taxation had expanded both the cash nexus and commodity production, which, in turn, promoted a network of grain markets (mandis), bazaars, and small townships (qasbahs), supplied by a highly differentiated peasantry in the countryside. Increasing monetization was illustrated, in the first place, by the growing use of bills of exchange (hundis) to transfer revenue to the centre from the provinces and the consequent meshing of the fiscal system with the financial network of the money changers (sarrafs); and second, by the increasing interest of and even direct participation by the Mughal nobles and the emperor in trade. Tatta, Lahore, Hugli, and Surat were great centres for such activity in the 1640s and '50s. The emperor owned the shipping fleets, and the governors advanced funds to merchants from state treasuries and the mints. The shift in the attitude toward trade in the course of the 17th century owed a good deal to the growing Iranian influence in the Mughal court. The Iranians had a long tradition of combining political power and trade. Shah 'Abbas I had espoused greater state control of commerce. Because the contemporary Muslim empires, including the Mughals, the Safavids, and the Ottomans, were conscious of one another as competitors, mutual borrowings and emulations were more frequent than the chroniclers would indicate.

History > The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 > The empire in the 17th century > Jahangir Within a few months of his accession, Jahangir had to deal with a rebellion led by his eldest son, Khusraw, who was reportedly supported by, among others, the Sikh Guru Arjun. Khusraw was defeated at Lahore and brought in chains before the emperor. The subsequent execution of the Sikh Guru permanently estranged the Sikhs from the Mughals. Khusraw's rebellion led to a few more risings, which were suppressed without much difficulty. Shah 'Abbas I of Iran, taking advantage of the unrest, besieged the fort of Qandahar (1606) but abandoned the attack when Jahangir promptly sent an army against him. History > The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 > The empire in the 17th century > Jahangir > Loss of Qandahar In 1622 Shah 'Abbas again attacked Qandahar, and Prince Khurram (later Shah Jahan) was directed to relieve that fortress. However, the prince was planning a rebellion against his father and failed to take effective action. The fortress fell after a 45-day siege. Shah 'Abbas justified its capture on the plea that it belonged to Iran. Jahangir accused the shah of treachery and sent forces to recover the fortress. This effort failed, owing to Shah Jahan's rebellion and the illness and death of Jahangir himself. The loss of Qandahar was a grievous blow to the prestige of the empire. Jahangir, however, commanded full control over Kabul, having reinforced it now by inducting the Afghans under Khan Jahan Lodi into the Mughal nobility. Khan Jahan had close connections with the tribesmen in the northwestern frontiers. History > The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 > The empire in the 17th century > Jahangir > Submission of Mewar Jahangir's most significant political achievement was the cessation of the Mughal-Mewar conflict, following three consecutive campaigns and his own arrival in Ajmer in 1613. Prince Khurram was given the supreme command of the army (1613), and Jahangir marched to be near the scene of action. The Rana Amar Singh then initiated negotiations (1615). He recognized Jahangir as his suzerain, and all his territory in Mughal possession was restored, including Chitor—although it could not be fortified. Amar Singh was not obliged to attend the imperial court, but his son was to represent him; nor was he required to enter into a matrimonial alliance with the Mughal royal family. Further, the Rajput rulers of Kangra, Kishtwar (in the Himalayas), Navanagar, and Kutch (Kachchh; in western India) accepted the Mughal supremacy. Bir Singh Bundela was given a high rank, and a Bundela princess entered the Mughal harem. Also significant was the subjugation of the last Afghan domains in eastern Bengal (1612) and Orissa (1617). History > The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 > The empire in the 17th century > Jahangir > Developments in the Deccan Toward the last years of Akbar's reign, the Nizam Shahis of Ahmadnagar in the Deccan had engaged the attention of the emperor considerably. The main objective of his intervention in Ahmadnagar was to gain Berar, which had been recently acquired by Ahmadnagar from Khandesh, and Balaghat, which had been a bone of contention between Ahmadnagar and Gujarat. By 1596 Berar was conquered and Ahmadnagar had accepted Mughai suzerainty. However, the issue of a clearly defined frontier could not be resolved, and Mughal attacks continued. Under Jahangir the rise of Malik 'Ambar, an Abyssinian general of unusual ability, at the Ahmadnagar court and his alliance with the 'Adil Shahis of Bijapur cemented a united front of the Deccan sultanates and initially forced the Mughals to retreat. At this time, the Marathas also had emerged as a force in the Deccan. Jahangir appreciated their importance and encouraged many Marathas to defect to his side (1615). Later, two successive Mughal victories against the combined Deccani armies (1618 and 1620) restrained the Abyssinian general. However, the Deccan expedition remained unfinished as a result of the rise to power of the emperor's favourite queen, Nur Jahan, and her relatives and associates. The queen's alleged efforts to secure the prince of her choice as successor to the ailing emperor resulted in the rebellion of Prince Khurram in 1622 and later that of Mahabat Khan, the queen's principal ally, who had been deputed to subdue the prince.

History > The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 > The empire in the 17th century > Jahangir > Rebellion of Khurram (Shah Jahan) After failing to take Fatehpur Sikri in April 1623, Khurram retreated to the Deccan, thence to Bengal, and from Bengal back again to the Deccan, pursued all the while by an imperial force under Mahabat Khan. His plan to seize Bihar, Ayodhya, Allahabad, and even Agra failed. At last, Khurram submitted to his father unconditionally (1626). He was forgiven and appointed governor of Balaghat, but the three-year-old rebellion had caused a considerable loss of men and money. History > The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 > The empire in the 17th century > Jahangir > Mahabat Khan's coup Immediately upon the conclusion of peace with Khurram, the imperious queen decided to punish Mahabat Khan for his refusal to take orders from anyone but Jahangir. She ordered Mahabat Khan to Bengal and framed charges of disloyalty and disobedience against him. Instead of complying, he proceeded to the Punjab, where the emperor was encamped. Jahangir refused to see him. Mahabat Khan placed both the emperor and the queen under surveillance, but he was finally overcome. The ordeal greatly impaired the emperor's health, and he died in November 1627.

History > The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 > The empire in the 17th century > Shah Jahan On his accession, Khurram assumed the title Shah Jahan (ruled 1628–58). Shahryar, his younger and only surviving brother, had contested the throne, but he was soon blinded and imprisoned. Under Shah Jahan's instructions, his father-in-law, Asaf Khan, slew all other royal princes, the potential rivals for the throne. Asaf Khan was appointed prime minister, and Nur Jahan was given an adequate pension.

History > The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 > The empire in the 17th century > Shah Jahan > The Deccan problem Shah Jahan's reign was marred by a few rebellions, the first of which was that of Khan Jahan Lodi, governor of the Deccan, who was recalled to court after failing to recover Balaghat from Ahmadnagar. Khan Jahan, however, rose in rebellion and fled back to the Deccan. Shah Jahan followed, and in December 1629 he defeated Khan Jahan and drove him to the north, ultimately overtaking and killing him in a skirmish at Shihonda (January 1631). The next rebellion was led by the Hindu Orchha chief Jujhar Singh in Bundelkhand, who commanded the crucial passage to the Deccan. Jujhar was compelled to submit after his kinsman Bharat Singh defected and joined the Mughals. His refusal to comply with subsequent conditions led, after a protracted conflict, to his defeat and murder (1634). Unrest in the region persisted. The chronic volatility of the Deccan prompted Shah Jahan to seek a comprehensive solution. His first step was to offer a military alliance to Bijapur, with the objective of partitioning troublesome Ahmadnagar. The result was both the total annihilation of the province and the accord of 1636, by which Bijapur was granted one-third of its southern territories. The accord reconciled the Deccan states to a pervasive Mughal presence in the Deccan. Bijapur agreed not to interfere with Golconda, which became a tacit ally of the Mughals. The treaty limited further Mughal advance in the Deccan and gave Bijapur and Golconda respite to conquer the warring Hindu principalities in the south. Within a span of a dozen years, Bijapuri and Golcondan armies overran and annexed a vast and prosperous tract beyond the Krishna River up to Thanjavur and including Karnataka. The Mughals, on the other hand, maneuvered to regain Qandahar (1638) and consolidated and extended their eastern position on the Assamese border (1639) and also in Bengal, where Shah Jahan had become involved in a dispute over Portuguese piracy and abduction of Mughal slaves. In 1648 he moved his capital from Agra to Delhi in an effort to consolidate his control over the northwest provinces of the empire. The Mughal attitude of benevolent neutrality toward the Deccan states began to change gradually after 1648, culminating in the invasion of Golconda and Bijapur in 1656 and 1657. A factor in this change was the inability of the Mughals to manage the financial affairs of the Deccan. Subsequently, Bijapur was compelled to surrender the Ahmadnagar areas it had received in 1636, and Golconda was to cede to the Mughals the rich and fertile tract on the Coromandel Coast as part of the jagir of Mir Jumla, the famous Golconda wazir who had now joined the Mughal service. To a great extent Shah Jahan's new policy in the Deccan also was propelled by commercial considerations. The entire area had acquired an added value because of the growing importance of the Coromandel Coast as the centre for the export of textiles and indigo.

History > The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 > The empire in the 17th century > Shah Jahan > Central Asian policy Following in the footsteps of his predecessors, Shah Jahan hoped to conquer Samarkand, the original homeland of his ancestors. The brother of Emam Qoli, ruler of Samarkand, invaded Kabul and, in 1639, captured Bamian, which gave offense to Shah Jahan. The emperor was on the lookout for an opportunity to move his army to the northwest borders. In 1646 he responded to the Uzbek ruler's appeal for aid in settling an internal dispute by sending a huge army. The campaign cost the Mughals heavily. They suffered serious initial setbacks in Balkh, and, before they could recover fully, an alliance between the Uzbeks and the shah of Iran complicated the situation. Qandahar was again taken by Iran, even though the Mughals reinforced their hold over the other frontier towns.

History > The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 > The empire in the 17th century > Shah Jahan > War of succession The events at the end of Shah Jahan's reign did not augur well for the future of the empire. The emperor fell ill in September 1657, and rumours of his death spread. He executed a will bequeathing the empire to his eldest son, Dara. His other sons, Shuja', Aurangzeb, and Murad, who were grown men and governors of provinces, decided to contest the throne. From the war of succession in 1657–59 Aurangzeb emerged the sole victor. He then imprisoned his father in the Agra fort and declared himself emperor. Shah Jahan died a prisoner on Feb. 1, 1666, at the age of 74. He was on the whole a tolerant and enlightened ruler, patronizing scholars and poets of Sanskrit and Hindi as well as of Persian. He systematized the administration, but he raised the government's share of the gross produce of the soil. Fond of pomp and magnificence, he commissioned the famous peacock throne and erected many elegant buildings, including the lovely Taj Mahal outside Agra, a tomb for his queen, Mumtaz Mahal; his remains also are interred there. History > The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 > The empire in the 17th century > Aurangzeb The empire under Aurangzeb (ruled 1658–1707) experienced further growth but also manifested signs of weakness. For more than a decade, Aurangzeb appeared to be in full control. The Mughals suffered a bit in Assam and Cooch Behar, but they invaded gainfully the Arakanese in southern Myanmar (Burma), captured Chittagong, and added territories in Bikaner, Bundelkhand, Palamau, Assam, and elsewhere. There was the usual display of wealth and grandeur at court.

History > The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 > The empire in the 17th century > Aurangzeb > Local and peasant uprisings Soon, however, regional disturbances again rocked the empire. The Jat peasantry of Mathura rebelled in 1669; the tribal Pathans plundered the northwestern border districts and caravan routes, declaring war on Aurangzeb in 1667 and again in 1672; a Satnami rising occurred in Narnaul in 1672; and the Sikhs in the Punjab revolted under their Guru Tegh Bahadur, who was brutally put to death in 1675. The most prolonged uprising, however, was the Rajput rebellion, sparked by Aurangzeb's annexation of the Jodhpur state and his seizure of its ruler's posthumous son Ajit Singh with the alleged intention of converting him to Islam. This rebellion spread to Mewar, and Aurangzeb himself had to proceed to Ajmer to fight the Rajputs, who had been joined by the emperor's third son, Akbar (January 1681). By a stratagem, Aurangzeb managed to isolate Akbar, who fled to the Deccan and thence to Persia. The war with Mewar came to an end (June 1681) because Aurangzeb had to pursue Akbar to the Deccan, where the prince had joined the Maratha king Sambhaji. Jodhpur remained in a state of rebellion for 27 years more, and Ajit Singh occupied his ancestral dominion immediately after Aurangzeb's death. Aurangzeb spent the last 25 years of his reign in the Deccan. Upon his arrival in the region in 1681, he attempted to cut off the Hindu Marathas from Muslim Bijapur and Golconda, which were, as a result of earlier Mughal offensives, similarly predisposed against Aurangzeb. Failing in this effort, the emperor invaded and annexed Bijapur (1686) and Golconda (1687) with the objective of conquering the Marathas outright, which he achieved, in his own estimation, by capturing and executing Sambhaji. Maratha resistance proved so stubborn, however, that even after nearly two decades of struggle Aurangzeb failed to completely subdue them (see below). The aged emperor died on Feb. 20, 1707, and was buried at Khuldabad, four miles west of Daulatabad.

History > The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 > The empire in the 17th century > Aurangzeb > Assessment of Aurangzeb Aurangzeb possessed natural gifts of a high order. He had assiduously cultivated learning, self-knowledge, self-reverence, and self-control, and he exercised a curb over his tongue and temper. He was extremely industrious, methodical, and disciplined in habits and thoughts, and his private life was virtuous. However, his narrow religious bigotry made him ill-suited to rule the mixed population of his empire. Aurangzeb deliberately reversed the policy of his predecessors toward non-Muslim subjects by trying to enforce the principles and practices of the Islamic state. He reimposed the jizya on non-Muslims and saddled them with religious, social, and legal disabilities. To begin with, he forbade their building new temples and repairing old ones. Next, he issued orders to demolish all the schools and temples of the Hindus and to put down their teaching and religious practices. He doubled the customs duties on the Hindus and abolished them altogether in the case of Muslims. He granted stipends and gifts to converts from Hinduism and offered them posts in public service, liberation from prison in the case of convicted criminals, and succession of disputed estates. He also persecuted some Shi'ites and Sufis (nonconformist Muslims) as well. All these efforts failed miserably at shoring up the sprawling Mughal political structure. Many of Aurangzeb's orders were not implemented, largely because his nobles did not support them. His bigotry strengthened the hand of those sectors that opposed him for political or other reasons. Of further detriment was his prolonged absence from the heartland of the empire. While he captured the forts of the Marathas, facing his own nobles' connivance at their escape, many of his jagirdars in the north were unable to collect their dues from the villages. In the regions that experienced economic growth in the 17th century, the local power-mongers and their followers in the community felt increasingly confident to stand on their own. The abundant commissioning of mansabdars with which the leadership addressed this situation far outstripped the empire's growth in area or revenues. The Mughal centre thus began to collapse under its own weight. In 1707, when Aurangzeb died, serious threats from the peripheries had begun to accentuate the problems at the core of the empire.

History > The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 > Mughal decline in the 18th century The new emperor, Bahadur Shah I (or Shah 'Alam; ruled 1707–12), followed a policy of compromise, pardoning all nobles who had supported his dead rivals and granting them appropriate postings. He never abolished jizya, but the effort to collect the tax became ineffectual. There was no destruction of temples in Bahadur Shah's reign. In the beginning he tried to gain greater control over the Rajput states of the rajas of Amber (later Jaipur) and Jodhpur, but when his attempt met with firm resistance he realized the necessity of a settlement. Because Rajput demands for high mansabs and important governorships were never conceded, however, the settlement did not restore them to fully committed warriors for the Mughal cause. The emperor's policy toward the Marathas was also that of half-hearted conciliation. They continued to fight among themselves as well as against the Mughals in the Deccan. Bahadur Shah was, however, successful in conciliating Chatrasal, the Bundela chief, and Curaman, the Jat chief; the latter also joined him in the campaign against the Sikhs. History > The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 > Mughal decline in the 18th century > The Sikh uprisings Bahadur Shah attempted to make peace with the Sikh Guru, Gobind Singh. But when, after the death of the Guru, the Sikhs once again raised the banner of revolt in the Punjab under the leadership of Banda Bahadur, the emperor decided to take strong measures and himself led a campaign against the rebels. Practically the entire territory between the Sutlej and the Jamuna rivers, reaching the immediate vicinity of Delhi, was soon under Sikh control. Newly prosperous Jat zamindars and peasants, anxious for recognition, responded to Banda's egalitarian appeal. They, along with numerous other low-caste poor cultivators, traveled to Banda's camp, converted to Sikhism, and took the name Singh as members of the faith. Banda also had support among the Khatris, the caste of the Sikh Gurus. The Sikh movement was an open challenge to Mughal royalty. Banda adopted the title of Sacha Badshah (True King), started a new calendar, and issued coins bearing the names of Guru Nanak, the founder of the Sikh religion, and Guru Gobind. The Himalayan Rajput chiefs, secretly in sympathy with any resistance against the Mughals, also supplied Banda with information, material, and refuge when needed. The plains Rajputs, the Muslim elite, and the wealthy townsfolk, including some Khatri traders, however, opposed Banda. The imperial forces under Bahadur Shah captured some important Sikh strongholds but could not crush the movement; they only swept the Sikhs from the plains back into the Himalayan hills. In 1715, during Farrukh-siyar's reign, however, Banda, together with hundreds of his followers, was captured by the governor of the Punjab. They were all executed in Delhi, and thus ended the threat of the emergence of an autonomous non-Mughal state in the Punjab in the early 18th century. When Bahadur Shah died (February 1712), the position of state finances had deteriorated further as a result of his reckless grants of jagirs and promotions. During his reign the remnants of the royal treasure, amounting in 1707 to some 13 crores (130 million rupees), were exhausted. Failure to assign productive jagirs strained the loyalties of the members of the nobility and mansabdars and reduced the efficiency of the state machinery.

History > The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 > Mughal decline in the 18th century > Cracks in the core A new element entered Mughal politics in the ensuing wars of succession. While previously such contests had occurred between royal princes—the nobles merely aiding one rival or another—ambitious nobles now became direct aspirants to the throne. The leading contender to succeed Bahadur Shah was his second son, 'Azim-ush-Shan, who had accumulated a vast treasure as governor of Bengal and Bihar and had been his father's chief adviser. His principal opponent was Zulfiqar Khan, a powerful Iranian noble, who was the chief bakhshi of the empire and the viceroy of the Deccan. Zulfiqar negotiated an unusual agreement allying the three other princes against Azim-ush-Shan and setting forth a partitioned, jointly ruled empire with Zulfiqar as imperial wazir. He later shifted his support to Jahandar Shah, the most pliable of the three brothers, but his proposal, in a measure, demonstrated the increasing potency of regional aspirations. Jahandar Shah (ruled 1712–13) was a weak and degenerate prince, and Zulfiqar Khan assumed the executive direction of the empire with power unprecedented for a wazir. Zulfiqar believed that it was necessary to establish friendly relations with the Rajputs and the Marathas and to conciliate the Hindu chieftains in general in order to save the empire. He reversed the policies of Aurangzeb. The hated jizya was abolished. Only toward the Sikhs did he continue the old policy of suppression. His goal was to reconcile all those who were willing to share power within the Mughal institutional framework. Zulfiqar Khan made several attempts at reforming the economic system, but, in the brief course of his ascendancy, he could do little to redress imperial fiscal decay. When Farrukh-siyar, son of the slain prince 'Azim-ush-Shan, challenged Jahandar Shah and Zulfiqar Khan with a large army and funds from Bihar and Bengal, the rulers found their coffers depleted. In desperation, they looted their own palaces, even ripping gold and silver from the walls and ceilings, in order to finance an adequate army.

History > The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 > Mughal decline in the 18th century > Struggle for a new power centre Farrukh-siyar (ruled 1713–19) owed his victory and accession to the Sayyid brothers, 'Abdullah Khan and Husayn 'Ali Khan Baraha. The Sayyids thus earned the offices of wazir and chief bakhshi and acquired control over the affairs of state. They promoted the policies initiated earlier by Zulfiqar Khan. Jizya and other similar taxes were immediately abolished. The brothers finally suppressed the Sikh revolt and tried to conciliate the Rajputs, the Marathas, and the Jats. However, this policy was hampered by divisiveness between the wazir and the emperor, as the groups tended to ally themselves with one or the other. The Jats had once again started plundering the royal highway between Agra and Delhi; however, while Farrukh-siyar deputed Raja Jai Singh to lead a punitive campaign against them, the wazir negotiated a settlement over the raja's head. As a result, throughout northern India zamindars either revolted violently or simply refused to pay assessed revenues. On the other hand, Farrukh-siyar compounded difficulties in the Deccan by sending letters to some Maratha chiefs urging them to oppose the forces of the Deccan governor, who happened to be the deputy and an associate of Sayyid Husayn 'Ali Khan. Finally, in 1719, the Sayyid brothers brought Ajit Singh of Jodhpur and a Maratha force to Delhi to depose the emperor. The murder of Farrukh-siyar created a wave of revulsion against the Sayyids among the various factions of nobility, who also were jealous of their growing power. Many of these, in particular the old nobles of Aurangzeb's time, resented the wazir's encouragement of revenue farming, which in their view was mere shopkeeping and violated the age-old Mughal notion of statecraft. In Farrukh-siyar's place the brothers raised to the throne three young princes in quick succession within eight months in 1719. Two of these, Rafi'-ud-Darajat and Rafi'-ud-Dawlah (Shah Jahan II), died of consumption. The third, who assumed the title Muhammad Shah, exhibited sufficient vigour to set about freeing himself from the brothers' control. A powerful group under the leadership of the Nizam-ul-Mulk, Chin Qilich Khan, and his father's cousin Muhammad Amin Khan, the two eminent “Turanis,” emerged finally to dislodge the Sayyid brothers (1720). However, this did not signal the restoration of imperial authority.

History > The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 > Mughal decline in the 18th century > The emperor, the nobility, and the provinces By the time Muhammad Shah (ruled 1719–48) came to power, the nature of the relationship between the emperor and the nobility had almost completely changed. Individual interests of the nobles had come to guide the course of politics and state activities. In 1720 Muhammad Amin Khan replaced Sayyid 'Abdullah Khan as wazir; after Amin Khan's death (January 1720), the office was occupied by the Nizam-ul-Mulk for a brief period until Amin Khan's son Qamar-ud-Din Khan assumed the title in July 1724 by a claim of hereditary right. The nobles themselves virtually dictated these appointments. However, because no faction of the nobility, nor for that matter the nobility as a whole, was capable of ruling on its own, the symbols of imperial power—most pointedly the person of the dynastic emperor—had to be preserved with a rather exaggerated emphasis. The nobles in control of the central offices maintained an all-empire outlook, even if they were more concerned with the stability of the regions where they had their jagirs. Farmans (mandates granting certain rights or special privileges) to governors, fowjdars, and other local officials were sent, in conformity with tradition, in the name of the emperor. Individual failings of Aurangzeb's successors also precipitated the decline of royal authority. Jahandar Shah lacked dignity and decency; Farrukh-siyar was fickle-minded; Muhammad Shah was frivolous and overly fond of ease and luxury. The rise to power of the latter's favourite consort, Koki Jio, and her relations and associates showed that a position at the Mughal court no longer depended on administrative ability, office, or military achievements. Opinions of the emperor's favourites weighed in the appointments, promotions, and dismissals even in the provinces. The steadily increasing vulnerability of the centre in the face of agrarian unrest, combined with the aforementioned irregularities, set in motion a new type of provincial government. Nobles with ability and strength sought to build a regional base for themselves. The wazir himself, Chin Qilich Khan, showed the path. Having failed to reform the administration, he relinquished his office in 1723 and in October 1724 marched south to found the state of Hyderabad in the Deccan. In the east, Murshid Quli Khan had long held Bengal and Orissa, which his family retained after his death in 1726. In the heartland of the empire, the governors of Ayodhya and the Punjab became practically independent. The court needed money from the governors in order to maintain both its functional structure and the necessary pomp and majesty. As the court was not in a position to militarily enforce its regulations in the empire, different provinces—in proportion to their internal conditions and geographic distance from Delhi, as well as the ambition and capability of their governors—reformulated their links with the court. The Mughal court's chief concern at this stage was to ensure the flow of the necessary revenue from the provinces and the maintenance of at least the semblance of imperial unity. Seizing upon the disintegration of the empire, the Marathas now began their northward expansion and overran Malwa, Gujarat, and Bundelkhand. Then, in 1738–39, Nadir Shah, who had established himself as the ruler of Iran, invaded India.

History > The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 > Mughal decline in the 18th century > Nadir Shah's invasion The obvious weakness of the Mughal Empire invited Nadir Shah's descent upon the plains of northern India for plunder and spoil. For years the defenses of the northwest had been neglected. Nadir captured Ghazni and Kabul, crossed the Indus at Attock (December 1738), and occupied Lahore virtually unopposed. Hurried preparations were then made to defend Delhi, but the faction-ridden nobles could not agree on a strategy. Nadir defeated the Mughals at Karnal (February 1739), took Emperor Muhammad Shah prisoner, and marched to Delhi. As a reprisal against the killing of some of his soldiers, Nadir ordered the massacre of some 30,000 Delhi citizens. The invader left Delhi in May laden with a booty estimated at 70 crores (700 million rupees). His plunder included the famous Koh-i-noor diamond and the jewel-studded Peacock Throne of Shah Jahan. He compelled Muhammad Shah to cede to him the province of Kabul. The Iranian invasion paralyzed Muhammad Shah and his court. Maratha raids on Malwa, Gujarat, Bundelkhand, and the territory north of these provinces continued as before. The emperor was compelled to appoint the Maratha peshwa, Balaji Baji Rao, as governor of Malwa. The province of Katehar (Rohilkhand) was seized by an adventurer, 'Ali Muhammad Khan Ruhela, who could not be suppressed by the feeble government of Delhi. The loss of Kabul opened the empire to the threat of invasions from the northwest; a vital line of defense had disappeared. The Punjab was again invaded, this time by Ahmad Shah Abdali, an Afghan lieutenant of Nadir Shah, who became king of Kabul after Nadir's death (June 1747); Abdali sacked Lahore, and, even though a Delhi army compelled him to retreat, his repeated invasions eventually devastated the empire. History > The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 > Mughal decline in the 18th century > Nadir Shah's invasion The obvious weakness of the Mughal Empire invited Nadir Shah's descent upon the plains of northern India for plunder and spoil. For years the defenses of the northwest had been neglected. Nadir captured Ghazni and Kabul, crossed the Indus at Attock (December 1738), and occupied Lahore virtually unopposed. Hurried preparations were then made to defend Delhi, but the faction-ridden nobles could not agree on a strategy. Nadir defeated the Mughals at Karnal (February 1739), took Emperor Muhammad Shah prisoner, and marched to Delhi. As a reprisal against the killing of some of his soldiers, Nadir ordered the massacre of some 30,000 Delhi citizens. The invader left Delhi in May laden with a booty estimated at 70 crores (700 million rupees). His plunder included the famous Koh-i-noor diamond and the jewel-studded Peacock Throne of Shah Jahan. He compelled Muhammad Shah to cede to him the province of Kabul. The Iranian invasion paralyzed Muhammad Shah and his court. Maratha raids on Malwa, Gujarat, Bundelkhand, and the territory north of these provinces continued as before. The emperor was compelled to appoint the Maratha peshwa, Balaji Baji Rao, as governor of Malwa. The province of Katehar (Rohilkhand) was seized by an adventurer, 'Ali Muhammad Khan Ruhela, who could not be suppressed by the feeble government of Delhi. The loss of Kabul opened the empire to the threat of invasions from the northwest; a vital line of defense had disappeared. The Punjab was again invaded, this time by Ahmad Shah Abdali, an Afghan lieutenant of Nadir Shah, who became king of Kabul after Nadir's death (June 1747); Abdali sacked Lahore, and, even though a Delhi army compelled him to retreat, his repeated invasions eventually devastated the empire. History > The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 > Mughal decline in the 18th century > Nadir Shah's invasion The obvious weakness of the Mughal Empire invited Nadir Shah's descent upon the plains of northern India for plunder and spoil. For years the defenses of the northwest had been neglected. Nadir captured Ghazni and Kabul, crossed the Indus at Attock (December 1738), and occupied Lahore virtually unopposed. Hurried preparations were then made to defend Delhi, but the faction-ridden nobles could not agree on a strategy. Nadir defeated the Mughals at Karnal (February 1739), took Emperor Muhammad Shah prisoner, and marched to Delhi. As a reprisal against the killing of some of his soldiers, Nadir ordered the massacre of some 30,000 Delhi citizens. The invader left Delhi in May laden with a booty estimated at 70 crores (700 million rupees). His plunder included the famous Koh-i-noor diamond and the jewel-studded Peacock Throne of Shah Jahan. He compelled Muhammad Shah to cede to him the province of Kabul.

The Iranian invasion paralyzed Muhammad Shah and his court. Maratha raids on Malwa, Gujarat, Bundelkhand, and the territory north of these provinces continued as before. The emperor was compelled to appoint the Maratha peshwa, Balaji Baji Rao, as governor of Malwa. The province of Katehar (Rohilkhand) was seized by an adventurer, 'Ali Muhammad Khan Ruhela, who could not be suppressed by the feeble government of Delhi. The loss of Kabul opened the empire to the threat of invasions from the northwest; a vital line of defense had disappeared. The Punjab was again invaded, this time by Ahmad Shah Abdali, an Afghan lieutenant of Nadir Shah, who became king of Kabul after Nadir's death (June 1747); Abdali sacked Lahore, and, even though a Delhi army compelled him to retreat, his repeated invasions eventually devastated the empire. History > Regional states, c. 1700–1850 The states that arose in India during the phase of Mughal decline and the following century (roughly 1700 to 1850) varied greatly in terms of resources, longevity, and essential character. Some of them—such as Avadh (Ayodhya) in the north or Hyderabad in the south—were located in areas that had harboured regional states in the immediate pre-Mughal period and thus could hark back to an older local or regional tradition of state formation. Others were states that had a more original character and derived from very specific processes that had taken place in the course of the late 16th and 17th centuries. In particular, many of the post-Mughal states were based on ethnic or sectarian groupings—the Marathas, the Jats, and the Sikhs, for instance—which had no real precedent in medieval Indian history.

History > Regional states, c. 1700–1850 > The Marathas > Early history The Maratha kingdom at the death of Sivaji (1680). There is no doubt that the single most important power that emerged in the long twilight of the Mughal dynasty was the Marathas. Initially deriving from the western Deccan, the Marathas were a peasant warrior group that rose to prominence during the rule in that region of the sultans of Bijapur and Ahmadnagar. The most important Maratha warrior clan, the Bhonsles, had held extensive jagirs (land-tax entitlements) under the 'Adil Shahi rulers, and these were consolidated in the course of the 1630s and '40s, as Bijapur expanded to the south and southwest. Sahji Bhonsle, the first prominent member of the clan, drew substantial revenues from the Karnataka region, in territories that had once been controlled by the rulers of Mysore and other chiefs who derived from the collapsing Vijayanagar kingdom. One of his children, Sivaji Bhonsle, emerged as the most powerful figure in the clan to the west, while Sivaji's half-brother Vyamkoji was able to gain control over the Kaveri delta and the kingdom of Thanjavur in the 1670s. Sivaji's early successes were built on a complex relationship of mixed negotiation and conflict with the 'Adil Shahis on the one hand and the Mughals on the other. His raids brought him considerable returns and were directed not merely at agrarian resources but also at trade. In 1664, he mounted a celebrated raid on the Gujarat port city of Surat, at that time the most important of the ports under Mughal control. The next year, he signed a treaty with the Mughals, but this soon broke down after a disastrous visit by the Maratha leader to Aurangzeb's court in Agra. Between 1670 and the end of his life (1680), Sivaji devoted his time to a wide-ranging set of expeditions, extending from Thanjavur in the southeast to Khandesh and Berar in the northwest. This was a portent of things to come, for the mobility of the Marathas was to become legendary in the 18th century.

History > Regional states, c. 1700–1850 > The Marathas > Rise of the peshwas The good fortune of Sivaji did not fall to his son and successor, Sambhaji, who was captured and executed by the Mughals in the late 1680s. His younger brother, Rajaram, who succeeded him, faced with a Mughal army that was now on the ascendant, moved his base into the Tamil country, where Sivaji, too, had earlier kept an interest. He remained in the great fortress of Señji (earlier the seat of a Nayaka dynasty subordinate to Vijayanagar) for eight years in the 1690s, under siege by a Mughal force, and for a time it may have appeared that Maratha power was on the decline. But a recovery was effected in the early 18th century, in somewhat changed circumstances. A particularly important phase in this respect is the reign of Sahu, who succeeded Rajaram in 1708 with some acrimony from his widow, Tara Bai. Lasting some four decades, to 1749, Sahu's reign was marked by the ascendancy of a lineage of Citpavan Brahman ministers, who virtually came to control central authority in the Maratha state, with the Bhonsles reduced to figureheads. Holding the title of peshwa (chief minister), the first truly prominent figure of this line is Balaji Visvanath, who had aided Sahu in his rise to power. Visvanath and his successor, Baji Rao I (peshwa between 1720 and 1740), managed to bureaucratize the Maratha state to a far greater extent than had been the case under the early Bhonsles. On the one hand, they systematized the practice of tribute gathering from Mughal territories, under the heads of sardesmukhi and cauth (the two terms corresponding to the proportion of revenue collected). But, equally, they seem to have consolidated methods of assessment and collection of land revenue and other taxes, which were derived from the Mughals. Much of the revenue terminology used in the documents of the peshwa and his subordinates derives from Persian, which suggests a far greater continuity between Mughal and Maratha revenue practice than might have been imagined. By the close of Sahu's reign, a complex role had been established for the Marathas. On the one hand, in the territories that they controlled closely, particularly in the Deccan, these years saw the development of sophisticated networks of trade, banking, and finance; the rise of substantial banking houses based at Pune, with branches extending into Gujarat, the Ganges Valley, and the south; and an expansion of the agricultural frontier. At the same time, maritime affairs were not totally neglected either, and Balaji Visvanath took some care to cultivate the Angria clan, which controlled a fleet of vessels based in Kolaba and other centres of the west coast. These ships posed a threat not only to the new English settlement of Bombay, but to the Portuguese at Goa, Bassein, and Daman. On the other hand, there also emerged a far larger domain of activity away from the original heartland of the Marathas, which was either subjected to raiding or given over to subordinate chiefs. Of these chiefs, the most important were the Gaikwads (Gaekwars), the Sindhias, and the Holkars. Also, there were branches of the Bhonsle family itself that relocated to Kolhapur and Nagpur, while the main line remained in the Deccan heartland, at Satara. The Kolhapur line derived from Rajaram and his wife, Tara Bai, who had refused in 1708 to accept Sahu's rule and who negotiated with some Mughal court factions in a bid to undermine Sahu. The Kolhapur Bhonsles remained in control of a limited territory into the early 19th century, when the raja allied himself with the British against the peshwas in the Anglo-Maratha wars. Unlike the Kolhapur Bhonsles and the descendants of Vyamkoji at Thanjavur, both of whom claimed a status equal to that of the Satara raja, the line at Nagpur was clearly subordinate to the Satara rulers. A crucial figure from this line is Raghuji Bhonsle (ruled 1727–55), who was responsible for the Maratha incursions on Bengal and Bihar in the 1740s and early 1750s. The relations of his successors, Janoji, Sabaii, and Mudhoji, with the peshwas and the Satara line were variable, and it is in this sense that these domains can be regarded as only loosely confederated, rather than tightly bound together.

History > Regional states, c. 1700–1850 > The Marathas > Subordinate Maratha rulers Other subordinate rulers who emerged under the overarching umbrella provided by the Satara ruler and his peshwa were equally somewhat opportunistic in their use of politics. The Gaikwads, who came to prominence in the 1720s, with the incursions of Damaji and Pilaji Gaikwad into Gujarat, were initially subordinate not only to the Bhonsles but also to the powerful Dabhade family. Their role in this period was largely confined to the collection of the cauth levy, and they consolidated their position by taking advantage of differences between the peshwa and the Dabhades. The fact that various interests at the Mughal court were at loggerheads with each other also worked to the Gaikwads' advantage. However, it was only after the death of Sahu, when the power of the peshwas was further enhanced, that the position of the Gaikwads truly improved. By the early 1750s, the rights of the family to an extensive portion of the revenues of Gujarat were recognized by the peshwa, and an amicable division was arranged. The expulsion of the Mughal governor of the Gujarat subah (province) from his capital of Ahmadabad in 1752 set the seal on the process. The Gaikwads preferred, however, to establish their capital in Baroda, causing a realignment in the network of trade and consumption in the area. The rule at Baroda of Damaji (d. 1768) was followed by a period of some turmoil. The Gaikwads still remained partly dependent on Pune and the peshwa, especially to intervene in moments of succession crisis. The eventual successor of Damaji, Fateh Singh (ruled 1771–89), did not remain allied to the peshwa for long, though. Rather, in the late 1770s and early 1780s, he chose to negotiate a settlement with the English East India Company, which eventually led to increased British interference in his affairs. By 1800, the British rather than the peshwa were the final arbiters in determining succession among the Gaikwads, who became subordinate rulers under them in the 19th century. In the mid-18th century, a great part of the holdings of the Gaikwads was described in the peshwa's correspondence and papers as saranjam, and the ruler himself was termed saranjaihar, or at times jagirdar. The same was broadly true of the Holkars and Sindhias, and also of another relatively minor dynasty of chiefs, the Pawars of Dhar. In the case of the Holkars the rise in status and wealth was particularly rapid and marked. From petty local power brokers, they emerged by the 1730s into a position in which Malhar Rao Holkar could be granted a large share of the cauth collection in Malwa, eastern Gujarat, and Khandesh. Within a few years, Malhar Rao consolidated his own principality at Indore, from which his successors controlled important trade routes as well as the crucial trading centre of Burhanpur. After him, control of the dynastic fortunes fell largely to his son's widow, Ahalya Bai, who ruled from 1765 to 1794 and brought Holkar power to its apogee. Nevertheless, their success could not equal that of the last great chieftain family, the Sindhias, who carved a prominent place for themselves in North Indian politics in the decades following the third battle of Panipat (1761). Again, like the Holkars, the Sindhias were based largely in central India, first at Ujjain, and later (from the last quarter of the 18th century) in Gwalior. It was during the long reign of Mahadaji Sindhia, which began after Panipat and continued to 1794, that the family's fortunes were truly consolidated. Mahadaji, employing in the 1780s a large number of European mercenaries in his forces, proved an effective and innovative military commander who went beyond the usual Maratha dependence on light cavalry. His power, however, had already grown in the 1770s, when he managed to make substantial inroads into a North India that had been weakened by Afghan attacks. He intervened with some effect in the Mughal court during the reign of Shah 'Alam II, who made him the “deputy regent” of his affairs in the mid-1780s. His shadow fell not only across the provinces of Delhi and Agra but also on Rajasthan and Gujarat, making him the most formidable Maratha leader of the era. He caused trepidation among the personnel of the East India Company and also at Pune, where his relations with the acting peshwa, Nana Fadnavis, were fraught with tension. Eventually, the momentum generated by Mahadaji could not be maintained by his successor Daulat Rao Sindhia (ruled 1794–1827), who was defeated by the British and forced by treaty in 1803 to surrender his territories both to the north and to the west.

History > Regional states, c. 1700–1850 > The Marathas > Mughal mystique in the 18th century The careers of some of these potentates, especially Mahadaji Sindhia, illustrate the potency of Mughal symbols even in the phase of Mughal decline. For instance, after recapturing Gwalior from the British, Mahadaji took care to have his control of the town sanctioned by the Mughal emperor. Equally, he zealously guarded the privileges and titles granted to him by Shah 'Alam, such as amir al-umara (“head of the amirs”) and na'ib wakii-i mutlaq (“deputy regent”). In this he was not alone. Instances in the 18th century of states that wholly threw off all pretense of allegiance to the Mughals are rare. Rather, the Mughal system of honours and titles, as well as Mughal-derived administrative terminology and fiscal practices, spread apace despite the deterioration of imperial power. History > Regional states, c. 1700–1850 > The Marathas > Mughal mystique in the 18th century > The case of Mysore Theoretically, in the 1720s, the Mughals claimed rights over a far larger area than had ever been the case under Akbar, Jahangir, or Shah Jahan. This area included large parts of southern India, over which central rule was never actually consolidated. Taking advantage of their somewhat ambiguous relations with the Mughals, and claiming to be the agents of Delhi, the Marathas often made partial claims on the revenues of these areas, as cauth and sardesmukhi. This was the case, for example, in Mysore in the 1720s and '30s. Mysore had come under the sovereign umbrella of the Mughals in the late 1690s, as the result of an embassy sent to Aurangzeb by Cikka Deva Raja Vadiyar, the ruler of Mysore at the time. In effect, this meant that Mysore was to pay a periodic tribute (peshkash) to Mughal representatives in the south, but there was a problem in doing so. As Mughal authority in the Deccan and the south was itself fragmented, several possible channels of tribute existed. Mysore thus sought to make use of this ambiguity, playing off Chin Qilich Khan (known by the title Nizam-ul-Mulk), a powerful Mughal noble who in these years founded a dynasty at Hyderabad, against the Mughal representative at Arcot, thereby putting off the tribute payment. A further variable in the fiscal politics of Mysore was the presence of the Marathas; and some clans, such as the Ghorpades, made it a regular practice to raid the Mysore capital of Seringapatam (Shrirangapattana). In this way, overlapping and at times conflicting claims were justified with reference to a Mughal centre that was distant and for the most part lacked interest in these affairs. As such, then, few if any of the states discussed above made a direct attack on Mughal legitimacy or sought to challenge Mughal claims head-on. To the extent that such a frontal challenge (as distinct from a rebellion conducted within a shared understanding of the framework of authority) can be located in the period, it comes from the far northwest of the Mughal domain. Eventually, however, this challenge was to have repercussions that were felt by the Marathas and other groups. History > Regional states, c. 1700–1850 > The Marathas > Mughal mystique in the 18th century > Challenge from the northwest The northwest frontier between the Mughals and Safavids had always harboured elements that possessed the potential to destabilize the balance between these states. The area, which falls largely in present-day Afghanistan, also had a tradition of religiopolitical movements, often intended to provide a direct challenge to the Mughals or Safavids. An important instance is the Roshani movement of Bayazid Ansari and his successors, which was crushed by the Mughals in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Again, in the reign of Aurangzeb, a frontal attack on the legitimacy of his rule was made by the Pashtun leader, Khushal Khan Khatak, though in this case from the standpoint of orthodox Islam. Significantly, in Khushal Khan's poetic and other literary works, there was also an explicit and nostalgic yearning for the time of Sher Shah Sur, the Afghan who had expelled the Mughal ruler Humayun from Hindustan. The spirit of these writings was translated into action in the early 18th century, when Mir Vays Khan Hotak, a leader of the Hotaki clan of Ghilzais, succeeded in carving out a Pashtun state based at Qandahar, under the nose of the Safavid governor of the area. Between 1709 and 1715, Mir Vays ruled Qandahar unofficially, but his successors were not so modest. His son, Mir Mahmud, first attacked Kerman in Iran, and then—in 1722—took Esfahan itself and proclaimed himself its ruler. However, the success of the Ghilzais was not to last long, as they were challenged both by their fellow Pashtuns—the Abdalis—and by the plans of Nadir Quli Afshar, a Safavid subordinate who harboured substantial ambitions of his own. Between Mir Mahmud's death (1725) and 1731, Nadir Afshar (later Nadir Shah) rapidly consolidated his hold over eastern Iran and placed a severe check on the rise of Pashtun power. Subsequently, he marched into Afghanistan and later the Mughal territories, sacking Delhi in 1739. Nadir Shah's success in welding together a disparate set of territories, while operating outside the system of Mughal sovereignty, provided a model for the Pashtuns after his assassination in 1747. Many from the Abdalis and Ghilzais had been employed by him, and they had had an opportunity to learn at close quarters. Among those who had been subordinate in this way to Nadir Shah was Ahmad Khan, a member of the relatively small Sadozai lineage of Abdalis. In the wake of the Afshar conqueror's death, a congregation of Pashtun khans at a shrine near Qandahar elected Ahmad Khan to be their leader. His trajectory took him into conflict with the Mughals, then the Marathas, and finally he acted as a crucial catalyst in the formation of the Sikh state in North India.

History > Regional states, c. 1700–1850 > The Afghan factor in North India, 1747–72 Unlike Nadir Shah, Ahmad Shah Abdali (or Ahmad Shah Durrani)—as Ahmad Khan came to be known after 1747—had little interest in the area west of Afghanistan. Rather, his principal endeavour was to create a state that would lie astride the major overland trade routes that passed from northern India to Central and western Asia. Qandahar naturally had an important place in this scheme, but a great deal of attention also had to be paid to centres in North India, such as Multan and Lahore. It is no coincidence that Ahmad Shah mounted 9 and possibly 10 expeditions to the Punjab, beginning with the first year of his reign, after he had taken Kabul. His campaigns bear an obvious similarity to the seasonal migration of the Powindah (pastoral nomads) from Afghanistan to India, which normally took place in the agricultural off-season. It was always in autumn and winter that the Abdali-led armies set out to the east; when summer's heat approached, they beat a tactical retreat to the hills from where they had come. The ability of the Pashtuns to form a lasting state in this process was severely curtailed by the opposition that Ahmad Shah faced within his own home territories. In the 1750s, when the first concerted challenge to his authority in the Punjab was posed by an alliance of Mughals, Sikhs, and Marathas, Ahmad Shah was too preoccupied with the rebellion of Nasir Khan Baluch, to the west, to devote attention to the threat in the east. Thus, in 1757, Ahmad Shah's son Timur, appointed governor of the Punjab, was forced to retreat from Lahore to Peshawar under the force of attacks from Sikhs and Marathas. It was only in 1760 that Ahmad Shah returned to fight a campaign in northern India, which culminated in his defeat of the Marathas at Panipat in January 1761. However, even this did not turn the tide in his favour. The large-scale attacks that were unleashed on the villages of Sikh peasantry led only to intensified resistance, and Ahmad Shah found his area of control in the 1760s constantly under threat. His campaigns of 1768 and '69 were accompanied by widespread desertions on the part of his allies and levies, who thought the Punjab project to be an unviable one. His death in 1772 thus left his son and successor, Timur Shah, with many problems to resolve. The Afghan presence in North India during the period was of course not simply restricted to Ahmad Shah's campaigns. In the course of the middle decades of the 18th century, several Afghan lineages had carved a place for themselves in northern India in the area known as Rohilkhand, to the east and northeast of Delhi and Agra. They diverted trade from these older imperial cities to their own centres and also helped create a new set of routes to Lahore and the northwest, bypassing the Ganges-Yamuna Doab. In so doing, they helped weaken further the economic power of the Mughal centre and accelerated the consolidation of regional states on the Gangetic valley itself. But a vacuum still existed in the Punjab, which neither the Mughals nor the Abdalis—as discussed above—were able to fill. It was in this context that a Sikh kingdom came to be consolidated in the late 18th century.

History > Regional states, c. 1700–1850 > The Sikhs in the Punjab > Early history Development of the Mughal Empire. The origins of the Sikhs, a religious group initially formed as a sect within the larger Hindu community, lie in the Punjab in the 15th century. The Sikh founder, Guru Nanak (1469–1539), was roughly a contemporary of the founder of Mughal fortunes in India, Babur, and belonged to the Khatri community of scribes and traders. From an early career as a scribe for an important noble of the Lodi dynasty, Nanak became a wandering preacher before settling down at Kartarpur in the Punjab at about the time of Babur's invasion. By the time of his death, he had numerous followers, albeit within a limited region, and, like many other religious leaders of the time, founded a fictive lineage (i.e., one not related by blood) of Gurus who succeeded him. His immediate successor was Guru Angad, chosen by Nanak before his death. He, too, was a Khatri, as indeed were all the remaining Gurus, though of various subcastes.

In practice, the essential teachings of Nanak, collected in the Adi Granth (Punjabi: “First Book”), represented a syncretic melding of elements of Vaisnava devotional Hinduism and Sufic Islam, with a goodly amount of social criticism thrown in. No political program is evident in the work, but—as has already been remarked with regard to the Roshanis—religious movements in the period had a tendency to assume political overtones, by virtue of the fact that they created bonds of solidarity among their adherents, who could then challenge the authority of the state in some fashion. The Sikh challenge to the Mughal state could be seen as prefigured in Nanak's own critical remarks directed at Babur, but in reality it took almost three-quarters of a century to come to fruition. It was in the early 17th century, when—under somewhat obscure circumstances—Guru Arjun (or Arjun Mal) was tortured and killed by Mughal authorities, that the first signs of a major conflict appeared. Guru Arjun was accused of abetting a rebel Mughal prince, Khusraw, and—more significantly—found mention in Jahangir's memoirs as someone who ran a “shop” where religious falsehoods were sold (apparently a reference to the Khatri origins of the Guru). His successor, Hargobind (1595–1644), then began the move toward armed assertion by constructing a fortified centre and holding court from the so-called Akal Takht (“Immortal Throne”). Briefly imprisoned for these activities by the Mughals, Hargobind was released, but he once more entered into armed conflict with Mughal officials. He was forced to spend the last years of his life in the Rajput principality of Hindur, outside direct Mughal jurisdiction, where he maintained a small military force. On Hargobind's death, a brief period of relative quiet followed. However, under his son Tegh Bahadur, who became Guru in 1664, conflicts with the Mughals once again increased, partly as a result of Tegh Bahadur's success as a preacher and proselytizer and partly because of the rather orthodox line of Sunnite Islam espoused by Aurangzeb. In 1675, Tegh Bahadur was captured and executed upon his refusal to accept Islam, thus laying the path for the increased militancy under the last of the Gurus, Gobind Singh (1675–1708). It should be stressed that it was the very success of the Sikh Gurus in attracting followers and acquiring temporal power that prompted such a response from the Mughals. However, rather than suppressing Sikhism, the policy of Aurangzeb backfired. Guru Gobind Singh assumed all the trappings of a chieftain, gave battle to Mughal forces on more than one occasion, and founded a new centre at Anandpur in 1689. His letters also suggest the partial assumption of temporal authority, being termed hukmnamas (loosely, “royal orders”). However, he still chose to negotiate with the Mughals, first with Aurangzeb and then, after the latter's death, with Bahadur Shah. Ironically, with Gobind Singh's death, the Sikh threat to Mughal dominance increased. In a further twist, this resulted from the assumption of leadership in the Punjab by Banda Singh Bahadur, a Maratha who had come under the Guru's influence during the latter's last days at Nanded in Maharashtra. Between 1709 and late 1710, the Sikhs under Banda enjoyed dramatic successes in the sarkars (districts) of Sirhind, Hisar, and Saharanpur, all of them ominously close to Delhi. Banda set up a capital at Mukhlispur, issued coins in the names of the Gurus (a particularly bold lèse-majesté), and began to use a seal on his orders even as the Mughals did. In late 1710 and 1711, the Mughal forces counterattacked, and Banda and his forces retreated. Expelled from Sirhind, he then moved his operations west into the vicinity of Lahore. Here, too, he was unsuccessful, and eventually he and his forces were forced to retreat to the fort of Gurdas Nangal. There they surrendered to Mughal forces after a prolonged siege, and Banda was executed in Delhi in 1716. This phase of activity is especially important for two reasons. First, as distinct from the sporadic militancy exhibited under Hargobind and then Gobind Singh, it was in this period that a full-scale Sikh rebellion against Mughal authority broke out for the first time. Second, Banda's role in the matter itself, which was somewhat enigmatic, lends the affair a curious flavour. Some of Banda's letters speak of orthodox Islam as an enemy to be rallied against, thus suggesting that the Sikhs at this time were moving somewhat away from their initial orientation as mediators between popular Hinduism and Islam. Further, this early Maratha-Sikh alliance prefigures later coalitions that were to emerge in the context of the Abdali attacks on Punjab.

History > Regional states, c. 1700–1850 > The Sikhs in the Punjab > From Banda Singh Bahadur to Ranjit Singh Development of the Mughal Empire. The quelling by Mughal forces of the Sikhs under Banda did not mean an end to Sikh resistance to Mughal claims. In the 1720s and '30s, Amritsar emerged as a centre of Sikh activity, partly because of its preeminence as a pilgrimage centre. Kapur Singh, the most important of the Sikh leaders of the time, operated from its vicinity and gradually set about consolidating a revenue-cum-military system, based in part on compromises with the Mughal governors of the province. Other Sikhs were, however, less willing than Kapur Singh to deal with the Mughal authorities and took the paths of social banditry and raiding. These activities served as a damper on the attempts by the Mughal governors of Lahore subah to set up an independent power base for themselves in the region. First 'Abdus Samad Khan and then his son Zakariya Khan attempted the twin tracks of conciliation and coercion, but all to little avail. After the latter's demise in 1745, the balance shifted still further in favour of the Sikh warrior-leaders, such as Jassa Singh Ahluwalia, later the founder of the kingdom of Kapurthala. The mushrooming of pockets under the authority of Sikh leaders was thus a feature of the two decades preceding Abdali's invasion of the Punjab and took place not merely in the eastern Punjab but in the Bari Doab, not far from Lahore itself. A unique centre was yet to emerge, and the end of the line of Gurus with Gobind Singh ensured that spiritual and temporal authority could not be combined in a single person as before.

Nevertheless, the principal opposition faced by Abdali in his campaigns of the 1750s and '60s in the Punjab came from the Sikhs, even if the Mughal forces and Marathas played a role of significance on occasion. These were sanguinary engagements, which cost the Sikhs many thousands of lives, as the Afghan chroniclers themselves testify. Eventually, by the mid-1760s, Sikh authority over Lahore had been established, and the Afghans had been unable to consolidate their early gains. Under Ahmad Shah's successor, Timur Shah (ruled 1772–93), some of the territories and towns that had been taken by the Sikhs (such as Multan) were recovered, and the descendants of Ahmad Shah continued to harbour ambitions in this direction until the end of the century. But by the 1770s, they were dealing with a confederation of about 60 Sikh chieftains, some of whom founded what were to remain princely states under the British—such as Nabha and Patiala. However, rather as in the case of the Marathas, the confederate structure did not mean that there were never differences or conflicts between these chiefdoms. Nevertheless, at least in the face of their major adversary, the Abdali clan and its allies, these chiefdoms came together to present a united front. The Sikh chiefdoms continued many of the administrative practices initiated by the Mughals. The main subordinates of the chiefs were given jagir assignments, and the Persianized culture of the Mughal bureaucracy continued to hold sway. Unlike the Gurus themselves, who, as has been noted, were exclusively drawn from Khatri stock, the bulk of the Sikh chieftains tended to be of Jat origin, a fact that drew disparaging remarks from at least some contemporary writers, who spoke of them as Sudras (the lowest of the four major Indian castes). Thus, besides the states set up in other regions, such as Bharatpur, the Jats can be said to have dominated state building in the Punjab in this period as well. It was one such chief, Ranjit Singh, grandson of Charhat Singh Sukerchakia, who eventually welded these principalities for a brief time into a larger entity. Ranjit Singh's effective rule lasted four decades, from 1799 to 1839, and was realized in a context already dominated by the growing power of the English East India Company. Within 10 years of his death, the British had annexed Punjab, and so this period can be seen as the last gasp of the old-regime polities in India. His rise to power was based on superior military force, partly serviced by European mercenaries and by the strategic location of the territories that he had inherited from his father. Ranjit Singh's kingdom combined disparate elements. On the one hand, it represented the culmination of nearly a century of Sikh rebellions against Mughal rule. On the other hand, it was based on the intelligent application of principles of statecraft learned from the Afghans. This emerges from the fact that he used as his capital the great trading city of Lahore, which he captured in 1799, in the aftermath of invasions by Shah Zaman, the successor of Timur Shah. Having gained control of the trade routes, he imposed monopolies on the trade in salt, grain, and textiles from Kashmir to enhance his revenues. Using the cash he was able to collect by these means, he built up an army of 40,000 cavalry and infantry, and by 1809 he was undisputed master of most of Punjab. Over the remaining three decades of his rule, Ranjit Singh continued to consolidate his territories, largely at the expense of Afghan and Rajput, as well as lesser Sikh, chieftains. In 1818, he took Multan, and the next year made major gains in Kashmir. At the time of his death, the territory that he controlled sat solidly astride the main trade routes extending from North India to Central Asia, Iran, and western Asia. However, in a number of areas, he established tributary relations with chieftains, thus not wholly subverting their authority. Once again, therefore, the model around which the Sikh state was built bears a striking resemblance to that of the Mughals. Jagirs remained a crucial form of remuneration for military service, and, in the directly taxed lands, officials bearing the title of kardar (“agent”) were appointed at the level of a unit called—as elsewhere in Mughal domains—the ta'alluqa (“district”). However strong the state of Ranjit Singh might have appeared, it was in fact based on a fragile system of alliances, as became apparent soon after his death. At the level of the palace, a dispute broke out in the early 1840s between two factions, one supporting Chand Kaur, daughter-in-law of Ranjit Singh, who wished to be regent, and the other supporting Sher Singh. But such disputes could scarcely have been the real reason for the collapse of Sikh power within a decade. Rather, it would appear that the state created by Ranjit Singh never really made the transition from being a conquering power to a stable system of alliances between conflicting social groups and regional interests. In any event, the process of disintegration was accelerated and given a helping hand by the British between 1845 and 1849.

History > Regional states, c. 1700–1850 > Rajasthan in the 18th century Such relatively ephemeral successes at state building as that of Ranjit Singh are rare. However, one can find other instances in the context of the 18th century in which consolidation was rapidly followed by reversals. Such instances can be divided into two categories: those in which the consolidation of a particular state proved a threat to British power and hence was undermined (e.g., the case of Mysore, below) and others in which the logic of consolidation and decline appears not to have concerned the British. In the latter category can be placed the case of Jaipur (earlier Amber) in eastern Rajasthan, a Rajput principality controlled by the Kachwaha clan. From the 16th century, the Kachwahas had been subordinate to the Mughals and had, as a consequence, gradually managed to consolidate their hold over the region around Amber in the course of the 17th century. The crucial role played in high Mughal politics by such members of the clan as Raja Man Singh thus paid dividends, and the chiefs were permitted to maintain a large cavalry and infantry force. In the early 18th century, the ruler Jai Singh Sawai took steps to increase his power manyfold. This was done by arranging to have his jagir assignment in the vicinity of his home territories and by taking on land in revenue-, or tax-, farm (tax rights on a parcel of land that are rented by the state to an individual), which was gradually made permanent. By the time of his death in 1743, Jai Singh (for whom Jaipur came to be named) had emerged as the single most important ruler in the region.

This example was followed some years later in the 1750s by Suraj Mal, the Jat ruler of Bharatpur, who—like Jai Singh—adopted a modified form of Mughal revenue administration in his territories. However, by this time, the fortunes of the Jaipur kingdom were seriously in question. Under threat from the Marathas, recourse had to be taken more and more to short-term fiscal exactions, while at the same time a series of crop failures in the 1750s and '60s spread a pall over the region's fragile agriculture. The second half of the 18th century was thus marked by an economic depression, accompanied by a decline in the political power of Jaipur, which became a vulnerable target for the ambitions of the Marathas, and of Mahadaji Sindhia in particular.

History > Regional states, c. 1700–1850 > The south: Travancore and Mysore The states discussed so far, with the exception of Maratha, were all landlocked. This does not mean that trade was not an important element in their makeup, for the kingdom of Ranjit Singh was crucially linked to trade. However, lack of access to the sea greatly increased the vulnerability of a state, particularly in an era when the major power was the English East India Company, itself initially a maritime enterprise. In the south, unlike the areas discussed so far, several states did make a determined bid in this period to consolidate their power by the use of maritime outlets. Principal among these were Travancore in Kerala under Martanda Varma and Rama Varma, and Mysore under Haidar 'Ali and Tipu Sultan.

These states rose to prominence, however, only in the latter half of the 18th century, or at least after 1740. Before that, the southern Indian scene had been dominated by a group of Muslim notables who had accompanied the Mughal expansion into the region in the 1680s and '90s, or else had come in a second wave that followed immediately after 1700. Among these notables, many of whom set themselves up as tribute-paying chiefs under Mughal authority, can be counted the relatively petty nawabs (deputies) of the Balaghat, or northern Karnataka (such as 'Abdul Rasul Khan of Sira), but there were also far more substantial men such as the Nizam-ul-Mulk himself and Sa'dullah Khan at Arcot. The Nizam-ul-Mulk had consolidated his position in Hyderabad by the 1740s, whereas the Arcot principality had emerged some three decades earlier. Neither of these rulers, while establishing dynastic succession, claimed full sovereignty, and thus they continued to cast themselves as representatives of Mughal authority. Southern Indian politics in the 1720s emerged, therefore, as a game with many petty players and three formidable ones: the Marathas (both at Thanjavur and elsewhere), the Nizam, and the Arcot (or Karnatak) Nawab. In the second half of the 18th century, the power of all three of these centres declined. The succession struggle at Arcot in the 1740s and early 1750s left its rulers open to financial manipulation by private British merchants, to whom they were increasingly in debt for war expenses. In the 1750s the power of Hyderabad also declined (after the death of its founder, the Nizam-ul-Mulk), and control of the coastal districts was soon lost, leaving the kingdom landlocked and relatively sparsely populated. The reign of Pratapasimha (1739–63) marks the beginning of Thanjavur's slide into fiscal ruin. Here again, it was the mounting costs of war and the intrusive presence of the Europeans on the coast that triggered the crisis. In this context, the only route remaining was for states to build an elaborate and well-organized war machine while keeping external supply lines open. The control of trade was also seen as crucial in the statecraft of the period. These principles were put into practice in the southern Kerala state of Venad (Travancore) by Martanda Varma (ruled 1729–58). He built a substantial standing army of about 50,000, reduced the power of the Nayar aristocracy on which rulers of the area had earlier been dependent militarily, and fortified the northern limits of his kingdom at the so-called “Travancore line.” It was also the policy of this ruler to extend patronage to the Syrian Christians, a large trading community within his domains, as a means of limiting European involvement in trade. The key commodity was pepper, but other goods also came to be defined as royal monopoly items, requiring a license for trade. These policies were continued in large measure by Martanda's successor, Rama Varma (ruled 1758–98), who was able, moreover, to defend his kingdom successfully against a dangerous new rival power—Mysore. The rise of Mysore to importance dates to the mid-17th century, when rulers of the Vadiyar dynasty, such as Kanthirava Narasaraja and Cikka Deva Raja, fought campaigns to extend Vadiyar control over parts of interior Tamil Nadu (especially Dharmapuri, Salem, and Coimbatore). Until the second half of the 18th century, however, Mysore was a landlocked kingdom and dependent therefore on trade and military supplies brought through the ports of the Indian east coast. As these ports came increasingly under European control, Mysore's vulnerability increased. From the 1760s, steps were taken to change this situation. A cavalry commander of migrant origin, Haidar 'Ali, assumed effective power in the kingdom in 1761, reducing the Vadiyars to figureheads and displacing the powerful Kalale family of ministers. First Haidar and then, after 1782, his son, Tipu Sultan, made attempts to consolidate Mysore and make it a kingdom with access to not one but both coasts of peninsular India. Against the Kodavas, the inhabitants of the upland kingdom of Kodagu (Coorg), they were relatively successful. Coastal Karnataka and northern Kerala came under their sway, enabling Tipu to open diplomatic and commercial relations on his own account with the Middle East. Tipu's ambitions apparently greatly exceeded those of his father, and he strove actively to escape the all-pervasive shadow of Mughal suzerainty, as discussed above. However, as in the Sikh kingdom of Ranjit Singh, the problem with the Mysore of Haidar and Tipu was their inability to build an internal consensus. Their dependence on migrants and mercenaries, for both military and fiscal expertise, was considerable, and they were always resisted by local chiefs, the so-called Poligars. More crucial was the fact that by the 1770s Mysore faced a formidable military adversary in the form of the English East India Company, which did not allow it any breathing room. It was the English who denied Mysore access to the relatively rich agricultural lands and ports of the Coromandel coastal plain in eastern India, and, equally as significant, it was at the hands of an English attacking force that Tipu finally was killed in 1799.

History > Regional states, c. 1700–1850 > Politics and the economy It emerges from the above discussion that the 18th century was a period of considerable political turmoil in India, one in which states were formed and dissolved with some rapidity, and that there was a great deal of fluidity in the system. Did this political turmoil have a clear counterpart in terms of economic dislocation? This does not seem to have been unambiguously the case. It is of course true that raids by military forces would have caused dislocation, and the practice of destroying standing crops was followed by armies throughout most of the century. On the other hand, economic warfare and the attempt to destroy the productive base of a rival state were relatively uncommon in the first half of the 18th century. But, after 1750, such means were exploited to the harshest degree. The destruction of irrigation tanks, the forcible expropriation of cattle wealth, and even the forced march of masses of people were not unknown in the wars of the 1770s and thereafter. All these must have had a deleterious effect on economic stability and curtailed the impulse toward growth.

Such negative effects also can be exaggerated, however. When viewed from Delhi, the 18th century is certainly a gloomy period. The attacks of Nadir Shah, then of Ahmad Shah Abdali, and finally the attempts by the Rohillas (who controlled Delhi in 1761–71) to hold the Mughals to ransom, left the inhabitants of the city with a sense of being under permanent siege. This perspective can hardly have been shared by the inhabitants of other centres in India, whether Trivandrum, Pune, Patna, or Jaipur. There was a process of economic reorientation that accompanied the political decentralization of the era, and it is on account of this that the experience of Delhi and Agra cannot be generalized. However, even the trajectory of the regions was mixed. In some, the first half of the 18th century witnessed continued expansion—Bengal, Jaipur, and Hyderabad, for example—while others were late bloomers, as in the case of Travancore, Mysore, or the Punjab. No single chronology of economic prosperity and decline is likely therefore to fit all the regions of India in the epoch. It would also appear for a variety of reasons, some obvious and others less so, that the mid-18th century marks a significant point of inflection in key processes. For example, the engrossing by the English East India Company of the revenues of Bengal subah had the effect of reversing the direction of flow of precious metals into the area; whereas Bengal had earlier absorbed gold and silver in exchange for its imports, this pattern no longer held. Similarly, on the external trade front, the latter half of the 18th century saw the growth, under the company's aegis, of semicoerced forms of crop production, the case of opium being a prominent one. But another reason why the latter half of the 18th century differs from the period before about 1750 is the changing character of war. In the post-1750 period, warfare became more disruptive of civil life and economic production than before, and at the same time the new technologies in use made it a far more expensive proposition. The use of firearms on a large scale, the employment of mercenaries, the maintenance of standing armies, all of these are likely to have had profound ramifications. But it does appear hyperbolic to describe the processes of the post-1750 period as a total inversion of what went before. History > Regional states, c. 1700–1850 > Cultural aspects of the late precolonial order Even as it has sometimes been maintained that the 18th century witnessed a general decline in material life, the cultural life of the period also has often been denigrated. In fact, there appears to be scant justification for such a portrayal of trends. Even Delhi, whose economic condition unequivocally declined, housed a number of major poets, philosophers, and thinkers in this epoch, from Shah Waliullah to Mir Taqi Mir. Further, as regional courts grew in importance, they tended to take on the function of the principal patrons of high culture, whether in music, the visual arts, or literature. It is thus also in relatively dispersed centres, ranging from Avadh to Bikaner and Lahore to Thanjavur, that one finds the courtly traditions of culture persisting. Thanjavur under the Marathas is a particularly fine example of cultural efflorescence, in which literary production of a high quality in Tamil, Telugu, Sanskrit, and Marathi continued, with some of the Maratha rulers themselves playing a significant direct role. Similarly, it is in 18th-century Thanjavur that the main compositions of what is today known as the Karnatak tradition of Indian classical music came to be written, by such men as Tyagaraja, Muttuswami Diksitar, and Syama Sastri. Finally, the period brought the development of a distinct style of painting in Thanjavur, fusing elements imported from the north with older local traditions of textile painting.

This vitality was not restricted purely to elite culture. To begin with, many of the theatre and musical traditions, as well as formal literary genres of the period, picked up and incorporated folk influences. At the same time, the melding of popular Hinduism and Islam gave a particular flavour to cultural productions associated with pilgrimages and festivals. More than in earlier centuries, the tradition of long-distance pilgrimages to major centres from Varanasi to Rameswaram increased and can be seen to fit in with a general trend of increasing mobility. It was common for post-Mughal states to employ mercenary soldiers and imported scribes and clerks. In 18th-century Hyderabad, for example, Kayasthas from the north were employed in large numbers in the bureaucracy, while in Mysore, Maharashtrian Brahmans were given fiscal offices as early as the 1720s. It is apparent that the mobility of musicians, men of letters, and artists was no less than that of these scribal classes. When a major new political centre emerged, it rapidly attracted talent, as evidenced in Ranjit Singh's Lahore. Here, Persian literature of high quality was produced, but not at the cost of literary output in Punjabi. At the same time, new developments were visible in the fields of architecture and painting. Farther to the north, the principality of Kangra fostered an important new school of painting, devoted largely to Vaisnava themes. Indeed, a surprisingly large proportion of what is understood today to be part of India's “traditional” culture is attributable to this period and also to the preceding century. History > India and European expansion, c. 1500–1858 > European activity in India, 1498–c. 1760 When the Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama landed at Calicut in 1498, he was restoring a link between Europe and the East that had existed many centuries previously. The first known connection between the two regions had been Alexander the Great's invasion of the Punjab, 327–325 BC. In the 2nd century BC, Greek adventurers from Bactria had founded kingdoms in the Punjab and the bordering Afghan hills; these survived into the late 1st century. This territorial contact in the north was succeeded by a lengthy commercial intercourse in the south, which continued until the decline of the Roman Empire in the 4th century AD. Trade with the East then passed into Arab hands, and it was mainly concerned with the Middle Eastern Islamic and Greek worlds until the end of the Middle Ages. The only physical contact came from occasional travelers, such as the Italians Marco Polo and Niccolò dei Conti and the Russian Afanasy Nikitin in the 15th century, and these were few because of commotions within the tolerant Arab-Islamic world created by successive incursions of Turks and Mongols. For Europe in 1498, therefore, India was a land of spices and of marvels handed down from imaginative Greek authors. For Muslims, Europe was the land of Rum, or the Greek empire of Constantinople (Turkish after 1453); and, for Hindus, it was the abode of the foreigners called Yavanas, a corruption of the Greek word Ionian. History > India and European expansion, c. 1500–1858 > European activity in India, 1498–c. 1760 When the Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama landed at Calicut in 1498, he was restoring a link between Europe and the East that had existed many centuries previously. The first known connection between the two regions had been Alexander the Great's invasion of the Punjab, 327–325 BC. In the 2nd century BC, Greek adventurers from Bactria had founded kingdoms in the Punjab and the bordering Afghan hills; these survived into the late 1st century. This territorial contact in the north was succeeded by a lengthy commercial intercourse in the south, which continued until the decline of the Roman Empire in the 4th century AD. Trade with the East then passed into Arab hands, and it was mainly concerned with the Middle Eastern Islamic and Greek worlds until the end of the Middle Ages. The only physical contact came from occasional travelers, such as the Italians Marco Polo and Niccolò dei Conti and the Russian Afanasy Nikitin in the 15th century, and these were few because of commotions within the tolerant Arab-Islamic world created by successive incursions of Turks and Mongols. For Europe in 1498, therefore, India was a land of spices and of marvels handed down from imaginative Greek authors. For Muslims, Europe was the land of Rum, or the Greek empire of Constantinople (Turkish after 1453); and, for Hindus, it was the abode of the foreigners called Yavanas, a corruption of the Greek word Ionian. History > India and European expansion, c. 1500–1858 > European activity in India, 1498–c. 1760 > The Dutch In the race to the East after the Spanish obstacle had been removed, the Dutch, having larger resources, were the first to arrive. Their first voyage was in 1595, helped by the local knowledge of Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, who had worked for six years in Goa. J. Van Neck's voyage in 1598 was so profitable (400 percent for all eight ships) that the die was cast for a great Eastern adventure. The Dutch objective was neither religion nor empire but trade, and the trade in mind was the spice trade. They were monopolists rather than imperialists. Empire came later, as a safeguard for monopoly.

The Dutch, therefore, went directly to the East Indies (Indonesia), the main source of spices, and only secondarily to South India, for pepper and cardamoms, and to Ceylon (Sri Lanka) for these and cinnamon. From 1619 their headquarters were fixed at Batavia (Jakarta) in Java, from which they developed a series of outlying stations in the East Indian islands (e.g., Celebes and the Moluccas) and intermediate ones like Cape Town in South Africa, along with Ceylon for supply. This was the work of the governor-general Jan Pieterzoon Coen (served 1618–23; 1627–29), and the whole system may be said to have been completed under the governor-general Joan Maetsuyker (served 1653–78). Monopoly was the keynote of 17th-century Dutch activity in the East; empire followed in the 18th. The Dutch system demanded the control of the Eastern seas, and this meant the elimination of European rivals. Those in possession were the Portuguese. The Dutch succeeded with superior resources and better seamanship, but the Portuguese, though defeated, were not destroyed. Ousted from most strongholds, the Portuguese retained their capital, Goa, in spite of blockades and sieges. The second European obstacle was the English, who followed the Dutch to the East Indies; no match for the Dutch in resources, they were virtually excluded from the East Indies with the Dutch seizure of their factory at Amboyna (modern Ambon) in 1623 (see below The British, 1600–1740). It remained for the Dutch to organize their trade, which was operated through the Dutch East India Company, a complicated organization dominated by the maritime state of Zealand. Much larger than the English company, it had the character of a national concern. Dutch sea power, more efficient than that of the Portuguese, secured monopoly conditions in the islands and sea-lanes. It was only in land areas like Travancore that resort had to be made to competition. But there remained the problem of exchange, for the Dutch, like the English, were short of exchange goods. Textiles were needed to buy spices in Indonesia, and silver to buy textiles (cotton or silk) in India and China. To work the spice monopoly, the Dutch developed an elaborate system of Eastern trade from the Persian Gulf to Japan, the ultimate object of which was to secure the goods with which to secure the spices without recourse to scarce European resources. It was this trade that brought the Dutch to India at Surat, the Coromandel Coast (Negapatam), Bengal, and up-country at Agra.

History > India and European expansion, c. 1500–1858 > European activity in India, 1498–c. 1760 > The British, 1600–1740 The English venture to India was entrusted to the East India Company, which received its monopoly rights of trade in 1600. The company included a group of London merchants attracted by Eastern prospects, not comparable to the national character of the Dutch company. Its initial capital of £50,000 was less than one-tenth of the Dutch company's. Its object, like that of the Dutch, was to trade in spices; and it was at first modestly organized on a single-voyage basis. These separate voyages, financed by groups of merchants within the company, were replaced in 1612 by terminable joint stocks, which covered operations over a term of years. Not until 1657 was a permanent joint stock established.

The company's objective was the spices of the East Indies (Indonesia), and it went to India only for the secondary purpose of securing cottons for sale to the spice growers. The British East Indian venture met with determined Dutch opposition, culminating in the massacre of Amboyna in 1623, when the Dutch seized the English factory there and executed its factors. No redress was ever obtained, though the Dutch occupation was not recognized until 1667. In India the English found the Portuguese enjoying Mughal recognition at the western Indian port of Surat. Portuguese command of the sea nullified the English embassy to the Mughal court in spite of its countenance by the emperor Jahangir. The English victory at Swally Hole in 1612 over the Portuguese, whose control of the pilgrim sea route to Mecca was resented by the Mughals, brought a dramatic change. The embassy of Sir Thomas Roe (1615–18) to the Mughal court secured an accord (in the form of a firman, or grant of privileges), by which the English secured the right to trade and to establish factories in return for becoming the virtual naval auxiliaries of the empire. This success, with England's exclusion from Indonesia by the Dutch in the same period, determined that India, not the Far East, should be the chief theatre of English activity in Asia. There followed through the 17th century a period of peaceful trading through factories operating under Mughal grants. This held good for Surat and later for Hugli (1651) in Bengal. In the south, the factory at Masulipatam (1611) was moved to the site of Madras, granted by a Hindu raja (1640); it shortly (1647) came under the control of the sultans of Golconda and thence passed to the Mughals in 1687. The only exception to this arrangement was the island port of Bombay; Bombay was independent, but its trade was small because the Marathas, soon locked in combat with the Mughals, held the hinterland. The trade the company developed differed radically from that of the Dutch. It was a trade in bulk instead of in highly priced luxury goods; the profits were a factor of volume rather than scarcity; it worked in competitive instead of monopolistic conditions; it depended upon political goodwill instead of intimidation. The English trade became more profitable than that of the Dutch, because the smaller area covered and the lack of armed forces necessary to enforce monopoly reduced overhead charges. But it encountered its own difficulties. The Indians would take little other than silver in exchange for their goods, and the export of bullion was an offense to England's reigning mercantilist political economy. Lack of military power meant management of Asian governments instead of their coercion. Lack of home dominance meant compromise and hazard of fortune. To solve the silver problem, the English developed a system of country trade not unlike that of the Dutch, the profits of which helped to pay for the annual investment of goods for England. Madras and Gujarat supplied cotton goods, and Gujarat supplied indigo as well; silk, sugar, and saltpetre (for gunpowder) came from Bengal, while there was a spice trade along the Malabar coast from 1615 on a competitive basis with the Dutch and Portuguese. Opium was shipped to the Far East, where it later became the basis of the Anglo-Chinese tea trade. The merchants lived in “factories” or in a collegiate type of settlement where life was confined, colourful, and often short. The company had many difficulties in England. There was mercantilist disapproval and mercantile jealousy of monopoly; there was danger from government at a time of political commotion. King Charles I encouraged the rival Courteen Association (1635), and Oliver Cromwell allowed virtual free trade until 1657. Under the later Stuarts the company prospered, only to have its hopes dashed by a war in India and by the Whig revolution of 1688. The Whigs promoted a new company in 1698, which, however, failed to oust the old one after some years of struggle. In 1702 the government insisted on a merger, which was completed in 1708–09 under the name of The United Company of Merchants Trading to the East Indies. This was the body that 40 years later launched on the sea of Indian politics. A way of harassing the company besides attacks on the export of bullion was to limit the sale of cotton goods in England. In 1700 the sale of Asian silks and printed or dyed cottons was forbidden, but trade continued for re-export to the Continent. After 1700 the company found a new profitable line in the Chinese tea trade, whose imports increased (1706–50) from 54,000 to 2,300,000-odd pounds. In India, the company suffered a serious setback when it resolved, under Sir Josiah Child's inspiration, to resort to armed trade and attack the Mughals. The emperor Aurangzeb was too strong, however, and the venture (1686–90) ended in disaster. Out of this fiasco, however, came the foundation of Calcutta by Job Charnock in 1690—a mud flat that had the advantage of a deep anchorage—and the age of fortified factories surrounded by satellite towns. These were the answers, with Mughal consent, to increasing Indian insecurity. The Madras factory was already fortified, and Fort William in Calcutta followed in 1696. The company thus had, with independent Bombay, three centres of Indian power. For the next half century, the company confined its relations with the Mughals, who had now spread to the deep south beyond Madras, to disputes over rights and terms of trade at local levels. Fresh privileges were obtained in Delhi, and these they were content to argue about rather than fight for. The factors were learning the art of Indian diplomacy as they had formerly to learn the arts of Indian commercial management. History > India and European expansion, c. 1500–1858 > European activity in India, 1498–c. 1760 > The French The French had shown an interest in the East from the early years of the 16th century, but individual efforts had been checked by the Portuguese. The first viable French company was launched by the minister of finance Jean-Baptiste Colbert, with the support of Louis XIV, in 1664. After some false starts, the French company acquired Pondicherry, 85 miles (137 kilometres) south of Madras, from a local ruler in 1674. It obtained Chandernagore (modern Chandarnagar), 16 miles north of Calcutta, from the Mughal governor in 1690–92. At first the French initiatives suffered from the mixing of grandiose political and colonial schemes with those of trade. Under the care of François Martin, from 1774, the company turned to trade and began to prosper.

The progress of the settlements was interrupted, however, by events in Europe. The Dutch captured Pondicherry in 1693; when the French regained it under the Peace of Ryswick (1697), they had gained the best fortifications in India but had lost their trade. By 1706 the French enterprise seemed moribund. The company's privileges were let to a group of Saint-Malo merchants from 1708–20. After 1720, however, came a dramatic change. The company was reconstituted, and over the next 20 years its trade was expanded, and new stations were opened. Mauritius was finally settled in 1721; Mahe in Malabar and Karaikal on the eastern coast were acquired in 1725 and 1739, respectively. Chandarnagar was revived. The French company remained under the close supervision of the government, which nominated the directors and, from 1733, guaranteed fixed dividends. In spite of the company's growth and its fostering by government, its sales in Europe in 1740 were only about half those of the English East India Company. Its trade was large enough to be worth seizing but not great enough to rival that of the English. Other enterprises in India included a Danish East India Company, which operated intermittently from 1616 from Tranquebar in southern India, acquiring Serampore (modern Shrirampur) in Bengal in 1755, and the Ostend Company of Austrian Netherlands merchants from 1723, a serious rival until eliminated by diplomatic means in 1731. Efforts by Swedes and Prussians proved abortive.

History > India and European expansion, c. 1500–1858 > European activity in India, 1498–c. 1760 > The Anglo-French struggle, 1740–63 In 1740 India appeared to be relatively tranquil. In the north the Persian Nadir Shah's invasion (1739) had proved only to be a large-scale raid. In the Deccan, the Nizam-ul-Mulk (“Deputy for the Whole Empire”) provided some measure of stability. In western India the Marathas were dominant. However, there was competition between Marathas, Mughals, and local rulers for political supremacy in the Deccan. There was a sense of impending change in the air; the Mughal emperor was sickly, the nizam was aged, the Marathas were active and ambitious.

It was on this scene that events in Europe precipitated an Anglo-French struggle in India. The War of the Austrian Succession began with Frederick II the Great of Prussia's seizure of Silesia in 1740; France supported Prussia, and from 1742 England supported Austria. The stage thus set, the English decided that the French Indian trade was too powerful to be left alone; the neutrality of previous years was therefore abandoned. Both sides depended on sea power for success, but it was the French who moved first—with an improvised fleet from Mauritius, Bertrand-François Mahé, Count de La Bourdonnais, drove the British in alarm to Bengal and captured Madras after a week's siege in September 1746. Quarrels between La Bourdonnais and the governor of Pondicherry, Joseph-François Dupleix, marred this unexpected success, but an English attack on Pondicherry was repelled. Then the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748), which ended the war, returned Madras to the British in exchange for Cape Breton Island in North America. It would thus appear that the status quo had been restored. In fact the situation had radically changed. Madras was now recognized as British by European treaty, and this was accepted by one of the rival Indian chiefs. The French had grown in prestige as skillful soldiers and in power by detachments of the French fleet left behind on La Bourdonnais' departure. Above all, the astute Dupleix had seen the opportunity offered for exploiting the new French reputation in the confused politics of the region. For some years there had been a disputed succession to the governorship of Karnataka, itself a dependency of the nizam of Hyderabad. The nizam had installed a new Karnatic nawab in 1743, but the dispute smouldered on between the partisans of the two rival families, who looked impartially to Marathas, Mughals, and the Europeans for help. In 1748, on the morrow of Aix-la-Chapelle, an occasion for French interference occurred with the death of the aged nizam. There was a disputed succession between his second son and a grandson, Muzaffar Jang. Dupleix, encouraged by his easy repulse of the Karnatic nawab from the walls of Madras, decided to support both Muzaffar and the claimant to the Karnatic nawabship, Chanda Sahib. Dupleix's reward for success would be the means of ruining the British trade in southern India and an indefinite influence over the affairs of the whole Deccan. At first fortune favoured him. The Karnatic nawab was killed in the Battle of Ambur (1749), which demonstrated convincingly the superiority of European arms and methods of warfare. The threatening invasion of the new nizam, Nasir Jang, ended with the nizam's murder in December 1750. French troops conducted Muzaffar Jang toward Hyderabad; and when Muzaffar in turn was murdered three months later, the French succeeded in placing the late nizam's third son, Salabat Jang, on the Hyderabad throne. Thenceforward, in the person of the skillful Charles, Marquis de Bussy-Castelnau, Dupleix had a kingmaker at the centre of Muslim power in the Deccan. The British response to these dramatic successes was to support for the Karnatic nawabship the son of the late nawab, Muhammad 'Ali, who had taken refuge in the rock fortress of Trichinopoly (modern Tiruchchirappalli). They had already interfered in the affairs of Tanjore (modern Thanjavur) and were no strangers to Indian politics. The French supported Chanda Sahib for the nawabship. There thus developed what was really a private war between the two companies. Bussy-Castelnau was established at Hyderabad, with the revenues of the Northern Sarkars (six coastal districts) to support his army. In the south the French had only Muhammad 'Ali to remove. But from 1751 Dupleix's star began to wane. Robert Clive, a discontented young British factor who had left the countinghouse for the field, seized the fort of Arcot, political capital of Karnataka, with 210 men in August 1751. This daring stroke had the hoped-for effect of diverting half of Chanda Sahib's army to its recovery. Clive's successful 50-day defense permitted Muhammad 'Ali to procure allies from Tanjore and the Marathas. The French were worsted, and they were eventually forced to surrender in June 1752. Dupleix never recovered from this blow; he was superseded in August 1754 by the director Charles-Robert Godeheu, who made a not unfavourable settlement with the British. The French gained but a brief respite; the Seven Years' War in Europe, in which Britain and France were once more on opposite sides, broke out in 1756. Both sides sent armaments to the East. The first British force was diverted to Bengal, so that the French general Thomas-Arthur Lally had an advantage on his arrival in 1758. Lally was brave but headstrong and tactless; after taking Fort St. David, he lost time and credit marching to Tanjore, where he forfeited Indian sympathy by executing temple Brahmans. Then his attack on Madras (1758–59) miscarried, while Clive's troops from Bengal defeated the French garrison of the Northern Sarkars. When Sir Eyre Coote arrived with reinforcements, the British defeated Lally decisively at Wandiwash in January 1760. Bussy-Castelnau, who had been recalled from Hyderabad, was captured; and Lally retreated to Pondicherry, where, after an eight-month siege made tense by bitter recrimination, he surrendered in January 1761. The French threat to British power in India had ended. This defeat could be partly blamed on Lally, but there were also other, more vital causes. An overriding factor was the British command of the sea. Lally could get no allies for lack of money and no money for lack of supply from France. The British could supply Madras from both Britain and Bengal. The French company was under the control of the French government, and the company suffered from the vicissitudes of its politics.

History > India and European expansion, c. 1500–1858 > European activity in India, 1498–c. 1760 > European military superiority The supremacy in Indian politics, which seemed to come so suddenly to the Europeans in India, also requires explanation. There was the matter of arms. The Mughals imported their cavalry tactics from Turkestan and their artillery from Turkey. Their firearms remained slow-firing and cumbrous, so that they were outclassed both in quick firing and in range by the 18th-century musket and the cannon landed from the fleets. Infantry could fire three times instead of once before the heavy Mughal cavalry could close, and this destroyed at a blow the Indians' traditional dominance. Moreover, besides this technical advantage, the Europeans also had the advantage of discipline. Troops with loyalty guaranteed by regular pay were more than a match for the personal retinues or mercenary soldiers of the Indian chiefs, however brave they might be individually. A chronic problem with Indian armies at that time was the lack of means to pay them; campaigns would be diverted for collecting revenue for this purpose (when Europeans later trained Indians in the European manner, their advantage increased; discipline removed the uncertain factor of personal leadership, and regular pay removed the Indian general's bugbear of mutiny). A further advantage was civil discipline; the European forces were directed by men themselves under discipline, who were without hereditary connections or ties (though to modern eyes they often seemed refractory or disloyal, by contemporary Indian standards they were regularity itself). Indian loyalty was to leaders who might be killed, to relatives who might back the wrong side, to governments that might (and often did) fail to pay or be overthrown. On the Indian side, whatever the situation, someone was nearly always looking over his shoulder thinking of the chances of a change of leadership or a successful coup. Thus the European possessed not only an expertise denied to the Indians but also a spirit of confidence, a tenacity, and a will to win that was rare in the Indian forces of the time.

History > India and European expansion, c. 1500–1858 > European activity in India, 1498–c. 1760 > Revolution in Bengal The revolution in Bengal was the product of a number of unrelated causes. The imminence of the Seven Years' War prompted the British to send out Clive with an armament to Madras in 1755. Succession troubles in Bengal combined with British mercantile incompetence to produce a crisis at a moment when the French in South India were still awaiting reinforcements from France.

'Ali Vardi Khan—the governor, or nawab, and virtual ruler of Bengal—died in April 1756, leaving his power to his young grandson Siraj-ud-Daulah. The latter's position was insecure because of discontent among both his Hindu and Muslim officers and because he himself was both headstrong and vacillating. On an exaggerated report that the British were fortifying Calcutta, he attacked and took the city after a four-day siege, on June 20, 1756. The flight of the British governor and several councillors added ignominy to defeat. The survivors were held for a night in the local lockup, known as the Black Hole; many were dead the next morning. News of this disaster caused consternation in Madras. An armament preparing to oust Bussy-Castelnau from the Deccan was diverted to Bengal, giving Clive a force of 900 Europeans and 1,500 Indians. He relieved the Calcutta survivors and recovered the city on Jan. 2, 1757. An indecisive engagement led to a treaty with Siraj on February 9, which restored the company's privileges, gave permission to fortify Calcutta, and declared an alliance. This was a decisive point in British Indian history. According to plan, Clive should have returned to Madras to pursue the campaign against the French; but he did not. He sensed both the hostility and insecurity of Siraj's position and began to receive overtures to support a military coup. The chance of installing a friendly and dependent nawab seemed too good to be missed. Having taken this decision, Clive chose the right candidate in Mir Ja'far, an elderly general with much influence in the army. In so acting Clive was probably influenced by the example of Bussy-Castelnau at Hyderabad; for six years Bussy-Castelnau had maintained himself with an Indo-French force, sustaining the nizam, Salabat Jang, and maintaining French influence in the largest South Indian state with outstanding success. This system of a “sponsored” Indian state, controlled but not administered, was the one Clive had in mind for Bengal. The prospects for success seemed good. The event, however, proved otherwise, and there were reasons for this not realized at the time. The chiefs were so lacking in vigour that they made little resistance to British encroachments. External danger could come from only one direction and source—the Mughal authority—and that was at the moment in dissolution. While Bussy-Castelnau had no French merchants to satisfy, the British merchants in Calcutta were ready and eager to exploit the situation. And, because the British company's government was made up entirely of merchants, it is easy to understand why the sponsored state of 1757 became the virtually annexed state of 1765. Before breaking with Siraj, Clive took the French settlement of Chandarnagar, which the nawab left to its fate lest he need British help to repulse an Afghan attack from the north. The actual conflict with Siraj, at Plassey (June 23, 1757), was decided by Clive's resolute refusal to be overawed by superior numbers, by dissensions within the nawab's camp, by Mir Ja'far's failure to support his superior, and by Siraj's own loss of nerve. Plassey was, in fact, more of a cannonade than a battle. It was followed by the flight and execution of Siraj, by the occupation of Murshidabad, the capital, and by the installation of Mir Ja'far as the new nawab. Clive now controlled a sponsored state, and he played the part with great skill. His position was prejudiced at the outset by the nawab's failure to find the expected hoarded treasure with which to fulfill his financial promises to the British. The nawab therefore looked for financial support toward his Hindu deputies, with whom saving was second nature. Clive had therefore to intervene repeatedly. In 1759 he defended Patna from attack by the heir to the Mughal throne, 'Ali Gauhar (later Shah 'Alam II), who hoped to strengthen his position in the confused world of Delhi politics by acquiring Bihar. Clive also had to deal with the Dutch, who, hearing of Mir Ja'far's restiveness and alarmed by the growth of British power in Bengal, sent an armament of six ships to their station at Chinsura on the Hooghly. Though Britain was at peace with the Netherlands at the time, Clive maneuvered the Dutch into acts of aggression, captured their fleet, defeated them on land, and exacted compensation. They retained Chinsura but could never again challenge the British position in Bengal. Clive left Calcutta on Feb. 25, 1760, at the height of his fame and aged only 34, looking forward to an English political career. The nawab was completely dependent on the British, to whose trade it seemed that the rich resources of Bengal were now open. But the prospect was less brilliant than it looked; and for this, and for the troubles that ensued in the next few years, Clive had a direct responsibility. Two measures undermined the plan of a sponsored state, leading to the company's bankruptcy on the one hand and to the virtual annexation of Bengal on the other. The first of these was an understanding with Mir Ja'far, not mentioned in the actual treaty, that the private internal trade of the East India Company's servants should be exempt from the usual tolls and customs duties (the company's trade with Europe was already exempt from duty under concessions made in 1717). The company's monopoly covered the actual trade with Europe and the articles purchased in India to make up its “investment”; but its servants were free to trade otherwise within Bengal and overseas to Asian countries. It was this private trade that, in the virtual absence of salaries, gave most of them their subsistence and some their fortunes. In Bengal this private trade was subject to internal duties. Mir Ja'far's concession, expressed in the form of dastaks, or passes, gave them immense advantages over their Indian competitors. From free trade many passed to intimidation; agents were employed who used the British name to terrorize the countryside and infringe the company's monopoly. The second measure was the taking of presents. This was not forbidden by the company and was, in fact, a recognized custom; but it unlocked the floodgates of corruption. The treasure of Murshidabad was reputed to be worth £40,000,000 sterling. On the strength of this rumour, large amounts were paid to the armed forces and to the company leaders. In addition, Clive obtained a further Mughal title and then claimed a revenue assignment, or jagir, for its upkeep, which was worth £30,000 a year. In the context of contemporary values these grants equaled nearly one-quarter of the average annual Bengal revenue, or about one-seventeenth of the then annual revenue of Great Britain. With such a vigorous opening of the floodgates, it is not surprising that the other servants of the company asked for more almost as a matter of right and that the company's directors in London, with relatives and connections on the spot, preferred verbal denunciations to any resolute or sustained action. The effects became speedily apparent when in fact the £40,000,000 sterling turned out to be £1,500,000, so that (as Clive later admitted to a parliamentary enquiry), the nawab had to sell jewels, goods, and furniture to meet his obligations. The results of these measures unfolded themselves in the next decade and continued to be felt for a generation.

History > India and European expansion, c. 1500–1858 > The extension of British power, 1760–1856 > The period of disorder, 1760–72 The departure of Clive signaled the release of acquisitive urges by the company's Bengal servants. These urges were so strong that the governor, Henry Vansittart (served 1760–64), found himself unable to control them. Under the company's constitution, he had only one vote in a council of up to a dozen and could be overruled by any knot of determined men. During these years, a body of British merchants, long separated from British standards and social restraints, suddenly found themselves with real but undefined authority over the whole of a large and rich province. It is not surprising that they thought mainly of getting rich quickly.

The first step was the deposition of the nawab Mir Ja'far on the grounds of old age and incompetence. His supplanter, Mir Qasim, reasserted his authority. He paid £200,000 in gratuities, of which Vansittart received £50,000 besides an allowance of £18,000 from the company and private trade on his own account. In addition, he ceded the districts of Burdwan, Midnapore, and Chittagong. Both sides wanted power, and both sides were short of money. The nawab had lost substantial land revenue and the lucrative tolls on the British merchants' private trade; the company was receiving no remittances from Britain, because the directors considered that Bengal should pay for itself. A clash was inevitable. Mir Qasim removed his capital to distant Monghyr, where he could not be so easily overseen, asserted his authority in the districts, and raised a disciplined force under an Armenian officer. He then turned to the company and negotiated a settlement with Vansittart, by which the company's merchants were to pay an ad valorem duty of 9 percent, against an Indian merchant's duty of 40 percent. At this the Calcutta council revolted, reducing the duty to 2.5 percent and on salt only. The breach came in 1763, when Mir Qasim, after defeat in four pitched battles, murdered his Indian bankers and British prisoners and fled to Avadh. The next year Mir Qasim returned with the emperor Shah 'Alam II and his minister Shuja'-ud-Daulah to be finally defeated at Buxar (Baksar). This conflict rather than Plassey was the decisive battle that gave Bengal to the British. These events had been viewed with growing alarm in London. The news of the Mir Qasim campaign coincided with the victory of Clive's faction in the company over that of Lawrence Sulivan. Clive used it to appoint himself governor with power to act over the head of the council; he intended an administrative reformation and a political settlement. He arrived in May 1765 to find that the British victory at Buxar had placed Shah 'Alam in his hands but had created a situation of deep confusion in other respects. Mir Ja'far had been restored and had died; his second son had succeeded at the cost of £139,000 in presents. The British merchants and their agents were the unresisted predators of the Bengal economy, and no one knew the next step to take. Clive acted with extraordinary vigour. Within four days of arrival he had set up a Select Committee; and, when he left less than two years later, he had effected another revolution. Turning to India's political situation, Clive had to decide where to stop. No one barred his way to Delhi, and he could at that moment have turned the whole Mughal Empire into a company-sponsored state. But he realized that Delhi was easier to have than to hold. He fixed his frontier at the borders of Bihar and Avadh. Shah 'Alam was given the districts of Kora and Allahabad, and he settled in the latter city, with a tribute (or subsidy) of £260,000 from Bengal (nearly 10 percent of its estimated revenue). Shuja' received back Avadh, with a guarantee of defense, in return for paying the troops involved and a cash indemnity. These two were to be buffers between the company and the Marathas and possible marauders from the north. Clive's next step was to settle Bengal's own status. The Mughal emperor still had much influence, though little power; his complete discountenance might therefore have done the company more harm than good. Clive's solution was to obtain from Shah 'Alam the dewanee, or revenue-collecting power, in Bengal and Bihar (the company was thus the imperial diwan for those two provinces). The nawab was left in charge of the judiciary and magistracy, but he was helpless because he had no army and could get money to raise one only from the company. This was Clive's system of “dual government.” The actual administration remained in Indian hands, and for superintendence Clive appointed a deputy diwan, Muhammad Rida Khan, who was at the same time appointed the nawab's deputy. The chain was thus complete. The company, acting in the name of the emperor and using Indian personnel and the traditional apparatus of government, now ruled Bengal. Their agent was Rida Khan; the success of the experiment turned on his efficiency and the extent of the governor's support. Within the company, Clive enforced his authority by accepting some resignations and enforcing others. Presents of more than 4,000 rupees were forbidden, and those between that figure and 1,000 rupees were only to be received with official consent. The regulation of private trade was more difficult, for the company paid virtually no salaries. Clive formed a Society of Trade, which operated the salt monopoly, to provide salaries on a graduated scale; but the company directors disallowed this on the ground of expense, and two years later they replaced it by commissions on the revenue, which cost the company more. Finally, Clive dealt with overgrown military allowances with equal vigour, overcoming a mutiny headed by a brigade commander. He used a legacy from Mir Ja'far to start the first pension fund for the Indian army. Clive left Calcutta in February 1767. His work—diplomatic, political, and administrative—was a beginning rather than a complete settlement. But in each direction, instead of looking back to the past, it reached out to the future. This creative period exacted a heavy price. Clive was pursued to England by his enemies, who launched a parliamentary attack, which, though triumphantly repulsed in 1773, led to his suicide the following year. The year 1765 marks the real beginning of the British Empire in India as a territorial dominion. It is worth noting how the company's servants so enriched themselves at this time that they undermined the economy of Bengal, and those who returned to Britain became a byword for ostentation. Apart from the great political prizes already mentioned, it must be remembered that all the company's servants were engaged in private trade on their own account. Their new authority and the company's power enabled them to exploit their trade with little hindrance. They had the means of using intimidation (through their agents) against Indian rivals like the indigo growers and Indian police, customs, revenue, and judicial officials. Presents and bribes were the price Indians had to pay for freedom from harassment. They were able, through their connection with the administration, to arrange virtual monopolies for particular articles in particular districts, fixing a low purchase price as well as a high selling price. They could arrange commissions on revenue collection, mercantile transactions, and any form of commercial activity. What was not done through agents could be arranged through intermediaries, who also, of course, had their own compensation. Thus a man could make a fortune, lose it in Britain, return for another, lose it again, and return for a third. It is significant that from the time of Clive's second governorship lamentations increased that the opportunities for quick fortunes were slipping away.

History > India and European expansion, c. 1500–1858 > The extension of British power, 1760–1856 > The Company Bahadur The regime that Clive established in 1765 was really a private dominion of the East India Company. It was not a British colony, and it fitted into the very flexible structure of the dying Mughal Empire. The structure of the administration was Mughal, not British, and its operators were Indian, personified by the deputy nawab Muhammad Rida Khan. It was a continuation of the traditional state under British control, and it can be aptly described by the company's popular title, the Company Bahadur—the Valiant, or Honourable, Company. This Company Bahadur state continued through Warren Hastings' time and in essence until the early 19th century, although Lord Cornwallis (governor-general, 1786–93) substituted largely British for Indian personnel. The revenue was collected by the officers of the deputy nawab; the law administered was the current Mughal (Islamic) criminal code, with the traditional personal codes of the Hindu and Muslim communities; the language of administration was Persian. Only the army broke with the past, with its British officers, its discipline, and its Western organization and tactics.

It was this state that Warren Hastings inherited when he became governor of Bengal in 1772. His 13-year rule can be divided into his internal administration, his dealings with his council, and his foreign policy. Hastings inherited a state that in the five years since Clive's departure had stepped back toward the corruption from which Clive had rescued it. But Hastings was armed with authority by the directors, so that the first two years of his government were a period of real reform. He first dealt with the dastaks, or free passes, the use of which had crept in again since Clive's departure; they were abolished, and a uniform tariff of 2.5 percent was enforced on all internal trade. Private trade by the company's servants continued but within enforceable limits. The Bengalis began to experience some security and a settled order, if not yet an equitable society. Next, the company “stood forth as diwan,” taking over the responsibility for the revenue collection from Rida Khan, who was arraigned for corruption; the charges could not be proved, however, even with the approving support of the British authorities. Hastings substituted British for Indian collectors working under a Board of Revenue. In a way this was a retrograde step, for the new collectors were often as corrupt as their predecessors and more powerful; but the change gave legal power to those who already wielded it in fact, and in the future their irregularities could more easily be dealt with than could the surreptitious dealings through the old Indian collectors. Finally, Hastings instituted a network of civil and criminal courts in place of the deputy nawab's. The same law was administered by British judges, who were often incompetent, but a model was provided into which Western ideas and practices could later be fed. These changes held good through the period of Hastings' rule and may be said to have provided a viable, though not yet very competent or equitable, state. Criminal and personal law cases were virtually in the hands of Indian assessors to British judges who did not know Persian; revenue administration was distorted by the collectors' desire for both gain and increased returns. Hastings was least successful in his revenue administration, in which he never advanced beyond a condition of trial and error; a five-year settlement made in ignorance proved unsuccessful, and he was finally reduced to annual settlements, which meant hit-and-miss arrangements with the traditional zamindars (land-revenue collectors). Hastings was personally incorrupt, but he had to tolerate a good deal in others and to resort to extensive jobbing to placate his supporters both in Bengal and in London. He left a personal legend behind him, but his administration was disorderly as well as strong. A reason for this can be found in his relations with his council. Under the Regulating Act of 1773, Hastings became governor general of Fort William in Bengal, with powers of superintendence over Madras and Bombay. He was also given a Supreme Court, administering English law to the British and those connected with them, and a council of four, appointed in the Regulating Act. The leading council member, Sir Philip Francis, hoped to succeed him, and, because Hastings had no power of veto, Francis was able with two supporters to overrule him. For two years Hastings was outvoted, until the death of one member enabled him to use his casting vote. But the struggle continued until Francis returned to London in 1780, to continue his vendetta there. The struggle culminated with charges against Hastings of malversation by an Indian entrepreneur, Nand Kumar, and with the latter's conviction before the Supreme Court of perjury and his execution under English law. The episode exposed the moral weakness of the council majority, which failed to reprieve Nand Kumar, and convinced the Indians of Hastings' overriding power. This struggle, lasting for years, left Hastings triumphant but also embittered; he had not only to deal with the opposition in Calcutta, which never ceased, but also with the constant threat of supersession in the involved politics of London at that time. This strain probably accounts for the acts that formed important items in Hastings' subsequent impeachment—these were the dunning of Raja Chait Singh of Varanasi and his deposition in 1781 and the pressuring of the Begums of Avadh (the mother and grandmother of the nawab Asaf-ud-Daulah) for the same reason. Hastings' financial difficulties at the time were great, but such actions were harsh and high-handed. The impeachment of Warren Hastings (1787–95) at the behest of Edmund Burke and the Whigs, which followed his return from India and ended in his acquittal but retirement, was a kind of very rough justice. Hastings had saved for the company its Indian dominions, and he was relatively incorrupt. But the charges served notice that the company's servants were responsible for their actions toward those they governed, and for these actions they were answerable to Parliament. Hastings was so identified with the company's rule that he was the inevitable target for any such assertion of principle. History > India and European expansion, c. 1500–1858 > The extension of British power, 1760–1856 > The company and the state During the first half of the 18th century, the East India Company was a trading corporation with a steady annual dividend of 8–10 percent, offering its servants prospects of a modest fortune through private trade, along with great hazards to health and life. It was directed in London by 24 directors—elected annually by the shareholding body, the Court of Proprietors—who worked through a series of committees. The Bengal adventure from 1757 turned the two courts—of directors and proprietors—into political bodies, because they now controlled a great Eastern state. Shares became political counters, the purchase of which might secure votes needed to change the company's policy. A second result was the return to Britain of the company's servants with fortunes; their ostentation and lack of restraint earned them the title of nabobs. These events soon produced reactions. The shareholders wanted to share in this new wealth, in the guise of increased dividends, and the directors wanted the company as well as its servants to benefit from this wealth. Two processes were thus set in motion—one a rising pressure for increased dividends and the other an attempt by the company to discipline its servants and to secure some profit for itself. Broadly speaking, it was the success of the first and the failure of the second that provoked state intervention in the company's affairs. The close personal connection between the “direction” and the company's servants themselves weighed heavily and eventually stultified the directors' efforts. It produced an infirmity of purpose, which led to the return to Bengal by one faction of servants dismissed for irregularities by another—a factionalism epitomized by the struggle between Clive and Sulivan for control of the company. These developments occupied the 1760s, drastically reducing the prestige of the company. On the side of discipline, alarm at the overruling of Vansittart and the wars against Mir Qasim and Shah 'Alam led to the dispatch of Clive as governor in 1765. As the effect of Clive's measures diminished after his return to England in 1767, three “supervisors” were dispatched to Bengal in 1769 with plenary powers, but they were lost at sea. Then Warren Hastings was appointed in 1772 with a reform mandate. But it was too late, for bankruptcy was now knocking at the door. The company had hoped for large profits from Clive's first control of Bengal. The hopes then shortly dashed were revived by his second governorship. Clive believed that he had secured a revenue surplus of £2,000,000 for the company. On the strength of these expectations, the company's dividend was raised to 12.5 percent in 1767; in the same year the first signs of parliamentary opposition were bought off by the offer of £400,000 a year to the state in return for undisturbed possession of Bengal. As the expectations withered, this became a financial millstone that compelled the company in 1772 to ask for the loan of £1,000,000 to avert bankruptcy. This opened the floodgates of parliamentary criticism, leading to committees of inquiry and revelations of malpractices, to Clive's suicide (1774), and to the beginning of state intervention. In 1773 the British government gave a loan of £1,400,000 to the company, but its price was the Regulating Act, passed the same year. The act sought to “regulate” the affairs of the company, in both London and India. In London, the qualifications fee for a vote was raised from £500 to £1,000, and the directors' terms were extended from one to four years, with a year's gap before reelection. This ended the jobbing of votes for the control of policy by private interests and gave continuity of policy to the direction. In India, a governor-generalship of Fort William in Bengal was established, with supervisory control over the other Indian settlements and Warren Hastings as its first incumbent. Hastings was given four named councillors, but future appointments were to be made by the company. Finally, a Supreme Court with a chief justice and three judges was set up. The Regulating Act was a first step toward taking the political direction of British India out of the hands of the company and of securing a unified overall control. But it had serious defects, which bedeviled administration in Bengal and made India (despite British preoccupation with the American Revolution) a leading subject of controversy over the next 20 years. The governor-general possessed no veto in his council. With three political councillors from Britain, each ready to take Warren Hastings' place, this led to his virtual supersession by the majority for two years and to a paralysis of the executive. Hastings used the energy in fighting his council that should have gone to reforming Bengal. The superintending power added responsibility with little power to enforce it. The Supreme Court decided to administer English law (the only law it knew) and to apply it not only to all the British in Bengal but also to all Indians connected with them; in practice this meant those Indians in Calcutta, and it led to such grave abuses as the hanging of Nand Kumar for an offense not recognized as being capital in any Indian code. In 1780 the company's privileges ran out, but this was during the crisis of the American Revolution, so that a decision was delayed until 1784. Charles James Fox's radical measure to transfer the control of British India to seven commissioners was defeated by the king's influence in the House of Lords, but the next year the matter was settled for more than 70 years by Prime Minister William Pitt's India Act of 1784. Its essence was the institution of a dual control. The directors were left in charge of commerce and as political executants, but they were politically superintended by a new Board of Control, the president of which, in the person of Henry Dundas, soon became the virtual minister for India. The directors dealt with the board through a secret committee of three, but their dispatches to India could be altered, vetoed, and dictated by the board. The governor-general could be recalled by the crown. In India, the governor's council was reduced to three, including the commander in chief, and by an amending act he acquired the veto, which Warren Hastings had missed so much. Finally, there was to be a parliamentary inquiry before each 20-year renewal of the company's charter. Pitt's India Act proved to be a landmark, because it gave the British government control of policy without patronage. The cumbrous dual system developed into a seesaw arrangement of give and take, becoming ever stronger on the government side as greater ability, influence, and power had their effect. The inquiry provision produced a national inquest on Indian affairs every 20 years, marking successive stages in the diminution of the company's political power. On the first such inquiry, in 1793, the company repelled an attempt to compel it to support Christian missionary work; this incident led to the foundation of the Church Missionary Society in 1799. In 1813 the company was obliged by Parliament to admit missionaries and was deprived of its monopoly on trade. By the Act of 1833 it lost its trade altogether and was thenceforth a governing corporation under increasing state surveillance. In 1853, with the introduction of competitive examinations, the company lost most of its patronage and also had to admit nominated directors. Policies were increasingly dictated to a sulky or apathetic board. The last case of the recall of a governor-general by the company was that of Lord Ellenborough in 1844; this was the real swan song of the company, because it was recognized that such a thing could never happen again. The company had become a managing agency of the British government.

History > India and European expansion, c. 1500–1858 > The extension of British power, 1760–1856 > Relations with the Marathas and Mysore After Clive's settlement in 1765, the East India Company had no desire for any further acquisitions. Its object was still trade; it regarded the acquisition of Bengal as a political framework for the safe conduct of trade, justified by the danger of near anarchy in its most profitable scene of operations. But such a resolution was easier to make than to keep. Indian states were ever ready to seek European help in achieving their own projects; many of the company's servants looked longingly at territorial revenues that might assist their own enrichment, and the exigencies of Indian politics at times made nonalignment difficult to observe.

In 1765 the three centres of the company's power were independent of each other, but the post-Mughal Indian pattern was becoming clear. In the north there were the Mughal fragments of Allahabad, Avadh, and Delhi, with the Sikhs resurgent in the Punjab. In the Deccan the nizam of Hyderabad maintained uneasily his Mughal regime, sometimes overwhelmed by two vigorous and expansive powers—the Marathas and Mysore. The Marathas had made their bid for the Mughal succession in the previous decade, and they were now recovering from a disastrous defeat at Panipat (1761). The unified leadership of the peshwa had given way to a confederacy of the peshwa and four military dictatorships developing into monarchies. The Marathas were restless, energetic, and acquisitive; their greatest enemy was their own divisions. In the south the old Hindu state of Mysore had passed into the hands of a Muslim military adventurer of genius, Haidar 'Ali Khan, in 1762. When Warren Hastings took overall control of the company's possessions in 1774, Madras had already stumbled into war with Haidar 'Ali and had submitted to a virtually dictated peace under the walls of Madras in 1769. The nawab of Karnataka had become by degrees dependent on the company because he needed its support against the threat of Haidar and the nizam. Ingenious and feckless, the nawab involved Madras in South Indian politics and the company in his affairs by borrowing from its servants. Hastings had a natural gift for realpolitik, but he was tied to a policy of nonaggression. Much of his diplomatic skill was spent repairing the blunders of others. His major work for British India was preserving the company's dominion against a coalition of country powers, virtually unaided from home, at a time when Britain was itself hard pressed both in America and by a European coalition. His first work was to safeguard Bengal from the reviving power of the Marathas, who had conducted Shah 'Alam to Delhi in 1771. Hastings intervened and handed Allahabad and Kora to Shuja'-ud-Daulah of Avadh in return for a subsidy and a treaty. The following year he found himself assisting the nawab of Avadh to crush the Afghan Rohillas between the Jumna (modern Yamuna) and the Ganges (this stroke was the first item in the indictment at his impeachment, but its effect was to stabilize the North Indian situation for the next 10 years). In western India, Hastings was the victim of Bombay brashness and of directorial blunders. A succession struggle in Pune for the peshwaship led Bombay to support Raghunatha Rao in the hope of securing the islands of Salsette and Bassein. When this was countermanded by Calcutta, London intervened to renew the venture. In 1779 a British army was surrounded on its way to Pune, one month before a force sent by Hastings completed a brilliant march across India at Surat. In 1782 the British made peace with the peshwa, abandoning Raghunatha and having only Salsette to show for seven years of war. This first round with the Marathas was a draw. While this war was in progress, Hastings was confronted with a far greater menace. In 1780 the ineptitude of Madras provoked a coalition of the nizam, Haidar, and the Marathas, which defeated the company's armies and swept over Karnataka. Though without hope of succour from Britain, itself hard-pressed, Hastings set about sustaining the Madras forces and dividing his foes. In 1781 the military balance was restored, and the next year the Marathas made peace. Haidar died (1782), French help arrived too late to affect the issue, and in 1784 the Treaty of Mangalore with Haidar's son Tipu restored the status quo. Hastings had thus little to show in the way of empire building. His feat of defense without external aid was nevertheless remarkable. He preserved the British dominion in India, and by so doing he made it possible for others to extend it. The company had become one of the recognized great powers of India. Pitt's Act of 1784 reiterated the company's own intentions by forbidding aggressive wars and annexations. Lord Cornwallis and his successor Sir John Shore (governor-general 1793–98) were eager to comply, but Cornwallis nevertheless found himself involved in the third Mysore war (1790–92) with Tipu Sultan, who possessed his father's ability without his judgment. The cause was a combination of Tipu's intransigence with conflicting obligations undertaken by the Madras government. It took three campaigns before Cornwallis could bring Tipu to bay. Half his dominions were annexed, more as a precaution than as an exercise in imperialism. But Tipu remained formidable and, not unnaturally, more hostile than ever.

History > India and European expansion, c. 1500–1858 > The extension of British power, 1760–1856 > The ascent to paramountcy India, 1797–1805. At this point a radical change occured in British policy. Two causes were principally responsible. There was a growing body of opinion within the company that only British control of India could end the constant wars and provide really satisfactory conditions for trade; full dominion would be economical as well as salutary. The more compelling immediate cause was the transformation of European politics by the French Revolution. A new French threat to India emerged, this time overland, with Napoleon's Egyptian expedition of 1798–99. It was certain that a French army under such a leader would find many friends in India to welcome it, and not least Tipu Sultan.

History > India and European expansion, c. 1500–1858 > The extension of British power, 1760–1856 > The ascent to paramountcy > The government of Lord Wellesley The next governor-general, Lord Mornington (later title, Wellesley), combined the convictions of the imperialist group with a mandate to deal with the French. Wellesley was thus able to use this fear of the French as a cover for his imperialism until he was near to complete success. His term of office (1798–1805) was therefore a decisive period in the rise of the British dominion.

Wellesley decided first to strike at Mysore, still a formidable military power and avowedly hostile. He had little difficulty getting the nizam for an ally and securing the neutrality of the peshwa. The nizam, hard pressed by the Marathas, was persuaded to disband his contingent of French-trained troops in return for a promise of protection. This was the first of Wellesley's subsidiary treaties (see below). Tipu Sultan had entertained French republican envoys and had planted a tree of liberty at Seringapatam, but when the British stormed Seringapatam in May 1799 he was isolated and at bay, and he found too late that concessions, in the Indian tradition, would not save him. Tipu died fighting in the breach. The British rejoicings over this unexpectedly complete victory emphasized the fear that the Mysore monarchy had inspired. Wellesley tempered his imperialism with diplomacy by restoring the child head of the old Hindu reigning family as the ruler of half of Tipu's dominions; the other half was divided between the nizam and the company. This was the real beginning of the Madras presidency as a substantial territorial unit. For the next three years Wellesley was occupied with certain exercises in realpolitik and with developing his device of the subsidiary treaty. The realpolitik was evidenced in four directions. On the death (1801) of the reigning Karnatic nawab, Wellesley took over his territories, pensioning the new nawab with one-fifth of the revenue. The same fate befell the small but highly cultivated state of Tanjore, to the south of Karnataka (1799), and the city-port state of Surat on a disputed succession. The biggest of these exercises concerned the Mughal successor state of Avadh in northern India, which had been in treaty relationship with the company since 1765. This rich state had fallen into disorder under the listless though cultured rule of Asaf-ud-Daulah; on his death in 1797 a succession dispute and an Afghan invasion of the Punjab gave Wellesley a welcome opportunity for interference. He pressed the nawab to disband his troops and increase his payment to the company for his subsidiary force. When the nawab offered to abdicate, it was accepted immediately; but, on finding that abdication would mean annexation and not his son's succession, he withdrew it, and Wellesley treated him as contumacious. In 1801 Wellesley annexed half the state, running along the northern and eastern banks of the Ganges, including Rohilkhand. Whatever the verdict on the means employed, this move had important consequences. Avadh was isolated, and a jumping-off place was secured for an attack on the northern Marathas. The company was no longer looking for buffer states as shields against attack but for territory that would serve as springboards for offensive action. This change of attitude applies to Wellesley's development of the subsidiary system. In the hands of Clive and Warren Hastings, it was a defensive instrument to safeguard the company's possessions; in the hands of Wellesley it was an offensive device with which to subject independent states to British control. The essence of the system was that the company undertook to protect a state from external attack in return for the control of its foreign relations. For this purpose it provided a subsidiary force of company troops, who were commonly stationed in a cantonment near the state capital. The state paid for this force by means of a subsidy, which was often commuted into a cession of territory. In order to protect itself from an external enemy, the state in question bound itself irrevocably to the British power, providing at its heart, as it were, the means of its own coercion should it ever wish to resume independence. Wellesley first applied this system in 1798 to Hyderabad, when the aging Nizam 'Ali Khan was in dire fear of the Marathas. In 1800 the subsidy was compounded for the nizam's share of the Mysore annexations. The same system was applied to Avadh, when the great annexation of 1801 was said to be on account of the subsidiary force. It was then the turn of the Marathas—the last bastion of Indian independence. Had the Maratha chiefs remained united, Wellesley could have accomplished little; the death of the young peshwa released fresh dissensions, however, heightened by that of the minister Nana Fadnavis in 1800. The chiefs Holkar and Daulat Rao Sindhia contended for power over the peshwa, Baji Rao II. On Holkar's success in 1802, Baji Rao fled to Bassein and applied for British aid. Such an opportunity at the centre of Maratha power was not to be missed; there was also the justification that Daulat Rao Sindhia, in the north, had 40,000 French-trained troops under a French commander. The Treaty of Bassein (Dec. 31, 1802) placed, as it were, a time bomb at the heart of the Maratha confederacy; British troops were stationed at Pune, at the price of a cession of territory, and the peshwa was reduced to dependency on the British. This action provoked the Second Maratha War—at first against Daulat Rao Sindhia and Raghuji Bhonsle and then against Holkar. At first the British won resounding victories. Wellesley's brother Arthur (later the Duke of Wellington) defeated the Sindhia-Bhonsle coalition in west-central India, while Lord Lake broke up Sindhia's French army, occupied Delhi, and took the aged emperor Shah 'Alam II under protection. Then came a check, however, with the intervention of Holkar using the old Maratha cavalry tactics, forcing the British to retreat, and besieging Delhi. Though Holkar was later defeated, this was the signal for which exasperated directors and a doubting ministry had been waiting. Wellesley was recalled. His race for hegemony had been lost in the last lap. But Wellesley's work, avowedly imperialistic, made ultimate supremacy inevitable. The Marathas were too broken to reunite, and there was no one to take their place.

History > India and European expansion, c. 1500–1858 > The extension of British power, 1760–1856 > The ascent to paramountcy > The government of Lord Wellesley The next governor-general, Lord Mornington (later title, Wellesley), combined the convictions of the imperialist group with a mandate to deal with the French. Wellesley was thus able to use this fear of the French as a cover for his imperialism until he was near to complete success. His term of office (1798–1805) was therefore a decisive period in the rise of the British dominion.

Wellesley decided first to strike at Mysore, still a formidable military power and avowedly hostile. He had little difficulty getting the nizam for an ally and securing the neutrality of the peshwa. The nizam, hard pressed by the Marathas, was persuaded to disband his contingent of French-trained troops in return for a promise of protection. This was the first of Wellesley's subsidiary treaties (see below). Tipu Sultan had entertained French republican envoys and had planted a tree of liberty at Seringapatam, but when the British stormed Seringapatam in May 1799 he was isolated and at bay, and he found too late that concessions, in the Indian tradition, would not save him. Tipu died fighting in the breach. The British rejoicings over this unexpectedly complete victory emphasized the fear that the Mysore monarchy had inspired. Wellesley tempered his imperialism with diplomacy by restoring the child head of the old Hindu reigning family as the ruler of half of Tipu's dominions; the other half was divided between the nizam and the company. This was the real beginning of the Madras presidency as a substantial territorial unit. For the next three years Wellesley was occupied with certain exercises in realpolitik and with developing his device of the subsidiary treaty. The realpolitik was evidenced in four directions. On the death (1801) of the reigning Karnatic nawab, Wellesley took over his territories, pensioning the new nawab with one-fifth of the revenue. The same fate befell the small but highly cultivated state of Tanjore, to the south of Karnataka (1799), and the city-port state of Surat on a disputed succession. The biggest of these exercises concerned the Mughal successor state of Avadh in northern India, which had been in treaty relationship with the company since 1765. This rich state had fallen into disorder under the listless though cultured rule of Asaf-ud-Daulah; on his death in 1797 a succession dispute and an Afghan invasion of the Punjab gave Wellesley a welcome opportunity for interference. He pressed the nawab to disband his troops and increase his payment to the company for his subsidiary force. When the nawab offered to abdicate, it was accepted immediately; but, on finding that abdication would mean annexation and not his son's succession, he withdrew it, and Wellesley treated him as contumacious. In 1801 Wellesley annexed half the state, running along the northern and eastern banks of the Ganges, including Rohilkhand. Whatever the verdict on the means employed, this move had important consequences. Avadh was isolated, and a jumping-off place was secured for an attack on the northern Marathas. The company was no longer looking for buffer states as shields against attack but for territory that would serve as springboards for offensive action. This change of attitude applies to Wellesley's development of the subsidiary system. In the hands of Clive and Warren Hastings, it was a defensive instrument to safeguard the company's possessions; in the hands of Wellesley it was an offensive device with which to subject independent states to British control. The essence of the system was that the company undertook to protect a state from external attack in return for the control of its foreign relations. For this purpose it provided a subsidiary force of company troops, who were commonly stationed in a cantonment near the state capital. The state paid for this force by means of a subsidy, which was often commuted into a cession of territory. In order to protect itself from an external enemy, the state in question bound itself irrevocably to the British power, providing at its heart, as it were, the means of its own coercion should it ever wish to resume independence. Wellesley first applied this system in 1798 to Hyderabad, when the aging Nizam 'Ali Khan was in dire fear of the Marathas. In 1800 the subsidy was compounded for the nizam's share of the Mysore annexations. The same system was applied to Avadh, when the great annexation of 1801 was said to be on account of the subsidiary force. It was then the turn of the Marathas—the last bastion of Indian independence. Had the Maratha chiefs remained united, Wellesley could have accomplished little; the death of the young peshwa released fresh dissensions, however, heightened by that of the minister Nana Fadnavis in 1800. The chiefs Holkar and Daulat Rao Sindhia contended for power over the peshwa, Baji Rao II. On Holkar's success in 1802, Baji Rao fled to Bassein and applied for British aid. Such an opportunity at the centre of Maratha power was not to be missed; there was also the justification that Daulat Rao Sindhia, in the north, had 40,000 French-trained troops under a French commander. The Treaty of Bassein (Dec. 31, 1802) placed, as it were, a time bomb at the heart of the Maratha confederacy; British troops were stationed at Pune, at the price of a cession of territory, and the peshwa was reduced to dependency on the British. This action provoked the Second Maratha War—at first against Daulat Rao Sindhia and Raghuji Bhonsle and then against Holkar. At first the British won resounding victories. Wellesley's brother Arthur (later the Duke of Wellington) defeated the Sindhia-Bhonsle coalition in west-central India, while Lord Lake broke up Sindhia's French army, occupied Delhi, and took the aged emperor Shah 'Alam II under protection. Then came a check, however, with the intervention of Holkar using the old Maratha cavalry tactics, forcing the British to retreat, and besieging Delhi. Though Holkar was later defeated, this was the signal for which exasperated directors and a doubting ministry had been waiting. Wellesley was recalled. His race for hegemony had been lost in the last lap. But Wellesley's work, avowedly imperialistic, made ultimate supremacy inevitable. The Marathas were too broken to reunite, and there was no one to take their place.

History > India and European expansion, c. 1500–1858 > The extension of British power, 1760–1856 > The ascent to paramountcy > The government of Lord Minto India, 1797–1805. The next 10 years were an interlude, not a new era. During this period both Sindhia and Holkar plundered the chiefs of Rajasthan, thus preparing them mentally for future British overlordship. Meanwhile, bands of freebooters, known as Pindaris, raided the Nagpur and Hyderabad states in widening circles and thence entered British territory. These were dispossessed villagers and discarded soldiers—the human flotsam and jetsam of the frequent wars. They had the elusiveness of guerrillas, and they received the tacit countenance of the Maratha princes but not the goodwill of the population, who were their principal victims.

Lord Minto (governor-general 1807–13) was occupied with the revived French danger, once again serious with the Treaty of Tilsit (1807) and Napoleon's resulting alliance with Russia. To guard against a French-sponsored Russian attack, British missions were sent to Afghanistan, to Persia, and to Ranjit Singh, the Sikh ruler of the Punjab. The first two proved fruitless, but the Treaty of Amritsar with Ranjit Singh (1809) defined British and Sikh spheres of influence and settled relations for a generation. Minto's other achievement was the capture of the Île de France and of Java from the French-controlled Dutch; the former island became a colony (now the dominion of Mauritius), and the latter was restored under the peace treaty. One result of this episode was the acquisition of the key point of Singapore by Sir Stamford Raffles in 1819.

History > India and European expansion, c. 1500–1858 > The extension of British power, 1760–1856 > The ascent to paramountcy > The government of Lord Hastings The end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 opened a new era in India by strengthening the commercial and economic arguments for completing supremacy and by removing all fear of the French. The Pindari raids, which grew year by year until they affected both the Bengal and Madras presidencies, added further reasons for action. The final act was directed by Lord Hastings (governor-general 1813–23), who came to India as a consolation for his failure to attain the premiership under his friend George Frederick, the prince regent. Lord Hastings, however, first had to deal, in 1814–16, with the Gurkhas of Nepal, who inflicted a series of repulses on a Bengal army unprepared for mountain warfare. Each side earned the respect of the other. The resulting Treaty of Kathmandu (1816) gave the British the tract of hill country where Simla (Shimla), the site of the future summer capital of British India, was situated, and it settled relations with British India for the rest of the British period. Nepal remained independent and isolated, supported by the export of soldiers to strengthen the British military presence in India. Lord Hastings then turned to the Pindaris. By a large-scale and well-planned enveloping movement, he hoped to enclose them in an iron net. But this involved entering Maratha territories and seeking the cooperation of their princes. Sindhia agreed after agonizing indecision, and this really settled the issue. Holkar's state was in disorder and was easily defeated. Both the raja of Nagpur and the peshwa resisted and attacked the British forces stationed under their respective subsidiary treaties. Nagpur quickly collapsed, but the peshwa kept up a running fight before surrendering in June 1818. The Pindari bands themselves, chased hither and thither, broke up or surrendered. The East India Company was thus the undisputed master of India, as far as the Sutlej River in the Punjab. This episode was completed by the acceptance of British suzerainty by the Rajput chiefs of Rajasthan, central India, and Kathiawar, as they had formerly accepted the Mughals. Thus the year 1818 marks a watershed, when the British Empire in India became the British Empire of India.

History > India and European expansion, c. 1500–1858 > The extension of British power, 1760–1856 > The ascent to paramountcy > The settlement of 1818 The diplomatic settlement of 1818, except for a few annexations before 1857, remained in force until 1947 and is therefore worth some attention. The company, under the influence of its guiding star of economy, wished to be saved as much of the expense of administering India as possible, especially the less fertile portions. Having controlled the larger states by its subsidiary forces (for which they paid), it was content with tribute from the remainder, with control posts at strategic points. Thus Kathiawar was controlled from Baroda, and Rajasthan from Ajmer. There was no thought of integration, as in Mughal days. The states were isolated and excluded from any connection with the British. About half of India remained under Indian rulers, robbed of any power of aggression and deprived of any opportunity of cooperation—in the south were the large units of Mysore, Hyderabad, and Travancore; in the west, the states of Sivaji's family; across the centre to the east, Nagpur and a number of poor “jungle” states; in the west and west-central areas, numerous Rajput and other Hindu chiefs with the surviving Maratha states of Sindhia, Holkar, and the Gaikwad; beyond the Jumna, some Sikh princedoms; and in the Ganges Valley, the still prosperous and disorderly state of Avadh. In all there were more than 360 units; politically they were like the surviving fragments of a broken jigsaw puzzle, with all its complexity but without its unity.

The subjection of a whole subcontinent containing a unique civilization has long been a source of historical wonderment. The one-time explanations of innate superiority and of mere fate are no longer seriously entertained. But analysis goes far to dissipate the mystery. In the first place, the feat was not unique; the Turkish Muslims had twice done much the same—for shorter periods, it is true, but also with fewer resources. All these achievements were made possible by the innate divisiveness of Hindu society, rent by class and caste divisions, which rendered it unusually willing to call in unwelcome outsiders to defeat the still more unwelcome neighbour. The foreigners, asked in the first resort to assist in defeating a rival, were in the last resort accepted as masters in preference to dominance by a rival. Thus Marathas preferred the British to the Mughals or Muslims; and the nizam preferred the British to the Marathas. Long historical memories can be inhibiting as well as inspiring. Against this setting can be set the company's urge toward unity in the interests of trade. Even when its Indian trade was no longer profitable, India gave profits to others, and its opium bought the Chinese tea, which gave the East India Company its overall profits. Given the fact of expansion, Britain enjoyed the advantage of overseas reinforcement through its sea power and of reserves of power, far greater than that of any Indian prince, through its rapidly expanding industrial economy. A lost battle for the British was an incident in a campaign; for the Indian prince, usually the end of the chapter. Then there were the technical advantages of arms and military discipline and the immense general advantage of a disciplined civilian morale. In the later stages this was boosted by the rising self-confidence of Europeans in general, with their belief that the western European civilization was the only truly progressive one that had ever existed. For the Hindu, on the other hand, his world was at its lowest ebb—in the Kali Yuga, or Dark Age—while the Muslim believed in inscrutable fate. The Hindu's heart was in his religiocultural complex, and political dominion meant little to the ordinary Hindu so long as this remained untouched.

History > India and European expansion, c. 1500–1858 > The extension of British power, 1760–1856 > Organization and policy in British India The realization of supremacy in 1818 made urgent the problem of the organization of and determination of policy for British India. So far only Bengal had been deliberately organized; the extensive areas annexed after 1799 in the north and the south were still under provisional arrangements. Now the peshwa's dominions in the west awaited settlement. The administrators of the first 30 years of the 19th century gave British India the form it retained until 1947. Outstanding among them were Sir Thomas Munro in Madras, Mountstuart Elphinstone in western India, and Sir Charles Metcalfe in Delhi; to this trio must be added a fourth—Holt MacKenzie, whose planning determined the lines of settlement from Varanasi to the Yamuna.

History > India and European expansion, c. 1500–1858 > The extension of British power, 1760–1856 > Organization and policy in British India > Organization The only areas so far definitely settled were those of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa. Lord Cornwallis had been charged by Pitt with the reorganization of Bengal under the new act. Besides being a soldier of distinction, Cornwallis was a man of outstanding integrity, a landlord with rural tastes, and an instinctive Whig. Cornwallis first undertook a cleansing of the existing system. Discipline among the company's servants was enforced at the price of dismissal. Private trade was forbidden to all government officers, and the service was divided into administrative and commercial branches. These measures were coupled with a generous salary system, which removed the temptation to corruption. From this time the company's service began to gain its later reputation for efficiency and integrity. All this could be done because the governor-general, with his council of three and his veto power, was now unassailable to the attacks that had ruined Vansittart and frustrated Warren Hastings.

From this base Cornwallis built up the Bengal system. Its first principle was Anglicization. In the belief that Indian officials were corrupt (while British corruption had been cured), all posts worth more than £500 a year were reserved for the company's covenanted servants. Next came the government. The 23 districts each had a British collector with magisterial powers and two assistants, who were responsible for revenue collection. The judicial system was organized with district judges for both civil and criminal cases. In civil cases there were four courts of appeal; and in criminal, four circuit courts. Criminal justice was taken over from the nawab's deputy, thus removing the last shred of Mughal authority. The criminal code was the Islamic one, humanely modified. A new police force replaced the former local constables of the zamindars (land revenue collectors). This new system, which, with its division of authority, showed its Whig influence, was rounded off by the proclamation of the rule of law, making all governmental acts answerable in the ordinary courts of law. Though hardly noticed at the time by Indians, it was a radical innovation with far-reaching effects. It was a charter of civil as distinct from political liberty. Cornwallis' permanent settlement of the land revenue is the measure that most deeply affected the life and structure of Indian society, three-quarters of the revenue coming from the land. He found a system of hereditary zamindars, who had acquired police and magisterial powers as well, and who were much shaken by the frequent changes of revenue policy under the British. The “settlement” was the decision in 1793 to stabilize the revenue demand at a fixed annual figure, with a commission to the zamindar for collection, and to regard him as the owner of his zamindari; he had the disposal of wastelands within his jurisdiction, but these lands were liable to be sold for arrears of payment. Thus the land revenue collector became a landlord, with the Achilles heel of sale for arrears, while the tiers of lesser landholders became his tenants. The zamindar reaped the profit of rising prices and of the cultivation of wasteland, while the classes below him lost their occupancy rights. The intended protection of these tenants proved illusory because their rights were customary, unsupported by documents. The legal cases that ensued clogged the courts to the point of breakdown. Initially, the zamindar often lost his holding because the fixed demand was pitched too high. The net result of this measure was the creation of a landlord class, loyal to the British connection but divorced from touch with the cultivators. The government, receiving the revenue from the zamindars, knew little of the people and could do little for them. At first the Bengal system was thought to provide the key to Indian administration, but doubts multiplied with the years. In Madras, Sir Thomas Munro retained the paternal framework of government but introduced a radically differing method of revenue management known as the ryotwari system, in which the settlement was made directly with the cultivator, each field being separately measured and annually assessed. The system eliminated the middleman but sometimes placed the cultivators at the mercy of lower officials, who often formed cliques of caste groups. Munro considered that innovation and ignorance were the ruling British vices. His system tended to be static and to allow the subordinate tail to wag the directing British dog. In western India, Mountstuart Elphinstone had the problem of reconciling to British control the resentful Marathas of the peshwa's dominions. With a masterly mixture of tact and firmness he largely succeeded. He retained Indian agency as far as possible, and he allowed the Maratha nobles, or jagirdars, to retain most of their land and many of their privileges. He even continued some donations to Hindu temples. He used the ryotwari method of assessing land revenue, collecting through local officials from the village headmen. In Bombay he encouraged Western learning and science, tempting suspicious Brahmans to open their minds to the West. He foresaw the ultimate end of British rule through voluntary Westernization, and he took the first steps toward introducing the new world without antagonizing the old. In the north, Sir Charles Metcalfe discovered the largely autonomous village with its joint ownership and cultivation by caste oligarchies. He believed this to be the original pattern of rural organization throughout India, and it became his passion to preserve it as far as possible in current conditions. Like Munro and Elphinstone, he was suspicious of change and wished to leave the villagers alone as far as possible. In this he was powerfully supported by the work of Holt MacKenzie, the Bengal secretary whose memorandum of 1819 set a course of recognition and record of village rights for the whole of the northwestern provinces (as later revised and codified, this marked the end of the Bengal system of permanent revenue settlement). The resulting system of administration of British India was still largely Indian in pattern, though it was now British in direction and superintendence. It was paternalistic and hierarchical, and it suffered, like its immediate predecessors, from a chronic tendency to overassess. The emperor was replaced by the mystical entity the Company Bahadur, and its representative, the governor-general, moved about with almost equal pomp. The higher direction was exclusively European, but the officers acted in a Mughal spirit, and the administration at subdistrict and village level went on much as before. But there were also large changes. The British established on a national scale the idea of property in land, and the resulting buying and selling caused large class changes. Their new security benefited the commercial classes generally, but the deliberate sacrifice of Indian industry to the claims of the new machine industries of Britain ruined such ancient crafts as cotton and silk weaving. The new legal system, with its network of courts, proved efficient on the criminal side but was heavily overloaded on the civil. The strain and the scandal of this situation created a demand for increased Indian agency and caused the first breaches in the British monopoly of higher office. Indianization began with the confessed inefficiency of the British legal system. The picture is completed by the company's army, separately organized in the three presidencies and officered, like the civil service, exclusively by the British. It was backed by contingents of the British army. The Bengal army preponderated in numbers and fighting spirit. By European standards it was cumbrous and inefficient; some of its defects were exposed in the early days of the Nepal war. But it was more than a match for anything that could be brought against it. Only the Russians, could they have moved so far in force, might have made short work of it. History > India and European expansion, c. 1500–1858 > The extension of British power, 1760–1856 > Organization and policy in British India > The determination of policy The administration of British India thus established was impressive though ponderous. But it was essentially static; it was a repair of the machinery of government without any decision about its direction. Such a situation in a subcontinent could not be viable for long. In the early 19th century a great debate went on in Britain about the nature of the government in India. The company wanted India to be regarded as a field for British commercial exploitation, with the company holding the administrative whip with one hand and exploiting with the other. This pleased no one but the company itself. As an extension of this, the new regime could be regarded as a law-and-order or police state, holding the ring while British merchants in general traded profitably. But this was assailed from several quarters. There was the Whig demand, first voiced by Edmund Burke in his campaign against Warren Hastings, that the Indian government must be responsible for the welfare of the governed. This was reinforced by Evangelicals in England, both Anglican and Baptist, who added the rider that, as the ruler, Britain was responsible for India's spiritual and moral welfare as well. The Evangelicals were a rising force, influential in the British “establishment.” Their specific for India, as a preparation for conversion, was English education. They were reinforced in this by the rising group of freethinking utilitarians—followers of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill—who were influential in the company's service, who wished to use India as a laboratory for their theories, and who thought Indian society could be transformed by legislation. Finally, there were radical rationalists who had borrowed the doctrine of human rights from France and wished to introduce them into India, and on the practical side there was a body of British merchants and manufacturers who saw in India both a market and a profitable theatre of activity and who chafed at the restraints of the East India Company's monopoly. Some of these influences seeped into the Tory ascendancy, which lasted until 1830. In 1813 the East India Company lost its monopoly of trade with India and was compelled to allow free entry of missionaries. British India was declared to be British territory, and £10,000 was to be set aside annually for the promotion of both Eastern and Western learning. But the real breakthrough came with the governor-generalship of Lord William Bentinck (served 1828–35) and with the Whig government that, from 1830, carried the great Reform Bill. Bentinck was a radical aristocrat. His administrative reforms were in line with utilitarian theory but with deference to local conditions and in harmony with his own military sense of command. In Bengal, the collector was made the real head of his district by the addition of civil judgeship to his magistracy; he was also disciplined by the institution of commissioners to superintend him. The judiciary was overhauled with the same eye to a chain of authority. But it was as a social reformer that Bentinck made an indelible mark on the future of India. He was commissioned by the directors to effect economies in order to show a balanced budget in the approaching charter-renewal discussions. In doing this he incurred much odium, but he was able to take the first steps in Indianizing the higher judicial services. On his arrival Bentinck was confronted with an agitation against suttee, or the burning of Hindu widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands. In suppressing the practice, he had to face the reproaches of both Hindus and Europeans on the grounds of religious interference. But he was also fortified by the support of the Hindu reformer Rammohun Roy. In thus acting and in prohibiting child sacrifice on Sagar Island and discouraging infanticide—a widespread practice among the Rajputs—Bentinck established the principle that the general good did not permit violations of the universal moral law, even if done in the name of religion. The same principle applied to the suppression of thagi (thuggee), or ritual murder and robbery by gangs in central India in the name of the goddess Kali. On a more positive side, Bentinck substituted English for Persian as the language of record for government and the higher courts, and he declared that government support would be given primarily to the cultivation of Western learning and science through the medium of English. In this he was supported by Thomas Babington (later Lord) Macaulay, whose speech in Parliament on July 10, 1833, was the most eloquent expression of the new spirit ever made. This period saw the British in India committed to promoting the positive welfare of India instead of merely holding a ring for trade and exploitation; to introducing Western knowledge, science, and ideas alongside the Indian with a view to eventual absorption and adoption; and to the promotion of Indian participation in the government with a view to eventual Indian self-government. It was the changeover from the concept of a Mughal successor state—the Company Bahadur—to that of a Westernized self-governing dominion. In the former case, the British were wardens of a stationary society; in the latter, trustees of an evolving one. A word should be added about the Indian states. Their place in British India was also a subject of the great debate on the future of India. On the whole, the argument for subordinate isolation held, and no great change occurred in their status until after the mutiny of 1857 (see below The mutiny and great revolt of 1857–59). Out of the discussions, however, came the de facto principle of British paramountcy, which was increasingly assumed though not openly proclaimed. The only important change before 1840 was the takeover of Mysore in 1831 on the ground of misgovernment; it was not annexed, but it was administered on behalf of the raja for the next 50 years.

History > India and European expansion, c. 1500–1858 > The extension of British power, 1760–1856 > The completion of dominion and expansion After the settlement of 1818, the only parts of India beyond British control were a fringe of Himalayan states to the north and a block of territory in the northwest covering the Indus Valley, the Punjab, and Kashmir. To the south Ceylon was already occupied by the British, but to the east lay the valley and hill tracts of Assam and the Buddhist kingdom of Myanmar (Burma) straddling the Irrawaddy River. The Himalayan states were Nepal of the Gurkhas, Bhutan, and Sikkim. Nepal and Bhutan remained independent throughout the British period; but Sikkim came under British protection, providing the hill station of Darjiling as Bengal's hill capital. The valley and hill tracts of Assam were taken under protection to save them from Myanmar attack. From this time the Indian tea plant was cultivated, after the failure of Chinese imported ones, and commenced the great Indian tea industry. In the early 19th century the Myanmar were in an aggressive mood, having defeated the Thais (1768) and subjected Arakan and hill states on either side of the river valleys. Attacks on British territory in 1824 started the First Anglo-Burmese War (1824–26), which, though mismanaged, led to the British annexation of the coastal strips of Arakan and Tenasserim in 1826. The Second Anglo-Burmese War (1852) was caused by disputes between merchants (trading in rice and teak timber) and the Rangoon governor. The governor-general, Lord Dalhousie (served 1848–56), intervened, annexing the maritime province of Pegu with the port of Rangoon (modern-day Yangôn) in a campaign this time well-managed and economical. Commercial imperialism was the motive for this campaign. To the northwest, British India was bounded by the Sikh kingdom of Ranjit Singh, who added Kashmir to his state in 1819 and Peshawar in 1834. Beyond was confusion, with the Afghan monarchy in dissolution and its lands parcelled between several chiefs and Sindh, controlled by a group of amirs, or chiefs. British indifference changed to action in the 1830s, owing to the advance of Russia in Central Asia and to that nation's diplomatic duel with Lord Palmerston about its influence in Turkey. Afghanistan was seen as a point from which Russia could threaten British India or Britain could embarrass Russia. Lord Auckland (served 1836–42) was sent as governor-general, charged with forestalling the Russians, and from this stemmed his Afghan adventure and the First Afghan War (1838–42). The method adopted was to restore Shah Shoja', the exiled Afghan king, then living in the Punjab, by ousting the ruler of Kabul, Dost Muhammad. Ranjit Singh cooperated in the enterprise but cleverly avoided any military commitment, leaving the British to bear the whole burden. The route of invasion lay through Sindh, because of Sikh occupation of the Punjab. The amirs' treaty of 1832 with the British was brushed aside, and Sindh was forced to pay arrears of tribute to Shah Shoja'. At first things went well, with victories and the occupation of Kabul in 1839. But then it was discovered that Shah Shoja' was too unpopular to rule the country unaided; the British restoring force thus became a foreign occupying army—anathema to the liberty-loving Afghans—and was regularly engaged in putting down sporadic tribal revolts. After two years, a general revolt in the autumn of 1841 overwhelmed the British garrison. Meanwhile, the Russian menace in eastern Europe had receded. Auckland's successor, Lord Ellenborough (served 1842–44), arranged for the evacuation of the country by means of a converging march on Kabul from Qandahar in the south and Jalalabad in the north and a return through the Khyber Pass. Thus honour was satisfied, and the fact of defeat was glossed over. Shah Shoja' was shortly murdered. The episode demonstrated, at a heavy price in terms of money and human suffering, the ease with which Afghanistan could be overrun by a regular army and the difficulty of holding it. The enterprise, though conceived as an insurance against Russian imperialism, developed into a species of imperialism itself. Economics joined with Afghan spirit to put a limit on British expansion in this direction. After the Afghans came Sindh. There was little to be said for the amirs themselves—a group of related chiefs who had come to power in the late 18th century and had kept the country in poverty and stagnation. A treaty in 1832 threw the Indus River open to commerce except for the passage of armed vessels or military stores; at the same time the integrity of Sindh was recognized. Thus Auckland's march through Sindh was a clear violation of a treaty signed only seven years before. Sore feelings at the turn of events in Afghanistan produced a final breach. On a charge of unfriendly feelings by the amirs during the First Anglo-Afghan War, Karachi, occupied in 1839, was retained. Further demands were then made; the moderate resident James Outram was superseded by the militant general Sir Charles James Napier; and resistance was provoked, to be crushed at Miani in 1843. Sindh was then annexed to the Bombay Presidency; after four years of rough-and-ready rule by Napier, it was put on the road to prosperity by Sir Bartle Frere. There remained the great Sikh state of the Punjab, the single-handed creation of Ranjit Singh. Succeeding to a local chiefship in 1792 at the age of 12, he occupied Lahore in 1799 under a grant from Zaman Shah, the Afghan king. He could thus pose as a legitimate ruler, not only to his own Sikhs but to the majority of Muslims of the Punjab. From this start he extended his dominions northwestward as far as the Afghan hills and including Kashmir and Jammu and southwestward toward Sindh to Multan and near Sheikhpura. The Treaty of Amritsar with the British in 1809 barred his expansion southeastward; besides directing Ranjit's expansionism northwestward, it produced an admiration for the disciplined company's troops, who coolly repelled the wild Sikh Akalis when they attacked the British at Amritsar. From that time dated the formation of the formidable Sikh army with its 40,000 disciplined infantry, 12,000 cavalry, and powerful artillery. It was generally agreed to compare favourably for efficiency with the company's forces. Ranjit Singh employed Hindus and Muslims besides Sikhs, but his regime was in fact a Sikh dominion based on tacit Hindu support and Muslim acquiescence. It used most of the revenue to support the army, which made it apparently powerful but retarded development. It was a highly personal system, centred on Ranjit himself. It was thus one that the company would not lightly attack but that had inner weaknesses behind its impressive facade. These weaknesses began to be exposed on the morrow of Ranjit's death in 1839; within six years the state was on the verge of dissolution. Army disbandment or foreign adventure seemed the only way for the Sikhs to deal with this crisis. The former being impossible, at length the Rani Jindan, regent for the boy prince Dalip Singh, the chief minister, and the commander in chief agreed on a move against the British. The frontier was crossed in December 1845, and a sharp and bloody war ended in a British victory at Sobraon in February 1846. The British feared to annex outright a region full of former soldiers and wished to retain a buffer state against possible attack from the northwest. By the Treaty of Lahore they took Kashmir and its dependencies, with the fertile Jullundur (now Jalandhar) area, reduced the regular army to 20,000 infantry and 12,000 cavalry, and exacted an indemnity of £500,000. They then sold Kashmir to the Hindu chief Gulab Singh of Jammu, who had changed sides at precisely the right moment. Thus a chronic political problem for the subcontinent was created. The balance thus created between annexation and autonomy—between Lahore and Jammu and Lahore and the Afghans—did not last. There was no subsidiary force, for fear of antagonizing the Sikhs. Two years later a rising at Multan became a national Sikh revolt, and the Sikh court was helpless. Another brief and still more bloody war, with the Sikhs this time fighting resolutely, ended with their surrender in March 1849 and the British annexation of the state. Annexation this time proved viable because of the underlying tension between Sikhs and Muslims. The Sikhs preferred the British to a Muslim raj. The British repressed the sirdars, or Sikh leaders, but left the rest of the community and its religion untouched. The Sikhs sided with the British during the 1857 mutiny; the Muslims, however, could not forget their loss of power to the Sikhs. There was little commercial exploitation of the state, and the Sikhs found employment in the army. Lord Dalhousie closely supervised the administration through a like-minded agent, Sir John Lawrence. The pair produced a new model administration, establishing what was known as the Punjab school. It was noted for strong personal leadership, on-the-spot decisions, strong-arm methods, impartiality between the communities, and material development, including irrigation. A canal, a road, or a bridge was the Punjabi official's delight. The cultivator was preferred to the sirdar (landlord); the countryman was preferred to the townsman. The Punjab system was strong and efficient, creating prosperity, but it never reconciled the communities or welded them into unity. The Punjab feeling thus remained a territorial sentiment, without ever becoming a national spirit. This failure was a basis for later partition. Lord Dalhousie's reign (served 1848–56) is often regarded as an exercise in imperialism; in fact it was more an exercise in Westernism. Dalhousie was a man of great drive and strong conviction. His convictions were Westernizing and mainly motivated his actions. In general he considered Western civilization to be far superior to that of the Indian, and the more of it that could be introduced the better. Along these lines he pushed Western education—introducing a grant-in-aid system, which later proliferated Indian private colleges—and planned three universities. Socially, he allowed Christian converts to inherit the property of their Hindu families. Materially, he extended irrigation and the telegraph and introduced the railway. Politically, British administration was preferable to Indian, and it was to be imposed where possible. Externally, this led to annexation, as in the Punjab and Burma, rather than to the control of foreign relations or to a British-superintended native regime. Internally, it led to the annexation of Indian states on the ground of misgovernment or the doctrine of lapse. The leading case of misgovernment was the disorderly but prosperous Muslim state of Avadh—the oldest ally of the British. The doctrine of lapse concerned Hindu states where rulers had no direct natural heirs. Hindu law allowed adoption to meet these cases, but Dalhousie declared that such must be approved by the supreme government; otherwise there was “lapse” to the paramount power, which meant the imposition of the usual British administration. The three principal cases were Satara in 1848 (the descendants of the Maratha king Sivaji), Jhansi (1853), and the large Maratha state of Nagpur (1854). Finally, Dalhousie abolished the titular sovereignties of Karnataka and Tanjore, declined to continue the former peshwa's pension to his adopted son, and gave notice of the termination of the Mughal imperial title itself.

History > India and European expansion, c. 1500–1858 > The extension of British power, 1760–1856 > The first century of British influence The onset of British influence in India differed both in manner and in kind from that of other historical invasions. The British came neither as migrating hordes seeking new homes nor as armies seeking plunder or empire. They had no missionary zeal. Yet eventually they did more to transform India than did any previous ruling power. This apparent paradox requires some explanation.

History > India and European expansion, c. 1500–1858 > The extension of British power, 1760–1856 > The first century of British influence > Political effects At first the British were only one group of foreign traders among several, fortunate to find in the Mughals a firm government ready to foster trade. Their entry into politics was gradual, first as allies of country powers, then as their virtual directors, and only finally as masters. At each step they were assisted by local powers who preferred British influence to that of their neighbours. It was only in the 20 years 1798–1818 that they were consciously imperialistic and only thereafter that they treated India as a conquered rather than an acquired country. The effect of this was to replace the defunct Mughal regime and the abortive Maratha successor empire with a veiled but very real hegemony. Indians were used to the idea of political unity and overlordship. They admired the British for being more successful than themselves, while reprobating many of the British habits and doctrines. But the old ruling classes showed little sign of adopting British institutions; after 1818 they withdrew within themselves, nursing their memories rather than feeding their hopes. The Indian regimes of 1857 all assumed a traditional form. The one department in which Western influence was effective was the military. From the time of Mir Qasim in Bengal (1760–63), Indian princes began to train troops in the European manner and to form parks of artillery. Some of these bodies, culminating in Ranjit Singh's Sikh army, attained a high degree of efficiency. Their problem was maintenance, for most princes lacked the necessary resources to pay their men and officers regularly and maintain their arms. Indian opinion in general saw the British as the latest holders of the traditional paramount power. There was no novelty in the foreign personnel of the government, for this had been a Mughal practice, too. What was new was the artificial division between British India and Indian-governed India, with virtually no contact between the two. The Mughals practiced partnership for a century; the Turks and Afghans, subordinate cooperation; the British, it seemed, wished to forget the Indian leaders altogether. History > India and European expansion, c. 1500–1858 > The extension of British power, 1760–1856 > The first century of British influence > Economic effects Things were quite different, however, in the economic field. Up to 1750, the effect of the East India Company's operations was marginal. Production of cotton and silk goods, of indigo, saltpetre, and, later, opium was stimulated in particular areas like Bengal, Gujarat, and Malwa, with some gain to the middlemen but no sign of any general rise in living standards. India then, as now, was mainly agricultural, and its industries, though significant, were marginal to its whole economy. The latter changed, however, with the acquisition of Bengal. The bias in favour of British merchants diverted trade from their Indian counterparts, though some of the profit went back to the British merchants' Indian agents. The extravagant present-giving, a large abuse of a traditional system, diverted much money to Britain. Still more, the pressure on the zamindars for more revenue, and theirs in turn on the cultivators, further diminished the Bengali income. To this must be added the operation of monopolies, public and private. When the Bengal famine of 1770 occurred, which was reckoned to have swept away one-third of the population, little attempt at relief was made, though this, with Bengal's network of waterways, was practicable. The cruel severity with which the revenue was still collected at this time delayed recovery for many years. Economic recovery was further delayed by Warren Hastings' makeshift revenue arrangements; and much dislocation was caused in the social structure, with its own effect on economic life. Cornwallis' permanent settlement (1793), after an initial period of dislocation, gave relief and security to the zamindars, who benefited by the rise in prices and the cultivation of wastelands; the cultivators themselves, now the zamindars' tenants at will, remained as poor as before. Apart from the zamindars, the only class to benefit from the British was that of the entrepreneurs of Calcutta, who acted as agents and bankers to the British. Thus, both Clive's and Hastings' business managers became wealthy landowners. In Madras little could be done until the incubus of the Karnatic nawab's debts was removed and the country was settled after the Cornwallis-Wellesley annexations (1792–99). There, economic settlement turned on the working of the ryotwari revenue system; regularity of collection was offset by severity of assessment, and the same may be said of both western and northern India. After 1800 there was a new factor: machine-made cotton goods from Britain. These steadily undermined the Indian handicraft industries, until all but the highest and coarsest grades of cloth were squeezed out. The district of Dacca (now Dhaka, Bangladesh) in the 1820s was illustrative of this process. From about 1830 the tea industry of Assam began with coffee in the south. Coal mining was begun, but its growth, with that of the jute and cotton-machine industries, had to wait for the second half of the century. The average Indian was far more secure than before (except for famine) but generally was not much more prosperous. India drifted toward the status of a colonial economy, a supplier of raw materials, a market for manufactured articles, to the profit of the foreigner.

History > India and European expansion, c. 1500–1858 > The extension of British power, 1760–1856 > The first century of British influence > Social effects The social effects of this period were considerable. They took mainly the form of the displacement of classes. As already noted, there was a general disturbance in Bengal caused by the permanent settlement, whereby the lesser landholders were reduced to the condition of tenants at will. But there was also disturbance among the zamindars. The first upset followed the famine of 1770, when the cultivators were often too few for the revenue demand to be met, and “farming” the revenue for some time took the place of a revenue settlement. The second upset came with the permanent settlement of 1793, when the revenue figure fixed was in many cases too high for the existing cultivation. By 1820 it was calculated that more than one-third of the estates had changed hands through sale for arrears of land tax. The purchasers were in the main the Calcutta entrepreneurs, newly enriched by their contacts with the British. Many were absentees. The social link between landholder and cultivator had been broken, cash nexus replacing traditional rights.

In Calcutta itself, these same rentiers formed a fashionable and intellectual society, from which came the first significant cultural contacts with the West. It was composed of the prosperous section of the three upper Bengali castes, with such others as gained acceptance by their wealth or education. Collectively this literate class was known as the bhadralok. In the north there was less dislocation, though the landholders, many of whom had no title but the sword, tended to be repressed. There was a general recognition of rights and broadly of their protection. The chief sufferers were ruling families, who lost power, and the official aristocracy, who lost office. In the south, chiefs whom Munro dispossessed were largely in the class of robber barons. In western India, a balance between aristocratic and cultivating rights was perhaps better maintained than elsewhere, and relations were harmonious. Of significance was the rapid development of Bombay from the time it came to possess a large hinterland in 1818. With it came the rise of the enterprising Parsi community. In general, apart from Bengal, there was some repression of the old aristocracy, a regulation and preservation of lesser landholders' rights, and an encouragement of the commercial classes. Communities did not break up, but their fortunes rose and fell with their ability to adjust to these conditions. History > India and European expansion, c. 1500–1858 > The extension of British power, 1760–1856 > The first century of British influence > Cultural effects The cultural effects of British influence during the century 1757–1857, though less spectacular, were in the long run farther-reaching. At first there was little enough. But as the Europeans grew in political importance, Indians became interested in the causes of the growth, so that the first examples of cultural influence were in the military field. Some Europeans, in their turn, early interested themselves in Indian culture, as evident from the foundation of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784 by Sir William Jones and from the translation of such Sanskrit works as the Bhagavadgita and Abhijñanasakuntala and of Persian works like the A'in-e Akbari. As the British completed their supremacy, four Indian attitudes could be discerned. There were Indians who rejected all things Western, retiring to their houses and estates to dream of the past. There were those who were clients and employees of the British, as they had been of the Mughals and the Turks before them, without any intention of giving up their traditional culture. But there were also those who, while remaining good Hindus or Muslims, began to study Western ways and thought for careerist purposes. And there was, finally, a small group who sought to study the ideas and spirit of the West, with a view to incorporating in their own society anything that seemed desirable. The agents of Western influence were government officials, who carried Western ideas, such as utilitarianism, equality before the law, and property into their administration of revenue and the law, and missionaries, who combined hostility to Hinduism and Islam with the presentation of a new ethic—the practice of good works and the promotion of English education as a preliminary for conversion. It was at this point that the Indian careerist and inquirer met the new Western stream of thought. The English language was popular because it opened paths to employment and influence; orthodox Hindus patronized the English schools and promoted the Hindu College (now Presidency College) in Calcutta (1816). This college, along with Alexander Duff's Scottish Church College, also in Calcutta, became a centre of Western influence and saw the rise of the Young Bengal movement, the Westernizing zeal of which denied the Hindu religion itself. But between the complete Westernizers and the careerists was a third group, which found a leader of genius in Rammohun Roy. Making a moderate fortune in Calcutta finance, which he invested in zamindaris, from 1815 Roy advocated reforms in Hindu society and the acceptance of some features of Western thought. He denounced suttee (the burning of widows) and championed the cause of the Indian widow and wife. He advocated English education as a means of bringing Western knowledge to India. He denounced idolatry and preached monotheism. With his Precepts of Jesus he both introduced the Christian ethic into Hindu society and drew the sting of missionary attacks. He finally founded a reforming Hindu body, the Brahmo Samaj (Divine Society), in 1828. Both careerists and Roy's followers cooperated in the spread of English education, but it was the latter who began the movement of borrowing from the West without any feeling of disloyalty to their past. By the year 1857 the British had established complete political control of the Indian subcontinent, which they ruled directly or through subordinate princes. They had established an authoritarian system of government, making use of Mughal practice and tradition and supported by an efficient civil service and a relatively efficient army. Princely India remained in a stagnant traditionalism; nominal sovereignties were suppressed in the name of progress. In British India, land settlements had produced much social dislocation, while purporting to respect traditional rights and to learn from the past; in particular, the Western concept of property in land had led to much social displacement. The Westernized legal system was efficient in suppressing crime but dilatory in upholding rights and incomprehensible in its working. Social evils like suttee, thuggee, and infanticide had been suppressed or discouraged, but Hinduism and Islam were still respected. The revolutionary aspect of the British presence was the decision, taken about the time of Bentinck, to introduce Western knowledge and science through the medium of the English language. Western inventions like the telegraph, scientific irrigation, railways, and steamships followed, throwing India open to the industrial mechanistic and democratic world of the developing West. Along with education went the Christian missionary intrusion, with its moral and ideological challenge. This, in its turn, provoked a creative response from Rammohun Roy's circle, who were laying the foundations of a modernized Hinduism, which was later to find political expression in the Indian National Congress.

History > India and European expansion, c. 1500–1858 > The mutiny and great revolt of 1857–59 The mutiny of the Bengal army began on May 10, 1857, at Meerut, when Indian soldiers who had been placed in irons for refusing to accept new cartridges were rescued by their comrades. They shot the British officers and made for Delhi, 40 miles (64 kilometres) distant, where there were no British troops. The Indian garrison at Delhi joined them, and by the next nightfall they had secured the city and Mughal fort, proclaiming the aged titular Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah II, as their leader. There at a stroke was an army, a cause, and a national leader—the only Muslim who appealed to both Hindus and Muslims. History > India and European expansion, c. 1500–1858 > The mutiny and great revolt of 1857–59 > Nature and causes of the rebellion But this movement became much more than a military mutiny. There has been much controversy over its nature and causes. The British military commander Sir James Outram thought it was a Muslim conspiracy, exploiting Hindu grievances. Or it might have been an aristocratic plot, set off too soon by the Meerut outbreak. But the only evidence for either of these was the circulation from village to village of chapati, or cakes of unleavened bread, a practice that, though it also occurred on other occasions, was known to have taken place at any time of unrest. The lack of planning after the outbreak rules out these two explanations, while the degree of popular support argues more than a purely military outbreak. Nationalist historians have seen in it the first Indian war of independence. In fact, it was rather the last effort of traditional India. It began on a point of caste pollution; its leaders were traditionalists who looked to reviving the past, while the small new Westernized class actively supported the British. And the leaders were not united, because they sought to revive former Hindu and Muslim regimes, which in their heyday had bitterly clashed. But something important was required to provoke so many to seize the opportunity of a military uprising to stage a war of independence. The military cause was both particular and general. In particular, it was the greased cartridges supplied for the new breech-loading Enfield rifles. These had to be bitten off before insertion, and the British manufacturers had supplied a fat of mixed beef and pork—anathema to both Hindus and Muslims. This mistake was retrieved as soon as discovered; but the fact that explanations and reissues could not quell the soldiers' suspicions suggests that the troops were already disturbed by other causes. The Bengal army of nearly 130,000 Indian troops contained about 40,000 Brahmans as well as many Rajputs. The British had accentuated caste consciousness by careful regulations, had allowed discipline to grow lax, and had failed to maintain understanding between British officers and their men. In addition, the General Service Enlistment Act of 1856 required recruits to serve overseas if ordered, a challenge to the castes who composed so much of the Bengal army. To these points may be added the fact that the British garrison in India had been reduced at this time to 23,000 men because of troop withdrawals for the Crimean and Persian wars. The general factors that turned a military mutiny into a popular revolt can be comprehensively described under the heading of political, economic, social, and cultural Westernization. Politically, the princes of India had retired into a sulky seclusion after their final defeat in 1818. But the wars against the Afghans and the Sikhs and then the annexations of Dalhousie alarmed and outraged them. The Muslims had lost the large state of Avadh; the Marathas had lost Nagpur, Satara, and Jhansi. Further, the British were becoming increasingly hostile toward traditional survivals and contemptuous of anything Indian. There was, therefore, both resentment and unease among the old governing class, fanned in Delhi by the decision to end the Mughal imperial title on Bahadur Shah's death. Economically and socially, there had been much dislocation in the landholding class all over northern and western India as a result of British land-revenue settlements, setting group against group. There was thus a suppressed tension in the countryside, ready to break out whenever governmental pressure might be reduced. Then came the Western innovations of the now overconfident British. Their educational policy was a Westernizing one, with English instead of Persian as the official language; the practitioners of the old learning felt themselves slighted. Western inventions like the telegraph and railways aroused the conservative prejudice of a conservative race (though Indians crowded the trains when they had them). More disturbing were the interventions, in the name of humanity, in the realm of Hindu custom—e.g., the prohibition of suttee, the campaign against infanticide, the law legalizing remarriage of Hindu widows. Finally, there was the activity of missionaries, by this time widespread. Government was ostentatiously neutral, but an increasing number of its officers were friendly, so that Hindu society was inclined to regard them as eroding Hindu society without openly interfering. In sum, this combination of factors produced, besides the normal tensions endemic in India, an uneasy, fearful, suspicious, resentful frame of mind and a wind of unrest ready to fan the flame of any actual physical outbreak.

History > India and European expansion, c. 1500–1858 > The mutiny and great revolt of 1857–59 > The revolt and its aftermath The dramatic capture of Delhi turned mutiny into full-scale revolt. The whole episode falls into three periods: first came the summer of 1857, when the British, without reinforcements from home, fought with their backs to the wall; the second concerned the operations for the relief of Lucknow in the autumn; and the third was the successful campaign of Sir Colin Campbell and Sir Hugh Rose in the first half of 1858. Mopping-up operations followed, lasting until the British capture of Tatya Tope in April 1859. From Delhi the revolt spread in June to Kanpur and Lucknow. Kanpur surrendered on June 16; but the Lucknow garrison held out in the residency from July 1, in spite of the death of Sir Henry Lawrence on July 4. The campaign then settled down to British attempts to take Delhi and relieve Lucknow. In spite of their apparently desperate situation, the British possessed long-term advantages: they could and did receive reinforcements from Britain; they had, thanks to the resolution of Sir John Lawrence, a firm base in the Punjab, and they had another base in Bengal, where the people were quiet; they had no anxiety in the south and only a little in the west; and they had an immense belief in themselves and their civilization, which gave resolution to their initial desperation. The mutineers, on the other hand, lacked good leadership until nearly the end, and they had no confidence in themselves and suffered the guilt feelings of rebels without a cause, making them frantic and fearful by turns. In the Punjab were some 10,000 British troops, which made it possible to disarm the Indian regiments; and the recently defeated Sikhs were so hostile to the Muslims that they supported the British against the Mughal restoration in Delhi. A small British army was improvised, which held the ridge before Delhi against greatly superior forces until Sir John Lawrence was able to send a siege train under John Nicholson. With this, and the aid of rebel dissensions, Delhi was stormed and captured by the British on September 20, while the emperor Bahadur Shah surrendered on promise of his life. Down-country operations centred on the relief of Lucknow. Setting out from Allahabad, Sir Henry Havelock fought through Kanpur to the Lucknow residency on September 25, where he was besieged in turn. But the back of the rebellion had been broken and time gained for reinforcements to restore British superiority. There followed the relief of the residency (November 16) and the capture of Lucknow by the new commander in chief, Sir Colin Campbell (March 1, 1858). By a campaign in Avadh and Rohilkhand, Campbell cleared the countryside. The next phase was the central Indian campaign of Sir Hugh Rose. He first defeated the Gwalior contingent and then, when the rebels Tatya Tope and Rani Lakshmi Bai of Jhansi had seized Gwalior, broke up their forces in two more battles. The rani found a soldier's death, and Tatya became a fugitive. With the British recovery of Gwalior (June 20), the revolt was virtually over. The restoration of peace was hindered by British cries for vengeance, often leading to indiscriminate reprisals. The treatment of the aged Bahadur Shah was a disgrace to a civilized nation; also, the whole population of Delhi was driven out into the open, and thousands were killed after perfunctory trials or no trials at all. Order was restored by the firmness of Charles Canning, first viceroy of India (governed 1858–62), whose title of “Clemency” was given in derision by angry British merchants in Calcutta, and of Sir John Lawrence in the Punjab. Ferocity led to grave excesses on both sides, distinguishing this war in horror from other wars of the 19th century. Measures of prevention of future crises naturally began with the army, which was completely reorganized. The ratio of British to Indian troops was fixed at roughly 1:2 instead of 1:5—one British and two Indian battalions were brigaded together so that no sizable station should be without British troops. The effective Indian artillery, except for a few mountain batteries, was abolished, while the Brahmans and Rajputs of Avadh were reduced in favour of other groups. The officers continued to be British, but they were more closely linked with their men. The army became an efficient professional body, drawn largely from the northwest and aloof from the national life.

History > British imperial power, 1858–1947 > Climax of the raj, 1858–85 The quarter century following the bitter Indian revolt of 1857–59, though spanning a peak of British imperial power in India, ended with the birth of nationalist agitation against it. For both Indians and British, the period was haunted with dark memories of the mutiny, and numerous measures were taken by the British raj to avoid another conflict. In 1885, however, the founding of the Indian National Congress marked the beginnings of effective, organized protest for “national” self-determination. On Aug. 2, 1858, less than a month after Canning proclaimed the victory of British arms, Parliament passed the Government of India Act, transferring British power over India from the East India Company, whose ineptitude was primarily blamed for the mutiny, to the crown. The merchant company's residual powers were vested in the secretary of state for India, a minister of Great Britain's Cabinet, who would preside over the India Office in London and be assisted and advised, especially in financial matters, by a Council of India, which consisted initially of 15 Britons, 7 of whom were elected from among the old company's court of directors and 8 of whom were appointed by the crown. Though some of Britain's most powerful political leaders became secretaries of state for India in the latter half of the 19th century, actual control over the government of India remained in the hands of British viceroys (who divided their time between Calcutta and Shimla) and their “steel-frame” of approximately 1,500 Indian Civil Service (ICS) officials posted “on the spot” throughout British India.

History > British imperial power, 1858–1947 > Climax of the raj, 1858–85 > Social policy On Nov. 1, 1858, Lord Canning announced Queen Victoria's proclamation to “The Princes, Chiefs and Peoples of India,” which unveiled a new British policy of perpetual support for “native princes” and nonintervention in matters of religious belief or worship within British India. The announcement reversed Lord Dalhousie's prewar policy of political unification through princely state annexation, and princes were left free to adopt any heirs they desired so long as they all swore undying allegiance to the British crown. In 1876, at Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli's prompting, Queen Victoria added the title Empress of India to her regality. British fears of another mutiny and consequent determination to bolster Indian states as “natural breakwaters” against any future tidal wave of revolt thus left more than 560 enclaves of autocratic princely rule to survive, interspersed throughout British India, for the entire nine decades of crown rule. The new policy of religious nonintervention was born equally out of fear of recurring mutiny, which many Britons believed had been triggered by orthodox Hindu and Islamic reaction against the secularizing inroads of utilitarian positivism and the proselytizing of Christian missionaries. British liberal socioreligious reform therefore came to a halt for more than three decades—essentially from the East India Company's Hindu Widow's Remarriage Act of 1856 to the crown's timid Age of Consent Act of 1891, which merely raised the age of statutory rape for “consenting” Indian brides from 10 years to 12. The typical attitude of British officials who went to India during this period was, as the English writer Rudyard Kipling put it, to “take up the White man's burden.” By and large, throughout the interlude of their Indian service to the crown, Britons lived as super-bureaucrats, “Pukka Sahibs,” remaining as aloof as possible from “native contamination” in their private clubs and well-guarded military cantonments (called camps), which were constructed beyond the walls of the old, crowded “native” cities in this era. These new British military towns were initially erected as secure bases for the reorganized British regiments and were designed with straight roads wide enough for cavalry to gallop through whenever needed. The old company's three armies (located in Bengal, Bombay, and Madras), which in 1857 had only 45,000 British to 240,000 native troops were reorganized to a much “safer mix” of 65,000 British to 140,000 Indian soldiers. Selective new British recruitment policies screened out all “nonmartial” (meaning previously disloyal) Indian castes and races from armed service and “promiscuously” mixed the soldiers in every regiment, thus permitting no single caste or linguistic or religious group to again dominate a British Indian garrison. Indian soldiers were also restricted from handling certain sophisticated weaponry. After 1869, with the completion of the Suez Canal and the simultaneous introduction of steam transport, reducing the sea passage to India from about three months to only three weeks, British women came to the East with ever greater alacrity, and the British officials they married found it more appealing to return home with their British wives during furloughs than to tour India, as their predecessors had done. Fewer British men now dared to consort openly with Indian women, although some still ventured briefly into the prostitute quarters of old Indian cities. While the intellectual calibre of British recruits to the ICS in this era was, on the average, probably higher than that of servants recruited under the company's earlier patronage system, British contacts with Indian society diminished in every respect, and British sympathy for and understanding of Indian life and culture were, for the most part, replaced by suspicion, indifference, and fear. Queen Victoria's 1858 promise of racial equality of opportunity in the selection of civil servants for the government of India had theoretically thrown the ICS open to qualified Indians, but examinations for the services were given only in Britain and only to male applicants between the ages of 17 and 22 (in 1878 the maximum age was further reduced to 19) who could stay in the saddle over a rigorous series of hurdles. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that by 1869 only one Indian candidate had managed to clear these obstacles to win a coveted admission to the ICS. British royal promises of equality were thus subverted in actual implementation by jealous, fearful bureaucrats posted “on the spot.”

History > British imperial power, 1858–1947 > Climax of the raj, 1858–85 > Government organization From 1858 to 1909, the government of India was an increasingly centralized paternal despotism and the world's largest imperial bureaucracy. The Indian Councils Act of 1861 transformed the viceroy's Executive Council into a miniature cabinet run on the portfolio system, and each of the five ordinary members was placed in charge of a distinct department of Calcutta's government—home, revenue, military, finance, and law. The military commander in chief sat with this council as an extraordinary member. A sixth ordinary member was assigned to the viceroy's Executive Council after 1874, initially to preside over the Department of Public Works, which after 1904 came to be called Commerce and Industry. Though the government of India was by statutory definition the “Governor-General-in-Council” (governor-general remained the viceroy's alternate title), the viceroy was empowered to overrule his councillors if ever he deemed that necessary. He personally took charge of the Foreign Department, which was mostly occupied by relations with princely states and bordering foreign powers. Few viceroys found it necessary to assert their full despotic authority, since the majority of their councillors usually were in agreement, but in 1879 Viceroy Lytton (governed 1876–80) felt obliged to overrule his entire council in order to accommodate demands for the elimination of his government's import duties on British cotton manufactures, despite India's desperate need for revenue in a year of widespread famine and agricultural disorders. From 1854 additional members met with the viceroy's Executive Council for legislative purposes, and by the act of 1861 their permissible number was raised to between 6 and 12, no fewer than half of whom were to be nonofficials. While the viceroy appointed all such legislative councillors and was empowered to veto any bill passed on to him by this body, its debates were to be open to a limited public audience, and several of its nonofficial members were Indian nobility and loyal landowners. For the government of India the legislative council sessions thus served as a crude public-opinion barometer and the beginnings of an advisory “safety valve” that provided the viceroy with early crisis warnings at the minimum possible risk of parliamentary-type opposition. The act of 1892 further expanded the council's permissible additional membership to 16, of whom 10 could be nonofficials, and increased their powers, though only to the extent of allowing them to ask questions of government and to criticize formally the official budget during one day reserved for that purpose at the very end of each year's legislative session in Calcutta. The Supreme Council, however, still remained quite remote from any sort of parliament.

History > British imperial power, 1858–1947 > Climax of the raj, 1858–85 > Economic policy and development Economically, this was an era of increased commercial agricultural production, rapidly expanding trade, early industrial development, and severe famine. The total cost of the mutiny of 1857–59, approximately £40 million and equivalent to a normal year's revenue, was charged to India and paid off from increased revenue resources in four years. The major source of government income throughout this period remained the land revenue, which, as a percentage of the agricultural yield of India's soil, continued to be “an annual gamble in monsoon rains.” Usually, however, it provided about half of British India's gross annual revenue, or roughly the money needed to support the army. The second most lucrative source of revenue at this time was the government's continued monopoly over the flourishing illicit opium trade to China; the third was the tax on salt, also jealously guarded by the crown as its official monopoly preserve. An individual income tax was introduced for five years to pay off the war deficit, but urban personal income was not added as a regular source of Indian revenue until 1886. Despite continued British adherence to the doctrine of laissez-faire during this period, a 10 percent customs duty was levied in 1860 to help clear the war debt, though it was reduced to 7 percent in 1864 and to 5 percent in 1875. The above-mentioned cotton import duty, abolished in 1879 by Viceroy Lytton, was not reimposed on British imports of piece goods and yarn until 1894, when the value of silver fell so precipitously on the world market that the government of India was forced to take action, even against Lancashire, by adding enough rupees to its revenue to make ends meet. Bombay's textile industry had by then developed more than 80 power mills, and the Indian industrialist Jamsetji N. Tata's (1839–1904) huge Empress Mill was in full operation at Nagpur, competing directly with Lancashire for the vast Indian market. Britain's millowners again demonstrated their power in Calcutta by forcing the government of India to impose an “equalizing” 5 percent excise tax on all cloth manufactured in India, thereby convincing many Indian millowners and capitalists that their best interests would be served by contributing financial support to the Indian National Congress. Britain's major contribution to India's economic development throughout the era of crown rule was the railroad net that spread so swiftly across the subcontinent after 1858, when there were barely 200 miles of track in all of India. By 1869 more than 5,000 miles of steel track had been completed by British railroad companies, and by 1900 there were 25,000 miles of rail laid. By the start of World War I the total reached 35,000 miles, almost the full growth of British India's rail net. Initially, the railroads proved a mixed blessing for most Indians, since by linking India's agricultural, village-based heartland to the British imperial port cities of Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta, they served both to accelerate the pace of raw-material extraction from India and to speed up the transition from subsistence food to commercial agricultural production. Middlemen hired by port-city Agency Houses rode the trains inland and induced village headmen to convert large tracts of grain-yielding land to commercial crops. Large sums of silver were offered in payment for raw materials when the British demand was high, as was the case throughout the American Civil War, but when the Civil War ended, restoring raw cotton from the southern United States to Lancashire mills, the Indian market collapsed. Millions of peasants weaned from grain production now found themselves riding the boom-and-bust tiger of a world-market economy. They were unable to convert their commercial agricultural surplus back into food during depression years, and from 1865 through 1900 India experienced a series of protracted famines, which in 1896 was complicated by the introduction of the bubonic plague (spread from Bombay, where infected rats were brought from China). As a result, though the population of the subcontinent increased dramatically from about 200 million in 1872 (the year of the first census) to more than 300 million in 1920, the population actually declined by several millions between 1895 and 1905. The spread of railroads also accelerated the destruction of India's indigenous handicraft industries, for trains filled with cheap competitive manufactured goods shipped from England now rushed to inland towns for distribution to villages, underselling the rougher products of Indian craftsmen. Entire handicraft villages thus lost their traditional markets of neighbouring agricultural villagers, and craftsmen were forced to abandon their looms and spinning wheels and return to the soil for their livelihood. By the end of the 19th century a larger percentage of India's population (approximately 90 percent) depended directly on agriculture for support than at the century's start, and the pressure of population upon arable land increased throughout this period. Railroads also provided the military with swift and relatively assured access to all parts of the country in the event of emergency and were eventually used to transport grain for famine relief as well. The rich coalfields of Bihar and Orissa began to be mined during this period to help power the imported British locomotives, and coal production jumped from 500,000 tons in 1868 to over 6,000,000 tons in 1900 and more than 20,000,000 tons by 1920. Coal was used for iron smelting in India as early as 1875, but the Tata Iron and Steel Company, which received no government aid, did not start production until 1911, when, in Bihar, it launched India's steel industry. Tata grew rapidly after World War I and by World War II had become the largest single steel complex in the British Commonwealth. The jute textile industry, Bengal's counterpart to Bombay's cotton industry, developed in the wake of the Crimean War (1853–56), which, by cutting off Russia's supply of raw hemp to the jute mills of Scotland, stimulated the export of raw jute from Calcutta to Dundee. In 1863 there were only two jute mills in Bengal, but by 1882 there were 20, employing more than 20,000 workers. The most important plantation industries of this era were tea, indigo, and coffee. British tea plantations were started in North India's Assam Hills in the 1850s and in South India's Nilgiri Hills some 20 years later. By 1871 there were over 300 tea plantations, covering more than 30,000 cultivated acres (12,000 hectares) and producing over 6,000,000 pounds of tea. By 1900 India's tea crop was large enough to export 137,000,000 pounds to Britain, displacing the tea of China in London. The flourishing indigo industry of Bengal and Bihar was threatened with extinction during the “Blue Mutiny” (violent riots by cultivators in 1859–60), but India continued to export indigo to European markets until the end of the 19th century, when synthetic dyes made that natural product obsolete. Coffee plantations flourished in South India from 1860 to 1879, after which disease blighted the crop and sent Indian coffee into a decade of decline.

History > British imperial power, 1858–1947 > Foreign policy > The northwest frontier British India expanded beyond its company borders to both the northwest and the northeast during this initial phase of crown rule. The turbulent tribal frontier to the northwest remained a continuing source of harassment to settled British rule, and Pathan (Pashtun) raiders served as a constant lure and justification to champions of the “forward school” of imperialism in Calcutta, Shimla, and Whitehall. Russian expansion into Central Asia in the 1860s provided even greater anxiety and incentive to British proconsuls in India, as well as at the Foreign Office in London, to advance the frontier of the Indian empire beyond the Hindu Kush and, indeed, up to Afghanistan's own northern border along the Oxus. Lord Canning (governed 1856–62), however, was far too preoccupied with trying to restore tranquillity within India to consider embarking upon anything more ambitious than the northwest frontier punitive expedition policy (commonly called “butcher and bolt”), which was generally regarded as the simplest, cheapest method of “pacifying” the Pathans. As viceroy, Lord Lawrence (governed 1864–69) continued the same border-pacification policy and resolutely refused to be pushed or lured into the ever-simmering caldron of Afghan politics. In 1863, when the popular old amir, Dost Muhammad Khan, died, Lawrence wisely refrained from attempting to name his successor, leaving the Dost's 16 sons to fight their own fratricidal battles until 1868, when Shir 'Ali finally emerged victorious. Lawrence then recognized and subsidized the new amir. Viceroy Lord Mayo (governed 1869–72) met to confer with Shir 'Ali at Ambala in 1869 and, though reaffirming Anglo-Afghan friendship, resisted all requests by the amir for more permanent and practical support for his still precarious regime. Lord Mayo, the only British viceroy killed in office, was assassinated by an Afghan prisoner on the Andaman Islands in 1872.

History > British imperial power, 1858–1947 > Foreign policy > The Second Afghan War Russia's glacial advance into Turkistan and Samarkand sufficiently alarmed Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and his secretary of state for India, Robert Salisbury, that by 1874, when they came to power in London, they pressed the government of India to pursue a more vigorous interventionist line with Kabul. Viceroy Lord Northbrook (governed 1872–76), resisting all such cabinet promptings to reverse Lawrence's noninterventionist policy and to return to the militant posture of the First Afghan War era, resigned his office rather than accept orders from ministers whose diplomatic judgment he believed to be disastrously distorted by Russophobia. Lord Lytton, however, who succeeded him as viceroy, was more than eager to act as his prime minister desired, and, soon after he reached Calcutta, he notified Shir 'Ali that he was sending a “mission” to Kabul. When the amir refused Lytton permission to enter his hermit kingdom, the viceroy bellicosely declaimed that Afghanistan was but “an earthen pipkin between two metal pots.” He did not, however, take action against the kingdom until 1878, when Russia's General Stolyetov was admitted to Kabul while Lytton's envoy, Sir Neville Chamberlain, was turned back at the border by Afghan troops. The viceroy decided to crush his neighbouring “pipkin” and launched the Second Afghan War on Nov. 21, 1878, with a British invasion over the high passes. Shir 'Ali fled his capital and country, dying in exile early in 1879. The British army occupied Kabul, as it had in the first war, and a treaty signed at Gandamak on May 26, 1879, was concluded with the former amir's son, Ya'qub Khan. Ya'qub Khan promised, in exchange for British support and protection, to admit to his Kabul court a British resident who would direct Afghan foreign relations, but the resident, Sir Louis Cavagnari, was assassinated on Sept. 3, 1879, just two months after he arrived. British troops trudged back over the passes to Kabul and removed Ya'qub from the throne, which remained vacant until July 1880, when 'Abdor Rahman Khan, nephew of Shir 'Ali, became amir. The new amir, one of the shrewdest statesmen in Afghan history, remained secure on the throne until his death in 1901. Viceroy Lord Lansdowne (governed 1888–94), who sought to reassert a more forward policy in Afghanistan, did so on the advice of his military commander in chief, Lord Roberts, who had served as field commander in the Second Afghan War. In 1893 Lansdowne sent Sir Mortimer Durand, the government of India's foreign secretary, on a mission to Kabul to open negotiations on the delimitation of the Indo-Afghan border. The demarcation, known as the Durand Line, was completed in 1896 and added the tribal territory of the Afridis, Mahsuds, Waziris, and Swatis as well as the chieftainships of Chitral and Gilgit, to the domain of British India. The 9th Earl of Elgin (governed 1894–99), Lansdowne's successor, devoted much of his viceregal tenure to sending British Indian armies on punitive expeditions along this new frontier. Viceroy Lord Curzon (governed 1899–1905), however, recognized the impracticality of trying to administer the turbulent frontier region as part of the large Punjab province. Thus, in 1901 he created a new North-West Frontier Province containing some 40,000 square miles (about 100,000 square kilometres) of trans-Sutlej and tribal borderland territory under a British chief commissioner responsible directly to the viceroy. By instituting a policy of regular payments to frontier tribes, the new province reduced border conflicts, though for the next decade British troops continued to fight against Mahsuds, Waziris, and Zakka Khel Afridis.

History > British imperial power, 1858–1947 > Foreign policy > The incorporation of Burma (Myanmar) British India's conquest of Burma, located to the northeast, was completed during this period. The Second Anglo-Burmese War (1852) had left the kingdom of Ava (Upper Burma) independent of British India, and under the rule of King Mindon (1853–78), who built his capital at Mandalay, steamers bringing British residents and private traders up the Irrawaddy from Rangoon (modern Yangôn) were welcomed. Mindon, noted for convening the Fifth Buddhist Council at Mandalay in 1871 (the first such council in some 1,900 years), was succeeded by a younger son, Thibaw, who in February 1879 celebrated his ascendancy to the throne by having 80 siblings massacred. Thibaw refused to renew his father's treaty agreements with Britain, turning instead to seek commercial relations with the French, who were then advancing toward his kingdom from their base in Southeast Asia. Thibaw sent envoys to Paris, and in January 1885 the French signed a treaty of trade with the kingdom of Ava and dispatched a French consul to Mandalay. This envoy hoped to establish a French bank in Upper Burma to finance the construction of a railway and the general commercial development of the kingdom, but his plans were thwarted. The viceroy, Lord Dufferin (governed 1884–88), impatient with Thibaw for delaying a treaty agreement with British India, goaded to action by British traders in Rangoon, and provoked by fears of French intervention in Britain's “sphere,” sent an expedition of some 10,000 troops up the Irrawaddy in November 1885. The Third Anglo-Burmese War ended in less than a month with the loss of hardly 20 lives, and on Jan. 1, 1886, Upper Burma, a kingdom of greater area than Britain and with a population of some 4,000,000, was annexed by proclamation to British India.

History > British imperial power, 1858–1947 > Indian nationalism and the British response, 1885–1920 > Origins of the nationalist movement The Indian National Congress held its first meeting in December 1885 in Bombay city while British Indian troops were still fighting in Upper Burma. Thus, just as the British Indian empire attained its outermost limits of expansion, the institutional seed of the larger of its two national successors was sown. Provincial roots of Indian nationalism, however, may be traced to the beginning of the era of crown rule in Bombay, Bengal, and Madras. Nationalism emerged in 19th-century British India both in emulation of and as a reaction against the consolidation of British rule and the spread of Western civilization. There were, moreover, two turbulent national mainstreams flowing beneath the deceptively placid official surface of British administration: the larger, headed by the Indian National Congress, which led eventually to the birth of India, and the smaller Muslim one, which acquired its organizational skeleton with the founding of the Muslim League in 1906 and led to the creation of Pakistan. Many English-educated young Indians of the postmutiny period emulated their British mentors by seeking employment in the ICS, the legal services, journalism, and education. The universities of Bombay, Bengal, and Madras had been founded in 1857 as the capstone of the East India Company's modest policy of selectively fostering the introduction of English education in India. At the beginning of crown rule, the first graduates of these universities, reared on the works and ideas of Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and Thomas Macaulay, sought positions that would help them improve themselves and society at the same time. They were convinced that, with the education they had received and the proper apprenticeship of hard work, they would eventually inherit the machinery of British Indian government. Few Indians, however, were admitted to the ICS; and, among the first handful who were, one of the brightest, Surendranath Banerjea (1848–1925), was dismissed dishonourably at the earliest pretext and turned from loyal participation within the government to active nationalist agitation against it. Banerjea became a Calcutta college teacher and then editor of The Bengalee and founder of the Indian Association in Calcutta. In 1883 he convened the first Indian National Conference in Bengal, anticipating by two years the birth of the Congress on the opposite side of India. After the first partition of Bengal in 1905, Banerjea attained nationwide fame as a leader of the swadeshi (“of our own country”) movement, promoting Indian-made goods, and the movement to boycott British manufactured goods. During the 1870s, young leaders in Bombay also established a number of provincial political associations, such as the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha (Poona Public Society), founded by Mahadev G. Ranade (1842–1901), who had graduated at the top of Bombay University's first bachelor of arts class in 1862. Ranade found employment in the educational department in Bombay, taught at Elphinstone College, edited the Indu Prakash, helped start the Hindu reformist Prarthana Samaj (Prayer Society) in Bombay, wrote historical and other essays, and became a barrister, eventually being appointed to the bench of Bombay's high court. Ranade was one of the early leaders of India's emulative school of nationalism, as was his brilliant disciple Gopal Krishna Gokhale (1866–1915), later revered by Mahatma Gandhi as a political guru (preceptor). Gokhale, an editor and social reformer, taught at Fergusson College in Poona (Pune) and in 1905 was elected president of the Congress. Moderation and reform were the keynotes of Gokhale's life, and by his use of reasoned argument, patient labour, and unflagging faith in the ultimate equity of British liberalism, he was able to achieve much for India. Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856–1920), Gokhale's colleague at Fergusson College, was the leader of Indian nationalism's revolutionary reaction against British rule. Tilak was Poona's most popular Marathi journalist, whose vernacular newspaper, Kesari (“Lion”), became the leading literary thorn in the side of the British. The Lokamanya (“Revered by the People”), as Tilak came to be called after he was jailed for seditious writings in 1897, looked to orthodox Hinduism and Maratha history as his twin sources of nationalist inspiration. Tilak called upon his compatriots to take keener interest and pride in the religious, cultural, martial, and political glories of pre-British Hindu India; in Poona, former capital of the Maratha Hindu glory, he helped found and publicize the popular Ganapati and Sivaji festivals in the 1890s. Tilak had no faith in British justice, and his life was devoted primarily to agitation aimed at ousting the British from India by any means and restoring swaraj (“self-rule” or independence) to India's people. While Tilak brought many non-English-educated Hindus into the nationalist movement, the orthodox Hindu character of his revolutionary revival (which mellowed considerably in the latter part of his political career) alienated many within India's Muslim minority and exacerbated communal tensions and conflict. The viceroyalties of Lytton and Lord Ripon (governed 1880–84) prepared the soil of British India for nationalism, the former by internal measures of repression and the futility of an external policy of aggression, the latter indirectly as a result of the European community's rejection of his liberal humanitarian legislation. One of the key men who helped arrange the first meeting of the Congress was a retired British official, Allan Octavian Hume (1829–1912), Ripon's radical confidant. After retiring from the ICS in 1882, Hume, a mystic reformer and ornithologist, lived in Shimla, where he studied birds and theosophy. Hume had joined the Theosophical Society in 1881, as had many young Indians, who found in theosophy a movement most flattering to Indian civilization. Helena Blavatsky (1831–91), the Russian-born cofounder of the Theosophical Society, went to India in 1879 to sit at the feet of Swami Dayananda Sarasvati (1824–83), whose “back to the Vedas” reformist Hindu society, the Arya Samaj, was founded in Bombay in 1875. Dayananda called upon Hindus to reject the “corrupting” medieval excrescences of their faith, including idolatry, the caste system, and infant marriage, and to return to the original purity of Vedic life and thought. The Swami insisted that post-Vedic changes in Hindu society had led only to weakness and disunity, which had destroyed India's capacity to resist foreign invasion and subjugation. His reformist society was to take root most firmly in the Punjab at the start of the 20th century, and it became that province's leading nationalist organization. Blavatsky soon left Dayananda and established her own “Samaj,” whose Indian headquarters were outside Madras city, at Adyar. Annie Besant (1847–1933), the Theosophical Society's most famous leader, succeeded Blavatsky and became the first and only British woman to serve as president of the Indian National Congress (1917).

History > British imperial power, 1858–1947 > Indian nationalism and the British response, 1885–1920 > The early Congress movement The first Congress session, convened in Bombay city on Dec. 28, 1885, was attended by 73 representatives, as well as 10 more unofficial delegates; every province of British India was represented. Fifty-four of the delegates were Hindu, only two were Muslim, and the remainder were mostly Parsi and Jaina. Practically all the Hindu delegates were Brahmans. All of them spoke English. More than half were lawyers, and the remainder consisted of journalists, businessmen, landowners, and professors. Such was the first gathering of the new India, an emerging elite of middle-class intellectuals devoted to peaceful political action and protest on behalf of their nation in the making. On its last day, the Congress passed resolutions, embodying the political and economic demands of its members, that served thereafter as public petitions to government for the redress of grievances. Among these initial resolutions were calls for the addition of elected nonofficial representatives to the Supreme and provincial legislative councils and for real equality of opportunity for Indians to enter the ICS by the immediate introduction of simultaneous examinations in India and Britain. Economic demands by the Congress started with a call for the reduction of “Home charges,” which included the entire India Office budget and the pensions of officials living in Britain in retirement. Dadabhai Naoroji (1825–1917), the “grand old man” of the Congress who served three times as its president, was the leading exponent of the popular economic “drain” argument, which offered theoretical economic support to nationalist politics by insisting that India's poverty was the product of British exploitation and the annual plunder of gold, silver, and raw materials. Other resolutions called for the reduction of military expenditure, condemned the Third Anglo-Burmese War, demanded retrenchment of administrative expenses, and urged reimposition of import duties on British manufactures. Hume, who is credited with organizing the Indian National Congress, attended the first session of the Congress as the only British delegate. Sir William Wedderburn (1838–1918), Gokhale's closest British adviser and himself later elected twice to serve as president of the Congress, and William Wordsworth, principal of Elphinstone College, both appeared as observers. Most Britons in India, however, either ignored the Congress and its resolutions as the action and demands of a “microscopic minority” of India's diverse millions or considered them the rantings of disloyal extremists. Despite this combination of official disdain and hostility, the Congress quickly won substantial Indian support and within two years had grown to number more than 600 delegates. In 1888, when Viceroy Dufferin, on the eve of his departure from India, dismissed the Congress as “microscopic,” it mustered 1,248 delegates at its annual meeting. Still, British officials continued to dismiss the significance of the Congress, and more than a decade later Viceroy Curzon claimed, perhaps wishfully, that it was “tottering to its fall.” Curzon, however, inadvertently helped to infuse the Congress with unprecedented popularity and militant vitality by his own arrogance and by failing to appreciate the importance of human sympathy in his relentless drive toward greater efficiency.

History > British imperial power, 1858–1947 > Indian nationalism and the British response, 1885–1920 > The first partition of Bengal The first partition of Bengal in 1905 brought that province to the brink of open rebellion. With some 85 million people, Bengal was, admittedly, much too large for a single province and merited reorganization and intelligent division. The line drawn by Lord Curzon's government, however, cut through the heart of the Bengali-speaking “nation,” leaving western Bengal's bhadralok (“respectable people”), the intellectual Hindu leadership of Calcutta, tied to the much less politically active Bihari- and Oriya-speaking Hindus to their north and south. A new Muslim-majority province of Eastern Bengal and Assam was created with its capital at Dacca (now Dhaka). The leadership of the Congress viewed that partition as an attempt to “divide and rule” and as proof of the government's vindictive antipathy toward the outspoken bhadralok intellectuals, especially since Curzon and his subordinates had ignored countless pleas and petitions signed by tens of thousands of Calcutta's leading citizens. Mother-goddess-worshiping Bengali Hindus believed that partition was nothing less than the vivisection of their “mother province,” and mass protest rallies before and after Bengal's division on Oct. 16, 1905, attracted millions of people theretofore untouched by politics of any variety. The new tide of national sentiment born in Bengal rose to inundate India in every direction, and “Bande Mataram” (“Hail to Thee Mother”) became the Congress' national anthem, its words taken from Anandamath, a popular Bengali novel by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, and its music composed by Bengal's greatest poet, Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941). As a reaction against the partition, Bengali Hindus launched an effective boycott of British-made goods and dramatized their resolve to live without foreign cloth by igniting huge bonfires of Lancashire goods. Such bonfires, re-creating ancient Vedic sacrificial altars, aroused Hindus in Poona, Madras, and Bombay to light similar political pyres of protest. Instead of wearing foreign-made cloth, Indians vowed to use only domestic (swadeshi) cottons and other clothing made in India. Simple hand-spun and hand-woven saris became high fashion, first in Calcutta and elsewhere in Bengal and then all across India, and displaced the finest Lancashire garments, which were now viewed as hateful imports. The swadeshi movement soon stimulated indigenous enterprise in many fields, from Indian cotton mills to match factories, glassblowing shops, and iron and steel foundries. Increased demands for national education also swiftly followed partition. Bengali students and professors extended their boycott of British goods to English schools and college classrooms, and politically active Indians began to emulate the so-called “Indian Jesuits”—Vishnu Krishna Chiplunkar (1850–82), Gopal Ganesh Agarkar (1856–95), Tilak, and Gokhale—who were pioneers in the founding of indigenous educational institutions in the Deccan in the 1880s. The movement for national education spread throughout Bengal, as well as to Varanasi, where Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya (1861–1946) founded his private Banaras Hindu University in 1910. One of the last major demands to be added to the platform of the Congress in the wake of Bengal's first partition was swaraj (“self-rule”), soon to become the most popular mantra (“holy utterance”) of Indian nationalism. Swaraj was first articulated, in the presidential address of Dadabhai Naoroji, as the Congress' goal at its Calcutta session in 1906.

History > British imperial power, 1858–1947 > Indian nationalism and the British response, 1885–1920 > Nationalism in the Muslim community While the Congress was calling for swaraj in Calcutta, the Muslim League held its first meeting in Dacca. Though the Muslim quarter of India's population lagged behind the Hindu majority in uniting to articulate nationalist political demands, Islam had, since the founding of the Delhi sultanate in 1206, provided Indian Muslims with sufficient doctrinal mortar to unite them as a separate religious community. The era of effective Mughal rule (c. 1556–1707), moreover, gave India's Muslims a sense of martial and administrative superiority to, as well as separation from, the Hindu majority. In 1857 the last of the Mughal emperors had served as a rallying symbol for many mutineers, and in the wake of the mutiny most Britons placed the burden of blame for its inception upon the Muslim community. Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817–98), India's greatest 19th-century Muslim leader, succeeded, in his “Causes of the Indian Revolt” (1873), in convincing many British officials that Hindus were primarily to blame for the mutiny. Sayyid had entered the company's service in 1838 and was the leader of Muslim India's emulative mainstream of political reform. He visited Oxford in 1874 and returned to found the Anglo-Muhammadan Oriental College (now Aligarh Muslim University) at Aligarh in 1875. It was India's first centre of Islamic and Western higher education, with instruction given in English and modeled after Oxford. Aligarh became the intellectual cradle of the Muslim League and Pakistan. Sayyid Mahdi Ali, popularly known by his title Mohsin al-Mulk (1837–1907), had succeeded Sayyid Ahmad as leader and convened a deputation of some 36 Muslim leaders, headed by the Aga Khan III, that in 1906 called upon Lord Minto (viceroy from 1905 to 1910) to articulate the special national interests of India's Muslim community. Minto promised that any reforms enacted by his government would safeguard the separate interests of the Muslim community. Separate Muslim electorates, formally inaugurated by the Indian Councils Act of 1909, were thus vouchsafed by viceregal fiat in 1906. Encouraged by the concession, the Aga Khan's deputation issued an expanded call during the first meeting of the Muslim League (convened in December 1906 at Dacca) “to protect and advance the political rights and interests of Mussalmans of India.” Other resolutions moved at its first meeting expressed Muslim “loyalty to the British government,” support for the Bengal partition, and condemnation of the boycott movement. History > British imperial power, 1858–1947 > Indian nationalism and the British response, 1885–1920 > Reforms of the British Liberals In Great Britain the Liberal Party's electoral victory of 1906 marked the dawn of a new era of reforms for British India. Hampered though he was by the viceroy, Lord Minto, the new secretary of state for India, John Morley, was able to introduce several important innovations into the legislative and administrative machinery of the British Indian government. First of all, he acted to implement Queen Victoria's promise of racial equality of opportunity, which since 1858 had served only to assure Indian nationalists of British hypocrisy. He appointed two Indian members to his council at Whitehall: one a Muslim, Sayyid Husain Bilgrami, who had taken an active role in the founding of the Muslim League; the other a Hindu, Krishna G. Gupta, the senior Indian in the ICS. Morley also persuaded a reluctant Lord Minto to appoint to the viceroy's Executive Council the first Indian member, Satyendra P. Sinha (1864–1928), in 1909. Sinha (later Lord Sinha) had been admitted to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1886 and was advocate general of Bengal before his appointment as the viceroy's law member, a position he felt obliged to resign in 1910. He was elected president of the Congress in 1915 and became parliamentary undersecretary of state for India in 1919 and governor of Bihar and Orissa in 1920. Morley's major reform scheme, the Indian Councils Act of 1909 (popularly called the Minto-Morley Reforms), directly introduced the elective principle to Indian legislative council membership. Though the initial electorate was a minuscule minority of Indians enfranchised by property ownership and education, in 1910 some 135 elected Indian representatives took their seats as members of legislative councils throughout British India. The act of 1909 also increased the maximum additional membership of the Supreme Council from 16 (to which it had been raised by the Councils Act of 1892) to 60. In the provincial councils of Bombay, Bengal, and Madras, which had been created in 1861, the permissible total membership had been raised to 20 by the act of 1892, and this was increased in 1909 to 50, a majority of whom were to be nonofficials; the number of council members in other provinces was similarly increased. In abolishing the official majorities of provincial legislatures, Morley was following the advice of Gokhale and other liberal Congress leaders, such as Romesh Chunder Dutt (1848–1909), and overriding the bitter opposition of not only the ICS but also his own viceroy and council. Viceroy Morley believed, as did many other British Liberal politicians, that the only justification for British rule over India was to bequeath to the government of India Britain's greatest political institution, parliamentary government. Minto and his officials in Calcutta and Shimla did succeed in watering down the reforms by writing stringent regulations for their implementation and insisting upon the retention of executive veto power over all legislation. Elected members of the new councils were empowered, nevertheless, to engage in spontaneous supplementary questioning, as well as in formal debate with the executive concerning the annual budget. Members were also permitted to introduce legislative proposals of their own. Gokhale took immediate advantage of these vital new parliamentary procedures by introducing a measure for free and compulsory elementary education throughout British India. Although defeated, it was brought back again and again by Gokhale, who used the platform of the government's highest council of state as a sounding board for nationalist demands. Before the act of 1909, as Gokhale told fellow members of the Congress in Madras that year, Indian nationalists had been engaged in agitation “from outside,” but “from now,” he said, they would be “engaged in what might be called responsible association with the administration.”

History > British imperial power, 1858–1947 > Indian nationalism and the British response, 1885–1920 > Reforms of the British Liberals In Great Britain the Liberal Party's electoral victory of 1906 marked the dawn of a new era of reforms for British India. Hampered though he was by the viceroy, Lord Minto, the new secretary of state for India, John Morley, was able to introduce several important innovations into the legislative and administrative machinery of the British Indian government. First of all, he acted to implement Queen Victoria's promise of racial equality of opportunity, which since 1858 had served only to assure Indian nationalists of British hypocrisy. He appointed two Indian members to his council at Whitehall: one a Muslim, Sayyid Husain Bilgrami, who had taken an active role in the founding of the Muslim League; the other a Hindu, Krishna G. Gupta, the senior Indian in the ICS. Morley also persuaded a reluctant Lord Minto to appoint to the viceroy's Executive Council the first Indian member, Satyendra P. Sinha (1864–1928), in 1909. Sinha (later Lord Sinha) had been admitted to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1886 and was advocate general of Bengal before his appointment as the viceroy's law member, a position he felt obliged to resign in 1910. He was elected president of the Congress in 1915 and became parliamentary undersecretary of state for India in 1919 and governor of Bihar and Orissa in 1920. Morley's major reform scheme, the Indian Councils Act of 1909 (popularly called the Minto-Morley Reforms), directly introduced the elective principle to Indian legislative council membership. Though the initial electorate was a minuscule minority of Indians enfranchised by property ownership and education, in 1910 some 135 elected Indian representatives took their seats as members of legislative councils throughout British India. The act of 1909 also increased the maximum additional membership of the Supreme Council from 16 (to which it had been raised by the Councils Act of 1892) to 60. In the provincial councils of Bombay, Bengal, and Madras, which had been created in 1861, the permissible total membership had been raised to 20 by the act of 1892, and this was increased in 1909 to 50, a majority of whom were to be nonofficials; the number of council members in other provinces was similarly increased. In abolishing the official majorities of provincial legislatures, Morley was following the advice of Gokhale and other liberal Congress leaders, such as Romesh Chunder Dutt (1848–1909), and overriding the bitter opposition of not only the ICS but also his own viceroy and council. Viceroy Morley believed, as did many other British Liberal politicians, that the only justification for British rule over India was to bequeath to the government of India Britain's greatest political institution, parliamentary government. Minto and his officials in Calcutta and Shimla did succeed in watering down the reforms by writing stringent regulations for their implementation and insisting upon the retention of executive veto power over all legislation. Elected members of the new councils were empowered, nevertheless, to engage in spontaneous supplementary questioning, as well as in formal debate with the executive concerning the annual budget. Members were also permitted to introduce legislative proposals of their own. Gokhale took immediate advantage of these vital new parliamentary procedures by introducing a measure for free and compulsory elementary education throughout British India. Although defeated, it was brought back again and again by Gokhale, who used the platform of the government's highest council of state as a sounding board for nationalist demands. Before the act of 1909, as Gokhale told fellow members of the Congress in Madras that year, Indian nationalists had been engaged in agitation “from outside,” but “from now,” he said, they would be “engaged in what might be called responsible association with the administration.”

History > British imperial power, 1858–1947 > World War I and its aftermath In August 1914, Lord Hardinge announced his government's entry into World War I. India's contributions to the war became extensive and significant, and the war's contributions to change within British India proved to be even greater. In many ways—politically, economically, and socially—the impact of the conflict was as pervasive as that of the mutiny of 1857–59. History > British imperial power, 1858–1947 > World War I and its aftermath > India's contributions to the war effort The initial response to Lord Hardinge's announcement was, for the most part, enthusiastically supportive throughout India. Indian princes volunteered their men, money, and personal service, while leaders of the Congress—from Tilak, who had just been released from Mandalay and had wired the king-emperor vowing his patriotic support, to Gandhi, who toured Indian villages urging peasants to join the British army—were allied in backing the war effort. Only India's Muslims, whose doctrinal allegiance to the Ottoman caliph had to be weighed against their temporal devotion to British rule, seemed ambivalent from the war's inception. Support from the Congress was primarily offered on the assumption that Britain would repay such loyal assistance with substantial political concessions—if not immediate independence or at least dominion status following the war, then surely its promise soon after the Allies achieved victory. The government of India's immediate military support was of vital importance in bolstering the western front, and an expeditionary force, including two fully manned infantry divisions and one cavalry division, left India in late August and early September 1914. They were shipped directly to France and moved up to the battered Belgian line just in time for the First Battle of Ypres. The Indian Corps sustained extraordinarily heavy losses during the winter campaigns of 1914–15 on the western front. The myth of Indian racial inferiority, especially with respect to courage in battle, was thus dissolved in sepoy blood on Flanders fields. In 1917 Indians were at last admitted to the final bastion of British Indian racial discrimination—the ranks of royal commissioned officers. In the early months of the war, Indian troops were rushed to East Africa and Egypt, as well as to the western front, and by the end of 1914 more than 300,000 officers and men of the British Indian Army had been shipped to overseas garrisons and battlefronts. The Indian Army's most ambitious, though ill-managed, campaign was fought in Mesopotamia. In October 1914, before Turkey joined forces with the Central Powers, the government of India launched an army to the mouth of the Shatt Al-'Arab to further Viceroy Curzon's policy of control over the Persian Gulf region. Basra was taken easily in December 1914, and by October 1915 the British Indian army had moved as far north as Al-Kut, barely 100 miles (160 kilometres) from Baghdad. The prize of Baghdad seemed within reach of British arms, but less than two weeks after General Sir Charles Townshend's doomed army of 12,000 Indians started north in November 1915, they were stopped at Ctesiphon, then forced to fall back to Al-Kut, which was surrounded by Turks in December and fell in April 1916. This disaster became a national scandal for Britain and led to the immediate resignation of India's secretary of state, Austin Chamberlain. Edwin Montagu, Chamberlain's successor at Whitehall's India Office, informed the British House of Commons on Aug. 20, 1917, that the policy of the British government toward India was thereafter to be one of “increasing association of Indians in every branch of the administration. . . with a view to the progressive realization of responsible government in India as an integral part of the Empire.” Soon after this stirring promise of political reward for India's wartime support, Montagu embarked upon a personal tour of India. During his tour, Montagu conferred with his new viceroy, Lord Chelmsford (governed 1916–21), and their lengthy deliberations bore fruit in the Montagu-Chelmsford Report of 1918, the theoretical basis for the Government of India Act of 1919.

History > British imperial power, 1858–1947 > World War I and its aftermath > Anti-British activity Anti-British terrorist activity started soon after the war began, sparked by the return to India of hundreds of embittered Sikhs who had sought to emigrate from their Punjab homes to Canada but who were denied permission to disembark in that country because of their colour. As British subjects the Sikhs had assumed they would gain entry to underpopulated Canada, but after wretched months in cramped and unsanitary conditions, with inadequate food supplies aboard an old freighter (the Komagata Maru), they returned to India as confirmed revolutionaries. Leaders of the Ghadr (“Mutiny”) Party, which had been started by Punjabi Sikhs in 1913, journeyed abroad in search of arms and money to support their revolution, and Har Dayal, the party's foremost leader, went to Berlin to solicit aid from the Central Powers. Muslim disaffection also grew and acquired revolutionary dimensions as the Mesopotamian campaign dragged on. Many Indian Muslims appealed to Afghanistan for aid and urged the amir to start a holy war against the British and in defense of the Caliphate. After the war the Khilafat movement, an offspring of growing pan-Islamic consciousness in India, was started by two fiery orator-journalists, the brothers Shaukat and Muhammad 'Ali. It lured thousands of Muslim peasants to abandon their village homes and trudge over frozen high passes in a disastrous hijrah (“flight”) from India to Afghanistan. In Bengal, terrorist bombings continued to harass officials, despite numerous “preventive detention” arrests made by Indian Criminal Intelligence Division police under the tough martial-law edicts promulgated at the war's inception. The deaths of Gokhale and of the Bombay political leader Sir Pherozeshah Mehta in 1915 removed the most powerful moderate leadership from the Congress and cleared the way for Tilak's return to power in that organization after its reunification in 1916 at Lucknow. That historic session in December 1916 brought even greater unity to India's nationalist forces, as the Congress and the Muslim League agreed to a pact outlining their joint program of immediate national demands. The Lucknow Pact called first of all for the creation of expanded provincial legislative councils, four-fifths of whose members should be elected directly by the people on as broad a franchise as possible. The League's readiness to unite with the Congress was attributed to the pact's stipulation that Muslims should receive a far higher proportion of separate electorate seats in all legislative councils than they had enjoyed under the act of 1909. Thanks to such generous concessions of political power by the Congress, Muslim leaders, including Mohammad Ali Jinnah (1876–1949), agreed to set aside doctrinal differences and work with the Indian National Congress toward the attainment of national freedom from British rule. This Congress-League rapprochement was, however, short-lived, and by 1917 communal tensions and disagreements once again dominated India's faction-ridden political scene. Tilak and Annie Besant each campaigned for different home-rule leagues, while Muslims worried more about pan-Islamic problems than all-India questions of unity.

History > British imperial power, 1858–1947 > World War I and its aftermath > The postwar years By Armistice Day, Nov. 11, 1918, more than 1,000,000 Indian troops had been shipped overseas to fight or serve as noncombatants behind the Allied lines on every major front from France to Gallipoli in European Turkey. More than 100,000 Indian battle casualties, over 36,000 of which proved fatal, were sustained during the war. India's material and financial contributions to the war effort included the shipment of some £80 million worth of military stores and equipment to various fronts and nearly 5 million tons of wheat (valued at over £40 million) to Great Britain; also supplied by India were raw jute, cotton goods, rough-tanned hides, tungsten (wolfram), manganese, mica, saltpetre, timbers, silk, rubber, and various oils. The government of India paid for all its troops overseas, and before the war ended the viceroy presented a gift of £100 million (actually an imperial tax) to the British government. Tata's Iron and Steel Company received Indian government support once the war started and by 1916 was producing 100,000 tons of steel a year. An industrial commission was appointed in 1916 to survey the subcontinent's industrial resources and potential, and in 1917 a munitions board was created to expedite the production of war matériel. Wartime inflation was immediately followed by one of India's worst depressions, which came in the wake of the devastating influenza epidemic in 1918, an epidemic that took a far heavier toll of Indian life and resources than all the casualties sustained throughout the war. Politically the postwar years proved equally depressing to India's great expectations. British officials, who in the first flush of patriotism had abandoned their ICS posts to rush to the front, returned to oust the Indian subordinates acting in their stead and carried on their prewar jobs as though nothing had changed in British India. Indian soldiers also returned from battlefronts to find that back at home they were no longer treated as invaluable allies but reverted immediately to the status of “natives.” Most of the soldiers recruited during the war had come from the Punjab, which, with only 7 percent of India's population, had supplied more than 50 percent of the combatant troops shipped abroad. It is thus hardly surprising that the flashpoint of postwar violence that shook India in the spring of 1919 was Punjab province. The issue that served to rally millions of Indians, arousing them to a new level of disaffection from British rule, was the government of India's hasty passage of the Rowlatt Acts early in 1919. These “black acts,” as they came to be called, were peacetime extensions of the wartime emergency measures passed in 1915 and had been rammed through the Supreme Legislative Council over the unanimous opposition of its Indian members, several of whom, including Jinnah, resigned in protest. Jinnah wrote to Viceroy Lord Chelmsford that the enactment of such autocratic legislation, following the victorious conclusion of a war in which India had so loyally supported Britain, was an unwarranted uprooting of the “fundamental principles of justice” and a gross violation of the “constitutional rights of the people.” Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869–1948), the Gujarati barrister who had returned from South Africa shortly after the war started and was recognized throughout India as one of the most promising leaders of the Congress, called upon all Indians to take sacred vows to disobey the Rowlatt Acts and launched a nationwide movement for the repeal of those repressive measures. Gandhi's appeal received the strongest popular response in the Punjab, where the nationalist leaders Kichloo and Satyapal addressed mass protest rallies from the provincial capital of Lahore to Amritsar, sacred capital of the Sikhs. Gandhi himself had taken a train to the Punjab early in April 1919 to address one of those rallies, but he was arrested at the border station and taken back to Bombay by orders of Punjab's lieutenant governor, Sir Michael O'Dwyer. On April 10, Kichloo and Satyapal were arrested in Amritsar and deported from the district by Deputy Commissioner Miles Irving. When their followers tried to march to Irving's bungalow in the camp to demand the release of their leaders, they were fired upon by British troops. With several of their number killed and wounded, the enraged mob rioted through Amritsar's old city, burning British banks, murdering several Britons, and attacking two British women. General R.E.H. Dyer was sent with Gurkha and Balochi troops from Jullundur to restore order.

History > British imperial power, 1858–1947 > World War I and its aftermath > Jallianwala Bagh massacre Soon after Dyer's arrival, on the afternoon of April 13, 1919, some 10,000 or more unarmed men, women, and children gathered in Amritsar's Jallianwala Bagh (bagh, “garden”; but before 1919 it had become a public square) to attend a protest meeting, despite a ban on public assemblies. It was a Sunday, and many neighbouring village peasants also came to Amritsar to celebrate the Hindu Baisakhi Spring Festival. Dyer positioned his men at the sole, narrow passageway of the Bagh, which was otherwise entirely enclosed by the backs of abutted brick buildings. Giving no word of warning, he ordered 50 soldiers to fire into the gathering, and for 10 to 15 minutes 1,650 rounds of ammunition were unloaded into the screaming, terrified crowd, some of whom were trampled by those desperately trying to escape. According to official estimates, nearly 400 civilians were killed, and another 1,200 were left wounded with no medical attention. Dyer, who argued his action was necessary to produce a “moral and widespread effect,” admitted that the firing would have continued had more ammunition been available. The governor of the Punjab province supported the massacre at Amritsar and, on April 15, placed the entire province under martial law. Viceroy Chelmsford, however, characterized the action as “an error of judgment,” and when Secretary of State Montagu learned of the slaughter, he appointed a commission of inquiry, headed by Lord Hunter. Although Dyer was subsequently relieved of his command, he returned a hero to many in Britain, especially conservatives, who presented him with a jeweled sword inscribed “Saviour of the Punjab.” The Jallianwala Bagh massacre turned millions of moderate Indians from patient and loyal supporters of the British raj into nationalists who would never again place trust in British “fair play.” It thus marks the turning point for a majority of the Congress' supporters from moderate cooperation with the raj and its promised reforms to revolutionary noncooperation. Liberal Anglophile leaders, such as Jinnah, were soon to be displaced by the followers of Gandhi, who would launch, a year after that dreadful massacre, his first nationwide satyagraha (“devotion to truth”) campaign as India's revolutionary response.

History > British imperial power, 1858–1947 > World War I and its aftermath > Gandhi's strategy For Gandhi there was no dichotomy between religion and politics, and his unique political power was in great measure attributable to the spiritual leadership he exerted over India's masses, who viewed him as a sadhu (“saint”) and worshiped him as a mahatma (“great soul”). He chose satya (“truth”) and ahimsa (“nonviolence,” or love) as the polar stars of his political movement; the former was the ancient Vedic concept of the real, embodying the very essence of existence itself, while the latter, according to Hindu (as well as Jaina) scripture, was the highest religion (dharma). With these two weapons, Gandhi assured his followers, unarmed India could bring the mightiest empire known to history to its knees. His mystic faith magnetized millions, and the sacrificial suffering (tapasya) that he took upon himself by the purity of his chaste life and prolonged fasting armed him with great powers. Gandhi's strategy for bringing the giant machine of British rule to a halt was to call upon Indians to boycott all British-made goods, British schools and colleges, British courts of law, British titles and honours, British elections and elective offices, and, should the need arise if all other boycotts failed, British tax collectors as well. The total withdrawal of Indian support would thus stop the machine, and nonviolent noncooperation would achieve the national goal of swaraj. The Muslim quarter of India's population could hardly be expected to respond any more enthusiastically to Gandhi's satyagraha call than they had to Tilak's revivalism, but Gandhi laboured valiantly to achieve Hindu-Muslim unity by embracing the 'Ali brothers' Khilafat movement as the “premier plank” of his national program. Launched in response to news of the Treaty of Sèvres's dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire in 1920, the Khilafat movement coincided with the inception of satyagraha, thus giving the illusion of unity to India's nationalist agitation. Such unity, however, proved as chimerical as the Khilafat movement's hope of preserving the caliphate itself, and in December 1920 Mohammed Ali Jinnah, alienated by Gandhi's mass following of Hindi-speaking Hindus, left the Nagpur Congress. The days of the Lucknow Pact were over, and by the start of 1921 the antipathetic forces of revivalist Hindu and Muslim agitation, destined to lead to the birth of the independent dominions of India and Pakistan in 1947, were thus clearly set in motion in their separate directions.

History > British imperial power, 1858–1947 > Prelude to independence, 1920–47 The last quarter century of British crown rule was racked by increasingly violent Hindu-Muslim conflict and intensified agitation demanding Indian independence. British officials in London, as well as in New Delhi and Shimla, tried in vain to stem the rising tide of popular opposition to their raj by offering tidbits of constitutional reform, which proved either too little to satisfy both the Congress and the Muslim League or too late to avert disaster. More than a century of British technological, institutional, and ideological unification of the South Asian subcontinent thus ended after World War II with communal civil war, mass migration, and partition.

History > British imperial power, 1858–1947 > Prelude to independence, 1920–47 > Constitutional reforms British politicians and bureaucrats tried to cure India's ailing body politic with periodic infusions of constitutional reform. The separate electorate formula introduced for Muslims in the Government of India Act of 1909 was expanded and applied to other minorities in later Government of India Acts (1919 and 1935). Sikhs and Christians, for example, were given the same special privileges in voting for their own representatives as had already been vouchsafed to Muslims. The British raj thus sought to reconcile Indian religious pluralism to representative rule and no doubt hoped, in the process of fashioning such elaborate constitutional formulas, to win undying minority support for themselves and to undermine the arguments of Congress' radical leadership that they alone spoke for India's “united nationalist movement.” Earlier official support of, and appeals to, India's princes and great landowners had proved fruitful, especially since the inception of the crown raj in 1858, and more concerted efforts were made in 1919 and 1935 to wean minorities and India's educated elite away from revolution and noncooperation. The Government of India Act of 1919 (also known as the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms), under which elections were held in 1920, increased the number of Indian members to the viceroy's Executive Council from at least two to at least three and transformed the Imperial Legislative Council into a bicameral legislature consisting of a Legislative Assembly (lower house) and a Council of State (upper house). The Legislative Assembly, with 140 members, was to have a majority of 100 elected, while 40 of the Council of State's 60 members were also to be elected. Enfranchisement continued to be based on property and education, but under the act of 1919 the total number of Indians eligible to vote for representatives to provincial councils was expanded to 5,000,000; just one-fifth of that number, however, were permitted to vote for Legislative Assembly candidates, and only about 17,000 elite were allowed to choose Council of State members. Dyarchy (dual governance) was to be introduced at the provincial level, where executive councils were divided between ministers elected to preside over “transferred” departments (education, public health, public works, and agriculture) and officials appointed by the governor to rule over “reserved” departments (land revenue, justice, police, irrigation, and labour). The Government of India Act of 1935 gave all provinces full representative and elective governments, chosen by franchise extended now to some 30,000,000 Indians, and only the most crucial portfolios—defense, revenue, and foreign affairs—were “reserved” to appointed officials. The viceroy and his governors retained veto powers over any legislation they considered unacceptable, but prior to the 1937 elections they reached a “gentleman's agreement” with the Congress' high command not to resort to that constitutional option, which was their last vestige of autocracy. The Act of 1935 was also to have introduced a federation of British India's provinces and the still nominally independent princely states, but that institutional union of representative and despotic rule was never realized since the princes were unable to agree among themselves on matters of protocol. The act of 1935 was itself the product of the three elaborate sessions of the Round Table Conference, held in London, and at least five years of bureaucratic labour, most of which bore little fruit. The first session—attended by 58 delegates from British India, 16 from the British Indian states, and 16 from British political parties—was convened by Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald in the City of Westminster, Eng., in November 1930. While Jinnah and the Aga Khan III led among the British Indian delegation a deputation of 16 Muslims, no Congress deputation joined the first session, as Gandhi and his leading lieutenants were all in jail at the time. Without the Congress the Round Table could hardly hope to fashion any popularly meaningful reforms, so Gandhi was released from prison before the second session started in September 1931 but, at his own insistence, attended it as the Congress' sole representative. Little was accomplished at the second session, for Hindu-Muslim differences remained unresolved, and the princes continued to argue with one another. The third session, which began in November 1932, was more the product of official British inertia than any proof of progress in closing the tragic gaps between so many Indian minds reflected in earlier debate. Two new provinces emerged, however, from those official deliberations. In the east, Orissa was established as a province distinct from Bihar, and in the west, Sind (Sindh) was separated from the Bombay Presidency and became the first Muslim-majority governor's province of British India since the reunification of Bengal. Burma was made a separate colony from British India. In August 1932 Prime Minister MacDonald announced his Communal Award, Great Britain's unilateral attempt to resolve the various conflicts among India's many communal interests. The award, which was later incorporated into the act of 1935, expanded the separate-electorate formula reserved for Muslims to other minorities, including Sikhs, Indian Christians, Anglo-Indians, Europeans, distinct regional groups (such as the Marathas in the Bombay Presidency), and special interests (women, organized labour, business, landowners, and universities). The Congress was, predictably, unhappy at the extension of communal representation but became particularly outraged at the British offer of separate-electorate seats for “depressed classes,” meaning the “untouchables.” Gandhi undertook a “fast unto death” against that offer, which he viewed as a nefarious British plot to wean more than 50 million Hindus away from their higher-caste brothers and sisters. The Mahatma, who called the untouchables “children of God” (Harijans), agreed after prolonged personal negotiations with Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956), a leader of the untouchables, to reserve many more seats for them than the British had promised as long as they remained within the “Hindu” majority fold. Thus, the offer of separate-electorate seats for the untouchables was withdrawn.

History > British imperial power, 1858–1947 > Prelude to independence, 1920–47 > The Congress' ambivalent strategy Gandhi, promising his followers freedom in just one year, launched on Aug. 1, 1920, his first nationwide satyagraha (“devotion to truth”) campaign, which he believed would bring the British raj to a grinding halt. After more than a year, and even with 60,000 satyagrahis in prison cells across British India, the raj remained firm, and, therefore, the Mahatma prepared to unleash his last and most powerful boycott weapon—calling upon the peasants of Bardoli in Gujarat to boycott land taxes. In February 1922, on the eve of that final phase of boycott, word reached Gandhi that in Chauri Chaura, United Provinces, 22 Indian police were massacred in their police station by a mob of “satyagrahis,” who set fire to the station and prevented the trapped police from escaping immolation. Gandhi announced that he had committed a “Himalayan blunder” in launching satyagraha without sufficient “soul-cleansing” of India's masses and, as a result, called a halt to the noncooperation movement. He was subsequently arrested, however, and found guilty of “promoting disaffection” toward the raj, for which he was sentenced to six years in prison. While Gandhi was behind bars, Motilal Nehru (1861–1931), one of North India's wealthiest lawyers, started within Congress a new politically active “party,” the Swaraj Party. Motilal Nehru shared the lead of this new party with C.R. (Chitta Ranjan) Das (1870–1925) of Bengal. Contesting the elections to the new Central Legislative Assembly in 1923, the party sought by antigovernment agitation within the council chambers to disrupt official policy and derail the raj. Though Gandhian noncooperation remained the Congress' primary strategy, actual partial cooperation in the postwar reforms thus became the alternate tactic of those Congress leaders who were less orthodox-Hindu, or more secular-minded, in outlook. The Swarajists won more than 40 seats in the Central Legislative Assembly in 1923, but their numbers were never quite enough to prevent the British from passing the legislation they desired or believed was needed to maintain internal “order.” Mahatma Gandhi was released from jail in February 1924, four years early, after a serious operation. Thereafter he focused on what he called his “constructive program” of hand spinning and weaving and overall village “uplift,” as well as on Hindu “purification” in seeking to advance the cause of the Harijans, especially through granting them entry to Hindu temples, from which they had always been banished. Gandhi himself lived in village ashrams (ideal communities), which served more as models for his socioeconomic ideals than as centres of political power, though the leaders of the Congress flocked to his remote rural retreats for periodic consultation on strategy. In many ways Congress policy remained plagued by ambivalence for the remaining years of the raj. Most members of the high command aligned with Gandhi, but others sought what seemed to them more practical or pragmatic solutions to India's problems, which so often transcended political or imperial-colonial questions. It was always easier, of course, for Indian leaders to rally the masses behind emotional religious appeals or anti-British rhetoric than to resolve problems that had festered throughout the Indian subcontinent for millennia. Most Hindu-Muslim differences, therefore, remained unresolved, even as the Hindu caste system was never really attacked or dismantled by the Congress. Imperial economic exploitation did, however, prove to be an excellent nationalist catalyst—as, for example, when Gandhi mobilized the peasant masses of India's population behind the Congress during his famous march against the salt tax in 1930, which was the prelude to his second nationwide satyagraha. The British government's monopoly on the sale of salt, which was heavily taxed, had long been a major source of revenue to the raj, and, by marching from his ashram at Sabarmati (near Ahmadabad, Gujarat) to the sea at Dandi, where he illegally picked up salt from the sands on the shore, Gandhi mobilized millions of Indians to follow him in thus breaking the law. It was an ingeniously simple way to break a British law nonviolently, and before year's end jail cells throughout India were again filled with satyagrahis. Many of the younger members of the Congress were eager to take up arms against the British, and some considered Gandhi an agent of imperial rule for having called a halt to the first satyagraha in 1922. Most famous and popular of these militant Congress leaders was Subhas Chandra Bose (1897–1945) of Bengal, a disciple of C.R. Das and an admirer of Hitler and Mussolini. Bose was so popular within Congress that he was elected its president twice (in 1938 and 1939) over Gandhi's opposition and the active opposition of most members of its central working committee. After being forced to resign the office in April 1939, Bose organized with his brother Sarat his own Bengali party, the Forward Bloc, which initially remained within the Congress fold. At the beginning of World War II Bose was arrested and detained by the British, but in 1941 he escaped their surveillance and fled to Afghanistan, thence to the Soviet Union and Germany. Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964), Motilal's only son, emerged as Gandhi's designated successor to Congress leadership during the 1930s. A Fabian socialist and a barrister, the younger Nehru was educated at Harrow School and at Trinity College, Cambridge, and was drawn into the Congress and the noncooperation movement by his admiration for Gandhi. Though Jawaharlal Nehru personally was more of an Anglophile aristocrat than a Hindu sadhu or mahatma, he devoted his energies and intellect to the national movement and, at age 41, was the youngest elected president of the Congress in December 1929, when it passed its Purna Swaraj (“Complete Self-Rule”) resolution. Jawaharlal's radical brilliance and energy made him a natural leader of the Congress' youth movement, while his Brahman birth and family fortune overcame many of that party's more conservative leadership's misgivings about placing him at the Congress' helm. The Purna Swaraj resolution—proclaimed on Jan. 26, 1930, later to be celebrated as independent India's Republic Day—called for “complete freedom from the British” but was later interpreted by Prime Minister Nehru as permitting India to remain within the British Commonwealth, a practical concession young Jawaharlal had often vowed he would never make.

History > British imperial power, 1858–1947 > Prelude to independence, 1920–47 > Muslim separatism The Muslim quarter of India's population became increasingly wary of the Congress' promises and restive in the wake of the collapse of the Khilafat movement, which occurred after Kemal Atatürk announced his modernist Turkish reforms in 1923 and disavowed the very title of caliph the following year. Hindu-Muslim riots in Malabar claimed hundreds of lives in 1924, and similar religious rioting spread to every major city in North India, wherever rumours of Muslim “cow slaughter,” the polluting appearance of a dead pig's carcass in a mosque, or other clashing doctrinal fears ignited the tinder of distrust ever lurking in the poorer sections of India's towns and villages. At each stage of reform, as the prospects of real devolution of political power by the British seemed more imminent, separate-electorate formulas and leaders of various parties stirred hopes, which proved almost as dangerous in triggering violence as did fears. The older, more conservative leadership of the pre-World War I Congress found Gandhian satyagraha too radical—moreover, far too revolutionary—to support, and liberals like Tej Bahadur Sapru (1875–1949) organized their own party (eventually to become the National Liberal Federation), while others, like Jinnah, dropped out of political life entirely. Jinnah, alienated by the Mahatma and his illiterate mass of devoutly Hindu disciples, instead devoted himself to his lucrative Bombay law practice, but his energy and ambition lured him back to the leadership of the Muslim League, which he revitalized in the 1930s. Jinnah, who was also instrumental in urging Viceroy Lord Irwin (governed 1926–31) and Prime Minister MacDonald to convene the Round Table Conference in London, was urged by many Muslim compatriots, including Liaquat Ali Khan (1895–1951), to become the permanent president of the Muslim League. By 1930 a number of Indian Muslims had begun to think in terms of separate statehood for their minority community, whose population dominated the northwestern provinces of British India and the eastern half of Bengal, as well as important pockets of the United Provinces and the great princely states of Kashmir and Hyderabad. One of Punjab's greatest Urdu poets, Muhammad Iqbal (1877–1938), while presiding over the Muslim League's annual meeting in Allahabad in 1930, proposed that “the final destiny” of India's Muslims should be to consolidate a “North-West Indian Muslim state.” Although he did not name it Pakistan, his proposal included what became the major provinces of modern Pakistan—Punjab, Sindh, the North-West Frontier Province, and Baluchistan. Jinnah, the Aga Khan, and other important Muslim leaders were at the time in London attending the Round Table Conference, which still envisaged a single federation of all Indian provinces and princely states as the best possible constitutional solution for India in the aftermath of a future British withdrawal. Separate electorate seats, as well as special guarantees of Muslim “autonomy” or “veto powers” in dealing with sensitive religious issues, were hoped to be sufficient to avert civil war or any need for actual partition. As long as the British raj remained in control, such formulas and schemes appeared to suffice, for the British army could always be hurled into the communal fray at the brink of extreme danger, and the army had as yet remained apolitical and—since its post-mutiny reorganization—untainted by communal religious passions. In 1933 a group of Cambridge Muslim students, led by Choudhry Rahmat Ali, proposed that the only acceptable solution to Muslim India's internal conflicts and problems would be the birth of a Muslim “fatherland,” to be called Pakistan (Persian: “Land of the Pure”), out of the Muslim-majority northwestern and northeastern provinces. The Muslim League and its president, Jinnah, did not join in the Pakistan demand until after the league's famous Lahore meeting in March 1940, as Jinnah, a secular constitutionalist by predilection and training, continued to hope for a reconciliation with the Congress. Such hopes virtually disappeared, however, when Nehru refused to permit the league to form coalition ministries with the Congress majority in the United Provinces and elsewhere after the 1937 elections. The Congress had initially entered the elections with the hope of wrecking the act of 1935, but after it had won so impressive a victory in most provinces and the league had done so poorly—mostly because it had inadequately organized itself for nationwide elections—Nehru agreed to participate in the government and insisted there were but “two parties” in India, the Congress and the British raj. Jinnah soon proved to Nehru that the Muslims were, indeed, a formidable “third” party. The years from 1937 to 1939, when the Congress actually ran most of British India's provincial governments, became the seed period for the Muslim League's growth in popularity and power within the entire Muslim community, for many Muslims soon viewed the new “Hindu raj” as biased and tyrannical and the Hindu-led Congress ministries and their helpers as insensitive to Muslim demands or appeals for jobs, as well as to their redress of grievances. The Congress' partiality toward its own members, prejudice toward its majority community, and jobbery for its leadership's friends and relations all conspired to convince many Muslims that they had become second-class citizens in a land that, while perhaps on the verge of achieving “freedom” for some Indians, would be run by “infidels” and “enemies” to the Muslim minority. The league made the most of the Congress' errors of judgment in governance; by documenting as many reports as it could gather in papers published during 1939, it hoped to prove how wretched a Muslim's life would be under any “Hindu raj.” The Congress' high command insisted, of course, that it was a “secular and national” party, not a sectarian Hindu organization, but Jinnah and the Muslim League responded that they alone could speak for and defend the rights of India's Muslims. Thus, the lines of battle were drawn by the eve of World War II, which served only to intensify and accelerate the process of communal conflict and irreversible political division that would split British India.

History > British imperial power, 1858–1947 > Prelude to independence, 1920–47 > The impact of World War II On Sept. 3, 1939, Viceroy Lord Linlithgow (governed 1936–43) informed India's political leaders and populace that they were at war with Germany. For Nehru and the Congress' high command, such unilateral declarations were viewed as more than insensitive British behaviour, for, in undertaking to run most of British India's provinces, the Congress thought of itself as the viceroy's “partner” in administering the raj. What a “betrayal,” therefore, this autocratic declaration of war was judged, and how angry it made Nehru and Gandhi feel. Instead of offering loyal support to the British raj, they demanded a prior forthright statement of Britain's postwar “goals and ideals.” Neither Linlithgow nor Lord Zetland, his Tory secretary of state, was prepared, however, to pander to the Congress' wishes at Great Britain's darkest hour of national danger. Nehru's outrage helped convince the Congress' high command to call upon all its provincial ministries to resign. Jinnah was overjoyed at this decision and proclaimed Friday, Dec. 22, 1939, a Muslim “Day of Deliverance” from the tyranny of the Congress “raj.” Jinnah met regularly with Linlithgow, moreover, and assured the viceroy that he need not fear a lack of support from India's Muslims, so many of whom were active members of Britain's armed services. Throughout World War II, as the Congress moved farther from the British, first with passive and later with active noncooperation, the Muslim League in every possible way quietly supported the war effort. The first meeting of the league after the outbreak of the war was held in Punjab's ancient capital of Lahore in March 1940. The famous Lahore Resolution, later known as the Pakistan Resolution, was passed by the largest gathering of league delegates just one day after Jinnah informed his followers that “the problem of India is not of an inter-communal but manifestly of an international character.” The league resolved, therefore, that any future constitutional plan proposed by the British for India would not be “acceptable to the Muslims” unless it was so designed that the Muslim-majority “areas” of India's “North-Western and Eastern Zones” were “grouped to constitute ‘independent States' in which the constituent units shall be autonomous and sovereign.” Pakistan was not mentioned until the next day's newspapers introduced that word in their headlines, and Jinnah explained that the resolution envisioned the establishment of not two separately administered Muslim countries but rather a single Muslim nation-state—namely, Pakistan. Gandhi launched his first “individual satyagraha” campaign against the war in October 1940. Vinoba Bhave, the Mahatma's foremost disciple, publically proclaimed his intent to resist the war effort and was subsequently sentenced to three months in jail. Jawaharlal Nehru, who was the next to openly disobey British law, was sentenced to four years behind bars. By June 1941 more than 20,000 Congress satyagrahis were in prisons. It was also in 1941 when Bose fled to Germany, where he started broadcasting appeals to India urging the masses to “rise up” against British “tyranny” and to “throw off” their chains. There were, however, few Indians in Germany, and Hitler's advisers urged Bose to go back to Asia by submarine; he was eventually transported to Japan and then to Singapore, where Japan had captured at least 40,000 Indian troops during its takeover of that island fortress in February 1942. These captured soldiers became Netaji (“Leader”) Bose's Indian National Army (INA) in 1943 and, a year later, marched behind him to Rangoon. Bose hoped to “liberate” first Imphal and then Bengal from British rule, but the British forces at India's eastern gateways held until the summer monsoon gave them respite enough to be properly reinforced and drove Bose and his army back down the Malay Peninsula. In August 1945 Bose escaped by air from Saigon but died of severe burns after his overloaded plane crashed onto Formosa.

History > British imperial power, 1858–1947 > Prelude to independence, 1920–47 > British wartime strategy Lord Linlithgow's initial refusal to discuss postwar ideals with the Congress left India's premier national party without an opportunity for constructive debate about any political prospects other than those it could win by noncooperation or violence. Soon after Japan joined the Axis powers in late 1941, however, and moved with such rapidity into most of Southeast Asia, Churchill's war Cabinet, fearing the imminent possibility of a Japanese invasion of India, sent the socialist Sir Stafford Cripps, a close personal friend of Nehru, to New Delhi with a postwar proposal in March 1942. The Cripps Mission offered Indian politicians full “dominion status” for India after the war's end, with the additional stipulation, as a concession primarily to the Muslim League, that any province could vote to “opt out” of such a dominion if it preferred to do so. Gandhi irately called the offer “a post-dated cheque on a bank that was failing,” and Nehru was equally negative and angry at Cripps for his readiness to give so much to the Muslims. Cripps's hands had been tied by Churchill before he left London, however, as he was ordered by the war Cabinet merely to convey the British offer, not to modify it or negotiate a new formula. He flew home empty-handed in less than a month, and soon afterward Gandhi planned his last satyagraha campaign, the “Quit India” movement. Declaring that the British presence in India was a provocation to the Japanese, Gandhi called upon the British to “quit India” and to leave Indians to deal with the Japanese by nonviolent means, but the Mahatma and all members of the Congress high command were arrested before the dawn of that movement in August 1942. In a few months at least 60,000 Indians filled British prison cells, and the raj unleashed massive force against Indian underground efforts to disrupt rail transport and to generally subvert the war effort that followed the crackdown on the Quit India campaign. Parts of the United Provinces, Bihar, the North-West Frontier, and Bengal were bombed and strafed by British pilots as the raj resolved to crush all Indian resistance and violent opposition as swiftly as possible. Many Indians were killed and wounded, but wartime resistance continued as more young Indians, women as well as men, were recruited into Congress' underground. Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 brought the United States into the war as Britain's most powerful ally. By late 1942 and throughout the rest of the war, U.S. arms and planes steamed and flew into Calcutta and Bombay, bolstering British India as the major Allied launching pad against Japanese forces in Southeast Asia and China. The British raj thus remained firm despite growing Indian opposition, both violent and nonviolent. Indian industry grew rapidly, moreover, during World War II. Electric power output doubled, and Jamshedpur became the British Empire's foremost producer of steel by the war's end. Indian shipyards and light-manufacturing plants flourished in Bombay, as well as in Bengal and Orissa, and, despite many warnings, the Japanese never launched air attacks against Calcutta or Madras. In mid-1943, Field Marshal Lord Wavell, who replaced Linlithgow as viceroy (1943–47), brought India's government fully under martial control for the war's duration. No progress was made in several of the Congress' attempts to resolve Hindu-Muslim differences through talks between Gandhi and Jinnah. Soon after the war's end in Europe, Wavell convened a political conference in Shimla in late June 1945, but there was no meeting of minds, no formula sturdy enough to bridge the gulf between the Congress and the Muslim League. Two weeks after the Shimla talks collapsed in midsummer, Churchill's government was voted out of power by the Labour Party's sweep of London's polls, and Prime Minister Clement Attlee appointed one of Gandhi's old admirers, Lord Pethick-Lawrence, to head the India Office. With the dawn of the atomic age in August and Japan's surrender, London's primary concern in India was how to find the political solution to the Hindu-Muslim conflict that would most expeditiously permit the British raj to withdraw its forces and to extricate as many of its assets as possible from what seemed to the Labour Party to have become more of an imperial burden and liability than any real advantage for Great Britain.

History > British imperial power, 1858–1947 > The transfer of power and the birth of two nations Elections held in the winter of 1945–46 proved how effective Jinnah's single-plank strategy for his Muslim League had been, as the league won all 30 seats reserved for Muslims in the Central Legislative Assembly and most of the reserved provincial seats as well. The Congress was successful in gathering most of the general electorate seats, but it could no longer effectively insist that it spoke for the entire population of British India. In 1946, Secretary of State Pethick-Lawrence personally led a three-man Cabinet deputation to New Delhi with the hope of resolving the Congress–Muslim League deadlock and, thus, of transferring British power to a single Indian administration. Cripps was responsible primarily for drafting the ingenious Cabinet Mission Plan, which proposed a three-tier federation for India, integrated by a minimal central-union government in Delhi, which would be limited to handling foreign affairs, communications, defense, and only those finances required to care for such unionwide matters. The subcontinent was to be divided into three major groups of provinces: Group A, to include the Hindu-majority provinces of the Bombay Presidency, Madras, the United Provinces, Bihar, Orissa, and the Central Provinces (virtually all of what became independent India a year later); Group B, to contain the Muslim-majority provinces of the Punjab, Sind, the North-West Frontier, and Baluchistan (the areas out of which the western part of Pakistan was created); and Group C, to include the Muslim-majority Bengal (a portion of which became the eastern part of Pakistan and in 1971 the country of Bangladesh) and the Hindu-majority Assam. The group governments were to be virtually autonomous in everything but matters reserved to the union centre, and within each group the princely states were to be integrated into their neighbouring provinces. Local provincial governments were to have the choice of opting out of the group in which they found themselves should a majority of their populace vote to do so. Punjab's large and powerful Sikh population would have been placed in a particularly difficult and anomalous position, for Punjab as a whole would have belonged to Group B, and much of the Sikh community had become anti-Muslim since the start of the Mughal emperors' persecution of their gurus in the 17th century. Sikhs played so important a role in the British Indian Army that many of their leaders hoped that the British would reward them at the war's end with special assistance in carving out their own nation from the rich heart of Punjab's fertile canal-colony lands, where, in the “kingdom” once ruled by Ranjit Singh (1780–1839), most Sikhs lived. Since World War I, Sikhs had been equally fierce in opposing the British raj, and, though never more than 2 percent of India's population, they had as highly disproportionate a number of nationalist “martyrs” as of army officers. A Sikh Akali Dal (“Party of Immortals”), which was started in 1920, led militant marches to liberate gurdwaras (“doorways to the Guru”; the Sikh places of worship) from corrupt Hindu managers. Tara Singh (1885–1967), the most important leader of this vigorous Sikh political movement, first raised the demand for a separate Azad (“Free”) Punjab in 1942. By March 1946, Singh demanded a Sikh nation-state, alternately called “Sikhistan” or “Khalistan” (“Land of the Sikhs” or “Land of the Pure”). The Cabinet Mission, however, had no time or energy to focus on Sikh separatist demands and found the Muslim League's demand for Pakistan equally impossible to accept. As a pragmatist, Jinnah, himself mortally afflicted with tuberculosis and lung cancer, accepted the Cabinet Mission's proposal, as did Congress leaders. The early summer of 1946, therefore, saw a dawn of hope for India's future prospects, but that soon proved false when Nehru announced at his first press conference as the reelected president of the Congress that no constituent assembly could be “bound” by any prearranged constitutional formula. Jinnah read Nehru's remarks as a “complete repudiation” of the plan, which had to be accepted in its entirety in order to work. Jinnah then convened the league's Working Committee, which withdrew its previous agreement to the federation scheme and instead called upon the “Muslim Nation” to launch “direct action” in mid-August 1946. Thus began India's bloodiest year of civil war since the mutiny nearly a century earlier. The Hindu-Muslim rioting and killing that started in Calcutta sent deadly sparks of fury, frenzy, and fear to every corner of the subcontinent, as all civilized restraint seemed to disappear. Lord Mountbatten (1900–79) was sent to replace Wavell as viceroy in March 1947, as Britain prepared to transfer its power over India to some “responsible” hands by no later than June 1948. Shortly after reaching Delhi, where he conferred with the leaders of all parties and with his own officials, Mountbatten decided that the situation was too dangerous to wait even that brief period. Fearing a forced evacuation of British troops still stationed in India, Lord Mountbatten resolved to opt for partition, one that would divide Punjab and Bengal virtually in half, rather than risk further political negotiations while civil war raged and a new mutiny of Indian troops seemed imminent. Among the major Indian leaders, Gandhi alone refused to reconcile himself to partition and urged Mountbatten to offer Jinnah the premiership of a united India rather than a separate Muslim nation. Nehru, however, would not agree to that, nor would his most powerful Congress deputy, Vallabhbhai Patel (1875–1950), as both had become tired of arguing with Jinnah and were eager to get on with the job of running an independent government of India.

British India in 1947, showing major administrative divisions, the distribution of the principal … Adapted from Joseph E. Schwartzberg, ed., A Historical Atlas of South Asia (1978); The University of Chicago Press Britain's Parliament passed in July 1947 the Indian Independence Act, ordering the demarcation of the dominions of India and Pakistan by midnight of Aug. 14–15, 1947, and dividing within a single month the assets of the world's largest empire, which had been integrated in countless ways for more than a century. Racing the deadline, two boundary commissions worked desperately to partition Punjab and Bengal in such a way as to leave a majority of Muslims to the west of the former's new boundary and to the east of the latter's, but as soon as the new borders were known, no fewer than 10 million Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs fled from their homes on one side of the newly demarcated borders to what they thought would be “shelter” on the other. In the course of that tragic exodus of innocents, some 1 million people were slaughtered in communal massacres that made all previous conflicts of the sort known to recent history pale by comparison. Sikhs, caught in the middle of Punjab's new “line,” suffered the highest percentage of casualties. Most Sikhs finally settled in India's much-diminished border state of Punjab. Tara Singh later asked, “The Muslims got their Pakistan, and the Hindus got their Hindustan, but what did the Sikhs get?” (The following section discusses the history since 1947 of those areas of the subcontinent that became the Republic of India. For historical coverage since 1947 of the partitioned areas in the northwest and the northeast, see the articles Pakistan, history of and Bangladesh, history of.)