India
With more than one billion people,
India ranks as the second-most populous country in the world after
China. Its geography encompasses 3,500 miles of coastline, mountain ranges that include the Himalayas, swaths of fertile farmland, diverse cultures and a glittering civilization that predates
Europe.
Before it was a nation,
India was a land of fiefs and city states vulnerable to raiding, invasion and migration.
The Indo-Aryan people settled in the northwest region and over the next 2,000 years developed the Brahman culture from which Hinduism evolved. Invaders include Alexander the Great in 327 B.C. and much later the Persians, who would found the Mogul empire. The Europeans began arriving early in the sixteenth century, drawn by the opulence of the moguls. The British East India Company, with trading posts in
Surat,
Bombay and
Calcutta, soon dominated the region, ousting Portuguese and Dutch traders. The British Raj was born and
India's vast raw wealth was shipped to the West.
During World War I Mohandas K. Gandhi began an organized protest of English rule. Gandhi used an inspired campaign of passive resistance, which later became the model for nonviolent protest during the American civil rights movement of the 1960s. In a divide-and-conquer strategy, the British rulers set Muslim interests against those of Hindus, partitioning
Bengal in 1905 and later widening Indian participation in governing councils. In the elections of the '30s the political party of Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru became dominant in the government. The Muslim League, led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, feared a loss of power in an independent
India. When independence came in 1947, British India split into
India and
Pakistan, with repercussions that continue to plague the sub-continent to this day. These two enemies now have nuclear weapons.
In August 2010,
India's Parliament approved a final, critical piece of a landmark civil nuclear agreement, a pact regarded as a cornerstone of a Bush-era effort to transform the relationship between the
United States and the world’s largest democracy. But even as supporters praised a historic victory, the end result is probably not es had hoped for, nor does it seem likely to signal a new era in relations between the
United States and
India.
