India

Article Outline

Introduction; Land and Resources; The People of India; Arts; Economy; Government; History

Muslim and Mongol Invaders

By the 10th century Turkic Muslims began invading India, bringing the Islamic religion to India. The Ghaznavids, a dynasty from eastern Afghanistan, began a series of raids into northwestern India at the end of the 10th century. Mahmud of Ghaznī, the most notable ruler of this dynasty, raided as far as present-day Uttar Pradesh state. Mahmud did not attempt to rule Indian territory except for the Punjab area, which he annexed before his death in 1030.

A little more than a century after Mahmud’s death, his magnificent capital of Ghaznī was destroyed in warfare among rivals within Afghanistan. In 1175 one of the successors to Mahmud’s dismembered empire, the Muslim conqueror Muhammad of Ghur, began his conquest of northern India. Within 20 years he had conquered all of north India, including the Bengal region. In 1206 Qutubuddin Aybak, one of Muhammad of Ghur’s generals, founded the Delhi Sultanate with its capital at Delhi and began the Slave dynasty. Also in 1206 Genghis Khan united the Mongol tribes and established the Mongol Empire. He then moved rapidly into China and westward, reaching the Indus Valley about 1221. In the following three centuries the Mongols remained the dominant power in northwest India, gradually merging with the Turkic Muslim peoples there.

The Delhi Sultanate engaged in constant warfare during its 300-year reign, subduing intermittent rebellions of the nobles of the Bengal region, repelling incursions of Mongols to the northwest, and conquering and looting Hindu kingdoms as far south as Madurai in Tamil Nādu. Beginning with the Slave dynasty, the sultanate was ruled by a succession of five dynasties before it was finally overthrown by the Mughal emperor Humayun in 1556. During the reign of the short-lived Khalji dynasty (1290-1320), the warrior leader Alauddin financed his successful campaigns to south India with an established system of local revenue. The next dynasty, that of the Tughluqs, weakened when Muhammad Tughluq moved his capital from Delhi to the more centrally located Daulatabad in an effort to assert more permanent rule over his southern lands. He lost control over the Delhi area, and nobles in the south and in Bengal also established their independence. In 1398 the Mongol conqueror Tamerlane invaded India, sacking Delhi and massacring its inhabitants. Tamerlane withdrew from India shortly after the sack of Delhi, leaving the remnants of the empire to Mahmud, who as last of the Tughluqs ruled from 1399 to 1413. Mahmud was succeeded by the Sayyid dynasty (1414-1451), under which the Delhi Sultanate shrank to virtually nothing. The Lodi dynasty (1451-1526), of Afghan origin, later revived the rule of Delhi over much of north India, although it was unable to give its rule a firm military and financial foundation. The rest of India remained under the rule of other kings, some Muslim and some Hindu. The greatest of these polities was the Hindu empire of Vijayanagar, which existed from 1336 to 1565, centered in what is now Karnātaka.

Many Indians converted to Islam during this era. One of the areas where a great majority of the population became Muslim was in the Punjab region, which by the end of the Delhi Sultanate had been under the continuous rule of Muslim kings for more than 500 years. Muslims did marry Hindus (the founder of the Khalji dynasty was the offspring of one such marriage), and Hindus did convert to Islam. In general, Muslim kings were far from tolerant, even despising their Hindu subjects, but there is no record of forced mass conversions. The region that is now Bangladesh also became overwhelmingly Muslim during this period. This area had been mainly Buddhist before the Muslims arrived. Even in south India, where the Hindu revival inspired by the works of Shankara and others had its greatest influence, a small minority of people became Muslim.

The Mughal Empire

Rise of the Mughals

The Mughal Empire was founded in 1526 by Babur, a descendant of Tamerlane. It is famous for its extent (it covered most of the Indian subcontinent) and for the heights that music, literature, art, and especially architecture reached under its rulers. The Mughal Empire was born when Babur, with the use of superior artillery, defeated the far larger army of the Lodis at Pānīpat, near Delhi. Babur’s kingdom stretched from beyond Afghanistan to the Bengal region along the Gangetic Plain. His son Humayun, however, lost the kingdom to Bihār-based Sher Khan Sur (later Sher Shah) and fled to Persia (now Iran). Humayun recaptured Delhi in 1555, shortly before his death.

Humayun’s son Akbar, whose name (meaning “great”) reflected the ruler he became, extended the Mughal Empire until it covered the subcontinent from Afghanistan to the Bay of Bengal and from the Himalayas to the Godāvari River. The Mughals moved their capitals frequently: Wherever they made camp became the capital. The cities they built, and the citadels within those cities, were like army camps, with the nobles living in tents, rich carpets on the ground, and just the walls, audience halls, royal residences, and mosques built of stone. In the course of the dynasty those citadels were located in Lahore, in and around Āgra, in the architecturally spectacular city of Fatehpur Sikri, and near the city of Shahjahanabad (“city of Shah Jahan”).

Although illiterate, Akbar matched the learning of his father and grandfather, both of whose courts were enriched by Persian arts and letters, and surpassed them in wisdom. He brought under his control the Hindu Rajput kings who ruled just south and west of Āgra by defeating them in battle, extending religious tolerance, and offering them alliances cemented by marriage (Akbar married two Rajput princesses, including the mother of his son and successor, Jahangir) and positions of power in his army and administration. As an observant Muslim, Akbar brought to his court adherents to various sects of Islam, as well as priests of other faiths, including Christians, to hear them present their beliefs. European visitors to the Mughal court became even more frequent in the succeeding reigns of Jahangir and Shah Jahan. Europeans were allowed to establish trading posts at the periphery of the empire and beyond, but they never became influential at court.

Paying for the military campaigns and for the magnificent court required the transformation of traditional patterns of taxation and administration. Sher Shah initiated the necessary administrative system, and Akbar improved it. By accurately assessing average yearly harvests for land in different regions and then standardizing the percentage of the harvest due in taxes, Akbar secured a reliable source of income from land revenues. To make it easier to govern his empire, he divided it into provinces and subdivided it into districts. He established a bureaucracy of ranked officials to administer the functions of the empire and paid many of its members in cash rather than in the traditional form of grants of land, allowing for flexibility in the location and type of assignments the officials were given. This system was so successful that the British adopted it in large part.

The system came under strain with Shah Jahan’s costly and unsuccessful campaign to capture the Mughal’s ancestral homeland of Samarqand in 1646, and his son Aurangzeb’s equally costly efforts to extend the empire south. In 1686 and 1687 Aurangzeb conquered the Muslim kingdoms of Bijāpur and Golkonda, which controlled the northern half of the Deccan Plateau. But his attempt to subdue the Hindu Maratha Confederacy (centered in what is now Mahārāstra state) was ultimately unsuccessful, and the Mughal armies suffered numerous defeats. Aurangzeb’s growing religious intolerance also undermined the stability of the empire. In 1697 he reimposed a poll tax on non-Muslims, abolished during Akbar’s rule. Disaffection over such discriminatory policies, along with the now-crushing tax burden, led to widespread rebellion at the end of Aurangzeb’s reign.

Although it did not formally end until 1858, the Mughal Empire ceased to exist as an effective state after Aurangzeb died in 1707. The political chaos of the period was marked by a rapid decline of centralized authority, by the creation of many small kingdoms and principalities by Muslim and Hindu adventurers, and by the formation of large independent states by the governors of the imperial provinces. Among the first of the large independent states to emerge was Hyderābād, established in 1712. The tottering Mughal regime suffered a disastrous blow in 1739 when the Persian king Nadir Shah led an army into India and plundered Delhi. Among the treasures stolen by invaders were the mammoth Koh-i-noor diamond and the magnificent Peacock Throne, made of solid gold inlaid with precious stones. Nadir Shah withdrew from Delhi, but in 1756 the city was again captured—this time by Ahmad Shah, emir of Afghanistan, who had previously seized Punjab.

Maratha Confederacy

Despite these outside sieges upon Delhi, it was the Marathas who first attempted to appropriate the lands of the Mughal Empire. Moving from the northwestern Deccan Plateau, they seized lands in Gujarāt in the 1720s, central India in the 1730s, the provinces up to the Bay of Bengal in the 1750s, and south India as far as Tanjore (Thanjāvūr) in what is now Tamil Nādu in the 1760s. They were defeated by the Afghans on the Pānīpat battlefield in 1761, preventing them from expanding any farther north. The Marathas held mainly nominal control of much of the land they conquered and did not collect taxes from many areas. The Sikhs, whose persecution under the later Mughals provoked them to transform themselves into a community of warriors, built a kingdom in the Punjab in the late 18th century.

The Europeans in India

As early as the 15th century, Europeans were interested in developing trade opportunities with India and a new trade route to East Asia. The Portuguese were devoted to this task, and in 1497 Vasco da Gama, a Portuguese royal navigator and explorer, led an expedition around the Cape of Good Hope and across the Indian Ocean. In May 1498 he sailed into the harbor of Calicut (now Kozhikode) on the Malabar Coast, opening a new era of Indian history. Establishing friendly relations with the dominant kingdom of the Deccan, the Portuguese secured lucrative trade routes on the coast of India in the early 16th century.

For about the first two centuries after Europeans arrived in India, their activities were restricted to trade and evangelism, their presence protected by naval forces. For the entire period of the Mughal Empire, European traders were confined to trading posts along the coast. In the 16th century the Portuguese navy controlled the sea lanes of the Indian Ocean, protecting the traders settled in Goa, Damān, and Diu on the western coast. Christianity swiftly followed trade. Saint Francis Xavier, a Spanish Jesuit missionary, came to Goa in 1542, converting tens of thousands of Indians along the peninsular coast and in southern India and Ceylon before leaving for Southeast Asia in 1545. In fact, the area of India he and other missionaries traversed was already home to communities of Christians, some converted by Saint Thomas in the 1st century ad and some who fled to India many centuries later to escape persecution for their Nestorian beliefs.

The Dutch displaced the Portuguese as masters of the seas around India in the 17th century. The Dutch East India Company was founded in 1602, two years after its main rival, the English East India Company. Both companies began by trading in spices, gradually shifting to textiles, particularly India’s characteristic light, patterned cottons. Their activities in India were centered primarily on the southern and eastern coasts and in the Bengal region. The economic effect of purchases made at the coastal depots were felt far inland in the cotton-growing areas, but the Europeans did not at that time attempt to extend their political sway.

By the 18th century British sea power matched that of the Dutch, and the European rivalry in India began to take on a military dimension. During the first half of the 18th century the French, who had begun to operate in India in about 1675, emerged as a serious threat to the growing power and prosperity of the English East India Company. By the mid-18th century the British and French were at war with each other throughout the world. This rivalry manifested itself in India in a series of conflicts, called the Carnatic Wars, which stretched over 20 years and established the British as the primary European power in India.

As the French and British skirmished over control of India’s foreign trade, the Mughal Empire was experiencing its rapid decline and regional kingdoms were emerging. The continuously warring rulers of these kingdoms used well-trained and disciplined French and British forces to support their military activities. The foreigners, however, had their own agenda, frequently expanding their own political or territorial power under the guise of championing a local ruler. Led by innovative and effective Joseph François Dupleix, the French managed by 1750 to place themselves in a powerful position in southern India, especially in Hyderābād. In 1751, however, British troops under Robert Clive captured the French southeastern stronghold of Arcot in a pivotal battle. With this encounter the balance of power in the south swung to favor the British, although the struggle for control of India’s trade continued.

In Bengal, the English East India Company had begun fortifying Fort William in Calcutta (now Kolkata) to defend against possible attacks by the French. Nominally a part of the Mughal Empire, Bengal was at this time virtually independent under the emperor’s nawab (governor). In response to reports of unauthorized activities of the British, the nawab Siraj-ud-Dawlah attacked Calcutta in 1756. Some British survivors of the attack were imprisoned in a small dungeon known as the Black Hole of Calcutta where a number of them died. After the incident, Robert Clive, then the British governor of Fort Saint David, moved north from Madras and, conniving with the commander of his enemy’s army, defeated the nawab in the Battle of Plassey in 1757. The battle marked the first stage in the British conquest of India. The French attempted to regain their position in India but were beaten back by the British in 1761. In 1764 the British again defeated local rulers at the Battle of Buxar. This victory firmly established British control over the Bengal region.

The British Empire in India

British Expansion

The English East India Company continued to extend its control over Indian territory throughout the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Treaties made with Indian princes provided for the stationing of British troops within these princely states. To pay for the troops the British were often given revenue-collecting rights in certain parts of the states; this gave them indirect control over these areas. Many of these states were annexed when succession to the throne was in doubt or when the ruler acted in ways that seemed contrary to British interests.

The British made even more significant gains by military means. In the late 1700s they were drawn into a three-way conflict when the nizam of Hyderābād asked for British assistance against his rivals: the Marathas, and Tipu Sahib, the sultan of Mysore. In 1799 the British marched on Seringapatam, Tipu’s capital, and defeated his troops. Tipu was killed defending the city. The British annexed much of Mysore outright; they controlled the remainder through a new sultan they installed. After a series of battles (1775-1782, 1803-1805, 1817-1818) with the Marathas, the British also succeeded in bringing Maratha lands under their control.

In 1773 the British Parliament passed the Regulating Act, the first of a series of acts that gave British governors greater control over the English East India Company. Under the Regulating Act the company was still permitted to continue handling all trading matters and to have its own troops, but its activity was now supervised by parliament. The act also established the post of governor-general of India and made the holder of the office directly responsible to the British government. Warren Hastings became the first governor-general of India in 1774.

The British proceeded to make major changes in the administration of their realm. The three presidencies (administrative districts)—Bengal, Bombay, and Madras—adopted different systems of fixing responsibility for the payment of land taxes. In Bengal, the local landed gentry accepted responsibility for a fixed amount of taxes in return for ownership of large estates. Under this arrangement the British did not share in the gains of any potential improvements in agricultural productivity. By contrast, in Madras and Bombay, peasant cultivators paid annual taxes directly to the government. The tax rate could be adjusted at fixed intervals, so in this case the British could reap the benefits of agricultural expansion. A civil service system was developed that admitted British officers through a merit examination, trained them in an administrative college, and paid them handsomely to reduce corruption. Meanwhile, the development of the textile industry in Britain forced a transformation of India’s economy: India had to produce raw cotton for export and buy manufactured goods—including cloth—from England, while the cottage industries that produced textiles in India were ruined.

At the same time British attitudes about Indian culture changed. Until about 1800 the East India Company traders adapted themselves to the country, donning Indian dress, learning Sanskrit, and sometimes taking Indian mistresses. As British rule strengthened, and as an influential evangelical Christian movement emerged in the early 19th century, India’s customs were judged more harshly. Missionaries, who had been kept out by the company for fear they would upset Indians and thus disrupt commerce, were now brought in. Laws were passed to abolish Indian customs such as suttee (the immolation of a widow on her husband’s funeral pyre). The 18th-century company officers, such as Sir William Jones, a scholar of Sanskrit who discovered the relationship of Indo-European languages, were replaced by British subjects who felt Indian thought and literature was of virtually no value. In 1835 English was enforced as the language of government.

Under the leadership of Governor-General James Andrew Broun Ramsay, 10th earl of Dalhousie, the empire continued to expand. After two wars with the Sikhs, the Sikh state of Punjab was added in 1849. Governor-General Dalhousie also annexed Sātāra, Jaipur, Sambalpur, Jhānsi, and Nāgpur on the death of their native rulers, taking advantage of a British doctrine that declared Britain’s right to govern any Indian state where there was no natural heir to the throne. The absorption of Oudh, long under Britain’s indirect control, was the last major piece added to the company’s possessions; it was annexed in 1856. Dalhousie’s tenure was also marked by various improvements and reforms: the construction of railroads, bridges, roads, and irrigation systems; the establishment of telegraph and postal services; and restrictions on slave trading and other ancient practices. These innovations and reforms, however, aroused little enthusiasm among Indian people, many of whom regarded the modernization of their country with both fear and mistrust.