Africa for the first time and arrived in

India via the great coastal migration.

Their direct descendants can be found in

the Andaman Islands even today.

The next people to populate India were a small

group so successful that their numbers

quickly multiplied and soon swamped all

traces of the previous coastal migration.

They domesticated the cow and grew wheat

barley and jujubes. The next wave of

settlers came from Central Asia and

between four to two thousand years ago

the two groups began to mix. Today's

Indians are the descendants of this

prehistoric intermingling.

In 1921archaeologists discovered the ruins of a

lost Bronze Age civilization in the Indus Valley

They found great cities with

careful town planning and drainage systems

This was the Indus Valley Civilization

older than the great pyramids

and at its peak home to up to

five million people. Most of the people

were craftsmen and merchants whose trade

network stretched all the way to Sumer in today's Iraq.

Hundreds of seals used

by these traders to stamp their goods

have been found. The seals contain a form

of writing but the Indus script has not

been deciphered so far

Eventually the civilization went into decline perhaps

because of climate change the Indus

Valley cities were abandoned and their

existence vanished out of memory

then around 1500 BC a new society emerged.

The people cleared forests to

graze cattle and made tools out of iron

Their kings road horse-drawn chariot

called Rathas to battle while the

priests or Brahmins appeased the gods

through ritual sacrifices at fire altars

The sages of this period composed the

Vedas, hymns to ancient gods. Many of these

hymns are attributed to women scholars

Three and a half thousand years later

the Vedas are still in use today

The language of the Vedas is Sanskrit,

mother to the languages of northern India and

itself related to the languages of Europe

Vedic india stretched from the Hindu Kush

to the plains of the Ganges and

was divided into many kingdoms and republics

One kingdom the kuru witnessed

a dynastic struggle that culminated in

a legendary war. This war would be the

inspiration for the Mahabharata, an epic

poem as gods and heroes that continues

to influence India even today.

In the 5thcentury BC a host of thinkers arose with

new ideas that challenged the authority

of the priests and their rituals

One of them was a young prince who had

renounced his kingdom to seek out the truth

He discovered that desire is the

cause of suffering and letting go of

desire was the path to inner peace

He became known as the Buddha

the enlightened one and his message spread across India

in 326 bc the undefeated

army of Alexander the Great reached

India's doorstep. They won a fierce

battle against King Porus in the Punjab

but to the east, a young adventurer

Chandragupta Maurya had seized power

He drove Alexander's successors out of

India and established the Mauryan empire

His grandson Ashoka expanded the empire

from the Khyber to Bengal. Shaken by his

brutally destructive victory against the

kingdom of Kalinga he became a Buddhist

and dedicated his life to the welfare of

his subjects. Ashoka issued edicts

bearing the message of peace, compassion

and justice all across his empire

These edicts were written in Brahmi,

the ancestor of all the writing systems used

in India today. By this time the general

population spoke various Prakrit languages

that would evolve into the

modern languages of India but in the

deep south the Tamil language had

already developed classical literature

The three kingdoms of the Tamil country

traded extensively with the Roman Empire

exchanging Indian spices for gold

After the fall of the Mauryan Empire

a nomadic tribe expanded from Central Asia into

northern India forming the Kushan empire

Under emperor Kanishka they embraced

Buddhism and exported it to China via

the famed Silk Road.

The decline of theKushan Empire was followed by

the rise of the Gupta dynasty and a period of

peace and prosperity followed.

This was the Golden Age of India. The Gupta period

produced cultural high points such as

the classical Sanskrit plays of kalidasa

Chaturanga - the precursor to the game of chess

and the world's first manual on sex

the Kama Sutra

the mathematician-astronomer Aryabhata proposed that the

Earth revolves around the Sun and

accurately calculated the circumference

of the earth but India's greatest

contribution to the world was the Hindu

number system and the use of zero

- The foundation of all modern science

A renewed Hinduism based on devotion

rather than ritual emerged under the Guptas

The cults of Shiva and

Vishnu became prominent

The Gupta Empireeventually declined and broke up into

many kingdoms that waged war against

each other no ruler of this period was

able to create and control a great empire.

in the tenth century the chola

dynasty under Raja raja broke the deadlock

and conquered all of southern India

The Cholan Navy dominated the Bay of Bengal

and invaded Sri Lanka and parts of

Southeast Asia. The chola kings built

great temples to Shiva that also became

the centres of economic and cultural life

Around the same time the temple towns of

the north were under attack by Turkic

Raiders led by Mahmud of Ghazni

150 years later another Muslim ruler

Mohammed Ghori raised vast armies that

over ran the Northern Plains

His defeat of the Rajput King pretty Rajan 1192

laid the foundations of Muslim rule in India

Qutub ud-din Aybak a former slave

of Ghori became the first Sultan of Delhi

the Delhi Sultanate would give India the

tradition of sufi saints, the Urdu

language, music and poetry and for a

brief period - its first female Empress

under Alauddin Khilji they repulsed the Mongol empire

and under the Tughlaq dynasty

the Sultanate expanded into

southern India

The weakening of the southern kingdoms

paved the way for the rise of Vijayanagara

the last great empire of the south

the Vijaynagara rulers built monumental

temples were patrons of carnatic music

as well as literature in the Kannada

Telugu and Tamil languages

In the North the nomadic warlord Timur sacked belly and

massacred its people. This attack

severely weakened the Sultanate and many

regional Sultanates, Rajput Princedoms

and the Ahom kingdom of the

Northeast emerged. In the Punjab

Guru nanak

founded the sikh religion

The final blow for the Sultanate came

when Babur a descendant of Timur and

Genghis khan defeated the last sultan of

delhi at Panipat

Although outnumbered five-to-one Babur had the

advantage of gunpowder and cannons

This battle marked the beginning of a new era

the Mughal empire

Babur's grandson Akbar was a great ruler

who united his subjects both by conquest

and by tolerance. He started an

experimental religion Din-i-Ilahi by

blending ideas from all religions

He reorganized the administrative

departments and abolished the sectarian

tax on Hindus. By the time of his death

India had the largest GDP in the world

the Mughals embarked on great building

projects constructing magnificent Gardens

forts and tombs including the Taj Mahal

built by the Emperor Shah Jahan in

memory of his beloved Queen Mumtaz

incidentally it was Shah Jahan's third son with Mumtaz

- Aurangzeb, who imprisoned Shah Jahan

and seized the throne

Aurangzeb ruled with an iron fist

The empirereached its greatest extent but was

plagued with revolts and religious the empire

Aurangzeb's greatest

enemy was Shivaji Bhonsle, a leader of

the Hindu Maratha people who broke away

from Mughal rule and established the

Maratha Empire

After Aurangzeb's death the Mughal

emperors became vassals of the Maratha

prime minister or Peshwa

Provincial governors or nawabs declared

independence as did the Sikhs and the

kingdoms of Mysore and Hyderabad but

waiting patiently on the sidelines were

the European powers

It was the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama who

first landed in India in 1498, almost 30

years before the Mughals

The Dutch, Danish French and British trading

companies soon followed

Wary of the growing influence of the British East India Company

the nawab of Bengal had

146 british prisoners locked up in a

small cell. Only 23 survived the night

This incident led to the battle of

Plassey where company troops led by

Robert Clive defeated the Nawabs forces

The emboldened East India Company went on to

defeat the Mysore kingdom, the Sikhs

the Marathas and the French to emerge as

the dominant power in India

The company troops were mostly made up

of Indian soldiers called Sepoys

In 1857 the company issued cartridges

greased with the fat of cows and pigs

This infuriated both Hindu and Muslim

sepoys causing a mutiny. They were

joined by local rulers including the

last Mughal emperor and the rebels

almost succeeded in driving the british

out of india. The rebellion however lacked

a central leadership and was brutally

suppressed a year later

the East IndiaCompany was dissolved and India was

directly governed by the crown

Independent local kingdoms became

British protectorates called princely states

The British Raj had begun

Indian social reformers campaigned for women's

education and the abolishment of widow immolation

and child marriages

The british-built universities, schools and

hospitals and a network of railways that

connected the country. This brought the

different regions of India together and

the sense of a common national identity emerged.

But all of this came at a heavy price

India was made to grow cash crops

like indigo, tea and cotton which were

processed into finished goods in Britain

only to be dumped back into Indian markets

Millions died in famines as food was

diverted to supply Britain's war efforts

in Europe. India's share of world gdp

fell from almost twenty-three percent in

1700 less than four percent

The Indian National Congress was first formed to

obtain a greater share in the government

for Indians but faced with opposition

from the British the party began

campaigning for total independence in

1919 British troops opened fire on a

peaceful gathering at jallianwala bagh

in the Punjab killing at least 379 men,

women and children. This event triggered a

nationwide movement for independence

although there were attempts at armed