INDIA, FLAG OF

horizontally striped orange-white-green national flag with a 24-spoked blue chakra(wheel) in the centre. The flag's width-to-length ratio is 2 to 3. For decades the All-India Congress under the leadership of Mohandas K. Gandhi struggled to rally the millions of British-ruled peoples in the Indian subcontinent. Like similar movements in other countries, it early felt the need for a distinctive symbol that could represent its nationalist objectives. In 1921 a student named Pinglay Venkayya presented a flag design to Gandhi that consisted of the colours associated with the two principal religions, red for the Hindus and green for the Muslims. To the centre of the horizontally divided flag, Lala Hans Raj Sondhi suggested the addition of the traditional spinning wheel, which was associated with Gandhi's crusade to make Indians self-reliant by fabricating their own clothing from local fibres. Gandhi modified the flag by adding a white stripe in the centre for the other religious communities in India, thus also providing a clearly visible background for the spinning wheel. In May 1923 at Nagpur, during peaceful protests against British rule, the flag was carried by thousands of people, hundreds of whom were arrested. The Congress flag came to be associated with nationhood for India, and it was officially recognized at the annual meeting of the party in August 1931. At the same time, the current arrangement of stripes and the use of orange instead of red were approved. To avoid the sectarian associations of the original proposal, new attributions were associated with the orange, white, and green stripes. They were said to stand, respectively, for courage and sacrifice, peace and truth, and faith and chivalry. During World War II Subhas Chandra Bose used this flag (without the spinning wheel) in territories his Japanese-aided army had captured. After the war Britain agreed to consider freedom for India, although the country was divided and a Muslim-dominated Pakistan was given separate statehood. On July 22, 1947, the Indian national flag was officially hoisted. Its stripes remained the same orange-white-green, but the spinning wheel was replaced by a blue chakrathe Dharma Chakra(Wheel of the Law). The Dharma Chakra, which was associated with Emperor Ashokain the 3rd century BCE, appeared on pillars erected throughout the Mauryan empire during the first serious attempt to unite all of India under a single government. The 1947 flag continues to be used by India, although special versions have been developed for ships registered in the country. Whitney Smith History The early Muslim period North India under Muslim hegemony, c. 12001526 Early Muslim India (c. 1200c. 1500). The first Muslim raids in the subcontinent were made by Arabs on the western coast and in Sindh during the 7th and 8th centuries, and there had been Muslim trading communities in India at least since that time. The significant and permanent military movement of Muslims into North India, however, dates from the late 12th century and was carried out by a Turkish dynasty that arose indirectly from the ruins of the 'Abbasid caliphate. The road to conquest was prepared by Sultan Mahmud of Ghazna (modern Ghazni in Afghanistan), who conducted more than 20 raids into North India between 1001 and 1027 and established in the Punjab the easternmost province of his large but short-lived empire. Mahmud's raids, though militarily successful, primarily had as their object the taking of plunder rather than conquest. The Delhi sultanate The decline of the Ghaznavids after 1100 was accentuated by the sack of Ghazna by the rival Shansabanis of Ghur in 115051. The Ghurids, who inhabited the region between Ghazna and Herat, rose rapidly in power during the last half of the 12th century, partly because of the changing balance of power that resulted from the westward movement of the non-Muslim Karakitai Turks into the area dominated by the Seljuq Turks, who had been the principal power in Iran and parts of Afghanistan during the previous 50 years. The Seljuq defeat in 1141 led to a struggle for power among the Karakitai, the Khwarezm-Shahs, and the Ghurids for control of parts of Central Asia and Iran. By 1152 Ghazna had been captured again by the Ghurid ruler, 'Ala'-ud-Din. After his death the Ghurid territory was partitioned principally between his two nephews, Ghiyas-ud-Din Muhammad and Mu'izz-ud-Din Muhammad ibn Sam, commonly called Muhammad of Ghur. Ghiyas-ud-Din ruled over Ghur from Firuz-Kuh and looked toward Khorasan, while Muhammad of Ghur was established in Ghazna and began to try his luck in India for expansion. The Ghurid invasions of North India were thus part of a Central Asian struggle. Almost all of North India was, however, already in contact with Ghur through an extensive trade, particularly in horses. The Ghurids were well known as horse breeders. Ghur also had a reputation for supplying Indian and Turkish slaves to the markets of Central Asia. Muslim merchants and saints had settled much beyond Sindh and the Punjab in a number of towns in what is now Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The Ghurids also were familiar with the fabulous wealth of western and central India. They therefore followed first the southern route into India through the Gumal Pass, with an eye set eventually on Gujarat. It was only after suffering a severe defeat at the hands of the Caulukya army of Gujarat that they turned to the northern route through the Khyber Pass. History The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500 BC to c. AD 1200 Principal sites of the Indus Civilization. The European scholars who reconstructed early Indian history in the 19th century regarded it as essentially static and Indian society as concerned only with things spiritual. Indologists, such as the German Max Mller, relied heavily on the Sanskritic tradition and saw Indian society as an idyllic village culture emphasizing qualities of passivity, meditation, and otherworldliness. In sharp contrast was the approach of the British historian James Mill and the utilitarians, who condemned Indian culture as irrational and inimical to human progress. Mill first formulated a periodization of Indian history into Hindu, Muslim, and British periods, a scheme that, while still commonly used, is now controversial. During the 19th century, direct contact with Indian institutions through administration, together with the utilization of new evidence from recently deciphered inscriptions, numismatics, and local archives, provided fresh insights. Nationalist Indian historians of the early 20th century tended to exaggerate the glory of the past but nevertheless introduced controversy into historical interpretation, which in turn resulted in more precise studies of Indian institutions. In recent decades, historians have reconstructed in greater detail the social, economic, and cultural history of the subcontinent. A major change in the interpretation of Indian history has been a questioning of an older notion of Oriental despotism as the determining force. Arising out of a traditional European perspective on Asia, this image of despotism grew to vast proportions in the 19th century and provided an intellectual justification for colonialism and imperialism. Its deterministic assumptions clouded the understanding of early interrelationships among Indian political forms, economic patterns, and social structures. A considerable change is noticeable during this period in the role of institutions. Clan-based societies had assemblies, whose political role changed with the transformation of tribe into state and with oligarchic and monarchical governments. Centralized imperialism, which was attempted in the Mauryan Period (c. 325185 BC), gave way gradually to decentralized administration and to what has been called feudalistic pattern in the Post-Gupta Periodi.e., from the 7th century AD. Although the village as an administrative and social unit remained constant, its relationship with the mainstream of history varied. The concept of divine kingship was known but rarely taken seriously, the claim to the status of the caste of royalty becoming more important. Because conformity to the social order had precedence over allegiance to the state, the idea of representation found expression not so much in political institutions as in caste and village assemblies. The pendulum of politics swung from large to small kingdoms, with the former attempting to establish empiresthe sole successful attempt being that of the Mauryan. Thus, true centralization was rare, because local forces often determined historical events. Although imperial or near-imperial periods were marked by attempts at the evolution of uniform cultures, the periods of smaller kingdoms (often referred to as the Dark Ages by earlier historians) were more creative at the local level and witnessed significant changes in society and religion. It was also these small kingdoms that often boasted the most elaborate and impressive monuments. The major economic patterns were those relating to land and to commerce. The transition from tribal to peasant society was a continuing process, with the gradual clearing of wasteland and the expansion of the village economy based on plow agriculture. Recognition of the importance of land revenue coincided with the emergence of the imperial system in the 4th century BC; and from this period onward, although the imperial structure did not last long, land revenue became central to the administration and income of the state. Frequent mentions of individual ownership, references to crown lands, numerous land grants to religious and secular grantees in the Post-Gupta Period, and detailed discussion in legal sources of the rights of purchase, bequest, and sale of land all clearly indicate that private ownership of land existed. Much emphasis has been laid on the state control of the irrigation system; yet a systematic study of irrigation in India reveals that it was generally privately controlled and that it serviced small areas of land. When the state built canals, they were mainly in the areas of the winter and summer monsoons and where village assemblies played a dominant part in revenue and general administration, as, for example, in the Cola (Chola) kingdom of South India. The urban economy was crucial to the rise of civilization in the Indus Valley (c. 26002000 BC). Later, the 1st millennium BC saw an urban civilization in the Ganges Valley and still later in coastal South India. The emergence of towns was based on administrative needs, the requirements of trade, and pilgrimage centres. In the 1st millennium AD, when commerce expanded to include trade with western Asia, the eastern Mediterranean, and Central and Southeast Asia, revenue from trade contributed substantially to the economies of the participating kingdoms, as indeed Indian religion and culture played a significant part in the cultural evolution of Central and Southeast Asia. Gold coins were issued for the first time by the Kusanas and in large quantity by the Guptas; both kingdoms were active in foreign trade. Gold was imported from Central Asia and Rome and later perhaps from eastern Africa because, in spite of India's recurring association with gold, its sources were limited. Expanding trade encouraged the opening up of new routes, and this, coupled with the expanding village economy, led to a marked increase of knowledge about the subcontinent during the Post-Mauryan Period. With increasing trade, guilds became more powerful in the towns. Members of the guilds participated in the administration, were associated with politics, and controlled the development of trade through merchant embassies sent to places as far afield as Rome and China. Not least, guilds and merchant associations held envied and respectable positions as donors of religious institutions. The structure of Indian society was characterized by caste. The distinguishing features of a caste society were endogamous kinship groups (jati) arranged in a hierarchy of ritual ranking, based on notions of pollution and purity, with an intermeshing of service relationships and an adherence to geographic location. There was some coincidence between caste and access to economic resources. Although ritual hierarchy was unchanging, there appears to have been mobility within the framework. Migrations of peoples both within the subcontinent and from outside encouraged social mobility and change. The nucleus of the social structure was the family, with the pattern of kinship relations varying from region to region. In the more complex urban structure, occupational guilds occasionally took on jati functions, and there was a continual emergence of new social and professional groups. Religion in early Indian history did not constitute a monolithic force. Even when the royalty attempted to encourage certain religions, the idea of a state religion was absent. In the main, there were three levels of religious expression. The most widespread was the worship of local cult deities vaguely associated with major deities, as seen in fertility cults, in the worship of mother goddesses, in the Sakta-Sakti cult, and in Tantrism. Less widespread but popular, particularly in the urban areas, were the more puritanical sects of Buddhism and Jainism and the bhakti tradition of Hinduism. A third level included classical Hinduism and more abstract levels of Buddhism and Jainism, with an emphasis on the major deities in the case of the first and on the teachings of the founders in the case of the latter two. It was this level, endorsed by affluent patronage, that provided the base for the initial institutionalization of religion. But the three levels were not isolated; the shadow of the third fell over the first two, the more homely rituals and beliefs of which often crept into the third. This was the case particularly with Hinduism, the very flexibility of which was largely responsible for its survival. Forms of Buddhism, ranging from an emphasis on the constant refinement of doctrine, on the one hand, to an incorporation of magical fertility cults in its beliefs, on the other, faded out toward the end of this period. Sanskrit literature and the building of Hindu and Buddhist temples and sculpture both reached apogees in this period. Although literary works in Sanskrit continued to be written and temples were built in later periods, the achievement was never again as inspiring. C. 1500c. 500 BC Principal sites of the Indus Civilization. By about 1500 BC an important change began to occur in the northern half of the Indian subcontinent. The Indus Civilization had declined by about 2000 BC (or perhaps as late as 1750 BC), and the stage was being set for a second and more lasting urbanization in the Ganges Valley. The new areas of occupation were contiguous with, but seldom identical to, the core of the Harappan area. There was continuity of occupation in the Punjab and Gujarat, and a new thrust toward urbanization came from the migration of peoples from the Punjab into the Ganges Valley. History The Indian subcontinent, the great landmass of South Asia, is the home of one of the world's oldest and most influential civilizations. In the present article, the subcontinent, which for historical purposes is usually called simply India, is understood to comprise the areas of not only the modern Republic of India but also the republics of Pakistan (partitioned from India in 1947) and Bangladesh (which formed the eastern part of Pakistan until its independence in 1971). For the histories of these latter two nations since their creation, see Pakistan, history of and Bangladesh, history of. Since early times the Indian subcontinent appears to have provided an attractive habitat for human occupation. Toward the south it is effectively sheltered by wide expanses of ocean, which tended in ancient times to isolate it culturally, while to the north it is protected by the massive Himalayan ranges, which also sheltered it from the Arctic winds and the air currents of Central Asia. Only in the northwest and northeast is there an easier access by land, and through these two sectors most of the early contacts with the outside world took place. Within the framework of hills and mountains represented by the Indo-Iranian borderlands on the west, the Indo-Myanmar borderlands in the east, and the Himalayas to the north, the subcontinent may in broadest terms be divided into two major divisions: in the north, the basins of the Indus and Ganges rivers (the Indo-Gangetic Plain) and, to the south, the block of Archean rocks that forms the Deccan Plateau. The expansive alluvial plain of the river basins provided the environment and focus for the rise of two great phases of city life: the civilization of the Indus (Sindhu) Valley during the 3rd millennium BC and, during the 1st millennium BC, that of the Ganges (Ganga). To the south of this zone, and separating it from the peninsula proper, is a belt of hills and forests running generally from west to east and to this day largely inhabited by tribal people. This belt has played mainly a negative role throughout Indian history in that it remained relatively thinly populated and did not form the focal point of any of the principal regional cultural developments of South Asia. However, it is traversed by various routes linking the more attractive areas north and south of it. The Narmada (Narbada) River flows through this belt toward the west, mostly along the Vindhya Range, which has long been regarded as the symbolic boundary between North and South India. The northern parts of India represent a series of contrasting regions, each with its own distinctive cultural history and its own distinctive modern population. In the northwest, the valleys of the Baluchistan uplands are a low-rainfall area, producing mainly wheat and barley and having a low density of population. These mainly tribal people are in many respects closely akin to their Iranian neighbours. The adjacent Indus plains are also an area of extremely low rainfall, but the annual flooding of the river in ancient times and the exploitation of its waters by canal irrigation in the modern period have enhanced agricultural productivity, and the population is correspondingly denser than that of Baluchistan. The Indus Valley may be divided into three parts: in the north are the plains of the five tributary rivers of the Punjab (Panjab); in the centre the consolidated waters of the Indus and its tributaries flow through the alluvial plains of Sindh and in the south the waters pass naturally into the Indus delta. East of the latter is the Great Indian, or Thar, Desert, which is in turn bounded on the east by the Aravali Hills, the northernmost extent of the Deccan Plateau. Beyond them is the hilly region of Rajasthan and the Malwa Plateau. To the south is the Kathiawar Peninsula, forming both geographically and culturally an extension of Rajasthan. All these regions have a relatively denser population than the preceding group, but for topographical reasons they have tended to be somewhat isolated, at least during historical times. East of the Punjab and Rajasthan, North India develops into a series of belts running broadly east to west and following the line of the foothills of the Himalayan ranges in the north. The southern belt consists of a hilly, forested area broken by the numerous escarpments of the Vindhya Range, which includes the Bhandrer, Rewa, and Kaimur plateaus. Between the hills of central India and the Himalayas lies the Ganges Valley proper, constituting an area of high-density population, moderate rainfall, and high agricultural productivity. Archaeology suggests that, from the beginning of the 1st millennium BC, rice cultivation has played a large part in supporting this population. The Ganges Valley divides into three major parts: to the west is the doab, or mesopotamia, of the Yamuna (Jumna) and Ganges rivers; east of the confluence of these rivers lies the middle Ganges Valley, in which population tends to increase and cultivation of rice predominates; and to the southeast lies the extensive delta of the combined Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers. The Brahmaputra flows from the northeast, rising from the Tibetan Himalayas and emerging from the mountains into the Assam valley, being bounded on the east by the Patkai Bum and Naga Hills and on the south by the Mikir, Khasi-Jaintia, and Garo hills. There is plenty of evidence that influences reached India from the northeast in ancient times, even if they are less prominent than those that arrived from the northwest. Along the Deccan Plateau there is a gradual eastward declivity, which dispenses its major river systemsthe Mahanadi, Godavari, Krishna, and Kaveri (Cauvery)into the Bay of Bengal. Rising some 3,000 feet along the western edge of the Deccan, the escarpment known as the Western Ghats traps the moisture of westerly winds from the Arabian Sea, most notably during the southwest monsoon, creating a tropical rain-forest climate along the narrow western littoral and depriving the Deccan of significant precipitation. The absence of snowpack in the South Indian uplands makes the region dependent entirely on rainfall for its streamflow. The arrival of the southwest monsoon in June is thus a pivotal annual event in peninsular culture. India from the Paleolithic Period to the decline of the Indus Civilization The earliest periods of Indian history are known only through reconstructions from archaeological evidence. In the late 20th century, much new data emerged, allowing a far fuller reconstruction than was formerly possible. This section will discuss five major periods: (1) the early prehistoric period (before the 8th millennium BC), (2) the period of the prehistoric agriculturalists and pastoralists (approximately the 8th to the mid-4th millennium BC), (3) the Early Indus or Early Harappan Period (so called after the excavated city of Harappa), witnessing the emergence of the first cities in the Indus River system (c. 35002600 BC), (4) the Indus, or Harappan, Civilization (c. 26002000 BC, or perhaps ending as late as 1750 BC), and (5) the Post-Urban Period, which follows the Indus Civilization and precedes the rise of cities in northern India during the second quarter of the 1st millennium BC (c. 1750750 BC). The materials available for a reconstruction of the history of India prior to the 3rd century BC are almost entirely the products of archaeological research. Traditional and textual sources, transmitted orally for many centuries, are available from the closing centuries of the 2nd millennium BC, but their use depends largely upon the extent to which any passage can be dated or associated with archaeological evidence. For the rise of civilization in the Indus Valley and for contemporary events in other parts of the subcontinent, the evidence of archaeology is still the principal source of information. Even when it becomes possible to read the short inscriptions of the Harappan seals, it is unlikely that they will provide much information to supplement other sources. In these circumstances it is necessary to approach the early history of India largely through the eyes of the archaeologists, and it will be wise to retain a balance between an objective assessment of archaeological data and its synthetic interpretation. History British imperial power, 18581947 Climax of the raj, 185885 The quarter century following the bitter Indian revolt of 185759, though spanning a peak of British imperial power in India, ended with the birth of nationalist agitation against it. For both Indians and British, the period was haunted with dark memories of the mutiny, and numerous measures were taken by the British raj to avoid another conflict. In 1885, however, the founding of the Indian National Congress marked the beginnings of effective, organized protest for national self-determination. On Aug. 2, 1858, less than a month after Canning proclaimed the victory of British arms, Parliament passed the Government of India Act, transferring British power over India from the East India Company, whose ineptitude was primarily blamed for the mutiny, to the crown. The merchant company's residual powers were vested in the secretary of state for India, a minister of Great Britain's Cabinet, who would preside over the India Office in London and be assisted and advised, especially in financial matters, by a Council of India, which consisted initially of 15 Britons, 7 of whom were elected from among the old company's court of directors and 8 of whom were appointed by the crown. Though some of Britain's most powerful political leaders became secretaries of state for India in the latter half of the 19th century, actual control over the government of India remained in the hands of British viceroys (who divided their time between Calcutta and Shimla) and their steel-frame of approximately 1,500 Indian Civil Service (ICS) officials posted on the spot throughout British India. Social policy On Nov. 1, 1858, Lord Canning announced Queen Victoria's proclamation to The Princes, Chiefs and Peoples of India, which unveiled a new British policy of perpetual support for native princes and nonintervention in matters of religious belief or worship within British India. The announcement reversed Lord Dalhousie's prewar policy of political unification through princely state annexation, and princes were left free to adopt any heirs they desired so long as they all swore undying allegiance to the British crown. In 1876, at Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli's prompting, Queen Victoria added the title Empress of India to her regality. British fears of another mutiny and consequent determination to bolster Indian states as natural breakwaters against any future tidal wave of revolt thus left more than 560 enclaves of autocratic princely rule to survive, interspersed throughout British India, for the entire nine decades of crown rule. The new policy of religious nonintervention was born equally out of fear of recurring mutiny, which many Britons believed had been triggered by orthodox Hindu and Islamic reaction against the secularizing inroads of utilitarian positivism and the proselytizing of Christian missionaries. British liberal socioreligious reform therefore came to a halt for more than three decadesessentially from the East India Company's Hindu Widow's Remarriage Act of 1856 to the crown's timid Age of Consent Act of 1891, which merely raised the age of statutory rape for consenting Indian brides from 10 years to 12. The typical attitude of British officials who went to India during this period was, as the English writer Rudyard Kipling put it, to take up the White man's burden. By and large, throughout the interlude of their Indian service to the crown, Britons lived as super-bureaucrats, Pukka Sahibs, remaining as aloof as possible from native contamination in their private clubs and well-guarded military cantonments (called camps), which were constructed beyond the walls of the old, crowded native cities in this era. These new British military towns were initially erected as secure bases for the reorganized British regiments and were designed with straight roads wide enough for cavalry to gallop through whenever needed. The old company's three armies (located in Bengal, Bombay, and Madras), which in 1857 had only 45,000 British to 240,000 native troops were reorganized to a much safer mix of 65,000 British to 140,000 Indian soldiers. Selective new British recruitment policies screened out all nonmartial (meaning previously disloyal) Indian castes and races from armed service and promiscuously mixed the soldiers in every regiment, thus permitting no single caste or linguistic or religious group to again dominate a British Indian garrison. Indian soldiers were also restricted from handling certain sophisticated weaponry. After 1869, with the completion of the Suez Canal and the simultaneous introduction of steam transport, reducing the sea passage to India from about three months to only three weeks, British women came to the East with ever greater alacrity, and the British officials they married found it more appealing to return home with their British wives during furloughs than to tour India, as their predecessors had done. Fewer British men now dared to consort openly with Indian women, although some still ventured briefly into the prostitute quarters of old Indian cities. While the intellectual calibre of British recruits to the ICS in this era was, on the average, probably higher than that of servants recruited under the company's earlier patronage system, British contacts with Indian society diminished in every respect, and British sympathy for and understanding of Indian life and culture were, for the most part, replaced by suspicion, indifference, and fear. Queen Victoria's 1858 promise of racial equality of opportunity in the selection of civil servants for the government of India had theoretically thrown the ICS open to qualified Indians, but examinations for the services were given only in Britain and only to male applicants between the ages of 17 and 22 (in 1878 the maximum age was further reduced to 19) who could stay in the saddle over a rigorous series of hurdles. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that by 1869 only one Indian candidate had managed to clear these obstacles to win a coveted admission to the ICS. British royal promises of equality were thus subverted in actual implementation by jealous, fearful bureaucrats posted on the spot. History India and European expansion, c. 15001858 European activity in India, 1498c. 1760 When the Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama landed at Calicut in 1498, he was restoring a link between Europe and the East that had existed many centuries previously. The first known connection between the two regions had been Alexander the Great's invasion of the Punjab, 327325 BC. In the 2nd century BC, Greek adventurers from Bactria had founded kingdoms in the Punjab and the bordering Afghan hills; these survived into the late 1st century. This territorial contact in the north was succeeded by a lengthy commercial intercourse in the south, which continued until the decline of the Roman Empire in the 4th century AD. Trade with the East then passed into Arab hands, and it was mainly concerned with the Middle Eastern Islamic and Greek worlds until the end of the Middle Ages. The only physical contact came from occasional travelers, such as the Italians Marco Polo and Niccol dei Conti and the Russian Afanasy Nikitin in the 15th century, and these were few because of commotions within the tolerant Arab-Islamic world created by successive incursions of Turks and Mongols. For Europe in 1498, therefore, India was a land of spices and of marvels handed down from imaginative Greek authors. For Muslims, Europe was the land of Rum, or the Greek empire of Constantinople (Turkish after 1453); and, for Hindus, it was the abode of the foreigners called Yavanas, a corruption of the Greek word Ionian. The Portuguese The Portuguese were the first agents of this renewed contact, because they were among the few European nations to possess both the navigational know-how and the necessary motivation for the long sea voyage. During the 15th century, the land routes for the Indian tradevia the Red Sea and Egypt or across Persia, Iraq, Syria, and Turkeyhad become increasingly blocked, mainly by Ottoman action. The surviving Egyptian route was subject to increasing exploitation by a line of middlemen, ending with the Venetian monopoly of the European trade, and in 1517 it likewise passed under Ottoman suzerainty. The motive for finding a new route was therefore strong; this task fell to the Portuguese, partly because the stronger Spaniards were absorbed in discovering the New World (a by-product of the same search for an Eastern route). The Portuguese further inherited crusading zeal from wars against the Moors in Portugal and North Africa. Finally, they had learned navigational techniques from the Genoese, who were disgruntled at their exclusion from the Mediterranean carrying trade. When Vasco da Gama arrived in Calicut, he hoped to find Christians cut off by Muslim action, to deal a blow at Muslim power from their maritime rear, as it were, and to corner the European spice trade. He found his Christians in the Syrian Christians of Cochin and Travancore, he found the spices, and he found Muslim Arab merchants entrenched at Calicut. It was his successors, Francisco de Almeida and Afonso de Albuquerque, who established the Portuguese empire in the East. Almeida set up a number of fortified posts; but it was Albuquerque (governor 150915) who gave the empire its characteristic form. He took Goa in western India in 1510, Malacca in the East Indies in 1511, and Hormuz (Ormuz) in the Persian Gulf in 1515, and he set up posts in the East Indian Spice Islands. The object of these moves was to establish for Portugal a strategic command of the Indian Ocean, so as to control the maritime spice trade and to ruin the Ottoman-controlled Middle Eastern Muslim world by cutting off its trade. Hormuz dominated the Persian Gulf; an attack on Aden was intended to do the same for the Red Sea. While Malacca was the nerve centre for the spice-producing islands of Indonesia and the exchange mart for the trade with the Far East (East Asia), Goa, not Malacca, was the capital because of Portuguese concern with the Ottomans of the Middle East. The Portuguese method was to rely on sea power based on fortified posts and backed by settlements. Portuguese ships, sturdy enough to survive Atlantic gales and mounted with cannon, could easily dispose of Arab and Malay shipping. The bases enabled the Portuguese to dominate the main sea-lanes; but Portugal, with fewer than one million people and involved in Africa and South America as well, was desperately short of manpower. Albuquerque turned his fortresses into settlements to provide a resident population for defense. Intermarriage was encouraged. At the same time, Christianity was encouraged through the church. Goa became an archbishopric. St. Francis Xavier started from Goa on his mission to the South Indian fishermen. The Inquisition was established in 1560. The new mixed population thus became firmly Roman Catholic and provided a stubborn resistance to attacks. A lack of resources precluded any attempt to establish a land empire. Portugal's control of the Indian Oceanits period of empirelasted through the 16th century. During this time it attained great prosperity. Goa acquired the title of Golden, and it became one of the world's wonder cities. Trade with Europe was a royal monopoly, and, in addition, a system of licenses for all inter-Asian trade enriched the royal exchequer. Inter-Asian trade was free to individual Portuguese; and it was the profits of this, combined with trimmings from the royal monopoly, that gave them their affluence. The three marks of the Portuguese empire continued to be trade, anti-Islamism, and religion. The Portuguese early considered that no faith need be kept with an infidel, and to this policy of perfidy they added a tendency to cruelty beyond the normal limits of a very rough age; the result was to deprive them of Indian sympathy. In religion the Portuguese were distinguished by missionary fervour and intolerance. Examples of the former are the Madura mission of Roberto de Nobili (15771656), nicknamed the White Brahman, and the Jesuit missions to the court of the Mughal emperor Akbar (ruled 15561605). Of the latter, there was the Inquisition at Goa and the forcible subjection of the Syrian church to Rome at the Synod of Diamper in 1599. The Portuguese thus had few friends in the East to help them in a crisis, and in 1580 the Portuguese kingdom was annexed to Spain; thenceforth until 1640, Portuguese interests were sacrificed to those of Spain. Because of the Spanish failure to quell a Dutch rising in the Netherlands, and after the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, the route to the East was opened to both English and Dutch. The Dutch arrived first; under their blows in Indonesia and those of the English in India the Portuguese ascendancy crumbled, though they retained Goa until 1961. This first modern impact on India has left distinct though not extensive traces. The first is the mixed population of Luso-Indians, or Goanese, along the western coast of India and in Sri Lanka and with them, a lingua franca in the ports and markets. Then came Roman Catholicism, which today has some 12 million followers and an array of churches, convents, and colleges all over India. More tangible traces include imported articles such as tobacco, potatoes, pineapples, tomatoes, papayas, cashew nuts, and two varieties of chilies. History The Republic of India The Nehru era, 194764 India's first years of freedom were plagued by the tragic legacy of partition. Refugee resettlement, economic disruption and inadequate resources for virtually every need, continuing communal conflicts (as more than 10 percent of India's population remained Muslim), and, within a few months of independence, the outbreak of undeclared war with Pakistan over Kashmir were but a few of the major difficulties confronting the newborn dominion. Mountbatten remained in New Delhi to serve as India's first new governor-general, mostly a ceremonial job, while Nehru took charge of free India's responsible government as its first prime minister, heading a Congress Cabinet, whose second most powerful figure was Patel. Gandhi, who accepted no office, chose to walk barefoot through the riot-torn areas of Bengal and Bihar, where he tried through his presence and influence to stop the communal killing. He then returned to Delhi, and there he preached nonviolence daily until he was assassinated by an orthodox Hindu Brahman fanatic on Jan. 30, 1948. The light has gone out of our lives, Prime Minister Nehru said, and there is darkness everywhere, yet Nehru carried on at India's helm, and, owing in part to his secular, enlightened leadership, not only did India's flood of religious hatred and violence recede but also some progress was made toward communal reconciliation and economic development. Nehru spoke out fearlessly against India's caste-ridden and priest-ridden society, which, as a Hindu Brahman pandit, he could do without fear of too much upper-caste criticism. His charismatic brilliance, moreover, continued to make him a major vote-winner in each election campaign that he led (195152, 1957, 1962) throughout his 17 arduous years in office, as the Congressopposed only by minor parties and independent candidatesdominated political life. Nehru's modernist mentality and cosmopolitan popularity helped to hide the traditional continuity of India's internal problems, few of which disappeared under his leadership. Government and politics The Dominion of India was reborn on Jan. 26, 1950, as a Sovereign Democratic Republic and a Union of States. With universal adult franchise, India's electorate was the world's largest, but the traditional feudal roots of most of its illiterate populace were deep, just as their religious caste beliefs would remain far more powerful than recent exotic ideas, such as secular statehood. Elections were to be held, however, at least every five years, and the major model of government followed by India's constitution was that of British parliamentary rule, with a lower House of the People (Lok Sabha), in which an elected prime minister and his Cabinet sat, and an upper Council of States (Rajya Sabha). Nehru led his ruling Congress Party from New Delhi's Lok Sabha until his death in 1964. The nominal head of India's republic, however, was a president, who was indirectly elected. India's first two presidents were Hindu Brahmans, Rajendra Prasad and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, the latter a distinguished Sanskrit scholar who had lectured in Oxford. Presidential powers were mostly ceremonial, except for brief periods of emergency rule, when the nation's security was believed to be in great danger and normal constitutional procedures and civil rights were feared to be too cumbersome or threatening. Reorganization of states and union territories since independence. (Left) India in 1955, with the India's federation divided powers between the central government in New Delhi and a number of state governments (former British provinces and princely states), each of which also had a nominal governor at its head and an elected chief minister with his cabinet to rule its legislative assembly. One of the Congress' long-standing resolutions had called for the reorganization of British provincial borders