India

• India is a country in South Asia.

• India is officially the Republic of India.

• India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives share a maritime border with Thailand and Indonesia in the Indian Ocean.

India

• Home to the ancient Indus Valley Civilization and a region of historic trade routes and vast empires was identified with its commercial and cultural wealth for much of its long history.

• Vast empires were the Indian subcontinent.

• Four of the world's major religions originated here.

India

• Zoroastrianism, Christianity and Islam arrived in the 1st millennium CE.

• Zoroastrianism, Christianity and Islam also helped shape the region's diverse culture.

• India became an independent nation in 1947 after a struggle for independence which was marked by non-violent resistance and led by Mahatma Gandhi.

India

• India was gradually annexed.

• India was administered by the British East India Company from the early 18th century.

• India was administered directly by the United Kingdom from the mid-19th century.

India

• The Indian economy is the world's tenth-largest economy by nominal GDP and third largest economy by purchasing power parity.

• A nuclear weapons state and a regional power, it has the third-largest standing army in the world.

• A nuclear weapons state and a regional power, it ranks tenth in military expenditure among nations.

• It is also home to a diversity of wildlife in a variety of protected habitats.

Ancient India

• BCE appeared on the subcontinent in Mehrgarh and other sites in western Pakistan around 7000.

• BCE was the first known neolithic settlements.

• These gradually developed into the Indus Valley Civilisation BCE in Pakistan and western India.

Ancient India

• The Indus Valley Civilisation was the first urban culture in South Asia.

• The civilisation engaged robustly in crafts production and wide-ranging trade.

• The civilisation was centred around cities such as Mohenjo-daro, Harappa, Dholavira, and Kalibangan, .

Ancient India

• The civilisation was relying on varied forms of subsistence.

• Many regions of the subcontinent evolved from copper age to iron age cultures during the period 2000500 BCE.

• The Vedas were composed during this period.

Ancient India

• Historians have analyzed these to posit a Vedic culture in the Punjab region and the upper Ganges Plain.

• The Vedas was the oldest scriptures of Hinduism.

• The caste system appeared during this period.

Ancient India

• The caste system spawned a social hierarchy.

• The large number of megalithic monuments found from this period, and nearby evidence of agriculture, irrigation tanks, and craft traditions suggest progression to sedentary life in South India.

• The empire was once thought to have controlled most of the subcontinent excepting the far south.

Ancient India

• Its core regions are now thought to have been separated by large autonomous areas.

• The Sangam literature of the Tamil language reveals that during the period from 200 BCE to 200 CE , the southern peninsula was being ruled by the Cheras , the Cholas , and the Pandyas , dynasties that traded extensively with the Roman Empire and with west and south-east Asia .

• A renewed Hinduism based on devotion rather than the management of ritual began to assert itself under the Guptas.

Ancient India

• This was reflected in a flowering of sculpture and architecture.

• The flowering of sculpture and architecture found patrons among an urban elite.

• Classical Sanskrit literature flowered as well.

• Indian science, astronomy, medicine, and mathematics made significant advances.

Medieval India

• They were defeated by the Pallavas from farther south from still farther south.

• The Chalukyas attempted to expand southwards.

• The Pallavas from farther south were opposed by the Pandyas and the Cholas in turn.

Medieval India

• Pastoral peoples whose land was usurped by cultivators were accommodated within caste society during this time.

• These were imitated all over India.

• These were led both to the resurgence of Hinduism and to the development of all the modern languages of the subcontinent.

Medieval India

• Indian royalty, big and small, and the temples they patronised, drew citizens in great numbers to the capital cities.

• The capital cities became economic hubs as well.

• The effects were evident in South Indian culture and elsewhere.

Medieval India

• Political systems were exported to Southeast Asia to lands now composing Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Java.

• Southeast Asia was in particular.

• Indian merchants, scholars, and at times armies were involved in this transmission.

Medieval India

• After the tenth century , Muslim Central Asian nomadic clans , using swift horse cavalry and raising vast armies united by ethnicity and religion , repeatedly overran South Asia 's north-western plains , and led eventually to the establishment of the Islamic Delhi Sultanate in 1206 .

• The Sultanate was to control much of North India.

• The Sultanate was to to make many forays into South India.

Medieval India

• The Sultanate largely left its vast non-Muslim subject population to its own laws and customs.

• The Sultanate's raiding and weakening of the regional kingdoms of South India, paved the way for the indigenous Vijayanagara Empire.

• The empire came to control much of peninsular India.

Medieval India

• The empire came to influence South Indian society and culture long afterwards.

• The empire was embracing a strong Shaivite tradition.

• The empire was building upon the military technology of the Sultanate.

Early modern India

• It came to rule balanced.

• It pacified them through new administrative practices, and diverse and inclusive ruling elites, leading to more systematic, centralised, and uniform rule.

• The Mughal empire resulted.

Early modern India

• The Mughal state's economic policies caused peasants and artisans to enter larger markets.

• The Mughal state's economic policies were deriving most revenues from agriculture.

• The Mughal state's economic policies were mandating that taxes be paid in the well-regulated silver currency.

Early modern India

• The relative peace maintained by the empire during much of the seventeenth century was a factor in India's economic expansion.

• The relative peace maintained by the empire during much of the seventeenth century resulted in greater patronage of painting, literary forms, textiles, and architecture.

• Newly coherent social groups gained military and governing ambitions during Mughal rule.

Early modern India

• Mughal rule gave them both recognition and military experience through collaboration or adversity.

• Expanding commerce during Mughal rule gave rise to new Indian commercial and political elites in the southern and eastern coastal India.

• The East India Company 's control of the seas , its greater resources , and its army 's more advanced training and technology , led it to increasingly flex its military muscle and caused it to become attractive to a portion of the Indian elite ; both these factors were crucial in allowing the Company to gain control over the Bengal region by 1765 , and sidelining the other European companies .

Early modern India

• Its further access to the riches of Bengal and the subsequent increased strength and size of its army enabled it to annex or subdue most of India by the 1820s.

• The Company began to more consciously enter non-economic arenas such as education, social reform, and culture by this time with its economic power severely curtailed by the British parliament and effectively now an arm of British administration.

Modern India

• The age may have begun in 1857.

• The age may have ravaged many parts of northern India.

• It may also have begun in 1858 when , after the rebels were suppressed , the British government opted for direct administration of India and proclaimed a unitary state , which on the one hand envisaged slow transition to a British-style parliamentary system , but on the other hand favored Indian princes and landlords as a feudal safeguard against popular unrest .

Modern India

• Its modern era may have commenced with the founding of the Indian National Congress in 1885, thus marking the start of an all-India public life.

• He rush of technology and the commercialization of agriculture in the second half of the 19th century was marked by economic setbacks-- many small farmers became dependent on the whims of far-away markets.

• There was an increase in the number of large-scale famines.

Modern India

• Little industrial employment was generated for Indians.

• There were also salutary effects : commercial cropping , especially in the newly canalled Punjab , increased food production for internal consumption , the railway network provided critical famine relief , reduced notably the cost of moving goods , and helped the nascent Indian owned industry .

• After the first world war , in which some one million Indians served , a new period began , which was marked by British reforms , but also repressive legislation , by more strident Indian calls for self-rule , and by the beginnings of a nonviolent movement of non-cooperation , of which Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi would become the leader and enduring symbol .

Modern India

• The next decade would be beset with crises.

• Vital to India's self-image as an independent nation was its constitution.

• Its constitution was completed in 1950.

Modern India

• Its constitution put in place a sovereign democratic republic.

• It has remained a democracy with civil liberties , an activist Supreme Court , and a largely independent press ; economic liberalization , which was begun in the 1990s , has created a large urban middle-class , transformed India into one of the fastest-growing economies in the world , and increased its global clout ; and Indian movies , music , and spiritual teachings , have increasingly contributed to global culture .

• India harbors seemingly unyielding rural and urban poverty.

Modern India

• India hosts religious, caste-related violence, Maoist-inspired Naxalite insurgencies, and separatists in Jammu and Kashmir.

• It has unresolved territorial disputes with the People's Republic of China.

• The Indo-Pakistani nuclear rivalry came to a head in 1998.

Modern India

• India's democratic freedoms are unique among the world's new nations.

• Freedom from want for its disadvantaged population, remains a goal yet to be realized.

• India's democratic freedoms have survived for over 60 years.

Geography

• India comprises the bulk of the Indian subcontinent.

• India lies atop the minor Indian tectonic plate.

• The minor Indian tectonic plate belongs to the Indo-Australian Plate in turn.

Geography

• The Eurasian Plate bore aloft the planet's highest mountains the subcontinent's subsequent collision with, and subduction under.

• The planet's highest mountains were the Himalayas.

• Plate movement created a vast trough that has gradually filled with river-borne sediment in the former seabed immediately south of the emerging Himalayas.

Geography

• It now forms the Indo-Gangetic Plain.

• The Thar Desert lies to the west.

• The Thar Desert is cut off by the Aravalli Range.

Geography

• These parallel ranges run from the Arabian Sea coast in Gujarat in the west to the coal-rich Chota Nagpur Plateau in Jharkhand in the east.

• To the south the remaining peninsular landmass , the Deccan Plateau , is flanked on the west and east by the coastal ranges , the Western and Eastern Ghats respectively ; the plateau contains the nation 's oldest rock formations , some over one billion years old .

• Constituted in such fashion , India lies to the north of the equator between 644 ' and 3530 ' north latitude -LRB- c -RRB- and 687 ' and 9725 ' east longitude .

Geography

• The mainland coast consists of the following: 43 % sandy beaches including cliffs, and 46 % mudflats or marshy coast.

• 43 % sandy beaches are 11 % rocky coast.

• Major peninsular rivers's steeper gradients prevent their waters from flooding.

Geography

• The Krishna drain into the Bay of Bengal; and the Narmada and the Tapti.

• The Bay of Bengal; and the Narmada and the Tapti drain into the Arabian Sea.

• The marshy Rann of Kutch in western India, and the alluvial Sundarbans delta are among notable coastal features of India.

Geography

• India shares the alluvial Sundarbans delta with Bangladesh.

• The Indian climate is strongly influenced by the Himalayas and the Thar Desert.

Biodiversity

• Habitat ranges from the tropical rainforest of the Andaman Islands, Western Ghats, and Northeast India to the coniferous forest of the Himalaya.

• The medicinal neem is a key Indian tree.

• The medicinal neem is widely used in rural Indian herbal remedies.

Biodiversity

• The luxuriant pipal fig tree shaded Gautama Buddha as he sought enlightenment.

• He sought enlightenment.

• The luxuriant pipal fig tree was shown on the seals of Mohenjo-daro.

Biodiversity

• Many Indian species descend from taxa originating in Gondwana.

• Mammals then entered India from Asia through two zoogeographical passes flanking the rising Himalaya.

• Only 12. 6 % of mammals and 4. 5 % of birds are.

Biodiversity

• 45. 8 % of reptiles and 55. 8 % of amphibians are endemic.

• India contains 172, or 2. 9 %, of IUCN-designated threatened species.

• The system of national parks and protected areas was substantially expanded in response.

• The system was first established in 1935.