*Civilisation has existed in the Indian Subcontinent since at least 6500 BC, when the oldest known evidence of wheat cultivation has been dated.  Pottery from at least 5500 BC has been discovered, and by 2600 BC, a major regional culture with cities of thousands of people existed in the Indus River Valley.

*This culture is sometimes called the Harappan Civilisation, because the first city excavated was near the modern city of Harappa, in Pakistan.  Another major city was found near modern Mohenjo-Daro; over 1,052 cities and settlements have been found so far.  These cities had advanced water and drainage systems, massive walls, intricate and exact systems of weights and measures, and bricks so similar they almost seem to have been mass-produced.

*Little is known of the Harappan culture or language (although it is possible that they were related to the Dravidian peoples of southern India), because their civilisation began to decline about 1,800 BC, and was replaced (perhaps forcibly) by an Indo-European people who called themselves Aryans.

*As the Aryans settled in the Indus Valley, they brought with them the Vedas, a series of sacred writings (in Sanskrit) that became part of the Hindu religion (which mixes Indo-European beliefs with some existing gods and traditions of the Harappans and Dravidians).

*Among other things, the Vedas organised society into four castes, the Brahmin (priests and teachers), the Kshatriya (kings, princes, and warriors), the Vaishya (merchants, landowners, and some craftsmen), and the Shudra (farmers and manual labourers).  There were also the Dalit, or outcastes, who performed unclean jobs that made everyone else shun them.  The caste system exists to some degree in India today, although it has declined somewhat.

*The most difficult aspect of the caste system was the fact that everyone was born into their caste, and could not (typically) change it (except, possibly, to go down).  This is because Hinduism teaches that people are reincarnated—born anew as they strive towards perfection.  Perfection does not come all at once—in fact, the three highest castes were called the ‘twice-born’ because to get to one of them, a person must have been a person at least once already (one could also be born as an animal). 

*While living, a good Hindu strives to follow the dharma, or moral law and duty (which is slightly different for each caste, each of whom has different tasks to fulfil), in order to improve one’s karma, which is improved by good deeds (in accordance with dharma) and worsened by bad deeds.  Eventually, good karma allows one to be reborn in higher and higher forms, until eventually one is reunited with the divine spirit.

*Many Hindus practise vegetarianism, although this is not strictly required.  Even those who are not completely vegetarian will not eat beef, and Hindus will not even use leather.  This is because cattle in ancient India were more useful for their milk and as pack and plough animals than they were as sources of meat.  Although cows are not actually worshipped, they hold an honoured place in Hindu society.

*Because there is ultimately one divine essence (Brahman), Hinduism can be seen as monotheistic.  However, the divine essence is also manifested in many gods and spirits (including, as fast as some Hindus are concerned, the gods of other religions, too), which are worshipped differently and which have different personalities, so it can also be seen as a polytheistic religion.

*Around 537 BC, an Indian man of the Brahmin caste named Siddhartha Gautama began to preach that the cause of misery was desire.  He was viewed as an enlightened teacher, or Buddha (‘Enlightened One’), and he taught the Four Noble Truths: 
1.    There is suffering. Suffering is an intrinsic part of life also experienced as dissatisfaction, discontent, unhappiness, impermanence.
2.    *There is a cause of suffering, which is attachment and desire.
3.    There is a way out of suffering, which is to eliminate attachment and desire.
4.    The path that leads out of suffering is called the Noble Eightfold Path (a series of right actions).

*Buddhism became popular in India, where it mixed freely with Hinduism (more or less), as both sought enlightenment and a reunion—and self-abnegation—with a peaceful divine essence (called Nirvana by the Buddha).  Buddhism also spread to China, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere, where it ended up being far more permanent and lasting than it had been in India.

*Throughout its early history, India was invaded through the Khyber Pass.

*The Persian Empire conquered parts of Pakistan around 500 BC, and maintained control for about 150 years, and Alexander the Great came through the Khyber Pass in 326 BC, and conquered parts of Pakistan as well, although he was ultimately stopped in north-western India.

*After Alexander, much of northern India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan was unified under the Mauryan Empire from about 320-180 BC.  This was India’s first great unified empire (previously the region had been ruled by many small kingdoms).  It went into decline when its last great emperor was assassinated, and many people rejected the Buddhism enforced by the ruling class, and returned to Hinduism.

*About 320 AD, another great empire arose, that of the Guptas.  This was a Hindu empire, and although not as large as the Mauryan Empire, it still covered large parts of northern India, Pakistan, and parts of Bangladesh.  This was a very advanced culture in its science and art, and, through their trade with Arab merchants, spread their system of numbers (including the idea of a numeral to stand for zero) to the Middle East and eventually the world (where they are falsely known as ‘Arabic numerals’).  The Guptas declined about 550 AD, due to increasingly weak rulers (in a quasi-federal system that already gave a lot of power to local authorities) and due to invasions from beyond the region.

*Between about 848 and 1279 much of India was ruled by the Chola Empire, a Tamil Hindu group.  The Tamils are a Dravidian people of southern India and Sri Lanka.  The Chola had a powerful navy, and demanded tribute from Cambodia and Thailand.

*Until the 1500s, India again existed mostly as a series of minor kingdoms.  However, in 1526 a group of Mongol invaders came into India and set up what came to called the Muhgal Empire.  This was a Moslem empire, the first major one on the Subcontinent (although there had been some earlier invasions by Islamic peoples, some of which had established minor sultanates, and briefly even extended beyond India, carrying Islam to Indonesia).  The Mughals would rule until 1857.

*In 1498, Vasco de Gama charted a sea route from Portugal to India.  In 1510, Portugal claimed the territory of Goa, and controlled it (and other small ports) until 1961.  In 1673 the French began trading in Pondicherry, and eventually took it over.  The Portuguese also claimed Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), but it was taken from them by the Dutch, and then by the British.  Even the Danes and the Austrians briefly had small enclaves.

*Britain was represented in South Asia only indirectly, through the Honourable East India Company.  Created by Queen Elizabeth I in 1600 to trade with the Far East, it began negotiations with the Mughal Emperor in 1615.  These were very successful, and the Company began to set up trading posts in major Indian cities.  By 1689, the Company was as powerful as any other nation on the Subcontinent, administering vast areas for its own benefit.

*During the Seven Years’ War, Company troops (both Englishmen and Indian Sepoys) fought French soldiers in India (while American militiamen and British regulars fought them in North America).  In 1757 the Company won a major victory in Bengal, and spent the next hundred years consolidating its power in the Subcontinent (although increasingly in competition with the Mughals).

*The Company operated to make a profit, and was often uninterested in the welfare or the culture of the people it ruled.  The Company’s insensitivity eventually caused serious problems that led to the downfall of the Company.

*Among other things, it was thought that the Company supported the activities of Christian missionaries in India (although there had always been a small Indian Christian community there).  In fact, the Company discouraged this, but many individual members of the Company did it anyway.

*The Company also tried to westernise India by outlawing (among other things) child marriage, Sati, female infanticide, and the Thuggee (a religious cult that practised highway robbery and murder).  The Company also tried to build a railway, which was thought to be a demon.

*Finally, the Company fielded one of the largest armies in the world (257,000 troops in 1857, more than the British Army).  However, when the Company tried to send them to Burma, they objected because they felt they would lose their caste if they left India.  The Company also used (or was thought to use) paper musket cartridges that had been greased with pig or beef fat, offensive to many Hindus and Moslems since the cartridges were usually torn with the teeth. 

*Finally the Indians (or at least some, mostly in the north) had had enough, especially the Company troops, and in 1857-58 they rebelled in what has been called the Sepoy Mutiny.  In the end, the Mutiny was put down, but the Company was dissolved, and India was put under direct British control, often called the Raj, from the Hindi word rajah, or king.  This was the end of the Mughal Empire, and within 20 years, Queen Victoria had been recognised by many of the lesser princes of India as their Empress.

*Unlike the Company, which had tried to modernise India, the British viceroys found it was easier to work with the existing system.  Although Sati and other particularly offensive practises were still outlawed, the caste system was recognised, and in many places the British still ruled through existing local princes—which in some cases remained independent from India forever, as in the cases of Nepal and Bhutan.

*India (which included Bangladesh and Pakistan) was the crown jewel of the British Empire, and although the Indian people were typically accorded second-class citizen status, they were still subjects of the Empire (and so better off than most people in colonial Africa), and Britain developed India tremendously, building roads, schools, hospitals, and more.  India already had a wide range of social classes, and the British worked with them, befriending the upper and middle classes, and using them to keep the lower classes in line.

*Eventually, some Indians came to oppose this, notably Mohandas Ghandi, an Indian lawyer educated in Britain who had first worked to oppose the race laws of South Africa (where he lived for a time) before returning to India.  He opposed British rule through non-violent means:  strikes, boycotts, marches, hunger protests, and other means, including diplomacy. 

*During WWII, there was significant fear that India might take the opportunity to rebel against Britain and join Japan.  In return for supporting Britain during the War, India was promised independence afterwards, and in 1947 it was granted, beginning the period of decolonisation.  Portugal and France did not give up their small portions of India so easily, but eventually India invaded them and took them over.

*India under the Raj was a multi-cultural colony, with both Moslem and Hindu peoples.  However, there was concern that once the British left, they might not work together, so the last Viceroy divided the old colony into India and Pakistan (both East and West—East Pakistan later became Bangladesh).  Ghandi was assassinated a year later by a Hindu nationalist who felt that Ghandi had betrayed India by allowing it to be partitioned.

*Some parts were difficult to apportion, especially Kashmir.  Its ruler was Hindu, but many of the people were Moslem.  The prince asked to be part of India, and was allowed to remain so, but as soon as independence was granted, India and Pakistan went to war over Kashmir.  This began the First Kashmir War of 1947-49.  It ended with a truce arranged by the United Nations, but in 1965 the Second Kashmir War was fought, also ending indecisively.  A third war was fought (called the Indo-Pakistani War) in 1971.  In 1972 the ‘line of control’ was drawn, but even it has not satisfied everyone, and Indian and Pakistani troops shoot at each other across the border from time to time.  In the 1980s, a local Moslem independence movement developed in Kashmir, and began killing local Hindus.  India responded with force.  In 1998, India and Pakistan both tested nuclear weapons, raising fears that the world’s first nuclear war might be fought over Kashmir.

*At the same time Pakistan was fighting India in 1971, it was also fighting itself.  In that year, East Pakistan, which was less religious, less prosperous, linguistically different, and geographically distant from West Pakistan, declared its independence.  With India’s help, the new nation, which called itself Bangladesh, won the war.

*Ceylon was given its independence in 1948, and in 1972 changed its name to Sri Lanka.  The majority (74%) of Sri Lanka’s people are Sinhalese, an Indo-European people, and principally Buddhist.  About 18% are Tamils (a Dravidian people), mostly Buddhist, who would like their own nation-state, or at least more power within Sri Lanka.  There have been riots and ethnic civil war in the country since 1983, although after the 2004 tsunami, efforts at a cease-fire have made significant progress.

*The Maldives are an island republic in the Indian Ocean, independent from Britain since 1965.  The people there are mostly Moslem, and speak an Indo-European language.  The Maldives are the flattest country in the world, and are in danger of flooding from tsunamis or sea level changes.

*Since the Communists took over in China (and especially since they took over Tibet), the Himalayan kingdoms of Nepal and Bhutan have been troubled by communist partisans.

*Nepal, the world’s only Hindu kingdom, has had a fairly traditional monarchy for most of its history, with an almost absolute monarch since 1990 (although there has usually been some sort of parliament and cabinet).  In 1996, the Maoist Communist Party of Nepal demanded the overthrow of the government and the creation of a communist state, and began a civil war to achieve this.  The war still goes on, with the Maoists controlling the majority of the countryside, and many people hating both the Maoists for their cruelty and the monarchy for its inability to do anything about the insurgents.  In February 2005, King Gyanendra took complete control of his government and declared a state of emergency so he could deal with the Maoists.  Recently they declared a cease-fire, and new elections have been promised for 2007. 

*Bhutan, a traditional Buddhist kingdom, closed its northern border in 1951 when China took over Tibet.  It then undertook a modernisation program with India’s help, and has remained close friends with India, which mostly determines its foreign policy and pays most of its development costs.  The king is powerful, but has many constitutional limits, and there is a parliament elected by a system in which each family gets one vote.  Bhutan has been criticised for passing laws requiring people to follow the Bhutanese cultural norms, including dress and language, even those of other ethnic groups.

*Today, most of South Asia is a fast-growing and important region, particularly the new nuclear powers, India and Pakistan.  Nepal has many problems, however, and even Bangladesh and Bhutan remain poor—although the King of Bhutan once remarked that while money mattered, satisfaction and traditional values mattered more:  ‘Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross National Product.’