nation draft India
The world's most populous country and largest democracy, an ancient civilisation of hundreds of languages and every major faith, still arguing, loudly and lovingly, about what it means to be Indian.
Taj Mahal · Yann; edited by Jim Carter, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Understanding an Indian in 5 minutes
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Unity in diversity, and it is not a slogan
India has about 1.4 billion people, more than any other country since 2023. The 2011 census recorded 22 officially scheduled languages and more than 120 languages with 10,000 or more speakers. About 80% of Indians are Hindu, 14% Muslim, and there are large Christian, Sikh, Buddhist and Jain communities. A Tamil from Chennai and a Punjabi from Amritsar may share no first language, cuisine or festival calendar, yet both are fiercely Indian. Holding that together is the country's great achievement and its constant argument.
- Census of India 2011: Language, Paper 1 of 2018 — Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India (2018)
- Census of India 2011: Religion (C-1 tables) — Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India (2015)
- India overtakes China as the world's most populous country — United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (2023)
- India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
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A civilisation older than the state
Many Indians feel they belong to a civilisation thousands of years old: the cities of the Indus Valley, the Vedas and Upanishads, the Buddha, the emperor Ashoka, the mathematicians who worked with zero. The modern republic only dates from 1947, but the national emblem is Ashoka's lion capital and the flag carries his wheel. Pride in that inheritance is strong, and who gets to define it, and which parts count, is one of the hottest debates in Indian politics.
- Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300 — Romila Thapar, Allen Lane / University of California Press (2002)
- India: A History — John Keay, HarperCollins (2000)
- Ashoka — Encyclopaedia Britannica
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Two centuries of colonial rule, and a non-violent revolt
From the battle of Plassey in 1757 the British East India Company, then from 1858 the British Crown, ruled most of the subcontinent. Indians remember the wealth drained away, the famines (the last, in Bengal in 1943, killed around three million), and the humiliation. They also remember how it ended: a mass movement led by Gandhi, built on non-violent resistance, which became a model for the world. Independence on 15 August 1947 is the central date of the national story.
- The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company — William Dalrymple, Bloomsbury (2019)
- Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation — Amartya Sen, Oxford University Press (1981)
- Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope — Judith M. Brown, Yale University Press (1989)
- A Concise History of Modern India — Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, Cambridge University Press (2012)
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Partition's long shadow
Freedom came with Partition. British India was split into India and Pakistan, and around 15 million people crossed the new borders while somewhere between 200,000 and two million were killed. Millions of Punjabi and Bengali families carry stories of homes, villages and relatives left behind. Partition still shapes relations with Pakistan, the dispute over Kashmir, and Hindu–Muslim politics inside India.
- The Partition of India — Ian Talbot and Gurharpal Singh, Cambridge University Press (2009)
- The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan — Yasmin Khan, Yale University Press (2007)
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The world's largest democracy
Against many predictions, a poor, newly independent and hugely diverse country became a lasting democracy under a 1950 constitution that guarantees equality and secularism. Indians vote in vast numbers: about 642 million cast a ballot in the 2024 general election. Democracy has had dark moments, above all Indira Gandhi's Emergency of 1975–77, and today Indians argue fiercely about whether its institutions are being weakened. But the sense that the people choose their rulers runs deep.
- The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation — Granville Austin, Oxford University Press (1966)
- India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
- General Election to Lok Sabha 2024: statistical reports — Election Commission of India (2024)
- Emergency Chronicles: Indira Gandhi and Democracy's Turning Point — Gyan Prakash, Princeton University Press (2019)
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Family, caste and community
For most Indians, family comes first: elders are respected, many households span three generations, and marriage is often a family decision as much as a personal one. Caste, the inherited social group (jati), still shapes marriage and politics, even though untouchability was outlawed in 1950 and reservations (quotas) in education and government jobs aim to undo old injustice. In Pew's 2019–20 survey, about two-thirds of Indians said it was very important to stop women in their community marrying into another caste.
- Religion in India: Tolerance and Segregation — Pew Research Center (2021)
- India's Silent Revolution: The Rise of the Lower Castes in North India — Christophe Jaffrelot, Hurst / Columbia University Press (2003)
- The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation — Granville Austin, Oxford University Press (1966)
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Aspiration and a rising power
Since the economic reforms of 1991, India has become one of the world's largest economies and a hub of software and services, and hundreds of millions have left extreme poverty, though inequality is large and many jobs are informal. Indians are proud of their space programme, which landed near the Moon's south pole in 2023, of their cricketers and film industries, and of a diaspora that runs tech companies and governments. Many feel India's moment has arrived.
- India: The Emerging Giant — Arvind Panagariya, Oxford University Press (2008)
- Chandrayaan-3 — Indian Space Research Organisation
- India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
The story
Indus & Vedic beginnings
3300 BCE – 600 BCE The Indus Valley Civilisation
One of the world's first urban civilisations builds planned brick cities such as Mohenjo-daro and Harappa along the Indus and its neighbouring rivers.
- The Indus Civilization: A Contemporary Perspective — Gregory L. Possehl, AltaMira Press (2002)
- Indus civilization — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300 — Romila Thapar, Allen Lane / University of California Press (2002)
- The formation of human populations in South and Central Asia — Vagheesh M. Narasimhan et al., Science 365 (6457) (2019)
- The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate — Edwin Bryant, Oxford University Press (2001)
- Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley Civilization — Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, Oxford University Press (1998)
- Archaeological Ruins at Moenjodaro — UNESCO World Heritage Centre
- Pakistan — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- The Idea of Pakistan — Stephen P. Cohen, Brookings Institution Press (2004)
Read more
- The Indus Civilization: A Contemporary Perspective — Gregory L. Possehl, AltaMira Press (2002)
- Indus civilization — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300 — Romila Thapar, Allen Lane / University of California Press (2002)
- The formation of human populations in South and Central Asia — Vagheesh M. Narasimhan et al., Science 365 (6457) (2019)
- The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate — Edwin Bryant, Oxford University Press (2001)
- Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley Civilization — Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, Oxford University Press (1998)
- Archaeological Ruins at Moenjodaro — UNESCO World Heritage Centre
- Pakistan — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- The Idea of Pakistan — Stephen P. Cohen, Brookings Institution Press (2004)
The Indus cities give Indians a civilisation as old as Egypt and Mesopotamia, and a source of deep pride. Who the Harappans were, what language they spoke and how they relate to the Vedic people is hotly debated, because it bears on the question of who is "indigenous" to India.
Farming villages appeared on the edge of the Indus plains long before any city: at Mehrgarh in Balochistan, people were growing wheat and barley and herding animals by around 7000 BCE. In the 1920s archaeologists digging at Harappa in Punjab and Mohenjo-daro in Sindh, both now in Pakistan, uncovered the great cities these communities eventually built.
The Harappans were a distinct urban culture, probably not speakers of Sanskrit.
Some Indian writers, many close to Hindu nationalism, identify the Harappans with the Vedic people and argue that Indian civilisation developed in place without any significant migration from outside.
Kingdoms, the Buddha & the Mauryas
599 BCE – 319 The Mauryan Empire and Ashoka
The Mauryas unite most of the subcontinent, and the emperor Ashoka, sickened by war, preaches a moral law of non-violence and tolerance.
- Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300 — Romila Thapar, Allen Lane / University of California Press (2002)
- Ashoka — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- India: A History — John Keay, HarperCollins (2000)
- Theravada Buddhism: A Social History from Ancient Benares to Modern Colombo — Richard Gombrich, Routledge (1988)
Read more
- Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300 — Romila Thapar, Allen Lane / University of California Press (2002)
- Ashoka — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- India: A History — John Keay, HarperCollins (2000)
- Theravada Buddhism: A Social History from Ancient Benares to Modern Colombo — Richard Gombrich, Routledge (1988)
Ashoka is modern India's model of a just ruler. The lion capital from his pillar at Sarnath is the national emblem, his wheel is on the flag, and his edicts urging respect for all sects are cited as an ancient root of Indian secularism.
Around 321 BCE Chandragupta Maurya seized the throne of Magadha in the Ganges plain, soon after Alexander the Great's invasion of the north-west, and built an empire from his capital at Pataliputra (Patna). His grandson Ashoka, who reigned from about 268 to 232 BCE, ruled almost the entire subcontinent except the far south.
Classical & regional kingdoms
320 – 1205 The Gupta age and classical India
Under the Gupta kings, north India sees a flowering of Sanskrit literature, temple art, mathematics and astronomy.
- Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300 — Romila Thapar, Allen Lane / University of California Press (2002)
- India: A History — John Keay, HarperCollins (2000)
Read more
- Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300 — Romila Thapar, Allen Lane / University of California Press (2002)
- India: A History — John Keay, HarperCollins (2000)
Indians often call it a "golden age". The place-value decimal system with zero, which reached Europe through the Arabs as "Arabic numerals", and works like Kalidasa's plays are sources of national pride.
From about 320 CE the Gupta dynasty ruled much of north India. Its era produced the poet and playwright Kalidasa, whose Shakuntala later enchanted Goethe; early free-standing stone Hindu temples; the Buddhist paintings of Ajanta; and the astronomer-mathematician Aryabhata (born 476), who calculated pi accurately and argued that the earth rotates.
The bhakti poets: devotion for everyone
Poet-saints across India, from Tamil singers to Kabir and Mirabai, preach passionate love of God in the people's languages, open to women and low castes.
- A Storm of Songs: India and the Idea of the Bhakti Movement — John Stratton Hawley, Harvard University Press (2015)
- An Introduction to Hinduism — Gavin Flood, Cambridge University Press (1996)
- Speaking of Śiva — A. K. Ramanujan (trans.), Penguin Classics (1973)
- Mira Bai — Encyclopaedia Britannica
Read more
- A Storm of Songs: India and the Idea of the Bhakti Movement — John Stratton Hawley, Harvard University Press (2015)
- An Introduction to Hinduism — Gavin Flood, Cambridge University Press (1996)
- Speaking of Śiva — A. K. Ramanujan (trans.), Penguin Classics (1973)
- Mira Bai — Encyclopaedia Britannica
The bhakti poets helped create India's regional literatures in Tamil, Kannada, Marathi, Hindi, Bengali and more. Poets such as Kabir drew on both Hindu and Sufi ideas and are celebrated as symbols of a shared Indian culture.
Bhakti means devotion, or loving participation in God. The Bhagavad Gita had already praised it as a path to liberation, but from around the sixth century it became a mass, emotional, singing religion.
A single great "bhakti movement" swept India from south to north, renewing Hinduism with love and equality before God and holding it together in hard times.
John Stratton Hawley shows that the idea of one bhakti "movement" was largely built by twentieth- century scholars and nationalists.
The raid on Somnath and its memory
The Turkish ruler Mahmud of Ghazni sacks the rich Shiva temple of Somnath in Gujarat, an event that later becomes a symbol of Hindu suffering under Muslim rule.
- Somanatha: The Many Voices of a History — Romila Thapar, Verso (2005)
- India in the Persianate Age, 1000–1765 — Richard M. Eaton, Allen Lane (2019)
- India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
Read more
- Somanatha: The Many Voices of a History — Romila Thapar, Verso (2005)
- India in the Persianate Age, 1000–1765 — Richard M. Eaton, Allen Lane (2019)
- India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
The temple's rebuilding was an early test of Indian secularism: Nehru objected to the President's attending its inauguration, while others saw it as national healing. The argument over how to remember such events continues.
Mahmud, sultan of Ghazni in today's Afghanistan, raided northern India about seventeen times between 1000 and 1027, carrying off treasure from temple cities. In January 1026 he attacked Somnath on the Gujarat coast, a wealthy temple of Shiva, killed many defenders and broke its linga. Court poets in the Persian world celebrated him as a destroyer of idols.
A deep and remembered wound: one of India's holiest temples looted, its image smashed and its worshippers killed by a foreign invader, then attacked again in later centuries.
Persian chronicles glorified the raid, but Sanskrit and Jain sources of the following centuries say little about it, and the temple was soon rebuilt and thriving.
Many Hindus and some historians answer that the absence of lament in surviving inscriptions does not mean the destruction was forgotten or unimportant, and that downplaying it denies Hindu experience.
Sultanates & Mughals
1206 – 1756 The Delhi Sultanate and the Mughals
For more than six centuries Muslim dynasties rule much of India from Delhi, creating an Indo-Islamic civilisation whose memory is fiercely contested today.
- India in the Persianate Age, 1000–1765 — Richard M. Eaton, Allen Lane (2019)
- India in the Persianate Age, 1000–1765 — Richard M. Eaton, Allen Lane (2019)
- India Before Europe — Catherine B. Asher and Cynthia Talbot, Cambridge University Press (2006)
- Temple Desecration and Indo-Muslim States — Richard M. Eaton, Journal of Islamic Studies 11 (3), Oxford University Press (2000)
- India: A History — John Keay, HarperCollins (2000)
- Akbar — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- The Partition of India — Ian Talbot and Gurharpal Singh, Cambridge University Press (2009)
- The Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals — Stephen F. Dale, Cambridge University Press (2010)
- Mystical Dimensions of Islam — Annemarie Schimmel, University of North Carolina Press (1975)
- Pakistan — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Pakistan: A New History — Ian Talbot, Hurst (2012)
- The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics — Christophe Jaffrelot, Hurst (1996)
- Modi's India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy — Christophe Jaffrelot, Princeton University Press (2021)
- India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
- A Concise History of Modern India — Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, Cambridge University Press (2012)
- Religion in India: Tolerance and Segregation — Pew Research Center (2021)
Read more
- India in the Persianate Age, 1000–1765 — Richard M. Eaton, Allen Lane (2019)
- India in the Persianate Age, 1000–1765 — Richard M. Eaton, Allen Lane (2019)
- India Before Europe — Catherine B. Asher and Cynthia Talbot, Cambridge University Press (2006)
- Temple Desecration and Indo-Muslim States — Richard M. Eaton, Journal of Islamic Studies 11 (3), Oxford University Press (2000)
- India: A History — John Keay, HarperCollins (2000)
- Akbar — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- The Partition of India — Ian Talbot and Gurharpal Singh, Cambridge University Press (2009)
- The Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals — Stephen F. Dale, Cambridge University Press (2010)
- Mystical Dimensions of Islam — Annemarie Schimmel, University of North Carolina Press (1975)
- Pakistan — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Pakistan: A New History — Ian Talbot, Hurst (2012)
- The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics — Christophe Jaffrelot, Hurst (1996)
- Modi's India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy — Christophe Jaffrelot, Princeton University Press (2021)
- India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
- A Concise History of Modern India — Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, Cambridge University Press (2012)
- Religion in India: Tolerance and Segregation — Pew Research Center (2021)
How to remember these centuries is one of the most divisive questions in Indian politics. Arguments over renamed cities, school textbooks, the Taj Mahal and disputed mosques such as Ayodhya, Varanasi and Mathura are all, at bottom, arguments about this period and about the place of India's 200 million Muslims in the nation.
Muslims had lived in India since the early days of Islam, as traders on the western coast and, from 711, as rulers of Sindh. Around 1000 the Turkish ruler Mahmud of Ghazni raided northern India repeatedly, sacking rich temple cities such as Somnath.
The sultans and Mughals were rulers of their age, motivated mainly by power, revenue and legitimacy.
A thousand years of foreign rule and humiliation, from the raids of Mahmud of Ghazni to Aurangzeb, marked by temple destruction, forced conversion, the jizya tax and massacres.
The view of Nehru and of many Indian historians after independence: the Mughals, especially Akbar, became Indian rulers who built a composite culture, the "Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb", in language, music, food and architecture.
This is part of their own Indian heritage, from the Sufi shrines to Urdu poetry and the Taj Mahal.
An age of Muslim greatness and the cultural root of the nation, from Lahore's Mughal monuments to Urdu and the Sufi poets of Sindh and Punjab.
Company rule
1757 – 1857 The East India Company takes Bengal
At Plassey a private British trading company defeats the Nawab of Bengal and soon controls the revenues of India's richest province.
- The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company — William Dalrymple, Bloomsbury (2019)
- Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire — C. A. Bayly, Cambridge University Press (1988)
- A Concise History of Modern India — Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, Cambridge University Press (2012)
Read more
- The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company — William Dalrymple, Bloomsbury (2019)
- Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire — C. A. Bayly, Cambridge University Press (1988)
- A Concise History of Modern India — Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, Cambridge University Press (2012)
Indians remember that their country was first conquered not by a state but by a corporation, through bribery, alliances and private armies. It is a reference point in debates about colonial plunder and about foreign companies and Indian sovereignty.
The English East India Company was chartered in London in 1600 to trade in Asian spices and Indian textiles. For a century and a half it was one of many European traders, along with the Portuguese, Dutch and French, working by permission of the Mughals and regional rulers.
The Uprising of 1857
Indian soldiers mutiny at Meerut, sparking a vast revolt across north India that is crushed with great brutality and ends Company rule.
- A Concise History of Modern India — Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, Cambridge University Press (2012)
- Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire — C. A. Bayly, Cambridge University Press (1988)
- India: A History — John Keay, HarperCollins (2000)
Read more
- A Concise History of Modern India — Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, Cambridge University Press (2012)
- Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire — C. A. Bayly, Cambridge University Press (1988)
- India: A History — John Keay, HarperCollins (2000)
What you call it shows how you see it. British histories long said "the Indian Mutiny"; many Indians call it the First War of Independence. Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi, who died fighting, is a national heroine celebrated in school poems and films.
On 10 May 1857 sepoys at Meerut, near Delhi, rose against their British officers. The spark was a rumour that new rifle cartridges were greased with cow and pig fat, offensive to Hindus and Muslims alike, but the anger ran deeper: annexations of Indian kingdoms, heavy land revenue demands, and fears that the British meant to undermine Indian religions.
The first war of independence, a national uprising of Hindus and Muslims together against foreign rule. V. D.
A massive but uneven set of revolts by soldiers, dispossessed princes, landholders and peasants, each with their own grievances, concentrated in the north.
The British Raj & the freedom struggle
1858 – 1946 The British Raj
India is ruled directly by the British Crown, bringing railways, English education and a modern state, but also economic drain, famines and the massacre at Amritsar.
- A Concise History of Modern India — Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, Cambridge University Press (2012)
- Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India — Shashi Tharoor, Hurst (2017)
- Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation — Amartya Sen, Oxford University Press (1981)
- An Economic History of India, 1857–2010 (4th edition) — Tirthankar Roy, Oxford University Press (2020)
Read more
- A Concise History of Modern India — Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, Cambridge University Press (2012)
- Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India — Shashi Tharoor, Hurst (2017)
- Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation — Amartya Sen, Oxford University Press (1981)
- An Economic History of India, 1857–2010 (4th edition) — Tirthankar Roy, Oxford University Press (2020)
The Raj is the reference point for Indian anger at colonialism and for suspicion of Western lectures. Shashi Tharoor's argument that Britain owes India a moral debt was widely cheered in India, and the Bengal famine of 1943 and the Amritsar massacre of 1919 remain open wounds.
After 1858 India was governed by a Viceroy and the elite Indian Civil Service, a few thousand British officials ruling hundreds of millions. About two-fifths of the territory remained under more than 500 princely states, whose rulers accepted British overlordship. Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India in 1877.
A system of exploitation that drained wealth to Britain, ruined Indian handicrafts, let tens of millions die in famines and divided Indians by religion and caste.
Some British writers, such as Niall Ferguson, argue that the Raj brought India the rule of law, railways, the English language, a unified administration and the parliamentary ideas on which Indian democracy was built.
The record is mixed and contested: the economy grew very slowly and famines were worsened by policy, but some historians, such as Tirthankar Roy, argue that India's poverty also had deep pre-colonial and geographic roots and that some sectors modernised under British rule.
Gandhi and the struggle for freedom
Gandhi turns the Indian National Congress into a mass movement of non-violent resistance that, with many other forces, ends British rule in 1947.
- Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope — Judith M. Brown, Yale University Press (1989)
- A Concise History of Modern India — Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, Cambridge University Press (2012)
- India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
- Mahatma Gandhi — Encyclopaedia Britannica
Read more
- Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope — Judith M. Brown, Yale University Press (1989)
- A Concise History of Modern India — Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, Cambridge University Press (2012)
- India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
- Mahatma Gandhi — Encyclopaedia Britannica
The freedom struggle is modern India's founding story. Gandhi's face is on every banknote, his birthday (2 October) is a national holiday, and his methods inspired Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. Yet Indians argue about him constantly: Dalits remember his disputes with Ambedkar, Hindu nationalists accuse him of appeasing Muslims, and others stress the role of revolutionaries and Subhas Chandra Bose.
The Indian National Congress was founded in 1885 as a polite forum of English-educated Indians seeking a greater say in government. By the early twentieth century more radical voices, such as Bal Gangadhar Tilak with his cry that "swaraj (self-rule) is my birthright", were pushing it further. But it was Mohandas Gandhi who turned it into a mass movement.
A uniquely Indian, non-violent revolution led by Gandhi, Nehru, Patel and the Congress, uniting Indians of every region and faith and winning freedom without a war of independence.
Gandhi opposed untouchability but defended the caste order (varna) and fought Ambedkar's demand for separate electorates for the Depressed Classes. For many Dalits, Ambedkar, not Gandhi, is the true liberator.
Gandhi's concessions to Muslim demands, and Congress's softness, made Partition possible.
Hindutva and the founding of the RSS
V. D. Savarkar defines "Hindutva", Hinduness, as the basis of Indian nationhood, and the RSS is founded in Nagpur to organise and discipline Hindu society.
- The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics — Christophe Jaffrelot, Hurst (1996)
- Essentials of Hindutva — V. D. Savarkar (1923)
- Vinayak Damodar Savarkar — Encyclopaedia Britannica
Read more
- The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics — Christophe Jaffrelot, Hurst (1996)
- Essentials of Hindutva — V. D. Savarkar (1923)
- Vinayak Damodar Savarkar — Encyclopaedia Britannica
Hindutva's idea of India as a Hindu nation, rather than a civic nation of equal faiths, underlies much of today's political debate, from citizenship law to school textbooks.
V. D. Savarkar wrote Essentials of Hindutva while imprisoned by the British; it was published in 1923, amid Hindu–Muslim riots after the collapse of the Khilafat movement. He defined a Hindu as someone for whom India was both fatherland and holy land.
Hindus, divided by caste and region and humbled by centuries of foreign rule, needed to unite and grow strong.
An ethnic nationalism that makes Muslims and Christians conditional citizens. Christophe Jaffrelot traces how it borrowed from European nationalism; M. S.
Many devout Hindus, such as the politician and writer Shashi Tharoor, argue that Hindutva is a political ideology, not Hinduism, and that their religion's genius lies in accepting many paths.
Ambedkar, Gandhi and the fight against untouchability
Dalits led by B. R. Ambedkar fight for access to water, temples and political power; Gandhi seeks reform within Hinduism; Ambedkar finally leaves for Buddhism.
- From Untouchable to Dalit: Essays on the Ambedkar Movement — Eleanor Zelliot, Manohar (1992)
- Annihilation of Caste — B. R. Ambedkar (1936)
- Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope — Judith M. Brown, Yale University Press (1989)
- B. R. Ambedkar — Encyclopaedia Britannica
Read more
- From Untouchable to Dalit: Essays on the Ambedkar Movement — Eleanor Zelliot, Manohar (1992)
- Annihilation of Caste — B. R. Ambedkar (1936)
- Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope — Judith M. Brown, Yale University Press (1989)
- B. R. Ambedkar — Encyclopaedia Britannica
Ambedkar is now honoured by every party, and his statues are everywhere. The Poona Pact's reserved seats are still part of India's constitution, and caste discrimination and violence remain painful realities.
In 1927 Ambedkar led thousands of "untouchables" to drink from a public water tank at Mahad in Maharashtra, from which they had been barred, and that December publicly burned the Manusmriti, the ancient law book that sanctioned caste hierarchy. Temple-entry campaigns, such as at Vaikom in Kerala in 1924–25, pressed the same demand for dignity.
Ambedkar chose Buddhism because it was born in India, rejected caste and rested on reason and compassion.
Untouchability is a sin and a corruption of Hinduism, not its essence.
Caste is rooted in Hindu scripture itself, and upper-caste reform is paternalistic. Dalits need political power of their own, and freedom may require leaving Hinduism.
Caste divisions weaken Hindu unity, which must be restored through social harmony (samarasata). The RSS honours Ambedkar as a great Indian, while downplaying his rejection of Hinduism.
Independence & Nehru's republic
1947 – 1990 Independence and Partition of India
British India wins its freedom and is split into India and Pakistan. Punjab and Bengal are cut in two, and around 15 million people flee across the new borders amid killing on all sides.
- Kashmir: The Unwritten History — Christopher Snedden, HarperCollins India (2013)
- A Mission in Kashmir — Andrew Whitehead, Penguin Viking (2007)
- The Partition of India — Ian Talbot and Gurharpal Singh, Cambridge University Press (2009)
- The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan — Yasmin Khan, Yale University Press (2007)
- The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan — Yasmin Khan, Yale University Press (2007)
- The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed — Ishtiaq Ahmed, Oxford University Press (2011)
- Pakistan: A New History — Ian Talbot, Hurst (2012)
- The Struggle for Pakistan: A Muslim Homeland and Global Politics — Ayesha Jalal, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2014)
- The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan — Ayesha Jalal, Cambridge University Press (1985)
- The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan — Ayesha Jalal, Cambridge University Press (1985)
- Presidential Address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, 11 August 1947 — Muhammad Ali Jinnah (1947)
- Kashmir in Conflict: India, Pakistan and the Unending War — Victoria Schofield, I.B. Tauris (2000)
- India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
- A Concise History of Modern India — Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, Cambridge University Press (2012)
- Tryst with Destiny: speech to the Constituent Assembly, 14–15 August 1947 — Jawaharlal Nehru (1947)
- The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation — Granville Austin, Oxford University Press (1966)
- The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics — Christophe Jaffrelot, Hurst (1996)
- Islam was the world's fastest-growing religion from 2010 to 2020 — Pew Research Center (2025)
- The Sikhs of the Punjab (The New Cambridge History of India, revised edition) — J. S. Grewal, Cambridge University Press (1998)
- A History of the Sikhs (2 vols, 2nd edition) — Khushwant Singh, Oxford University Press (2004)
- The Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies — Pashaura Singh and Louis E. Fenech (eds.), Oxford University Press (2014)
Read more
- Kashmir: The Unwritten History — Christopher Snedden, HarperCollins India (2013)
- A Mission in Kashmir — Andrew Whitehead, Penguin Viking (2007)
- The Partition of India — Ian Talbot and Gurharpal Singh, Cambridge University Press (2009)
- The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan — Yasmin Khan, Yale University Press (2007)
- The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan — Yasmin Khan, Yale University Press (2007)
- The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed — Ishtiaq Ahmed, Oxford University Press (2011)
- Pakistan: A New History — Ian Talbot, Hurst (2012)
- The Struggle for Pakistan: A Muslim Homeland and Global Politics — Ayesha Jalal, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2014)
- The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan — Ayesha Jalal, Cambridge University Press (1985)
- The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan — Ayesha Jalal, Cambridge University Press (1985)
- Presidential Address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, 11 August 1947 — Muhammad Ali Jinnah (1947)
- Kashmir in Conflict: India, Pakistan and the Unending War — Victoria Schofield, I.B. Tauris (2000)
- India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
- A Concise History of Modern India — Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, Cambridge University Press (2012)
- Tryst with Destiny: speech to the Constituent Assembly, 14–15 August 1947 — Jawaharlal Nehru (1947)
- The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation — Granville Austin, Oxford University Press (1966)
- The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics — Christophe Jaffrelot, Hurst (1996)
- Islam was the world's fastest-growing religion from 2010 to 2020 — Pew Research Center (2025)
- The Sikhs of the Punjab (The New Cambridge History of India, revised edition) — J. S. Grewal, Cambridge University Press (1998)
- A History of the Sikhs (2 vols, 2nd edition) — Khushwant Singh, Oxford University Press (2004)
- The Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies — Pashaura Singh and Louis E. Fenech (eds.), Oxford University Press (2014)
Partition is the wound inside India's proudest moment. It created the enduring rivalry with Pakistan and the conflict over Kashmir, left millions of Punjabi, Sindhi and Bengali families as refugees, and still shapes how many Indians see Hindu–Muslim relations. Since 2021 the government has marked 14 August as "Partition Horrors Remembrance Day".
Since 1940 Muhammad Ali Jinnah's Muslim League had demanded separate states for the Muslim-majority regions of British India. After the Second World War an exhausted Britain wanted out, but the 1946 Cabinet Mission plan for a loose federation collapsed amid mistrust between the League and Congress.
Azadi (freedom): the achievement of a homeland where Muslims would no longer be a permanent minority under a Hindu majority, won by Jinnah against both the British and Congress, at a dreadful price paid by those who migrated.
Independence came with a "vivisection" of the motherland, widely blamed on British "divide and rule" and the Muslim League's two-nation theory, which India rejected by choosing to be a secular republic where tens of millions of Muslims remained equal citizens.
A betrayal and a catastrophe: Sikhs, who had fought for the British and the freedom movement alike, ended with no state of their own, their homeland cut in half, and their most sacred birthplace across a hostile border.
Partition was a vivisection of the motherland caused by Congress and Gandhi appeasing Muslim demands. Some speak of an "Akhand Bharat", an undivided India, as an ideal.
Most now stress contingency rather than a single culprit.
Kashmir escaped the Punjab-style massacres in the valley itself, where Sheikh Abdullah's volunteers kept the peace, but the people of the state were never asked where they belonged.
The Constitution and the Republic
India adopts a long, liberal constitution, drafted under B. R. Ambedkar, that makes it a sovereign democratic republic with universal adult suffrage.
- The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation — Granville Austin, Oxford University Press (1966)
- India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
- Speech to the Constituent Assembly, 25 November 1949 (Constituent Assembly Debates, vol. XI) — B. R. Ambedkar (1949)
Read more
- The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation — Granville Austin, Oxford University Press (1966)
- India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
- Speech to the Constituent Assembly, 25 November 1949 (Constituent Assembly Debates, vol. XI) — B. R. Ambedkar (1949)
Republic Day, 26 January, is celebrated with a great parade in Delhi. The constitution, with its guarantees of equality, secularism, free speech and affirmative action, is the rulebook that Indians of every view appeal to, and holding up a copy of it has become a common protest gesture.
A Constituent Assembly, elected indirectly in 1946, worked for nearly three years to write India's constitution. Its drafting committee was chaired by B. R. Ambedkar, a Dalit lawyer and fierce critic of caste. The constitution was adopted on 26 November 1949 and came into force on 26 January 1950, when India became a republic.
The Emergency
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi suspends civil liberties for 21 months, jailing opponents and censoring the press, until voters throw her out.
- Emergency Chronicles: Indira Gandhi and Democracy's Turning Point — Gyan Prakash, Princeton University Press (2019)
- India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
Read more
- Emergency Chronicles: Indira Gandhi and Democracy's Turning Point — Gyan Prakash, Princeton University Press (2019)
- India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
The Emergency is India's reminder that its democracy can be suspended, and that voters can restore it. Every party invokes it: the BJP against Congress, and critics of today's government as a warning.
In June 1975 a court found Indira Gandhi guilty of electoral malpractice, as a protest movement led by Jayaprakash Narayan grew. On 25 June she declared a state of emergency. Civil liberties were suspended, opposition leaders and tens of thousands of others were jailed without trial, and newspapers were censored.
The rise of Hindu nationalism to power
The Bharatiya Janata Party grows from two seats in 1984 to dominate Indian politics under Narendra Modi, reshaping the meaning of Indian nationhood.
- Modi's India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy — Christophe Jaffrelot, Princeton University Press (2021)
- The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics — Christophe Jaffrelot, Hurst (1996)
- India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
- General Election to Lok Sabha 2024: statistical reports — Election Commission of India (2024)
Read more
- Modi's India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy — Christophe Jaffrelot, Princeton University Press (2021)
- The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics — Christophe Jaffrelot, Hurst (1996)
- India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
- General Election to Lok Sabha 2024: statistical reports — Election Commission of India (2024)
This is the defining political story of today's India. Supporters see a confident, decisive nation finally proud of its Hindu civilisation; critics, including most Muslims and many liberals, see the secular republic of 1950 being turned into a majoritarian state. Families, friendships and diaspora communities are divided over it.
Hindu nationalism is older than the republic. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a disciplined volunteer organisation founded in 1925, and its political wings, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (1951) and then the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP, founded 1980), argued that India was essentially a Hindu nation.
Decades of Congress rule appeased minorities, tolerated corruption and treated Hindu culture with embarrassment.
Hindu nationalism treats Muslims and Christians as second-class citizens.
Many Muslims describe feeling increasingly unsafe and unwelcome in their own country, under- represented in parliament and government, and blamed for history they had no part in.
Mandal and the politics of caste
The government extends job reservations to the "Other Backward Classes", sparking upper-caste protest and transforming Indian politics.
- India's Silent Revolution: The Rise of the Lower Castes in North India — Christophe Jaffrelot, Hurst / Columbia University Press (2003)
- India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
Read more
- India's Silent Revolution: The Rise of the Lower Castes in North India — Christophe Jaffrelot, Hurst / Columbia University Press (2003)
- India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
Reservations (quotas) in education and government jobs are among the most argued-over issues in India. Many communities campaign to be classed as "backward", and the question of counting caste in the census has returned to the centre of politics.
5% respectively. In 1980 the Mandal Commission recommended adding 27% for the "Other Backward Classes" (OBCs), intermediate castes that it estimated made up over half the population.
Centuries of caste exclusion cannot be undone by formal equality alone.
Quotas based on caste rather than income entrench caste identity, help the better-off within "backward" groups most, and penalise poor upper-caste students. Merit should decide.
Liberalised, aspiring India
1991 – today The 1991 reforms: opening the economy
Facing bankruptcy, India dismantles the "licence raj", opens to world trade and investment, and begins three decades of fast growth.
- India: The Emerging Giant — Arvind Panagariya, Oxford University Press (2008)
- India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
Read more
- India: The Emerging Giant — Arvind Panagariya, Oxford University Press (2008)
- India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
1991 divides modern India into before and after. Indians who grew up waiting years for a phone line or a scooter now live in a country of smartphones, start-ups and shopping malls. The reforms created a huge middle class and the IT industry, though critics point to rising inequality and too few good jobs.
After independence India built a planned, state-led economy, inspired by Nehru's socialism and a determination never again to depend on foreign capital. It built dams, steel mills and the Indian Institutes of Technology, but by the 1980s the "licence raj" of permits, quotas and controls was choking growth, which was mocked as the "Hindu rate of growth".
Ayodhya: from the Babri Masjid to the Ram temple
Hindu activists tear down a sixteenth-century mosque they believe stands on Rama's birthplace; after decades of violence and litigation, a grand temple opens on the site in 2024.
- The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics — Christophe Jaffrelot, Hurst (1996)
- Modi's India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy — Christophe Jaffrelot, Princeton University Press (2021)
- India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
- M. Siddiq (D) Thr. Lrs. v. Mahant Suresh Das & Ors. (Ayodhya judgment) — Supreme Court of India (2019)
Read more
- The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics — Christophe Jaffrelot, Hurst (1996)
- Modi's India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy — Christophe Jaffrelot, Princeton University Press (2021)
- India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
- M. Siddiq (D) Thr. Lrs. v. Mahant Suresh Das & Ors. (Ayodhya judgment) — Supreme Court of India (2019)
Ayodhya made Hindu nationalism a mass force and is the defining event of India's religious politics. For many Indian Muslims the demolition and the verdict mark the point at which they felt the republic's promise of equality break. Similar claims now target mosques in Varanasi and Mathura.
The Babri Masjid ("Babur's mosque") was built in Ayodhya around 1528–29 by Mir Baqi, a commander of the first Mughal emperor. Many Hindus believe it was built on the exact birthplace of Rama, over a demolished temple.
Ayodhya is Rama's birthplace, and the Mughal general Mir Baqi built the mosque in 1528 over a temple there, as a deliberate humiliation.
A mosque where Muslims had prayed for four centuries was destroyed in front of the police, those accused were never convicted, and the courts handed the land to those who tore it down.
There is no early evidence that the site was revered as Rama's birthplace before the eighteenth century, and archaeologists disagree over whether the remains under the mosque were a temple.
Weighing the evidence of possession and faith, the court gave the site to a trust for the Hindu deity Ram Lalla and five acres elsewhere to the Muslim side, while calling the placing of idols in 1949 and the 1992 demolition serious violations of the law.
Chandrayaan-3 lands near the Moon's south pole
India becomes the fourth country to land softly on the Moon, and the first near its south pole.
- Chandrayaan-3 — Indian Space Research Organisation
Read more
- Chandrayaan-3 — Indian Space Research Organisation
The landing, watched live by millions, became a symbol of the confident, technological India that many Indians feel the world still overlooks. The space programme's frugality, and the women scientists in its control rooms, are points of particular pride.
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) was founded in 1969 under the physicist Vikram Sarabhai. Its rockets were once carried to the launch pad on bicycles; by 2014 its Mangalyaan probe had reached Mars orbit on its first attempt, at a famously low cost.
Core values & worldview
If you ask an Indian friend what holds the country together, you will probably get a laugh first, and then a long answer. India is less like a European nation-state than like a continent: 28 states and 8 union territories, many of them bigger than European countries, each with its own language, food, festivals and history.
- India — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
- The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation — Granville Austin, Oxford University Press (1966)
- India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
Family first. For most Indians the family, not the individual, is the basic unit of life. Elders are touched on the feet in respect, adult children often live with or near their parents, and decisions about education, careers and marriage are family conversations. Arranged marriages, increasingly with the couple’s consent and veto, remain common, and most people marry within their religion and, often, their caste.
- Religion in India: Tolerance and Segregation — Pew Research Center (2021)
- A Concise History of Modern India — Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, Cambridge University Press (2012)
Religion as everyday life. India is deeply religious. In Pew’s large 2019–20 survey, most Indians of every faith said religion was very important in their lives, and large majorities said that respecting all religions was an important part of being truly Indian. The same survey found that most people prefer to keep their close friendships and marriages within their own community: tolerance, as Pew put it, alongside segregation.
- Religion in India: Tolerance and Segregation — Pew Research Center (2021)
Argument as a national sport. Indians love to debate, in parliament, on television, in tea stalls and family WhatsApp groups. Amartya Sen called his compatriots “argumentative Indians”. Politics, cricket selections and film stars all get the same passion.
- India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
Pride and sensitivity about the past. Many Indians are proud of an ancient civilisation that gave the world yoga, the decimal place-value system with zero, chess’s ancestor and great religions, and feel that colonial rule both impoverished the country and taught Indians to look down on their own heritage.
- Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300 — Romila Thapar, Allen Lane / University of California Press (2002)
- Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India — Shashi Tharoor, Hurst (2017)
Daily life & customs
Greetings. Namaste or namaskar, palms pressed together, works almost everywhere; Muslims may say salaam or adaab, Sikhs sat sri akal. Across languages, people add -ji to a name as a mark of respect, and call older strangers “uncle” and “aunty”.
Food. Food is central to hospitality, and guests are pressed to eat more. A large share of Indians are vegetarian, around four in ten Hindus in Pew’s survey, and many more avoid beef (for Hindus) or pork (for Muslims). Many eat with the right hand, and the left is considered unclean for eating.
- Religion in India: Tolerance and Segregation — Pew Research Center (2021)
- Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors — Lizzie Collingham, Chatto & Windus (2005)
Festivals. The calendar is crowded: Diwali, the festival of lights, and Holi, the festival of colours, are the biggest Hindu festivals, but Eid, Christmas, Guru Nanak’s birthday, Durga Puja in Bengal, Onam in Kerala and Pongal in Tamil Nadu are national or regional celebrations too, and neighbours of different faiths often join in. Independence Day (15 August) and Republic Day (26 January) are the great civic holidays.
- India — Encyclopaedia Britannica
Weddings. An Indian wedding is a multi-day family event that may involve hundreds of guests, music, mehndi (henna) and a great deal of food. It is a key moment of family pride and, for many families, a huge expense.
Time and space. Life is crowded, noisy and social. Personal space is smaller than in northern Europe or North America, plans can change at short notice, and “adjust” is a much-used word. Many Indians juggle two or three languages a day, often mixing English into Hindi (“Hinglish”) or their regional language.
- Census of India 2011: Language, Paper 1 of 2018 — Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India (2018)
Wounds & sensitivities
Colonialism. British rule is remembered as an era of exploitation and humiliation: the deindustrialisation of Indian textiles, recurrent famines, the massacre at Amritsar’s Jallianwala Bagh in 1919 and the Bengal famine of 1943, which killed about three million people.
- Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation — Amartya Sen, Oxford University Press (1981)
- Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India — Shashi Tharoor, Hurst (2017)
- Churchill's Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II — Madhusree Mukerjee, Basic Books (2010)
Partition. The violence of 1947 left deep scars, especially in Punjab and Bengal, and the conflict with Pakistan over Kashmir has led to wars in 1947–48, 1965, 1971 and 1999, plus repeated terror attacks, such as Mumbai in 2008.
- The Partition of India — Ian Talbot and Gurharpal Singh, Cambridge University Press (2009)
- India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
Caste. Caste is painful and complex. For Dalits (formerly “untouchables”) and Adivasis (tribal peoples) it means a history of exclusion and continuing discrimination; for some upper-caste Indians, quotas feel like reverse discrimination. Questions about someone’s caste or surname are not small talk.
- India's Silent Revolution: The Rise of the Lower Castes in North India — Christophe Jaffrelot, Hurst / Columbia University Press (2003)
- Religion in India: Tolerance and Segregation — Pew Research Center (2021)
Religious violence. Episodes such as the anti-Sikh riots in Delhi in 1984, the destruction of the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya in 1992 and the riots that followed, and the Gujarat violence of 2002, are remembered very differently by different communities.
- India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
- Modi's India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy — Christophe Jaffrelot, Princeton University Press (2021)
Being reduced to poverty and stereotypes. Many Indians tire of a Western picture that sees only slums, snake charmers or call centres, and of jokes about accents. India is also the land of the Moon landing and of world-class universities and companies.
Modern attitudes
Politics. Since 2014 India has been governed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) under Narendra Modi, which won outright majorities in 2014 and 2019 and in 2024 returned with a reduced count, needing coalition partners. Supporters credit it with infrastructure, welfare delivery, a confident foreign policy and pride in Hindu culture; critics, including many Muslims, opposition parties and international watchdogs, warn of majoritarianism and pressure on the press, courts and civil society.
- Modi's India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy — Christophe Jaffrelot, Princeton University Press (2021)
- General Election to Lok Sabha 2024: statistical reports — Election Commission of India (2024)
Religion and nation. In Pew’s survey, 64% of Hindus said being Hindu was very important to being “truly” Indian, while most Muslims, Sikhs and Christians said they felt very proud to be Indian too. Indians agree that India is diverse; they disagree on whether it is, at heart, a Hindu nation.
- Religion in India: Tolerance and Segregation — Pew Research Center (2021)
Young India. Half of Indians are under about 28. Young people are online, ambitious and impatient, often more relaxed about love marriages and dating than their parents, but also under huge pressure in competitive exams and a tight job market.
- India overtakes China as the world's most populous country — United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (2023)
- India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
Women. Indian women have been prime minister (Indira Gandhi) and president, and lead companies and space missions, but female participation in paid work is low by world standards, and violence against women became a national issue after the 2012 Delhi gang-rape and murder of a young woman.
- India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
The world. Indians tend to see their country as a civilisation reclaiming its place: non-aligned, friendly with the US and with Russia, wary of China (the two fought a war in 1962 and clashed again in 2020) and of Pakistan.
- India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
Not all Indians are the same
North and South. Hindi is the most widely spoken language, the first language of about 44% of Indians in 2011, but the South speaks Dravidian languages such as Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam, and many southerners strongly resist the idea of Hindi as a national language. Tamil Nadu has its own politics, rooted in an anti-caste, anti-Brahmin movement.
- Census of India 2011: Language, Paper 1 of 2018 — Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India (2018)
- India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
Religion. India has around 200 million Muslims, one of the largest Muslim populations in the world, as well as Christians (over 2%, with old communities in Kerala, Goa and the north-east), Sikhs (concentrated in Punjab), Buddhists, Jains and Parsis. India’s Jews have been here for perhaps two thousand years.
- Census of India 2011: Religion (C-1 tables) — Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India (2015)
- How the Global Religious Landscape Changed From 2010 to 2020 — Pew Research Center (2025)
Caste and class. A Brahmin professor in Pune, a Dalit activist in Uttar Pradesh, a tribal farmer in Jharkhand and a tech worker in Bengaluru live in very different Indias. Urban and rural India can feel like different countries.
- India's Silent Revolution: The Rise of the Lower Castes in North India — Christophe Jaffrelot, Hurst / Columbia University Press (2003)
The North-East and Kashmir. The north-eastern states, linked to the rest of India by a narrow corridor, are home to many peoples with Tibeto-Burman languages, many of them Christian. Kashmir has a long, painful history of insurgency and military rule. People from both regions often feel misunderstood by the “mainland”.
- India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
The diaspora. About 18 million people born in India lived abroad in 2020, the world’s largest diaspora, from Gulf construction workers to Silicon Valley CEOs, and older communities descended from indentured labourers in the Caribbean, Fiji, Mauritius and South Africa.
- International Migration 2020 Highlights — United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (2020)
Meeting someone
Conversation starters
- Food. “What’s your home state’s food like?” almost never fails, and you may be invited to try some.
- Cricket and films. A cricket match or a favourite film, Bollywood or Tamil or Malayalam, is a great way in.
- Their language and region. Ask where their family is from and what language they speak at home. Showing that you know India is many places is appreciated.
- Festivals. Asking how they celebrate Diwali, Eid, Christmas or Onam is usually welcome.
Topics to approach carefully
- Caste. Don’t ask someone’s caste, and don’t guess it from their surname.
- Pakistan and Kashmir. Strong feelings, often with family histories behind them.
- Religion and politics. Modi, the BJP and Hindu–Muslim relations divide families. Listen before you offer opinions.
- Colonialism. Don’t defend the Raj, and be aware of what the British did in 1919 and 1943.
- Poverty. Don’t treat poverty as the whole story of India.
Common misconceptions
- “Indians speak Indian.” There is no Indian language. Hindi and English are the official languages of the central government, and 22 languages are recognised in the constitution.
- Census of India 2011: Language, Paper 1 of 2018 — Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India (2018)
- “All Indians are Hindu and vegetarian.” About one in five Indians is not Hindu, and most Indians eat meat at least sometimes.
- Census of India 2011: Religion (C-1 tables) — Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India (2015)
- Religion in India: Tolerance and Segregation — Pew Research Center (2021)
- “Caste is gone” or “caste is everything”. Neither. Caste discrimination is illegal and much has changed, but caste still shapes marriage, politics and opportunity.
- India's Silent Revolution: The Rise of the Lower Castes in North India — Christophe Jaffrelot, Hurst / Columbia University Press (2003)
- Religion in India: Tolerance and Segregation — Pew Research Center (2021)
- “The British gave India unity and democracy.” Indians built their democracy themselves, against colonial resistance, and the subcontinent had political and cultural unities long before the Raj.
- India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
- Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300 — Romila Thapar, Allen Lane / University of California Press (2002)
- “India is poor.” India still has many poor people, but it is one of the world’s largest economies and has a vast middle class, a global tech industry and a space programme that has reached Mars and the Moon.
- India: The Emerging Giant — Arvind Panagariya, Oxford University Press (2008)
- Chandrayaan-3 — Indian Space Research Organisation
People everyone knows
Ashoka
The Mauryan emperor who ruled most of the subcontinent and then, horrified by the slaughter of his conquest of Kalinga, turned to the Buddha's teaching of dhamma: non-violence, tolerance of all sects and care for people and animals. He carved his message on rocks and pillars across his empire. Modern India took its national emblem, the lion capital of Sarnath, and the wheel on its flag from him.
- Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300 — Romila Thapar, Allen Lane / University of California Press (2002)
- Ashoka — Encyclopaedia Britannica
Akbar
The third Mughal emperor, who built a vast, well-run empire through conquest and alliances with Hindu Rajput kings. He abolished the jizya tax on non-Muslims, invited Hindu, Jain, Zoroastrian and Christian scholars to debate at his court, and promoted "sulh-i kul", peace with all. For many Indians he stands for a tolerant, shared past; Hindu nationalists often prefer Rajput heroes such as Maharana Pratap, who fought him.
- Akbar — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- India Before Europe — Catherine B. Asher and Cynthia Talbot, Cambridge University Press (2006)
- India in the Persianate Age, 1000–1765 — Richard M. Eaton, Allen Lane (2019)
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi)
A Gujarati lawyer who developed non-violent mass resistance, satyagraha, in South Africa and then turned the Indian National Congress into a movement of millions. A devout Hindu who drew on the Gita, he campaigned for Hindu–Muslim unity and against untouchability, and was shot dead in January 1948 by the Hindu nationalist Nathuram Godse. Indians call him "Bapu" (father) and "Father of the Nation". B. R. Ambedkar and many Dalits criticised his defence of the caste order.
- Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope — Judith M. Brown, Yale University Press (1989)
- Mahatma Gandhi — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
Jawaharlal Nehru
Gandhi's chosen heir and India's first prime minister, from 1947 until his death in 1964. A Cambridge-educated secularist, he built the institutions of the new republic: parliamentary democracy, a planned, state-led economy, scientific institutes and a non-aligned foreign policy. Admired for holding a shattered country together, he is criticised for the slow-growth economy, the 1962 war with China and for founding a political dynasty. Today he is a target of the Hindu right.
- Nehru: A Tryst with Destiny — Stanley Wolpert, Oxford University Press (1996)
- India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar
Born into the "untouchable" Mahar caste, he earned doctorates from Columbia and the London School of Economics and became the chief architect of India's constitution, which outlawed untouchability. A fierce critic of caste and of the scriptures that justified it, he converted to Buddhism with hundreds of thousands of followers in 1956. To Dalits he is "Babasaheb", a liberator, and his statue stands in villages across India.
- B. R. Ambedkar — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- From Untouchable to Dalit: Essays on the Ambedkar Movement — Eleanor Zelliot, Manohar (1992)
- The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation — Granville Austin, Oxford University Press (1966)
Indira Gandhi
Nehru's daughter (no relation to the Mahatma) and India's only woman prime minister so far (1966–77, 1980–84). She led India to victory in the 1971 war that created Bangladesh and tested a nuclear device in 1974, but suspended democracy in the Emergency of 1975–77. After she ordered the army into the Golden Temple in Amritsar in 1984, she was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards, and thousands of Sikhs were killed in riots that followed.
- Indira Gandhi — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Emergency Chronicles: Indira Gandhi and Democracy's Turning Point — Gyan Prakash, Princeton University Press (2019)
- India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
Try it yourself
The quickest way into a culture: a song, a film, a book and a dish.
“Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.”
“On the 26th of January 1950, we are going to enter into a life of contradictions. In politics we will have equality and in social and economic life we will have inequality.”
“Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high; Where knowledge is free; Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls…”
Listen
- Jana Gana Mana The national anthem, written in Bengali by Rabindranath Tagore, Asia's first Nobel laureate (literature, 1913).▶ Listen
Watch
- Pather Panchali (1955) Satyajit Ray's first film, about a poor Bengali village family, put Indian art cinema on the world map.▶ Watch
- Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995) The Bollywood romance about a diaspora couple winning over a strict father; it played at Mumbai's Maratha Mandir cinema for more than twenty years.▶ Watch
- RRR (2022) A Telugu action epic set in the colonial era; its song 'Naatu Naatu' won the 2023 Oscar for best original song, a reminder that Indian cinema is far bigger than Bollywood.▶ Watch
Read
- Midnight's Children (1981) Salman Rushdie's Booker Prize-winning novel about children born at the stroke of independence, 15 August 1947.Find it
Taste
- The thali, and a hundred regional kitchens A metal plate of rice or breads with dal, vegetables, pickles and yoghurt.Recipe
See & do
- Cricket Close to a national religion.Look it up
- The Taj Mahal The white marble tomb built at Agra from 1632 by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan for his wife Mumtaz Mahal, India's most famous building.Look it up
Where
Homeland Diaspora Significant place
Related
Sources & further reading
- Speaking of Śiva — A. K. Ramanujan (trans.), Penguin Classics, 1973
- Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation — Amartya Sen, Oxford University Press, 1981
- A Mission in Kashmir — Andrew Whitehead, Penguin Viking, 2007
- Mystical Dimensions of Islam — Annemarie Schimmel, University of North Carolina Press, 1975
- India: The Emerging Giant — Arvind Panagariya, Oxford University Press, 2008
- The Struggle for Pakistan: A Muslim Homeland and Global Politics — Ayesha Jalal, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014
- The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan — Ayesha Jalal, Cambridge University Press, 1985
- The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan — Ayesha Jalal, Cambridge University Press, 1985
- Speech to the Constituent Assembly, 25 November 1949 (Constituent Assembly Debates, vol. XI) — B. R. Ambedkar, 1949
- Annihilation of Caste — B. R. Ambedkar, 1936
- A Concise History of Modern India — Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, Cambridge University Press, 2012
- Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire — C. A. Bayly, Cambridge University Press, 1988
- India Before Europe — Catherine B. Asher and Cynthia Talbot, Cambridge University Press, 2006
- India's Silent Revolution: The Rise of the Lower Castes in North India — Christophe Jaffrelot, Hurst / Columbia University Press, 2003
- Modi's India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy — Christophe Jaffrelot, Princeton University Press, 2021
- The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics — Christophe Jaffrelot, Hurst, 1996
- Kashmir: The Unwritten History — Christopher Snedden, HarperCollins India, 2013
- The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate — Edwin Bryant, Oxford University Press, 2001
- From Untouchable to Dalit: Essays on the Ambedkar Movement — Eleanor Zelliot, Manohar, 1992
- General Election to Lok Sabha 2024: statistical reports — Election Commission of India, 2024
- Ashoka — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- India — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Indus civilization — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Pakistan — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Mira Bai — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Akbar — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Vinayak Damodar Savarkar — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Mahatma Gandhi — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- B. R. Ambedkar — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Indira Gandhi — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- An Introduction to Hinduism — Gavin Flood, Cambridge University Press, 1996
- The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation — Granville Austin, Oxford University Press, 1966
- The Indus Civilization: A Contemporary Perspective — Gregory L. Possehl, AltaMira Press, 2002
- Emergency Chronicles: Indira Gandhi and Democracy's Turning Point — Gyan Prakash, Princeton University Press, 2019
- Pakistan: A New History — Ian Talbot, Hurst, 2012
- The Partition of India — Ian Talbot and Gurharpal Singh, Cambridge University Press, 2009
- Chandrayaan-3 — Indian Space Research Organisation
- The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed — Ishtiaq Ahmed, Oxford University Press, 2011
- The Sikhs of the Punjab (The New Cambridge History of India, revised edition) — J. S. Grewal, Cambridge University Press, 1998
- Tryst with Destiny: speech to the Constituent Assembly, 14–15 August 1947 — Jawaharlal Nehru, 1947
- India: A History — John Keay, HarperCollins, 2000
- A Storm of Songs: India and the Idea of the Bhakti Movement — John Stratton Hawley, Harvard University Press, 2015
- Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley Civilization — Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, Oxford University Press, 1998
- Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope — Judith M. Brown, Yale University Press, 1989
- A History of the Sikhs (2 vols, 2nd edition) — Khushwant Singh, Oxford University Press, 2004
- A Survey of Hinduism (3rd edition) — Klaus K. Klostermaier, State University of New York Press, 2007
- Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors — Lizzie Collingham, Chatto & Windus, 2005
- Churchill's Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II — Madhusree Mukerjee, Basic Books, 2010
- Presidential Address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, 11 August 1947 — Muhammad Ali Jinnah, 1947
- Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World — Niall Ferguson, Allen Lane, 2003
- Census of India 2011: Language, Paper 1 of 2018 — Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India, 2018
- Census of India 2011: Religion (C-1 tables) — Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India, 2015
- The Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies — Pashaura Singh and Louis E. Fenech (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2014
- Religion in India: Tolerance and Segregation — Pew Research Center, 2021
- How the Global Religious Landscape Changed From 2010 to 2020 — Pew Research Center, 2025
- Islam was the world's fastest-growing religion from 2010 to 2020 — Pew Research Center, 2025
- Gitanjali (Song Offerings) — Rabindranath Tagore, India Society / Macmillan, 1912
- India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador, 2007
- Theravada Buddhism: A Social History from Ancient Benares to Modern Colombo — Richard Gombrich, Routledge, 1988
- India in the Persianate Age, 1000–1765 — Richard M. Eaton, Allen Lane, 2019
- India in the Persianate Age, 1000–1765 — Richard M. Eaton, Allen Lane, 2019
- Temple Desecration and Indo-Muslim States — Richard M. Eaton, Journal of Islamic Studies 11 (3), Oxford University Press, 2000
- Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300 — Romila Thapar, Allen Lane / University of California Press, 2002
- Somanatha: The Many Voices of a History — Romila Thapar, Verso, 2005
- Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India — Shashi Tharoor, Hurst, 2017
- Why I Am a Hindu — Shashi Tharoor, Aleph Book Company / Hurst, 2018
- Nehru: A Tryst with Destiny — Stanley Wolpert, Oxford University Press, 1996
- The Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals — Stephen F. Dale, Cambridge University Press, 2010
- The Idea of Pakistan — Stephen P. Cohen, Brookings Institution Press, 2004
- Kashmir: Roots of Conflict, Paths to Peace — Sumantra Bose, Harvard University Press, 2003
- M. Siddiq (D) Thr. Lrs. v. Mahant Suresh Das & Ors. (Ayodhya judgment) — Supreme Court of India, 2019
- An Economic History of India, 1857–2010 (4th edition) — Tirthankar Roy, Oxford University Press, 2020
- Archaeological Ruins at Moenjodaro — UNESCO World Heritage Centre
- India overtakes China as the world's most populous country — United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2023
- International Migration 2020 Highlights — United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2020
- Essentials of Hindutva — V. D. Savarkar, 1923
- The formation of human populations in South and Central Asia — Vagheesh M. Narasimhan et al., Science 365 (6457), 2019
- Kashmir in Conflict: India, Pakistan and the Unending War — Victoria Schofield, I.B. Tauris, 2000
- The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company — William Dalrymple, Bloomsbury, 2019
- The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan — Yasmin Khan, Yale University Press, 2007
- The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan — Yasmin Khan, Yale University Press, 2007