The cradle of human civilization, timeless and eternal, India has remained in the world’s consciousness since time immemorial. India’s history is a kaleidoscope of the march of human society.

The word "India" is derived from the river Indus, along whose banks the Aryans from Central Asia are believed to have settled well over 5,000 years ago. However, the first evidence of human settlement in the Indian sub-continent dates back to possibly 8,000 BC, and these settlements expanded around 3,000 BC into what is today known as the Indus Valley Civilization, a highly urbanized society, its cities marvels of town planning, based on agriculture and commerce and trading with contemporary Mesopotamia, Sumeria and Egypt.

With the passage of time, the Aryans also metamorphosed into an urbanized culture, spreading ever southwards, pushing the indigenous Dravidian inhabitants deeper into the Indian peninsula. The cataclysmic social, economic and political changes of the time are depicted in the two great epics of ancient India, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. The old Vedic religion, naturalistic and sacrificial, gave way to the pragmatism of the Upanishads, and this in turn stimulated the rise of reformers like Vardhaman Mahavira and Gautama Buddha around the 5th century BC.

Ashok Pillar of Sarnath

The political history of India is the history of the rise and fall of many empires, some indigenous, some established by invaders who came to conquer but ended up being absorbed into the great Indian family, contributing to the diversity of Indian culture today.

The great Indian dynasties included the Nandas (3rd century BC) who stopped Alexander the Great from entering the Gangetic plain (326-325 BC), the Mauryas (2nd - 1st century BC) whose zenith was the empire of Ashoka, a convert to Buddhism who helped spread this faith throughout the Far East, and the Guptas (4th century AD) in whose time Kautilya wrote the famous treatise on diplomacy, the Arthshastra. The last great empire in this period of Indian history was that of Harsha in the 7th century AD.

The medieval period of Indian history can be loosely termed the age of invasions, beginning with the Turko-Afghans in the 11th century. The Turkish Sultanate collapsed before the onslaught of the great Mughals, whose empire (1526 to 1857), at its zenith stretched from today's Afghanistan to deep into India's Southern peninsula. With Vasco de Gama's arrival at Calicut on India's western coast in 1498, the latter half of India's medieval era saw the Portuguese, the Dutch, the French and the British entering India from the sea, initially as traders and later as colonizers.

Through a combination of treachery, guile and force of arms, the British overcame indigenous resistance (beginning with the Battle of Plassey in 1757) and turned the Mughal Emperor into a puppet controlled by the East India Company. However, British avarice and attempts to meddle with Indian culture provoked the First War of Independence in 1857, following which the British Crown took over the government of British India from the East India Company. The last descendant of the Great Mughals was exiled to face a solitary death in Rangoon (Yangon). British rule lasted till 1947, when the struggle for India’s independence led by the apostle of nonviolence, Mahatma Gandhi, achieved its goal. India became free on 15 August 1947, but was simultaneously partitioned into India and Pakistan.