India gains Independence from British rule after near 190 years of Crown rule and joins the Commonwealth of Nations.
The Indian independence movement was a series of historic events with the ultimate aim of ending British rule in India. It lasted from 1857 to 1947.
The first nationalistic revolutionary movement for Indian independence emerged from Bengal. It later took root in the newly formed Indian National Congress with prominent moderate leaders seeking the right to appear for Indian Civil Service examinations in British India, as well as more economic rights for natives. The first half of the 20th century saw a more radical approach towards self-rule by the Lal Bal Pal triumvirate, Aurobindo Ghosh and V. O. Chidambaram Pillai.
The last stages of the self-rule struggle from the 1920s was characterized by Congress' adoption of Gandhi's policy of non-violence and civil disobedience. Intellectuals such as Rabindranath Tagore, Subramania Bharati, and Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay spread patriotic awareness. Female leaders like Sarojini Naidu, Pritilata Waddedar, and Kasturba Gandhi promoted the emancipation of Indian women and their participation in the freedom struggle. B. R. Ambedkar championed the cause of the disadvantaged sections of Indian society.Some leaders followed a more violent approach. This became especially popular after the Rowlatt Act, which permitted indefinite detention. The Act sparked protests across India, especially in Punjab Province (British India) where they were violently suppressed in the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. Frustrated by perceived Congress inaction, revolutionaries such as Bhagat Singh, Shivaram Rajguru, Sukhdev Thapar, Chandra Shekhar Azad, and Subhas Chandra Bose resorted to violent means. Bose famously allied himself with the Axis powers and formed the Azad Hind. Meanwhile, Singh, Rajguru, Thapar, and Azad assassinated key British officers, and bombed Government buildings.
The Indian independence movement was in constant ideological evolution. Essentially anti-colonial, it was supplemented by visions of independent, economic development with a secular, democratic, republican, and civil-libertarian political structure. After the 1930s, the movement took on a strong socialist orientation. It culminated in the Indian Independence Act 1947, which ended suzerainty in India and created Pakistan.
India remained a Crown Dominion until 26 January 1950, when the Constitution of India established the Republic of India. Pakistan remained a dominion until 1956 when it adopted its first constitution. In 1971, East Pakistan declared its own independence as Bangladesh.
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: Bhārat Gaṇarājya), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the southeast, it shares land borders with Pakistan to the west; China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the north; and Bangladesh and Myanmar to the east. In the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives; its Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a maritime border with Thailand, Myanmar and Indonesia.
Modern humans arrived on the Indian subcontinent from Africa no later than 55,000 years ago.
Their long occupation, initially in varying forms of isolation as hunter-gatherers, has made the region highly diverse, second only to Africa in human genetic diversity. Settled life emerged on the subcontinent in the western margins of the Indus river basin 9,000 years ago, evolving gradually into the Indus Valley Civilisation of the third millennium BCE.
By 1200 BCE, an archaic form of Sanskrit, an Indo-European language, had diffused into India from the northwest, unfolding as the language of the Rigveda, and recording the dawning of Hinduism in India. The Dravidian languages of India were supplanted in the northern and western regions.
By 400 BCE, stratification and exclusion by caste had emerged within Hinduism,
and Buddhism and Jainism had arisen, proclaiming social orders unlinked to heredity.
Early political consolidations gave rise to the loose-knit Maurya and Gupta Empires based in the Ganges Basin.
Their collective era was suffused with wide-ranging creativity, but also marked by the declining status of women, and the incorporation of untouchability into an organised system of belief. In South India, the Middle kingdoms exported Dravidian-languages scripts and religious cultures to the kingdoms of Southeast Asia.In the early medieval era, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism put down roots on India's southern and western coasts.
Muslim armies from Central Asia intermittently overran India's northern plains,
eventually establishing the Delhi Sultanate, and drawing northern India into the cosmopolitan networks of medieval Islam.
In the 15th century, the Vijayanagara Empire created a long-lasting composite Hindu culture in south India.
In the Punjab, Sikhism emerged, rejecting institutionalised religion.
The Mughal Empire, in 1526, ushered in two centuries of relative peace,
leaving a legacy of luminous architecture.
Gradually expanding rule of the British East India Company followed, turning India into a colonial economy, but also consolidating its sovereignty. British Crown rule began in 1858. The rights promised to Indians were granted slowly, but technological changes were introduced, and ideas of education, modernity and the public life took root.
A pioneering and influential nationalist movement emerged, which was noted for nonviolent resistance and became the major factor in ending British rule. In 1947 the British Indian Empire was partitioned into two independent dominions, a Hindu-majority Dominion of India and a Muslim-majority Dominion of Pakistan, amid large-scale loss of life and an unprecedented migration.India has been a federal republic since 1950, governed in a democratic parliamentary system. It is a pluralistic, multilingual and multi-ethnic society. India's population grew from 361 million in 1951 to 1.211 billion in 2011.
During the same time, its nominal per capita income increased from US$64 annually to US$1,498, and its literacy rate from 16.6% to 74%. From being a comparatively destitute country in 1951,
India has become a fast-growing major economy and a hub for information technology services, with an expanding middle class. It has a space programme which includes several planned or completed extraterrestrial missions. Indian movies, music, and spiritual teachings play an increasing role in global culture.
India has substantially reduced its rate of poverty, though at the cost of increasing economic inequality.
India is a nuclear-weapon state, which ranks high in military expenditure. It has disputes over Kashmir with its neighbours, Pakistan and China, unresolved since the mid-20th century.
Among the socio-economic challenges India faces are gender inequality, child malnutrition,
and rising levels of air pollution.
India's land is megadiverse, with four biodiversity hotspots. Its forest cover comprises 21.7% of its area. India's wildlife, which has traditionally been viewed with tolerance in India's culture, is supported among these forests, and elsewhere, in protected habitats.