India

The Indus Valley (or Harappan) Civilisation was a Bronze Age society spanning the north-western Indian subcontinent. Its mature, urban phase is usually dated to roughly 2600–1900 BCE, though earlier village cultures in the region reach back to around 3300 BCE and beyond. At its height it was contemporary with, and comparable in scale to, ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia.

Its great cities — Harappa and Mohenjo-daro chief among them, both flourishing around 2600 BCE and each home to tens of thousands of people — display a remarkable command of urban planning: gridded streets, baked-brick houses, sophisticated drainage and covered sewers, public baths and large granaries. Standardised weights and measures and a uniform material culture spread across hundreds of settlements, pointing to extensive trade and shared administration.

The Harappans left a script of short inscriptions on seals that has never been deciphered, so their language, beliefs and rulers remain largely unknown. From around 1900 BCE the cities declined and were gradually abandoned, a shift now linked chiefly to climate change and the weakening of monsoon-fed rivers rather than any single invasion.

Turning points

1. c. 2600 BCEFormation

   Mature urban phase of the Indus cities

   Harappa, Mohenjo-daro and hundreds of other settlements reach their peak, with grid-planned streets, advanced drainage and standardised weights across a vast trading network.

   [1] [2]

2. c. 2600 BCECulture & Ideas

   Mohenjo-daro flourishes

   Mohenjo-daro, on the Indus in modern Pakistan, becomes one of the civilisation's largest cities and is today a UNESCO World Heritage Site renowned for its Great Bath and citadel.

   [3] [1]

3. c. 1900 BCECatastrophe

   Decline of the Harappan cities

   The major cities are gradually abandoned as weakening monsoons and shifting rivers undermine the agricultural base, marking the end of the civilisation's urban phase.

   ↗See the data

   [1] [2]

Following the decline of the Indus cities, Indo-Aryan-speaking peoples and their culture spread across northern India, ushering in the Vedic period of roughly 1500–500 BCE. The Rigveda, the oldest of the four Vedas and one of the world's earliest religious texts, was composed in archaic Sanskrit during the earlier part of this age and transmitted orally for centuries.

Vedic society organised itself into kingdoms and lineages, developed the ritual and philosophical traditions that would crystallise into Hinduism, and produced the Upanishads, whose speculation on the self and ultimate reality reshaped Indian thought from around 500 BCE.

The mid-first millennium BCE was a time of extraordinary spiritual creativity. In the Gangetic plain, Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, taught a path beyond suffering, founding Buddhism, while his near-contemporary Mahavira reformed and propagated Jainism. Both movements rejected aspects of Vedic ritual and caste authority and would profoundly shape India and, in Buddhism's case, much of Asia.

Turning points

1. c. 1500 BCEReligion

   Composition of the Rigveda

   The Rigveda, the oldest Vedic text and a foundational scripture of Hinduism, is composed in early Sanskrit and preserved through oral tradition.

   [4] [5]

2. c. 500 BCEReligion

   Rise of the Buddha and Mahavira

   Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) founds Buddhism and Mahavira reforms Jainism, launching two enduring religions amid a wider questioning of Vedic ritual.

   [6]

Figures of the era

Around 322 BCE Chandragupta Maurya founded the Maurya Empire, the first state to unite most of the Indian subcontinent under a single administration. Under his grandson Ashoka (reigned c. 268–232 BCE) the empire reached its greatest extent. After the bloody conquest of Kalinga, Ashoka embraced Buddhism, renounced aggressive war, and propagated principles of dharma through edicts carved on pillars and rocks across his realm.

After the Mauryas fragmented in the early second century BCE, India saw a succession of regional powers until the Gupta dynasty established a new empire over much of northern India in the fourth century CE. The imperial Gupta period, roughly 320–550 CE, is widely remembered as a classical golden age, though some scholars caution against idealising it.

Under rulers such as Chandragupta I, Samudragupta and Chandragupta II 'Vikramaditya', Sanskrit literature, sculpture, temple architecture and learning flourished. The poet and dramatist Kalidasa produced enduring masterpieces, the mathematician-astronomer Aryabhata advanced the science of numbers and the cosmos, and Indian mathematicians developed the place-value decimal system and the concept of zero that would transform global mathematics. The empire declined in the sixth century under dynastic strife and Huna invasions.

Turning points

1. c. 322 BCEFormation

   Chandragupta Maurya founds the Maurya Empire

   Chandragupta Maurya overthrows the Nanda dynasty and builds the first empire to unify most of the subcontinent, with its capital at Pataliputra.

   [7] [8]

2. c. 261 BCEReligion

   Ashoka's conquest of Kalinga and conversion

   After the devastating Kalinga war, Emperor Ashoka embraces Buddhism, renounces conquest, and spreads an ethic of dharma through inscribed edicts across his vast empire.

   [7]

3. c. 320 CECulture & Ideas

   Gupta golden age

   The Gupta Empire presides over a classical flowering of Sanskrit literature, mathematics and astronomy, including the works of Kalidasa and Aryabhata and the maturing of the decimal system.

   [9] [10]

Figures of the era

In 1206 Qutb al-Din Aibak, a former general, established independent rule that became the Delhi Sultanate, a Persianate Islamic state that over three centuries was ruled in turn by five dynasties — the Mamluk, Khalji, Tughlaq, Sayyid and Lodi lines. The Sultanate at its height dominated much of the subcontinent and left a deep imprint on its architecture, language and administration.

In 1526 Babur, a Central Asian prince descended from Timur and Genghis Khan, defeated the last Lodi sultan at the First Battle of Panipat and founded the Mughal Empire. Under his grandson Akbar (reigned 1556–1605) the empire was consolidated through able administration and a policy of religious accommodation that drew Hindus and Muslims into a shared imperial order.

The Mughals presided over a brilliant synthesis of Persian and Indian culture, producing masterpieces of painting, poetry and architecture, above all the Taj Mahal built by Shah Jahan. By the reign of Aurangzeb (1658–1707) the empire reached its greatest territorial extent, but costly wars in the Deccan, heavy taxation and religious friction strained it. After Aurangzeb's death in 1707 imperial power fragmented, opening the way for regional states and, ultimately, European intrusion.

Turning points

1. 1206Politics & Power

   Founding of the Delhi Sultanate

   Qutb al-Din Aibak establishes independent rule at Delhi, beginning a 320-year succession of Islamic dynasties that reshape the politics and culture of northern India.

   [11] [12]

2. 1526War & Rupture

   Babur founds the Mughal Empire

   Babur defeats Ibrahim Lodi at the First Battle of Panipat, ending the Delhi Sultanate and establishing the Mughal Empire, which would rule much of the subcontinent for over two centuries.

   ↗See the data

   [12] [13]

3. 1556Politics & Power

   Reign of Akbar

   Akbar the Great consolidates and expands the empire, reforms its administration with the mansabdari system, and pursues a policy of religious tolerance and cultural synthesis.

   [13]

4. 1707Politics & Power

   Death of Aurangzeb and Mughal decline

   Aurangzeb dies after extending the empire to its greatest extent; his costly wars and religious policies leave the Mughal state weakened, and its authority rapidly fragments thereafter.

   [13]

Figures of the era

The British East India Company's victory at the Battle of Plassey in 1757, won by Robert Clive over the Nawab of Bengal, transformed a commercial enterprise into a territorial power. Over the following century the Company expanded across India through war, treaty and annexation, draining wealth from the subcontinent while imposing its own administration.

Resentment at Company rule erupted in the Indian Rebellion of 1857, a vast uprising that shook British power. After it was suppressed, the British Crown abolished Company rule in 1858 and took direct control, inaugurating the British Raj, which would govern India until 1947. The Raj built railways and a unified administration, but its rule was extractive and its priorities imperial.

Colonial policy bore a terrible human cost. India suffered repeated famines under British rule, culminating in the Bengal famine of 1943, in which an estimated two to three million people died — a catastrophe widely attributed not to crop failure but to wartime policy, inflation, export priorities and administrative neglect.

Against this backdrop a powerful nationalist movement grew, led by the Indian National Congress and increasingly by Mahatma Gandhi, whose mass campaigns of non-violent resistance — the Salt March of 1930, the Quit India movement of 1942 — mobilised millions and made continued British rule untenable.

Turning points

1. 23 Jun 1757Colonisation

   Battle of Plassey

   Robert Clive's East India Company forces defeat the Nawab of Bengal, marking the beginning of British political and military dominance in India.

   ↗See the data

   [14] [15]

2. 1858Colonisation

   British Crown rule begins

   After the suppression of the 1857 rebellion, the Crown abolishes East India Company rule and assumes direct governance of India, beginning the British Raj.

   ↗See the data

   [15]

3. 12 Mar 1930Politics & Power

   The Salt March

   Gandhi leads a 24-day march to the sea to make salt in defiance of the British salt monopoly, galvanising mass non-violent resistance against colonial rule.

   [16]

4. 1943Catastrophe

   Bengal famine

   An estimated two to three million people die in Bengal in a man-made famine driven by wartime inflation, export priorities and colonial policy rather than any major shortfall in food production.

   ↗See the data

   [17] [18]

Figures of the era

At midnight on 15 August 1947 India became independent, with Jawaharlal Nehru as its first prime minister. Independence was inseparable from Partition: the subcontinent was divided into India and Pakistan along the hastily drawn Radcliffe Line, splitting Punjab and Bengal and triggering one of the largest forced migrations in history.

Partition was accompanied by catastrophic violence. Between roughly 12 and 20 million people were displaced across the new borders, and estimates of the dead range widely, commonly cited at around one to two million. Communities that had lived together for generations were torn apart by massacres, mass abductions and sexual violence — a trauma that still shadows relations between India and Pakistan.

On 26 January 1950 the Constitution of India came into force, transforming the newly independent dominion into a sovereign democratic republic. Drafted under the chairmanship of B. R. Ambedkar, it established universal adult suffrage, fundamental rights and a federal parliamentary system, and abolished untouchability. The date is celebrated each year as Republic Day.

In the decades since, India has held regular multiparty elections, built a diverse industrial and technological economy, and become the most populous nation on Earth and the world's largest democracy — while continuing to grapple with inequality, communal tension and the unfinished work of inclusion.

Turning points

1. 15 Aug 1947Independence

   Independence and Partition

   India becomes independent from Britain under Prime Minister Nehru as the subcontinent is partitioned into India and Pakistan, unleashing mass migration and communal violence.

   ↗See the data

   [19] [20]

2. 1947–1948Peoples & Migration

   Partition violence and mass migration

   Up to 12–20 million people are uprooted and an estimated one to two million die in massacres and forced migration along the new India–Pakistan border.

   ↗See the data

   [19]

3. 26 Jan 1950Politics & Power

   Constitution and the Republic

   The Constitution of India comes into force, making India a sovereign democratic republic with universal suffrage and fundamental rights; the day is celebrated as Republic Day.

   [20] [21]

Figures of the era