Egyptian Lotus flower
Egyptian Lotus flower symbol which was called Sesen in the Egyptian language. It is a symbol of the sun, of creation and rebirth. At night the flower closes and sinks underwater, at dawn it rises and opens again. According to one creation myth it was a giant lotus which first rose out of the watery chaos at the beginning of time. From this giant lotus the sun itself rose on the first day.

Eastern Lotus flower
In the East, the lotus flower is viewed as a symbol of spiritual enfoldment. The lotus has its roots in earthly mud, but as it grows upward in aspiration toward the light, its petals open out in a beautiful flower. Om Mani Padme Hum, meaning, «Hail to the Jewel in the Lotus» is the sacred mantra of the Tibetans.

Christian Lotus flower
«Blessed are the pure in heart», said Jesus, «for they shall see God». The teachings of the Galilean Master and those of India's great yogis were cut from the same cloth of Self-realization. Only when the likes and dislikes of the heart, and their resultant vortices of desire and aversion, have been dissolved, in short, when the heart has been purified, can Self-realization be attained. Most efforts to transform one self involve a laborious struggle to correct an endless array of individual faults. It would be like trying to realign each molecule in a bar of steel separately.

Indian Yoga Lotus flower
The ancient yogic technique of Kriya Yoga, brought to America by Paramhansa Yogananda, is central and direct in its application to this spiritual awakening. Kriya Yoga directs energy lengthwise around the spine, gradually neutralizing the edges of the verities. At the same time, it strengthens the nerves in the spine and brain to receive cosmic currents of energy and consciousness.

Summary
Symbols are a means of bringing subtle, inner realities to a focus in outward expression. Within the fundamental unity of consciousness, certain symbols, such as the lotus lifting itself in purity above the muddy water, possess universal relevance and power.

Name of the Sutra
The Sutra in Sanskrit word is called Saddharmapundarika Sutra.
Sad means wonderful, fine, proper.
Dharma means teaching, generally used to described the Buddhist teaching.
Pundarika means white lotus flower.
The simplest name is, of course, the Lotus Sutra.

The original text & its propagation & translation
The Lotus Sutras is one of the few whose original text is written in Sanskrit nowadays. Probably, it was once written in dialect in east India, and was transmitted to NW India around the second century A.D., and then written in Sanskrit for further propagation. The Sutra was widely spread to Central Asia and Nepal. Since then, it has been translated in many different languages.
The Sutra was certain in its composition when the first Chinese translation was made by Dharmaraksa in A.D. 286. There were at least six Chinese versions, but only three are still in circulation. Amongst the three, the version translated by Kumarajiva in A.D. 406 is widely known and accepted. It is the most authoritative version on which the present English translation is based. The standard in rendering his oral languages is extremely high. It was a work of great literacy merit. The form of construction is strict, but it is easy to read.
Another Chinese version translated by Jnanagupta and Dharmagupta in A.D. 601 is the third one still in existence.

Veneration for the Sutra
The Lotus Sutra was spoken by Shakyamuni Buddha before he entered Nirvana. It is the Buddha's ultimate teaching i.e. the most final Dharma, containing his final revelation on the universality of salvation, the true nature of Buddhahood, and the best and universally applicable means of attaining Buddhahood.
The Sutra is regarded as the pure, complete, unique and solitarily wonderful teaching in Buddhism. It is also said that all other Sutras were spoken for the sake of the Lotus Sutra, and so it is «the King of the Sutras».
In the first few centuries, Nagarjina and Vasubandhu manifested and promoted the Mahayana Buddhism. The Lotus Sutra was certainly one of the important Sutras venerated by the two great Dharma masters. Vasubandhu wrote a commentary on the Lotus Sutra, which is still one of the oldest and most authoritative Shastra nowadays in India.
Apart from China, the Sutra has been particularly influential to the Buddhists in Korea, Japan and other regions of eastern Asia over many years. It has been held in high regard, and generally well known in the West too.
If Buddhist disciples do not understand the Lotus Sutra, they don't understand Buddhism, because the speaking of the Lotus Sutra is the final goal of the Buddha's life. The Lotus Sutra vigorously advances the position that the superior person only knows the way to ultimate bliss and wisdom, but also helps others to find the Way.

Meaning of the Title
According to the Seven Title Classifications, the Wonderful Dharma Flower Sutra is established by reference to a Dharma and an analogy. The Wonderful Dharma is a Dharma, and the Lotus Flower is an analogy. Because the Wonderful Dharma is difficult to understand, the Lotus Sutra is used as an analogy.

Wonderful
The Dharma is spoken only occasionally by the Buddha, just as the Udumbara flower appears but once in a great while. Therefore, it is wonderful to hear the Dharma.
The Dharma is extremely profound that have ever attained. All the Buddhas speak the Dharma in accord with what is appropriate, but its purport is difficult to understand. What is the reason? The Buddha extensively speak all Dharmas by means of countless expedient devices, various causes and conditions, analogies and expression.
The Dharma cannot be understood through deliberation and discrimination. Only the Buddhas alone can know it. As the wonderful Dharma cannot be thought nor expressed in words, it is inconceivable and wonderful. The speaking of Dharma itself is not wonderful, but merely describes how wonderful the Dharma is.
The Dharma is so vast, deep and far reaching that it is immeasurable. Its power is pervading unobstructively, so it is wonderful.
The Dharma is so rare and foremost, that its Real Mark can only be ultimately comprehended amongst Buddhas only.
The Dharma is difficult to think and understand. Those who are arrogant in studying Buddhism will not respect and believe the Dharma expounded by the Lotus Sutra. That is why five thousand Bhikshus, Bhiskshuni, Upasakas, Upasikas in the assembly rose their seats made obeisance to the Buddha and left, when the Buddha started to talk the Wonderful Dharma.
It is not easy to explain the word «wonderful». A great Chinese Dharma Master Chih Che of the Tien Tai School took 90 days to lecture on one word «wonderful», yet he had not finished. Everything is the wonderful Dharma, because it is our heart that everything is to be known. Isn't it wonderful?

Dharma
What is the Dharma expounded in the Lotus Sutra? It is the Dharma of the Buddha Vehicle. When Shakyamuni Buddha attained the perfect and complete enlightenment under the Bodhi tree, he made every endeavour to open and reveal the profound doctrine of Buddhahood to the living beings, so that they could understand and enter the realm of Buddhahood. However, the levels and «roots» of the living beings were so different that the Buddha had no alternative but spoke of the doctrine of the Three Vehicles, for the sake of Sravaka (the Sound Hearer), Pratyeka Buddha (Condition-enlightened One) and Bodhisattva.
The doctrine of the Three Vehicles is an expedient device, which facilitates the Buddha in leading living beings to understand the Wonderful Dharma of One Buddha Vehicle. The Sutra says in the verse,

«In the Buddhalands of the ten directions,
There is only the Dharma of One Vehicle,
There are not two or three,
Except those spoken by the Buddhas as expedients,
And those are but false appellations
Used to induce living beings,
So that he may teach them the Buddha's wisdom»

Lotus Flower
Lotus Flower is used to represent the Wonderful Dharma of One Buddha Vehicle. It is most appropriate because lotus flower is beautiful and noble. Vasubandhu, indicated that there were two meanings of lotus flower in this respect.

The meaning of the flower above water
The lotus flower grows in the pond, which is full of impure water and mud. However, the flower is not contaminated, the flowers blossom above the surface of water, but their stems and roots are still in water and mud. The flower, stem and root of lotus are just like the pure and wonderful doctrine One Buddha Vehicle spoken with the expedient and coarse doctrines of the Two Vehicles and the Three Vehicles in the hierarchy of the Buddha's teachings. Actually, the Two and Three Vehicles finally reveal and converge to One Buddha Vehicle.

The meaning of the blossoming of flower
The lotus flower is beautiful in appearance, fragrant in smell, pure and bright, so that everybody loves it. In the Dharma assembly, many people received the predictions to become Buddhas. They were so happy that they had strong faith and determination to cultivate and practice the Buddhist Way. In this respect, the blossoming of lotus flower is analogous to the attainment of Buddhahood.

That is why lotus flower is one of the important symbols in Buddhism.
Alternatively, the lotus flower can be interpreted as the Absolute Principle of the Middle Way. The root in the mud represents common people. The stem in the water represents those of the Two Vehicles. Common people are attached to existence; the mud is an analogy for existence. Those of the Two Vehicles are attached to emptiness; the stem in the water represents emptiness. The lotus flower, which blossoms above the water, represents the transcendence of emptiness and existence, and represents the Absolute Principle of the Middle Way. Middle Way means neither falling into emptiness nor going to the extreme of existence. Emptiness and existence are the two extremes; To be unattached to either of the two extremes is the Absolute Principle of the Middle Way.
Moreover, as the lotus flower blooms and bears fruit/seeds at the same time, they can represent the non-duality of cause and effect. As the cause is thus, thus is the effect. If the cause planted is one of Buddhahood, the effect will be one of Buddhahood.
The lotus blooming and bearing fruit simultaneously also represents the opening the provisional to manifest the real - one of the most important principle in Lotus Sutra. The blooming of the lotus represents the opening of the provisional Dharma (i.e. the Two Vehicles and the Three Vehicles). The lotus seeds which are revealed when the lotus blooms represent the real Dharma (i.e. One Buddha Vehicle). Provisional Dharma refers to expedient devices, and real Dharma is the genuine and proper Dharma.
When the lotus petals fall away, the seedpod stands alone. This represents annulling the provisional to establish the real i.e. abandoning the provisional Dharma and retaining the real Dharma.
In general, the lotus flower represents the wonderful Dharma. The lotus flower is just the wonderful Dharma, and vice versa. This is an analogy of the Sutra.

Sutra
Sutra, a Sanskrit Word, means a tallying text. Above, a sutra tallies with the wonderful principles of all Buddhas, and below, it tallies with the opportunities for the teaching living beings.
The word sutra; can be interpreted in many ways:
A road - one may travel from the status of a common person to the position of Buddhahood.
Basic Dharma - The sutras are the roots forming the foundation of the Dharma.
Manifestation - The sutras clearly instruct and reveal to us the principles of Buddhadharma.
A bubbling spring - the principles flowing out from the Sutras like water gushing continuously from the spring.
A guideline - to make guidelines in cultivating the way.
A flower garland - the principles are linked together in the sutras like flowers woven into a garland.
All sutras have a specific title and a common title. The Wonderful Dharma Lotus Flower is the specific title while the word Sutra is the common title.

Hinduism
Symbols We Live With
Vedic rituals, like the «Yagna» and «Puja», as said Rishi Aurobindo, are «attempts to fulfill the purpose of creation and elevate the status of man to that of a godhead or a cosmic man». Puja is essentially a ritual suggestive of symbolic offering of our lives and activities to God.
Symbolic Significance of Puja Items
Every object associated with the ritual of Puja or worship is symbolically significant. The statue or image of the deity, which is called «Vigraha» (Sanskrit: «vi»+ «graha») means something that is devoid of the ill effects of the planets or «grahas». The flower that we offer to the deity stands for the good that has blossomed in us. The fruits offered symbolize our detachment, self-sacrifice and surrender, and the incense we burn collectively stands for the desires we have for various things in life. The lamp we light represents the light in us, that is the soul, which we offer to the Absolute. The vermilion or red powder stands for our emotions.

The Lotus
The holiest of flowers for Hindus, the beautiful lotus is symbolic of the true soul of an individual. It represents the being, which lives in turbid waters yet rises up and blossoms to the point of enlightenment. Mythologically speaking, lotus is also a symbol of creation, since Brahma, the creator came forth from the lotus that blooms from the navel of Vishnu. It is also famous as the symbol of BJP - the Hindu Right-wing political party of India, the familiar lotus position in meditation and yoga, and as the national India and Bangladesh.

The Purnakumbha
An earthen pot or pitcher - called «Purnakumbha» - full of water, and with fresh mango leaves and a coconut atop it, is generally placed as the chief deity or by the side of the deity before starting a Puja. Purnakumbha literally means a «full pitcher» (Sanskrit: «purna» = full, «kumbha» = pot). The pot symbolizes mother earth, the water life-giver, the leaves life and the coconut divine consciousness. Commonly used during almost all religious rites, the pitcher also stands for goddess Lakshmi.

Fruits & Leaves
The water in the Purnakumbha and the coconut have been objects of worship since the Vedic age. The coconut (Sanskrit: Sriphala = God's fruit) alone is also used to symbolize «God». While worshipping any deity, a coconut is almost always offered along with flowers and incense sticks. Other natural objects that symbolize divinity are the betel leaf, the areca-nut or betel-nut, banyan leaf and the leaf of «bel» or vilva tree.

Naivedya or Prasad
It is our ignorance («avidya») which we offer to the deity in a Puja. The food symbolically stands for our ignorant consciousness, which we place before god for spiritual enlightenment. After he suffuses it with knowledge and light and breathes a new life into our bodies, it makes us divine. When we share the prasad with others, we share the knowledge we thus gained with fellowbeings.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelumbo_nucifera

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Tucked away in the lanes of Old Delhi, not far from the Red Fort of the Mughal emperors, sits the little visited Anglican church of St James, consecrated in 1836. With its Renaissance - style dome and campanile, and painted a cheerful lemon, this church would not look out of place in Italy. In Delhi it is an oddity, as was its founder, the swashbuckling military adventurer James Skinner, who built it «in fulfilment of a vow made while lying wounded on the field of battle». (Skinner's equally remarkable contemporary Begum Samru - a Kashmiri dancing-girl turned army commander - built a Catholic church in similar style at Sardhana, with two Wren-like spires flanking the dome.) Skinner did not come seamlessly to Christian piety: half-Scot and half-Rajput, he never visited Europe, began his career in the service of the Marathas, and sired numerous part-Indian children by (it was said) 16 wives and mistresses. In a small yard outside the church, members of his multi-ethnic clan lie buried. Some of their tombs have crosses on top and epitaphs on the side in Persian - memorials to a period in Anglo-Indian history when European and Eastern cultures comfortably converged.
Finding your way to St James's Church takes a bit of ingenuity, at least on the part of your auto-rickshaw-wallah, because this is not a place familiar to the average Delhi-ite. Perhaps historical memory has a hand in this. For it was near here, in the spring of 1857, that some of the first and fiercest episodes in the Indian Mutiny played themselves out. On 11 May, rebelling sepoys of the Bengal Army crossed the River Jumna and called on the Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah to serve as their protector. Next, they turned their attention to the British civilians who clustered in the area around the church, slaughtering the firingis in their midst. Inside the church, the memory of those violent days vividly endures. Victorian plaques pay tribute to the military and civilian casualties: to three members of the Corbett family, «who were murdered During the Massacre of the Christians in Delhi»; to Thomas Collins and no fewer than 23 members of his extended family, «all barbarously murdered at Delhi on or about the 11th of May 1857»; to Dr Chimmun Lall, a «native Christian and a Worshipper in this Church», who «fell a martyr to his faith on the day of the massacre of Christians in Delhi». It is no small irony that here, where the mixed-blooded Skinners lie at rest, the blood of Indians and Britons would be copiously spilled in vicious partisan conflict.
Throughout the winter months of 1857 there had been rumours of something afoot in northern India: talk of conspiracies passed by chapati, of secret signals encoded in lotus flowers. Nor was it lost on some (Muslim millenarian preachers among them) that 1857 marked the centenary of the Battle of Plassey, when Robert Clive asserted East India Company ascendancy in Bengal. In the event, it was gun cartridges that set the mutiny off: they were greased, the sepoys believed, with a blend of cow and pig fat, which would defile both Hindus and Muslims when they bit the ends of the cartridges to load them. On 10 May, the sepoys of Meerut revolted and shot their British officers; other mutinies quickly followed across the Bengal army camps of north and central India. Thanks in part to newly laid telegraph lines, the company was able to prevent mutiny from spreading in the Punjab and elsewhere; the Madras and Bombay armies also remained «loyal». But it was not able to prevent the mutineers from marching victoriously to Delhi and reviving Mughal authority, or from attacking and besieging British communities, notably in the Awadh cities of Lucknow and Kanpur.
This was not an organised «national» rebellion; but the Indian Mutiny, as the uprisings collectively became known in Britain, represented the most serious, sustained armed threat posed by Indians against their British rulers. Episodes of violence and Indian «barbarism» branded themselves on the British imagination. One of these was the massacre at Kanpur, where the Maratha king Nana Sahib turned against a corps of about a thousand Europeans, laying siege to their cramped entrenchments. After a punishing fortnight under fire, and some 250 deaths, the British surrendered with a promise of safe passage to Allahabad. But as they pushed off into the river towards their haven, they were attacked by Nana Sahib's men. Most were killed on the spot; 125 women and children were taken captive, only to die of fever or be slaughtered in a final purge soon after. Another focal point of British panic was Lucknow, where 7000 Europeans and loyal Indians holed up inside the Residency to endure a punishing summer under siege, in conditions of unremitting squalor and danger. In September 1857, General Sir Henry Havelock «relieved» the city only to find himself effectively trapped inside it; in March 1858, hundreds of casualties later, Lucknow was finally liberated by British troops. It was not until 1859 that the mutiny was fully put down, and British rule restored and strengthened. Reprisals - then, as throughout the fighting - were savage.
The Indian Mutiny was about more than the gun cartridges, of course. But what exactly it was about would be debated for generations to come. Was this a purely military uprising that got out of hand, a failure of adequate discipline and intelligence? Was it the consequence of administrative mismanagement by the East India Company? Was it, as the early 20th-century nationalist Vinayak Damodar Savarkar would insist, the first «Indian war of independence»? Was it a race war, or a war of religion? (Even what to call it remains a matter of considerable dispute: «rebellion», «revolt» or «uprising» are often preferred to «mutiny».) Competing portrayals in British writing are the subject of Gautam Chakravarty's concise monograph, a study of the seventy or so novels about the mutiny published before 1914.
Chakravarty is at least as much concerned with contemporary historiography as he is with popular literature, so mutiny novels do not make a serious appearance until nearly halfway through the book. His overarching argument is that these novels absorbed and reworked historiography, first-hand accounts and contemporary policy debates. From the outset, British writers infused the mutiny with ideological and emotive significance. East India Company administrators made a point of stressing its military origins, pointing the finger at the army. Officers, in turn, sought to blame administrators for enacting policies that led to wider discontent, such as the unpopular annexation of Awadh in 1856. Many British commentators condemned the company, continuing a long tradition of Whig criticism; while the Muslim reformer Syed Ahmad Khan, in his 1858 Causes of the Indian Revolt, attributed the rebellion to the company's unwillingness to incorporate Indian voices in its legislative council.
Apportioning blame for what had happened was one thing. Describing what happened was another. (It proved to be a lengthy and difficult business for the military historian John Kaye, who died in 1876 before completing his still standard History of the Sepoy War in India: in three volumes he had taken the narrative only to the end of 1857. More recently, Andrew Ward's moving account of the mutiny at Kanpur weighs in at nearly 700 pages; volumes by Christopher Hibbert and Saul David hover around 500.) Seen from certain perspectives, what had happened was a complete collapse of British security, authority and intelligence. The first real mutiny novel, Edward Money's The Wife and the Ward (1859), captured this frank, demoralising view by ending with the massacre of Kanpur, and the death of all the protagonists. Unsurprisingly, later novels would conclude on a brighter, triumphant note, making Kanpur less like the charge of the Light Brigade and more like the Alamo - a martyrdom gilded and redeemed by the victories that followed it.
The apogee of mutiny fiction came at the turn of the century, which should not startle anybody familiar with the jingoistic fervour of the «new imperialism». As one might expect, novels from this period tended to be emphatically heroic, and featured muscular, Anglo-Saxon, Christian soldiers of the sort championed by Cecil Rhodes and Robert Baden-Powell. Thus the prolific G.A. Henty, who churned out more than a hundred boys' adventures in a range of imperial settings, turned to the mutiny with In Times of Peril. His fellow adventure novelist Hume Nisbet's hero Sammy Tompkins disguises himself as an Indian to spy on the sepoys at Meerut, and goes on to slaughter several of them (in Nisbet's words) «as callously as if he had been a professional murderer».
Sammy was not alone: several novels feature the plot device of Britons «going native» to elude capture, or to infiltrate the ranks of the mutineers. Jim Douglas, the hero of Flora Annie Steel's On the Face of the Waters (1896), stays in the heart of occupied Delhi in the guise of an Afghan horse-trader. The leading man of A.F.P. Harcourt's Jenetha's Venture (1899), Roland Ashby, «was a perfect linguist and could easily pass as a native of the country». Women also take part in these cross-cultural charades. Kate Elston, Steel's heroine, sets up house with Douglas in Delhi, pretending to be his Muslim wife, while Harcourt's Jenetha Wentworth boldly takes off after her idol Ashby and, disguised as an old Indian woman, penetrates the Red Fort, where she becomes an invaluable British spy.
Such fictionalised accounts of Britons in Indian disguise rested on two strong historical precedents. As Chakravarty points out, first-person accounts of the mutiny often featured «frightened, fumbling attempts at «going native» as the path to escape and survival. (Or, in the case of mixed-blood Anglo-Indians, assertions of their Indian origins: one of James Skinner's daughters, Elizabeth Wagentreiber, frequently invoked her father's name and her part-Indian lineage as she shepherded her family out of rebel-held Delhi.) Disguise as a survival tactic figures less in the novels, however, than disguise as a strategy, and this also had roots in historical fact. Decades before Kipling sent his Indianised Irish urchin Kim into the Himalayas on the trail of Russian agents, East India Company operatives had disguised themselves, often as Muslim horse-dealers, in order to penetrate the lands beyond the North-West Frontier. From the 1860s, the surveyor Thomas Montgomerie began to map Tibet by training his Indian aides to dress up as Buddhist pilgrims, counting paces with their rosary beads. When Jim Douglas carries Kate safely out of Delhi only to charge back into the mêlée, saying «I am off to the palace to see what has really happened; information's everything», he is indulging in more than plot-lengthening theatrics. He is acting out, in a different context, exactly the sort of dramatic espionage that made (and continues to make) stories of the Great Game so popular. One of Chakravarty's most intriguing suggestions is that these mutiny novels of the 1890s are in some sense Great Game novels - which suddenly stops Kim looking unique.
You can almost hear the «culturally cross-dressed spy-hero» crying out to postcolonial theorists for analysis. To assess these characters Chakravarty invokes Homi Bhabha's influential essay «Of Mimicry and Man», on the ways that colonised subjects emulated or adopted the culture of their colonisers. But where Bhabha's mimic men challenge imperial authority by making a mockery of it, Chakravarty argues that these Britons in disguise work to bolster imperial power, to play out a «fantasy of mastery and colonial knowledge». Getting inside the skin of the Indians is the ultimate statement of dominance: knowing them better than they do themselves.
Stressing the «anxieties» of empire, as many scholars have done, can sometimes feel dissatisfying - not least because «anxiety» seems too imprecise and feeble a term for describing the range of ways in which Britons responded to, or participated in, their nation's overseas enterprises. Nevertheless, it is a little disappointing that Chakravarty essentially stops at reading these fictions as confirmations of high imperial stereotype. The strength of this book lies in the way it consistently relates literature to history and vice versa, and here it would be worth examining the link more closely.
By the 1890s the mutiny was comfortably a thing of the past, sanitised by time, victory and imperial consolidation. But the prospect of unsettling protest within India was not a thing of the past, particularly following the misbegotten partition of Bengal in 1905. On India's frontiers, competition with Russia reached its most intense at exactly this time. Beyond India, the British Empire faced other serious challenges; and though Chakravarty correctly emphasises the centrality of war to Victorian Britain, the greatest of these wars, the Boer War, barely gets a look-in. Last but not least, there was the fact that the successful expansion of empire brought about increased reliance on the Indian Army, which was needed to hold down key possessions from Singapore to Egypt. Just how critical the sepoy army remained - and how cautious British commanders needed to be in deploying it - would be underscored during the First World War, when woefully ill-equipped sepoys came close to mutiny on the Western Front, and Indian forces in Mesopotamia, some of them Muslim, had to be persuaded to fight against fellow Muslims, in the wake of the Ottoman sultan and caliph's declaration of jihad. Surely it is significant that British writers and readers revived stories of the mutiny at a time when the Indian Army was more vital than ever.
It is worth underscoring that these fantasies of penetration, assimilation and espionage corresponded to a period when Britons in India were far less tolerant of cross-cultural mixing than they had been before 1857. If anything worked to erode the cosmopolitan world of James Skinner (and his intermarried parents), it was the mutiny. One symptom of the increasing certitude that European and Indian communities must remain firmly separate was the British obsession with tales of the rape and murder of European women and children. Though Chakravarty can hardly be faulted for concentrating on literature, his specialism, it is a pity that visual representations rate at best passing mention. (Were these novels illustrated?) For instance, at much the same time that Charles Ball, in one of the first mutiny histories, luridly retailed reports of the «indescribable barbarities» inflicted on British families («infants . . . torn from their mothers' arms, and their little limbs chopped off»), visitors to the 1858 Royal Academy exhibition were shocked by Sir Joseph Noel Paton's painting In Memoriam, which depicted British women, children and an Indian ayah cowering in a cellar as sepoys loomed at the door. So alarmed were viewers, indeed, that Paton was pressured into painting kilts onto the sepoys and transforming them into rescuing Highlanders. The mid-Victorian British imagination was only too keen to envision Indians in the darkest possible terms.
Chakravarty effectively demonstrates how the mutiny, surely Britain's most desperate imperial scare, could end up, reworked into fiction, actually bolstering imperial self-confidence. That reworking emerged from the same spirit that turned Paton's sepoys into Highlanders: an enforced segregation of Indian and Briton, a consolidation of military and political control. The suppression of the mutiny ended the founding fusion of British India: the nominal premise that the East India Company had been operating under the aegis of the Mughal emperor. In late 1858, Parliament abolished the East India Company and assumed the reins of government directly, commencing the Raj. Vengeance was visited on remnants of the Mughal regime. Much of the old city of Lucknow, for instance, was razed to the ground and replaced by wide, easily policed streets. British communities were placed in safe, fortified cantonments at some distance from native quarters. And the elderly, misty-eyed emperor himself, Bahadur Shah, who had been yanked by the mutineers out of his courtly world of poetry and song, found himself convicted of treason in a British military court and exiled to Rangoon. As for the mutineers themselves, they suffered British wrath most immediately; thousands were degraded, flogged and summarily hanged. Grisliest of all were the fates of mutineers tied to cannon barrels and blasted into hash.
Yet what did it say about the new British Raj that even this, its most vicious punishment, had been borrowed from the Mughals? For whatever impact the Indian Mutiny made on the British imagination, it could not entirely eradicate those earlier traditions on which imperial rule had been based. In post-mutiny India, legacies of fusion would persist alongside those of trauma, like the memorial plaques in St James's Church.
The lotus flower appeared in legends pertaining to Ancient India. It played an important part in Ancient Indian religion. The flower is generally pink or white in color, and the Lotus plant is the only plant it the world to flower and fruit simultaneously. It's hard to imagine that something of such breathtaking beauty can emerge from the depths of a muddy swamp. Growing from the mud at the bottom of a pond or a swamp, the wondrous Lotus flower emerges to the top with 15 or more spreading oval petals and a strange seedcase at its center.

Lotus Flower Symbol
The Lotus is an important flower in a lot of religions and theosophically is a much-revered flower and is therefore subjected to endless symbolic interpretation by different cultures. However due to its «spontaneous» generation, it is accepted all over the world as a symbol of purity and divine birth. It is also said to represent one of the core principles of Hindu philosophy, that of birth and rebirth because it closes its petals and sinks underwater every night only to rise again at dawn. Because its seed already has within it perfectly formed embryo leaves and whole plantlets - even to the flowers - this water lily symbolizes the recalling of the universe from the Eternal at the beginning of a great solar cycle. The lotus is called «the child of the Universe bearing the likeness of its mother in its bosom» by Madame H.P.Blavatsky. The Lotus flower is also used for the different flower tattoos and is widely prevelent nowadays.
From some accounts, after the occurrence of the first «OM», «a wondrous golden lotus, resplendent as the sun, floated upon the lonely water» which was the ocean. The three great gods of Hindu tradition, Vishnu, Brahma and Shiva emerged from the «OM» and are represented as being seated on lotus seats. Vishnu's consort Lakshmi was born out of the ocean on a White lotus which became her symbol. She is the goddess of wealth and wisdom and is omnipresent just as Vishnu is all pervading.
If we look at Buddhism, it is said that on the day that Gautam Buddha was born, a lotus flower sprang up from the earth. As one who achieved enlightenment on earth, the Buddha was given the honor of a lotus throne because the lotus is a symbol of «dwija» or twice born.

Lotus Flower In Popular Culture
Lotus flower jewelry is quiet a rage in the western world today. Wearing pendants and earrings shaped like the Lotus is considered an epitome of style and elegance. Blue emeralds are molded into jewelry which resembles the blue lotus flower. Lotus flower tattoo's are especially designed and advertised these days to draw in younger crowds. However, it does sadden one a bit to see that amongst all this commercialization, the true origin, meaning and significance of this enigmatic flower are set to become obsolete!
Among the several kinds of flowers grown in the garden, only a few are natives of our country. The important flowers which are natives of India and which are under cultivation in different parts of the world are orchids, rhododendrons, musk rose (Rosa moschata), begonia, balsam (Immpatiens balsamina), globe amaranth(Gomphrena Globosa), gloriosa lily (Gloriosa superba), foxtail lily (Eremerus himalicus), primula (Primuladenticulata P.rosea), blue poppy (Meconopsis), lotus (Nelumbo nucifera), water lily Nymphae spp.), clematis (Clematis Montana- a climber) and the wild tulip of the Himalayas (Tulipa stellata and T. aitchisonii). Of these, only the lotus has been mentioned in the ancient Sanskrit scripture of the Vedic times. Mention of the lotus was also made by Kalidasa in his play Shakuntala. The poet Asvaghosa (A.D.100) also mentions the lotus in his Buddha Charita. According to Dr. M. S. Randhawa, the flowering trees were commonly grown in the gardens in the Hindu-Buddhist periods and the native annual herbaceous plants were perhaps not cultivated.
Gardening has been popular in India from ancient times. In the Ramayana, mention is made of the Ashokavana, in which Sita was held captive. 'Ashoka trees (Saraca indica) were predominant in this garden. A description of the layout of gardens and parks and artificial lakes in the city of Indraprastha is given in the Sabha-Parva of the Mahaharata. Several trees, such as Saraca indica, Terminalia arjuna, Mesua ferrea, Ficus benghalensis, F. religiosa, Michelia champaka, Butea monosperma and Casia fistula, have been mentioned in the Ramayana. Almost all of them have also been described in the Mahabharata. The association of Lord Krishna with the Kadamba tree (Anthocephalus indicus) is well known. In the ancient Sanskrit work of Panini in Ashtadhyayi, several beautiful trees are mentioned, such as Ficus (F. religiosa, F. benghalensis, F. infectora), Butea monosperma, Prosopis spcigera Kadamba and a few others. The poet Asvaghosa described the Nandanavana in which Siddhartha Gauthama saw flowering trees and lotuses. During the Buddhist period, gardens were laid out around the monasteries and stupas and there were beautiful gardens in Nalanda and Taxila. It is said that Lord Buddha was born under a tree in a garden, the pipal. The Bodhi tree under which The Buddha attained nirvna, is sacred to the Buddhists.
The planting of roadside avenue trees (margeshuvriksha) was an important contribution of the king Ashoka (233 B.C.). Similarly, Shudraka (100 B.C.) has also given an account of gardens and flowers in the Mrichhakatikam. Kalidasa (about 57 B.C.) in his play Shakuntala has mentioned the pleasure garden having a bower of the madhavi creeper (Hiptage madablota) and several beautiful trees like Ashoka (Saraca indica), Kadamba (Anthocephalus indicus), Arjuna (Terminalia arjuna) Vakula (Mimusops elengi), Palasha (Butea monosperma), Parijata (Nyctanthes arbor-tristis) and Kavidara (Bauhinia varieagata).
The art of gardening has been described by Saragadhara (A.D. 1300) in his Upavana Vinoda,and Sarangadhara Paddhati, wherein mention is also made of some trees. Vatsyayana (A.D. 300-400) has also rendered interesting accounts of four kinds of gardens, namely, pramadodyan, udyan, vrikshavatika and nandanavana. Classical Sanskrit literature, as mentioned above, as well as the flower and tree motifs delineated in old sculptures and the architecture of Mathura (Kanishka period A.D. 78-101), Bharhut, Sanchi and several others and displayed in the Ajanta frescoes (A.D. 100-600) bear testimony to the importance of gardening and flowers in Indian culture.
The important native ornamental flowering trees, many of which have been mentioned in ancient literature are Kachnar (Bauhinia variegata), Amaltas (Cassia fistula), Pink cassia (Cassia nodosa) Dhak or Flame of the Forest (Butea Frondosa), Indian coral tree (Erythrina blakei, Pride of India (Lagerstroemia flos-reginae, L. thorelli), Lal Lasora or Scarlet Cordia (Cordia sebestena), Yellow silk cotton (Cochlospermum gossypium), Karanj (Pongamia glabra), Rugtora or Wavy-leafed Tecomella (Tecomella undulata), tulip tree or Bhendi (Thespesia populnae), Crataeva roxburghii, Sterculia colorata, chalta (Dillenia indica), Ashoka,Kadamba and rhododendrons.
Among the native shrubs and climbers, the most important ones are the jasmine (Jasminum sambac, J. pubescens, J. auriculatum, J. humile, J. officinale, J. grandiflora) and madhavi (Hiptage medablota), which have been mentioned by Kalidasa in his plays.The other indigenous species are Bauhinia acuminata, Mussaenda frondosa, Ixora spp. (I. coccinae, I. parviflora, I. barbata, I. undulata) Hamiltonia sauveolens, Holmskioldia sanguinea, Clerodendron inerme, Crossandra ininfundibuliformis, Plumbago rosea, Plumbago zeylancia, Tabernaemontana coronaria, Trachelospermum fragrans, Osmanthus fragrans, Passiflora leschenaulti, Clitoria ternatea, Porana paniculata, Glorosia superba and Clemantis Montana.
Like many crop plants, several of the flowers, particularly the herbaceous annuals, biennials and perennials and bulbous flowers grown in our country, have been introduced from abroad. These exotic flowers have come from Europe, America, Africa, China, Japan and other countries. How these exotic flowers were introduced in India has not been properly recorded. However, it can be said that most of the exotic flowers were introduced during the Mughal and British periods. With the renaissance of gardening in India by the Mughal emperors beginning with Babur, many plant species were brought by them from Persia and Central Asia where herbaceous and bulbous flowers were already under cultivation. Many of these have been mentioned in autobiographies and other books written during those days. Besides, in the Mughal paintings also we find illustrations of many flowers. These have also been used to illustrate the borders of those paintings. In the book Bagh-I-wafa, the emperor Babur has presented a description of gardening in India. The Mughal emperors introduced several types of plants, many of which were planted in Kashmir where the climate was more suitable for the growth of such plants than that of the plains. The species brought by them included the famous Chinar tree, which is the most beautiful tree in Kashmir even today, besides roses, carnations, irises, narcissuses, daffodils, lilies, tulips and others. The rose was introduced into our country via the port of Bussorah by Babur in the year 1526 or so. Jehangir and Nurjehan were ardent lovers of the rose and encouraged rose growing in gardens.
Later during the British period many species were introduced mainly by Englishmen and the Portugese. These were mostly brought in by missionaries and priests, civil servants and individual amateur gardeners. One of the important missionaries who introduced a number of exotic plants was Dr. Firminger, an Englishman, who wrote a book on gardening, giving descriptions of various species of flowers in the year 1863. The book entitled «Firminger's Manual of Gardening in India» is an authoritative reference book on ornamental flowering plants even today.
Several of our native flowers, particularly the attractive flora of the Himalayas including many alpine species, have been introduced in other countries. During the early British period in India, when some famous gardens were being developed in Great Britain, several plant collectors came to our country in search of beautiful wild flowers. The wealth of Himalayan flora was taken to England in the early part of this century. One of these important plant collectors was Frank Kingdon-ward, who visited Assam and Burma about five to seven times during the years 1938 to 1956. He discovered the blue poppy (Meconopsis) for the first time. Ludlow and Sheriff went to Kashmir during the year 1939-1941 besides visiting other areas like Tibet and Bhutan. There were similar expeditions to Nepal also. Several other botanists and plant hunters also came from many other European countries and the USA to our country in search of wild ornamental flowers. As a result of these plant collections, many wild flowers including many alpines like several species of Primula, Orchids, Aconitum, Androsace, Delphinium ,Erigeron, Anemone, Aquilegia, Aster, Bergenia, Campanula, Corydalis, Gentiana, Geum, Saxifraga, Allium, Fritillaria, Lilium, Iris, Meconopsis, Paeonia, Clematis, Cornus, Prunus, Rhododendrons, Sorbus, Viburnum and several others were introduced from their wild habitats in India into England and other European countries. Some of these, like the Blue poppy (Meconopsis), Clematis Montana, many species of orchids, rhododendrons and primula, balsam, begonia, foxtail lily (Eremurus himalaicus), gloriosa lily (Gloriosa superba, musk rose (Rosa moschata) etc, are now widely grown in gardens in several parts of the world. Several species of orchids and rhododendrons, which are native of India, have been extensively used in breeding new varieties and hybrids. Most of the plants species introduced from India into Great Britain are being maintained in the Kew and Edinburgh Botanic Gardens. Unfortunately many of us in India are not aware of our rich heritage of native flowers.

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Vedic Culture
Vedic civilization is the earliest civilization in Indian history of which we have written records that we understand. It is named after the Vedas, the early literature of the Hindu people. The Vedic Civilization flourished along the river Saraswati, in a region that now consists of the modern Indian states of Haryana and Punjab. The Vedic texts have astronomical dates, that some have claimed, go back to the 5-th millennium BC. The use of Vedic Sanskrit continued up to the 6th century BC. Vedic is synonymous with Aryans and Hinduism, which is another name for religious and spiritual thought that has evolved from the Vedas.
The early Aryans: Unfortunately, the origin of the Saraswati Valley civilization (Vedic culture) and its relation to the Indus Valley civilization remain hazy. The timeline of Vedic civilization is 4500 BC-1800 BC while that of Indus valley civilization is 3300 BC-1800 BC. The texts describe a geography that some believe to be north India. The greatest river of the Rigveda was Saraswati, now dry and identified with Ghaggar, a seasonal river. It is believed that this river ceased to reach the Arabian Sea by about 1900 BC. Now, a dry river bed, that seems to fit the description of the Saraswati River, has been detected by satellite imagery. It begins in the modern Indian state of Uttaranchal and passing through Haryana, Punjab, and Rajasthan, reaches the Arabian Sea in Gujarat. Our knowledge of the early Aryans comes from the Rigveda, the earliest of the Vedas.
Political organization: The grama (village), vis and jana were political units of the early Aryans. A vis was probably a subdivision of a jana and a grama was probably a smaller unit than the other two. The leader of a grama was called gramani and that of a vis was called vispati. Another unit was the gana whose head was a jyeshta (elder). The rashtra (state) was governed by a rajan (king). The king is often referred to as gopa (protector) and samrat (supreme ruler). He governed the people with their consent and approval. It is possible that he was sometimes elected. The sabha and samiti were popular councils. The main duty of the king was to protect the tribe. He was aided by two functionaries, the purohita (chaplain) and the senani (army chief; sena: army). The former not only gave advice to the ruler but also practiced spells and charms for success in war. Soldiers on foot (patti) and on chariots (rathins), armed with bow and arrow were common. The king employed spasa (spies) and dutas (messengers). He often got a ceremonial gift, bali, from the people.
Society and economy: Rig Vedic society was characterized by a nomadic lifestyle with cattle rearing being the chief occupation. The Aryans kept hordes of cattle and cows were held in high esteem. Milk was an important part of the diet. Agriculture was equally important and went hand in hand with cattle rearing. It grew more prominent with time as the community settled down. The cow was also the standard unit of barter; coins were not used in this period. Families were patrilineal, and people prayed for abundance of sons. Education of women was not neglected, and some even composed Rig Vedic hymns. Marriage for love as well as for money was known. The concept of caste and hereditary nature of profession was unknown to the early Aryans. The food of the early Aryans consisted of parched grain and cakes, milk and milk products, and fruits and vegetables. Consumption of meat was common. A passage in the Rig Veda describes how to apportion the meat of a sacrificed horse. It must be borne in mind that vegetarianism took firm root in India only after the rise of Buddhism in the sixth century BC.

Literature and Religion
Vedic or Hindu literature consists primarily of the Vedas; but also includes Shruti and various Smriti texts. The Vedic rites were meant to help the participant transform; this was primarily accomplished via sacrifices (such as the agnihotra).
Astronomical references in the Vedas help provide some broad approximations that help date the beginning of the tradition. Due to the precession of the equinoxes, the seasons shift with relation to the fixed zodiac at a rate of about a month every two thousand years. Some Vedic notices mark the beginning of the year at the vernal equinox in Orion; this was the case around 4500 BC.
The rishis saw the universe as going through unceasing change in a cycle of birth and death, free and yet, paradoxically, governed by order. This order was reflected in the bandhu (connections) between the planets, the elements of the body, and the mind. At the deepest level, the whole universe was bound to, and reflected in, the individual consciousness.
The place of sacrifice represents the cosmos. The three fires used stand for the three divisions of space. The course of the sacrifice represents the year, and all such ritual forms part of continuing annual performances. The rite culminates in the ritual rebirth of the yajamana (sacrificer), which signifies the regeneration of his universe. It is sacred theatre, built upon paradoxes of reality, where symbolic deaths of animals and humans, including the yajamana himself, may be enacted.
The Vedic gods represent the cognitive centers of the self. Vedic science is the science of consciousness. These have evolved into the Hindu paths of Yoga and Vedanta, which is a religious path that is the 'essence' of the Vedas.
The Vedic pantheon is considered to consist of thirty-three different gods, which are placed, in groups of eleven, into one of the three different categories: atmospheric, terrestrial, or celestial, each of which has its own area of responsibility. But just because a god is in one category does not mean that it is completely different from a god from another category; for sometimes a god from one category will have some of the same qualities of a god from another category. This is because the Vedic system is recursive. It has developed into a broader group but it is also seen in Vedic philosophy that they are manifestations of one divine ground known as Brahman. This thought of unity is expressed severally in Vedic texts.
The categories of the gods are: 1) Agni, terrestrial; 2) Indra, atmospheric; and 3) Surya or Vishnu, celestial that mirrors the body, prana, and atman division of the individual. Since one aspires to reach the inner being through the prana (atmosphere), many Vedic hymns extol Indra.
The Vedic or Hindu religion presents a unitary view of the universe with God seen as immanent and transcendent in the forms of Ishvara and Brahman, respectively. Brahman is projected into various deities in the human mind. The main deities were Indra, Varuna, Surya (the Sun), Mitra, Vayu, Agni and Soma. Goddesses included Prithvi, Aditi, Ushas and Saraswati. Deities were not viewed as all-powerful. The relationship between the devotee and the deity was one of transaction. Each deity had a specific role; at any given point, a particular deity was considered superior to the others.
The mode of worship was performance of sacrifices and chanting of verses. The priests helped the common man in performing rituals. People prayed for abundance of children, cattle and wealth.
Later Vedic period: The transition from the early to the later Vedic period was marked by the emergence of agriculture as the dominant economic activity and a corresponding decline in the significance of cattle rearing. Several changes went hand in hand with this. For instance, several large kingdoms arose because of the increasing importance of land and its protection.
Kingdoms: Several small kingdoms merged to form a few large ones which were often at war with each other. 16 mahajanapadas (great kingdoms) are referred to in some of the literature. By this time the Aryan tribes had spread from their original home in the west to much of the east and the south. The power of the king greatly increased. Rulers gave themselves titles like ekarat (the one ruler), sarvabhumi (ruler of all the earth) and chakravartin (protector of land). Note that in early Vedic times he was called gopa, protector of cows. The kings performed sacrifices like rajasuya, (royal consecration) vajapeya (drink of strength) and ashvamedha (horse sacrifice). The coronation ceremony was a major social occasion. Several functionaries came into being in addition to the purohita and the senani of earlier times. The participation of the people in the activities of the government decreased.
Society: The concept of varna and the rules of marriage became rigid, but not yet watertight. The status of the Brahmanas and Kshatriyas increased greatly. To legitimize their position and the increase their power, the Brahmanas proliferated a large number of sacrifices, developed extreme specialization, and also restricted social mobility. The proper enunciation of verses was considered essential for prosperity and success in war. Kshatriyas amassed wealth, and commissioned the performance of sacrifices. Many rituals emerged to strengthen the alliance between these two groups. But the varna system in India has remained fluid.

Mahabharat
History of Haryana - Mahabharat War, 900 BC approximately
Mahabharat, (or Mahabharata as it is known in English), is the longest poem in the world, made up of 220,000 lines divided into 18 sections. It was written in Sanskrit, the ancient sacred language of India and it tells the story of a great battle that occurred about 3000 years back. It was on the banks of river Saraswati that saint Ved Vyas wrote Mahabharat, approximately in 900 BC. Lord Krishna preached «Bhagvad Gita», the gospel of duty, to Arjun at the on set of the great battle of Mahabharat. Since then, this profound philosophy of the supremacy of duty has became the foundation of Hinduism, Indian culture and thought. The Mahabharat knows Haryana as «Bahudhhanyaka» - The land of plentiful grains, and «Bahudhana» - The land of immense riches.
Dhritarashter and Pandu were born to Bhisham's brothers. Dhritarashter was born blind and though the elder, he had to forfeit his claim to the throne due to this physical defect. Pandu became king. Of the two brothers Dhritarashter married Gandhari, whereas Pandu, the younger had two wives, Kunti and Madri. Gandhari was so devoted to her husband that she bandaged her eyes, not to enjoy anything that she could not share with her royal husband, and thus remained voluntarily blind for life. She became the mother of the Kouravs, 100 in total, whereas Kunti got three sons and Madri two.
One day while hunting, Pandu accidentally killed the wife of a sage, who got enraged and cursed Pandu that if ever he had intercourse with a woman, he would die instantly. Pandu renounced his crown to become a hermit and went to the jungle with his two wives, Kunti and Madri. But one day, Pandu couldn't resist himself and had intercourse with Madri and thus died. Madri immolated herself and walked into her husband's funeral fire leaving behind her two sons Nakul and Sahadev in custody of Kunti who already had three sons Yudhishthir, Bheem and Arjun. On Pandu's death Dhritarashter became the king and the five sons of Pandu, known as the Pandavs grew up in the guardianship of Kunti. The five Pandav princes were educated along with Kourav boys under the supervision of Bhisham and the patronage of Dhritarashter. Drone, though a Brahmin was a very skilful and efficient teacher, who taught them the art of archery and the various techniques of warfare.
Yudhishthir, the eldest of the Pandavs, was so righteous that he gained the name Dharamputr. Bheem was a giant in physical strength. Arjun was handsome and the most skilful archer. Dharamputr was the beloved of the people and being the eldest among the 105 princes, was naturally, and by his right too, the heir to the throne. Duryodhan, the eldest of the Kouravs, however was jealous of the Pandavs and tried every means to destroy them. When Yudhishthir was proclaimed king, Duryodhan could not sit quiet and watch. Dhritarashter loved all the 105 princes alike, and there was no partiality in his mind between his own sons and the nephews, the Pandavs. The great blind royal father, came under the bad influence of Duryodhan and, though directly not an evil-doer, was in sympathy with his son's disappointments and sorrows.
Duryodhan's plan to kill the Pandavs cunningly giving poison to Bheem, burning down the lac-house etc., failed miserably. Bheem was strong enough to digest the poison. The Pandavs were warned in time by their uncle Vidur and so in the darkness of the night the five brothers along with their mother escaped into the jungle from the burning lac-house. After their miraculous escape from the lac-house, they did not return to the palace. They roamed about in the guise of Brahmins with their mother. Every one including the Kouravs believed them to be dead.
During that time, they heard of the Swayamvara of Droupadi. The qualification to marry her lay in the extraordinary skill of archery in hitting a moving target. Arjun easily won. Everybody congratulated the winner, and discovered that it was Arjun. Thus the Pandavs were found out, He took his bride to their hut and called to his mother to come outside and see what he had brought. Instead of doing so, she answered back «My dear children, whatever it be, you share it among yourselves». Therefore, Droupadi became the common wife of all the five Pandavs. Krishna, who was also present, at the marriage ceremony became a great friend of the Pandavs from then onwards. On Bhisham's advice, the kingdom was divided into two parts. Naturally the better half was taken away by the Kouravs. Still, the others built a wonderful city in their own half and called it Indraprastha. Duryodhan watching the increasing prosperity of the Pandavs and could contain himself no longer. He openly challenged Dharamputr for a game of dice, Sakuni, deceit in human form, was the uncle of the Kouravs. He played for them. Inevitably Dharamputr lost everything - his kingdom, his brothers and also his wife.
Not satisfied with this gain, Duryodhan tried to insult Droupadi in public. By Lord Krishna's grace, nothing disastrous happened. Dhritarashter, fearing that this might bring unforeseen calamities begged Droupadi to take whatever she wanted. She asked for the freedom of her husbands. It was granted. Dhritarashter due to his excessive love for the eldest son was blind to what is right and what is wrong. So again Duryodhan invited Dharamputr for another game of dice, and the bet was that the losers would live in the forest for 13 years without any claim to the kingdom, the last year however to be spent incognito. But if in the thirteenth year, they were detected, again a round of 13 years' exile; and this would go on forever.
Dharamputr lost again. During the twelve years in the forests, the Pandavs visited many holy places. They had many interesting adventures at this time. One of them led to Hanuman's friendship and grace. Arjun is called Kapidhvaja as he keeps on his flag the emblem of Hanuman. Krishna visited them now and then. Arjun, at the advice of Vyasa, practiced penance, propitiated Siva and got from Him the mighty weapon, the Pasupatastra. He propitiated also the other gods lndra, Agni, Varuna and others and got from all of them very powerful weapons. Thus the twelve years were not wasted but spent in securing the divine weapons, which would become useful later on.
In the 13-th year, hiding all their weapons in the hollow of a tree in a burial ground, all the Pandavs with Droupadi went to the palace of the king of the Viratas and stayed there as servants. Duryodhan was making frantic efforts to discover them. When he heard about the strange murder of Kichaka the brother-in-law of the king, he concluded that the Pandavs must be in the Virata country. So the Kouravs attacked the Viratas, with apparent purpose of carrying away its cattle-wealth. Of course the Pandavs took part in the battle, but when they were recognized as Pandavs the time limit of thirteen years had already passed.
Dharamputr was fond of peace, and was ever against any quarrel, much less war. So he sent Krishna as a messenger to Hastinapura to claim his kingdom back from Duryodhan. But Duryodhan had by this time come to regard Indraprastha as his own. He not only refused to give their kingdom back, but refused to give even 5 houses for the five brothers to live! War had to be declared. This is the great war fought at Kurukshetra to decide the right of claim. The hundred Kouravs, Bhisham, Drone, Asvathama, etc., were on one side and the Pandavs, Krishna, Drupada, etc., were on the other. Krishna did not actually fight. He was the charioteer of Arjun and hence He is called Parthasarathy. Krishna was very impartial. He gave his army to the Kouravs and himself offered to serve the Pandavs. The Kourav and the Pandav armies arrayed themselves for the war. The Kouravs planned their attacks under the supervision of Bhisham, and under Bheem's management the Pandava army marched into formation. This is the point at which Arjun has second thoughts about fighting in the battle. Krishna gives Arjun good advise that brings back his war-spirit. This advice is known as: The Bhagvad-Gita.
All the Kourav princes died in this battle, and Yudhishthir became king. He continued to reign until he felt that he had completed his life's work. Then he renounced the throne and set out for heaven with the other Pandavs and their wife, Droupadi. With them also went a dog which represented Dharma, the god of duty and moral law. After more adventures, the Pandavs were finally united in heaven.
This story, which forms the main theme of the Mahabharat, makes up only about a quarter of the poem. The Mahabharat contains many other popular stories, including the tales of Nala and Damayanti, Savitri and Satyawan, Rama, and Shakuntala. The battle of Kurukshetra offers an opportunity to discuss military strategy, there is also a mention of a board game Chaturanga, from which the modern day Chess originated. But the underlying theme of the Mahabharat concerns moral duty and right conduct. The long and complex dispute that divides the royal family of Bharat affords an opportunity to explain the duties and conduct expected of a king. It also shows the ideals of behavior for subjects, soldiers, religious hermits, and people suffering misfortune.
Sage Ved Vyasa is traditionally regarded as the author of the Mahabharat, but he is more likely to have been its compiler. The epic seems to be a collection of writings by several authors who lived at various times. The oldest parts are probably about 3,000 years old, while others can be traced to as late as AD 500. The importance of Krishna as the main god of this epic developed in Hindu thought between 200 BC and AD 200. As a result, the Mahabharat can be used to trace the spread and development of Vaishnavite thought in Hinduism. The god Vishnu became a very personal deity for his worshippers through his appearance as Krishna, the adviser and friend of Prince Arjun in the Mahabharat. About 1,300 greatly varying manuscripts of the Mahabharat survive today. All of them show the poem in its later form because the earliest of them goes back only to the 1400's.
The most famous addition to the Mahabharat is the Bhagvad-Gita. It occurs in the sixth book and is now the most widely recognized of Hinduism's sacred texts. The Bhagavad Gita tells how Arjun, the third of the Pandav princes, has misgivings about whether he should be fighting his cousins, the Kouravs. Krishna, speaking with the authority of the god Vishnu, persuades him that his action is just, and then Arjun's military skill becomes a deciding factor in the ensuing Pandav victory. The teachings of the Bhagavad-Gita are fundamental to Hinduism.

Harshvardhan
History of Haryana - Harshvardhan (606-647 AD)
After the downfall of the Gupta Empire in the middle of the sixth century AD, North India was again split into several independent kingdoms. The Huns established their supremacy over the Punjab and certain other parts of Central India. The northern and western regions of India passed into the hands of a dozen or more feudatories. Gradually, one of them, Prabhakar Vardhana, the ruler of Thanesar, who belonged to the Pushabhukti family, extended his control over all other feudatories.
Prabhakar Vardhan was the first king of the Vardhan dynasty with his capital at Thanesar now a small town in the vicinity of Kurukshetra in the state of Haryana nearly 150 km. from Delhi. After his death in A.D. 606, his eldest son, RajyaVardhan, ascended the throne. He was killed in a battle which he won against Devagupta who had killed Grahavarman, the husband of his sister Rajyashri and usurped the throne of Kannauj.
Harsha ascended the throne at the age of 16. Though quite a young man, he proved himself a great conqueror and an able administrator. After his accession, Harsha first rescued his sister just as she was going to commit Sati. At the request of his sister, he united the two kingdoms of Thanesar (Kurukshetra) and Kannauj and transferred his capital from Thanesar to Kannauj. Harsha waged many wars. he defeated Sasank of Bengal. He also brought the five Indies i.e. Eastern Panjab (present day Haryana), Kannauj, Bengal, Bihar and Orissa under his control. He conquered Dhruvasena of Gujarat. He also conquered Ganjam, a part of the modern Orissa State.
His empire included territories of distant feudal kings too. Harsha governed his empire on the same lines a the Guptas. The kings he conquered paid him revenue and sent soldiers when he was fighting war. They accepted his sovereignty, but remained rulers over their own kingdoms. Harsha's ambition of extending his power to the Deccan and southern India were stopped by Pulakesin II, the Chalukya king of Vatapi in northern Mysore.
His reign is comparatively well-documented, thanks to his court poet Bana and Hieun Tsang. Bana composed an account of Harsha's rise to power in «Harshacharita». Hieun Tsang was a Chinese Buddhist pilgrim who came to India during this time to collect Buddhist literature and to visit places connected with Buddhism. He wrote a full description of his journey in his book «SI-YU-KI». Harsha died in the year 647 AD. He ruled over India for 41 years. He was the last empire builder of ancient India. Harsha supported the development of philosophy and literature and wrote three well-known plays - Nagananda, Ratnavali and Priyadarsika.
After Harsha's death, apparently without any heirs, his empire died with him. The kingdom disintegrated rapidly into small states. The succeeding period is very obscure and badly documented, but it marks the culmination of a process which had begun with the invasion of the Hunas in the last years of the Gupta empire. Meanwhile, the kingdoms of the Deccan and the south became powerful.

«There is a region called Haryana which is like a heaven on earth» - Vikrami Samwat, 1385
Haryana became a state of India on November 1, 1966. The present day Haryana is the region where, along the banks of the River Saraswati, the Vedic Civilization began and matured. It was here that the Vedas were written, as the Aryans chanted their sacred Mantras. Replete with myths and legends, Haryana's 5000 year old history is steeped in glory. It was here that Lord Krishna preached Bhagvad-Gita at the start of the battle of Mahabharat. It was on this soil that saint Ved Vyas wrote Mahabharat in Sanskrit. Before the Mahabharat war, a battle of ten kings took place in the Kurukshetra region in the Saraswati valley. But it was the Mahabharat War, approximately in 900 BC, which gave to the region worldwide fame. Mahabharat knows Haryana as Bahudhhanyaka, land of plentiful grains and Bahudhana, the land of immense riches. The word Hariana, occurs in a 1328 AD Sanskrit inscription kept in the Delhi Museum, which refers to the Haryana region as The heaven on earth.
Excavations of various archeological sites in Haryana, like Naurangabad and Mittathal in Bhiwani, Kunal in Fatehbad, Agroha near Hissar, Rakhi Garhi (Rakhigarhi) in Jind, Sites in Rukhi (Rohtak) and Banawali in Sirsa have evidence of pre-Harappan and Harappan culture. Findings of pottery, sculpture and jewellery in sites at Pehowa, Kurukshetra, Tilpat and Panipat have proved the historicity of the Mahabharat war. These places are mentioned in the Mahabharat as Prithudaka (Pehowa), Tilprastha (Tilput), Panprastha (Panipat) and Sonprastha (Sonipat.
Haryana has been the scene of many wars because of it being «The Gateway of North India». As years rolled by, successive streams of Huns, Turks and the Afghans invaded India and decisive battles were fought on this land. After the downfall of the Gupta empire in the middle of 6th century AD north India was again split into several kingdoms. The Huns established their supremacy over the Punjab. It was after this period that one of the greatest King of ancient India, Harshvardhan began his rule. He became the King of Thanesar (Kurukshetra) in 606 AD, and later went on to rule the most of north India. In the 14-th century, the Tomar kings led an army through this region to Delhi.
Later the Mughal, Babur, defeated the Lodhis in the first battle of Panipat in the year 1526. Another decisive battle was fought in Panipat in 1556, establishing the reign of the Mughals for centuries to come. Taking advantage of Humayun's death, Hemu had marched to Agra and Delhi and occupied it without difficulty. In response, Bairam Khan (Akbar's guardian) marched towards Delhi. Both the armies clashed in the second battle of Panipat. Hemu was in a winning position when a stray arrow struck him in the eye. He fell unconscious causing panic among his troops. The tide of the battle turned and the Mughals won the battle. Towards the middle of the 18th century, the Marathas had control over Haryana. The intrusion of Ahmed Shah Durrani in India, culminated in the third battle of Panipat in 1761. Marathas' defeat in this battle marked the end of their ascendancy and the decline of the Mughal Empire, leading to the advent of the British rule.
In 1857, the people of Haryana joined the Indian leaders in the 1857 Revolt against the British Government. By the end of June, 1857, most of the present Haryana region was liberated from the British. But the British managed to put down the rebellion in November, 1857 by bringing in additional forces from outside the area.
Indian history is replete with tales of heroism of the highest order and in this context, the historic significance of the battles of Panipat and Kurukshetra in Haryana cannot be ignored by any means. The sacrifices of Haryana's brave soldiers have played a very important role in maintaining the territorial and sovereign integrity of our nation. The new state which emerged as a separate political entity of the Indian Union on November 1, 1966, is considered to be the cradle of rich Indian cultural heritage. In terms of economic development too, Haryana has come a long way during the few past years.

History of Haryana - First Battle of Panipat (1526 AD)

The first Battle of Panipat gave a death blow to the Lodhi empire and marked the end of the Delhi Sultanate's rule in India. It led to the establishment of the Mughal Empire in India. Mongol prince Zahir-ud-Din Muhammad, known as Babur, had promised to help Daulat Khan Lodhi, Governor of Lahore, to fight the Sultan of Delhi Ibrahim Lodhi in 1523 and made many raids into Punjab. Babur, after occupying the whole of Panjab by 1525 AD, marched towards Delhi. In November 1525 he set out to meet the Sultan of Delhi. Passage of Indus took place on 15th December. Babur had about 12,000 soldiers. Crossing Sutluj at Roper and reached Ambala without meeting any resistance. On April 1st Babur reached Panipat. It was barren wasteland dry and naked with few thorny bushes. Rumors came that Sultan was coming with an army of 100,000 and 1000 war elephants. The Afghan Sultan of Delhi, Ibrahim Lodhi advanced from Delhi to meet the invader. Babur had a strong artillery which was effectively pressed into service.
The battle started at six in the morning. Sultan Ibrahim Lodhi advanced rapidly . At about 400 yards Babur's Cannons opened fire, noise and smoke from the artillery terrified the Afghans and the attack lost momentum. Seizing the movement Babur sent out his flanking columns to envelop the Sultan's army. Here the Afghans met for the first time the real weapon of Mongols «Turko-Mongol Bow». Its superiority lay in the fact that it was the weapon of the nobles, of the finest warriors. Such a bow in the hands of a Mongol warrior would shoot three times as rapidly as musket and could kill at 200 yards.
Attacked from 3 sides the Afghans jammed into each other. Elephants hearing noise of cannon at close range ran wildly out of control. Ibrahim Lodhi and about 6000 of his troops were involved in actual fighting. Most of his army stretching behind up to a mile never saw action. Battle ended in about 3 hours with the death of Ibrahim Lodhi who was at forefront.
And in place where fighting had been the fiercest, among the heap of Mongols slain of his sword, lay the vain but courageous Sultan Ibrahim Lodhi. His head was cut off and taken to Babur. Ibrahim Lodhi's tomb is still present in Panipat. When afghans fled they left 20,000 dead and wounded. Losses to Babur's army were heavy 4000 of his troops were killed or wounded. Had Sultan Ibrahim survived another hour of fighting he would have won, as Babur had no reserves and his troops were rapidly tiring in Indian mid-day sun. Babur observes in his autobiography, «The mighty army of Delhi was laid in the dust in the course of half a day». In the words of Rushbrook Williams, «If there was one single material factor, which more than any other conduced to his ultimate triumph in Hindustan, it was his powerful artillery». The elephants trampled their own soldiers after being frightened away by the explosion of gunpowder.
Two weeks later the victorious Babur entered Agra where he was presented with the famous diamond «Koh-i-noor». Babur celebrated his victory in a lavish manner and occupied Delhi and Agra.

Second Battle of Panipat (1556 AD)

On 24-th January 1556 AD Mughal ruler Humayun slipped while climbing down the steps of his library and fell to his death. His son Akbar was only thirteen years old when he ascended the throne. At the time of Akbar's accession to the throne, the Mughal rule was confined to Kabul, Kandhahar, and parts of Punjab and Delhi. Akbar was then campaigning in Punjab with his chief minister Bairam Khan. On February 14, 1556, in a garden at Kalanaur, Akbar was enthroned as emperor. Hemu (Hemchandra) was a military chief of the Afghan King Muhammad Adil Shah who had established himself at Chunar and was seeking to expel the Mughals from India. Taking advantage of Humayun's death, Hemu marched to Agra and Delhi in October and occupied it without difficulty, and became the ruler under the title 'Raja Vikramaditya'.
To counter this, Bairam Khan (Akbar's guardian) marched towards Delhi. On November 5 both the armies met at Panipat. Hemu with a large army including 1,500 war elephants had initial success. There was a pitched battle and Hemu was on a winning spree when a stray arrow struck him in the eye. He fell unconscious. As in many other battles, the loss of the leader caused panic among the troops and turned the tide of the battle. The Mughals won the battle. Shah Quli Khan captured the Hawai elephant with its prize occupant, and took it directly to Akbar. Hemu was brought unconscious before Bairam and Akbar. Bairam pleaded Akbar to perform the holy duty of slaying the infidel and earn the Islamic holy title of 'Ghazi'. Among much self-congratulation Akbar then severed the head of unconscious Hemu with his saber.
Some historians claim that Akbar did not kill Hemu himself, but just touched the infidel's head with his sword and his associates finished the gory «holy» work. After the battle Hemu's head was sent to Kabul as a sign of victory to the ladies of Humayun's harem, and Hemu's torso was sent to Delhi for exposure on a gibbet. Iskandar Khan chased the Hemu's fleeing army and captured 1500 elephants and a large contingent. Hemu's wife escaped from Delhi with the treasure and Pir Mohammad Khan's troops chased her caravan without success. There was a great slaughter of those who were captured and in keeping with the custom of his ancestors, Akbar had a victory pillar built with their heads. This battle, known as Second Battle of Panipat was an epoch-making event in the history of India as it resulted in re-establishment of the Mughal empire in India.

History of Haryana - Battle of Karnal 1739 AD

February 24, 1739, battle between the forces of Nadir Shah, an Iranian adventurer, and Muhammad Shah, the Mughal emperor, at Karnal, 125 km north of Delhi; the Mughals suffered a decisive defeat. Nadir led about 55,000 troops, and Muhammad 15,000, but both sides, especially the Indian, had large numbers of noncombatants. Nadir Shah had become the ruler of Persia by deposing the King in 1732.
Nadir began his invasion in 1738 AD by pursuing fugitives from Kandhahar to Mughal-held Kabul (both now in Afghanistan). The alleged violation of promises by Muhammad Shah, and the ill-treatment of his envoys by the Delhi court, served as the alleged cause for his invasion. Divided counsels prevented a Mughal stand until Nadir reached Karnal. Jealousy and rashness led to the Indian defeat, and the emperor was besieged in his entrenched camp. Nadir marched to Delhi and massacred its inhabitants on March 11. He left Delhi on May 5 with plunder, including the famous Peacock Throne of Shah Jahan and the Koh-i-noor diamond. The Mughal Empire never recovered from this blow to its prestige.

History of Haryana - The third battle of Panipat (1761)

Towards the middle of the 18-th century, Marathas, under the leadership of the Peshwas had established their sway over Haryana and most of North India. The intrusion of the Afghan, Ahmed Shah Abdali into India, culminated in the third battle of Panipat on 14 January 1761. Ahmad Shah defeated the Marathas and this marked the end of the Maratha ascendancy. The defeat of the Marathas, rapid decline of the Mughal empire after Aurangzeb's death, leading ultimately to the advent of the British rule.
The main reason for the failure of Marathas were the lack of allies. Though their infantry was based on European style contingent, they failed to woo allies in North India. Their earlier behavior and their political ambitions which led them to loot and plunder, had antagonized all the powers. They had interfered in the internal affairs of the Rajputana states (present day Rajasthan) and levied heavy taxes and huge fines on them. They had also made huge territorial and monetary claims upon Awadh. Their raids in the Sikh territory had angered the Sikh chiefs. Similarly the Jat chiefs, on whom also they had imposed heavy fines, did not trust them. They had, therefore, to fight their enemies alone, except for the weak support of Imad-ul-Mulk. Moreover, the senior Maratha chiefs constantly bickered with one another. Each one of them had ambitions of carving out their independent states and had no interest in fighting against a common enemy.
Ahmad Shah (1722/?/-1773), first emir of Afghanistan, was the hereditary chief of the Abdali tribe of Afghans, whom he later renamed the Durrani. He led a contingent of his tribesmen in the service of Nadir Shah, king of Persia, who won control of most of Afghanistan and part of India. When Nadir died, Ahmad founded an independent Afghan kingdom. He invaded the Indian Punjab six times between 1748 and 1752, and he seized and sacked Delhi. Although he was a powerful military leader, Ahmad never succeeded in permanently ruling India; he subsequently withdrew into Afghanistan.

History of Haryana - History from 1803 to 1857

The year 1803 is an important year in the history of Haryana. In this year the area of what is now present day Haryana and Delhi came under the control of the East India Company of Great Britain. At that time Delhi was being ruled by the old and week Mughal ruler Shah Alam. But the real power lay in the hands of the Maratha leader Daulat Rao Sindhiya, who acted as his Regent. On 6-th September, 1803 the battle between General Lake's British forces and the Marathas took place near village Partapganj, 6 miles south of Delhi. Many people from Haryana fought along with the Marathas against the British. Among them were the Jats, led by Hari Singh, the king of Ballabhgarh, Ahirs, led by Rao Tej Singh of Rewari and 5000 Sikhs. The Marathas fought bravely but lost due to the cowardice of French officers who were assisting them. When the British entered Delhi on 14 September 1803, the Mughal ruler Shah Alam surrendered. On 30 September 1803, the Maratha leader Daulat Rao Sindhiya also decided to make peace with the British by signing a treaty with the East India Company. Under this treaty the areas of Haryana and Delhi came under the control of the British.
In 1805 the British divided this area into 2 parts for administrative and political reasons. A smaller part called the 'Assigned Territories' was kept directly under the control of the Company. The larger part was divided and handed over to various local ruler who were faithful and loyal to the British. The Assigned Territory consisted of the areas under Panipat, Sonipat, Samalkha, Ganaur, Palam, Palwal, Nuh, Nagina, Hathin, Ferozepur Jhirkha, Sohna and Rewari. This area was administered by East India Company officer called the 'Resident' and he reported directly to the Governor General. The other larger part was divided into various princely states and handed over to loyal local kings and nawabs. But these arrangements didn't go down too well with the people of Haryana, who are by nature independent minded and dont like outsiders meddling in their affairs. Therefore they, especially the Jats of Rohtak and Ahirs & Meos of Gurgaon, rose again and again in revolt against the rulers. But by 1809 the British had established full control over the territory of Haryana.
Year 1833 was another important landmark in Haryana's history. In this year the Bengal Presidency under the East India Company, was divided into two provinces of Bengal and North Western Province. Most areas of Haryana and Delhi together became one of the six divisions of the North Western Province called the Delhi division. The Delhi division was further sub-divided into seven princely states and five districts. The princely states were Bahadurgarh, Ballabhgarh, Dujana, Farukhnagar, Jhajjar, Loharu and Pataudi. The five districts were Delhi, Gurgaon, Rohtak, Panipat and Hissar. These districts were divided into Tehsils and Tehsils into «Zails». The officer heading the Delhi division was now called a Commissioner instead of the «Resident». At this time some areas of present day Haryana were outside the Delhi division and they were considered as part of the «upper region». These were the districts of Ambala and Thanesar and the princely states of Buria, Chhachhrauli and Jind. But the people of 'upper region' and Delhi division though administratively in different provinces, were closely bound by socio-cultural ties. This administrative system continued till the revolt of 1857.
The revolt of 1857 was sparked by the introduction of the Enfield rifle in the Indian Army. The cartridges of this new rifle were greased with an ingredient containing «cow's fat» and «hog's lard». This news spread like wild fire among the sepoys of the army. Both Hindus and the Muslims were shocked and outraged at the use of «cow's fat» and «hog's lard» respectively. They soon formed panchayats in all corps and decided to socially boycott any sepoy who used these cartridges. This feeling continued to grow until at last a spirit of mutiny spread throughout northern India and Bengal. The first military station in northern India where the mutiny started was Ambala on 10 May 1857. Except for the princely states of Jind, Kalsia, Buria and some small Jagirs in Ambala and Thanesar, whole of the Haryana region was severely affected by the revolt. An important aspect of the uprising in Haryana was complete communal cooperation and amity. By the start of June 1857 almost whole of Haryana had become independent of the British rule. It took almost six months for the British to take back the control of Haryana. This they managed by the use of superior firearms, artillery and the help of some loyal rulers of princely states. The rebels were ruthlessly crushed by the British and in doing so they burned down hundreds of villages and indulged in wanton killing.

History of Haryana - History from 1858 to 1885

After the 1857 revolt, the British in February 1858, removed Haryana from the North Western Province and merged it with Punjab. The region of Haryana was divided into two divisions that of Hissar and Delhi. Delhi division consisted of the districts of Delhi, Gurgaon and Panipat while the Hissar division consisted of the districts of Hissar, Sirsa and Rohtak. The districts were further divided into tehsils, tehsils into Zails and Zails into villages. The Panjab government in 1871 ordered setting up of district committees or «Zila Samiti». The 1883 Panjab District Board Act gave more power to these Zila Samitis.
The formation of Arya Samaj on 10 April 1875 was to play a very important role in the history of Haryana region. The founder of Aryan Samaj, Swami Dayanand (1824-1883) was a great Sanskrit and Vedic scholar. Swami Dayanand came to Haryana in 1880. He stayed in Rewari for some time to preach against superstition and illiteracy. He also established a branch of Arya Samaj in Rewari. Later another branch was established in Rohtak. Later still, Lala Lajpat Rai played an important part in popularizing Arya Samaj in Haryana villages. Arya Samaj played a great role in removing backwardness in the farming community of Haryana, especially the Jats.
The formation of Congress party in 1885 speeded up the political activities in the Haryana region.

History of Haryana - History from 1885 to 1947

After the formation of Congress in 1885, the political activities in Haryana accelerated. In 1905, the British partitioned Bengal and this directly challenged the Congress program, which responded by the «Swadeshi Andolan». Sh. Murlidhar from Ambala and Lala Lajpat Rai in Hissar actively participated in this agitation. In October, 1907 in Ambala, a state level conference was held by the Congress. A large number of people from every corner of Punjab and Haryana participated in this conference. Under the leadership of Lala Lajpat Rai, the conference decided to form branches in every district. Till this time the Congress's Swadeshi Andolan did not have much effect outside the urban middle class of the region. As a result of the Ambala conference decision, district level branches were formed in all the districts of Haryana and Punjab.
On 9 May 1907, the British exiled Lala Lajpat Rai to Burma causing a major setback to the activities of the Congress party. Due to increasing criticism, the British were forced to bring Lalaji back on 14 November 1907. But the bitter fight between the Garam Dal and Naram Dal factions of the Congress resulted in its activities coming to a standstill. Due to this and various other reasons the agitation for independence ran out of steam and it remained so till the end of the first world war.
After the start of the first world war, the congress held a conference in Madras where it passed a resolution to support the British in its war effort. Four annual conferences were held by the Congress during the period of the war, and in each of them, similar resolutions for helping the British were passed. As a result congress workers from Haryana also started helping the British in their war effort. The main reason was that the leadership was in the hands of middle class urban people and they thought that by doing this they would be able to get some personal benefit.
During the war a very large number of Haryanavi youth got themselves enlisted in the army. In Rohtak district alone more that 20,000 young men were recruited in the army by the British. Businessmen and other rich people donated large amounts of money to help the government. While the 'naram dal' faction of the congress was helping the British during the war, the 'garam dal' faction led by Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Ms Annie Besant started the 'Home Rule League' agitation. In Haryana, Pt. Neki Ram Sharma was at the forefront of this agitation. After the Calcutta Adhiveshan in 1917, Tilakji asked Pt. Neki Ram Sharma to lead the Home Rule agitation in the Haryana region.
Pt. Neki Ram Sharma concentrated his activities particularly in the Rohtak region. Perturbed by this the Government threatened him with imprisonment and also tried to buy him out with offers of land and money, but to no avail. Disturbed by the failure of the Home Rule agitation he decided to invite Tilakji to Haryana but the Government reacted by banning Tilakji from coming to Punjab and arrested Pt. Neki Ram Sharma.

History of Haryana - The people of Haryana agitate for a separate state

The region of present day Haryana was made a part of Punjab in 1858 by the British. Due to the active role of people of Haryana in the revolt of 1857, this region was punished and no significant development work took place. The people of Haryana region were treated as second-class citizens. Moreover there were many difference between the people of these two regions like language, clothing and other habits. The demand for a separate state got a boost with the demand of Master Tara Singh for a «Punjabi Suba» in 1948. Moreover there were problems between the Hindi-speaking and the Punjabi-speaking population.
To solve this problem the then Panjab Chief Minister, Sh. Bhimsen Sacchar introduced the «Sacchar Formula» on 1 October 1949. According to this formula, the state was sub-divided into two parts: 1. Panjabi Area 2. Hindi Area. The Hindi Area included the districts of Rohtak, Hissar, Gurgaon, Kangra, Karnal and the tehsils of Jagadhari and Naraingarh. It was decided that the official language of the Punjabi area would be «Panjabi» (Gurumukhi script) and the official language of the Hindi area would be Hindi (Devnagri script). The then state of PEPSU also decided to follow the same formula. But the «Sacchar Formula» could not succeed and it became especially unpopular in the Hindi area.
On 25 December 1953, the Indian government set up a commission under the chairmanship of Syed Fiazal Ali for suggesting the reorganization of states according to language and culture. The proponents of 'Panjabi Suba' and Haryana both appeared before the Commission to press their case. But the Commission in its wisdom did not approve of the division or reorganization of Panjab. This decision of the commission caused great despondency in the region.
Panjab government tried to find a solution to this increasingly difficult problem by suggesting the division of the state into Panjabi speaking and Hindi speaking areas. Accordingly, in April 1956 the Indian government declared Panjab to be a dual-language state and divided it into «Panjabi Area» and «Hindi Area». Both Hindi and Panjabi were declared its official language. The Hindi Area this time included the districts of Hissar, Rohtak, Karnal, Gurgaon, Mahendergarh, Shimla, Kangra, Kohistan and the tehsils of Ambala, Jagadhari, Naraingarh, Jind and Narwana. But in 1957, due to certain actions of Pratap Singh Kairon, the then Chief Minister of Panjab, this solution too failed.
The failure of this solution accelerated the demand for separate states in both the regions. In 1960 Master Tara Singh launched a «Morcha» to press for his demand of «Panjabi Suba». He was promptly arrested on the orders of Panjab CM, P. S. Kairon. On the arrest of Master Tara Singh, Sant Fateh Singh took over the leadership of the agitation. Because Sant Fateh Singh was a secular person and well connected with the masses, he became more popular. He went on a 'Fast unto death' to force the government to accept their demand for the «Panjabi Suba». More than 57,000 people went to jail in this «Satyagrah». Both the Indian and Panjab government were shaken by this agitation. The wily Panjab Chief Minister Kairon then played his trump card and released Master Tara Singh from jail. Master Tara Singh was greatly disturbed by the increasing popularity of Sant Fateh Singh. He took the leadership of the agitation back from Sant Fateh Singh and persuaded him to break his fast. The he himself decided to go on a «fast unto death», but broke the fast after 48 days. This caused Master Tara Singh to loose his popularity and Sant Fateh Singh became the leader of the Panjab people especially the Sikhs. Meanwhile discontent keep on simmering in the people of Haryana region for a separate state.
In 1965, Sant Fateh Singh again decided to go on a fast on 10 August 1965 to press for the demand of the «Panjabi Suba». He further threatened self-immolation if the demand was not accepted in 25 days. The Hindus of the Panjabi Area opposed the demand for the division of the state fearing that they would be in a minority in the new state. The local press, which was also controlled by the Hindus, too joined in and openly opposed the division. The people of Haryana region, except for RSS and Jan Sangh followers, supported the demand for the division of Panjab into Hindi speaking and Panjabi speaking states.
Finally bowing to the growing pressure from the people of both the regions, the Indian government announced the setting up of a parliamentary committee for reorganization of Panjab on 23 September 1965. This committee was headed by Sardar Hukam Singh. Meanwhile in October, all the legislatures belonging to the Haryana region got together an discussed the issue of the new state. On 17 October 1965, in a big meeting in Rohtak, three important resolutions were passed:
A new Hindi speaking state should be formed, which shall include in addition to the Hindi speaking areas of Punjab, some areas of Delhi, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.
If the states of Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh are not agreeable, then the new state should be formed consisting of Hindi speaking areas of Panjab.
The people of Haryana region would not tolerate any division of the Hindi speaking area and whole of this area should constitute the state of Haryana.
Hukam Singh committee agreed to the division and reorganization of Panjab and recommended that a «Boundary Commission» may be set up to facilitate this division. On 23 April 1966, acting on the recommendation of the Hukam Singh Committee, the Indian government set up the Shah Commission under the chairmanship of Justice J. C. Shah, to divide and set up the boundaries of Punjab and Haryana.

History of Haryana - Haryana Day: A new state is born!

Haryana was carved out of the Indian state of Punjab on 1-st November 1966. This state was formed on the recommendation of the Sardar Hukam Singh Parliamentary Committee. The formation of this committee was announced in the Parliament on 23 September 1965. On 23 April, 1966, acting on the recommendation of the Hukam Singh Committee, the Indian government set up the Shah Commission under the chairmanship of Justice J. C. Shah, to divide and set up the boundaries of Panjab and Haryana.
The commission gave its report on 31 May 1966. According to this report the districts of Hissar, Mahendergarh, Gurgaon, Rohtak, and Karnal were to be a part of the new state of Haryana. Further the Tehsils of Jind (district Sangrur), Narwana (district Sangrur) Naraingarh, Ambala and Jagadhari were also included. The commission recommended that Tehsil Kharar (including Chandigarh) should also be a part of Haryana. After receiving the report of the Shah Commission, the Indian government passed Panjab reorganization bill, 1966 on 18 September 1966. According to this bill, the boundary of the Haryana was to be as follows:
The districts of Hissar, Rohtak, Gurgaon, Karnal and Mahendergarh
The Jind and Narwana tehsils of Sangrur district
The Ambala, Jagadhari and Naraingarh tehsils of Ambala district
The Pinjore circle of Kharar tehsil (district Ambala)
Part of the Mani Majra circle of Kharar tehsil
It was also decided that the two states of Haryana and Punjab would have a common High Court called the «Panjab & Haryana High Court». The other parts of the bill dealt with issues like division of the Parliament seats in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha.

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Akbar was only 14 years of age in 1556 when he succeeded his father Humayun. That year, a formidable anti-Mughal coalition, consisting mainly of Afghanis, tried to recapture northern India but lost its battle against the Mughals at Panipat. Mughal control over northern India was finally established.
Akbar pursued a policy of vigorous expansion until his empire reached the greater part of the sub-continent north of the Godavari, writes Hambly. Akbar proved himself as sophisticated a commander and leader as any of his ancestors. Akbar's far-sighted policies also included the employment of talented Hindus in senior administrative positions in a regime that previously had been exclusively Muslim.
In 1566, an attempt was made on Akbar's life. An assassin, posted on the roof of Khair al-Manzel, a madrasah built by Maham Anka near the Purana Qila, shot an arrow at the emperor as he rode back into Delhi. The arrow wounded Akbar's shoulder. This incident changed Akbar's method of rule, notes Hambly. Akbar now took into his own hands the supervision of the entire administration of the empire.
Akbar was an ambitious and noble commander who built the largest army ever in the history of the Mughal empire. By the end of the 16-th century, a Mughal army in the field resembled a city on the move. Not all of Akbar's military expeditions were of an expansionist nature. Akbar also was compelled to quell formidable uprisings among his own subjects, especially the Uzbeks and the Afghans. The Afghans in India were the most turbulent and dangerous of the emperor's subjects, especially those who had been born in the time of the Lodi Sultans and still remembered the great era of Shir Shah Sur and his son Islam Shah.
Akbar annexed Malwa, Gondwana, and Bengal to the empire, and the Mughal troops made their first appearance in the Deccan. Khandesh, Berar and Ahmadnagar became Mughal subahs (provinces). According to Hambly, the annexation of the formerly independent Sultanate of Gujarat provided the empire with: enormous additional revenue from the area's rich commercial centers; access to the Gulf of Cambay, and hence, to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina in the Arabian Peninsula; and opportunities for trade with the Portuguese and the Ottoman Empire.
Akbar was well aware of the structure and stratum of the society of his empire. His bold and imaginative approach to the problems of his heterogeneous empire may have reduced some of the long-standing, although generally passive, Hindu antagonism toward an administration which was entirely Muslim in spirit.
Akbar appointed the great Hindu Rajput chiefs to an active partnership in his government. Eventually, it became accepted practice for high-profile Hindus, like Amber or Jodhpur, to be governors of a major province or commander-in-chief of an army composed largely of Muslims. The Hindus were able to practice their own religion without disturbance.
Akbar's policy toward Hindus must be seen in its proper perspective. There was consistent contact between Hindus and Muslims in many areas of social life. Not only Muslim sovereigns but the entire Muslim ruling class recruited Hindus into their services, often in positions of great responsibility such as the case with Todar Mal and his staff. Hindus also served as craftsmen, artisans, entertainers, concubines, soldiers and servants. The two communities acknowledged and respected each other's rights in all aspects of social and religious life, notes Hambly.
Akbar, who was born at Amarkot in Sind in 1542, had spent most of his childhood as an Afghanistan. From his Persian mother, he inherited his princely manners, his love of literature and the arts, and a characteristically Persian delight in philosophical discussion. From his Turkish father, he inherited his fierce energy, his love of war and his ability to command. During the early part of his life, Akbar took the greatest joy in hunting, in elephant fights, and in intellectual games. Akbar reveled in all the varied pleasures of the chase, from facing charging tigers and leopards to pursuing the wild ass in the Rajasthan desert.
Akbar became unhappy with the increasing criticism of his relaxed attitude regarding non-Muslims in his government. Akbar's attitude was undoubtedly related to his vision of an empire with a diversity of faiths and cultures. Akbar's ire also reflected a hardening of his iron will and his fiercely individualistic personality, writes Hambly. The establishment of a new religion, Din-i llahi (Divine Faith), was a result of Akbar's consistent confrontations with his orthodox opponents.
The court of Akbar fostered a lively literary culture and encouraged translations of all kinds. Massive numbers of classics were rendered into Sanskrit and Hindi. Also, religious literature was translated into Persian from other languages like Chaghatai Turkish, Sanskrit and Arabic. Akbar's school of translation made a valuable contribution to the Indianization of the Mughal ruling class.
Hambly writes that Akbar's vigorous personal influence over the life of his court was paralleled in his patronage of painting. During Akbar's reign, early Safavid style - which had been introduced into India by Humayun - began to merge and blend with indigenous Indian elements, and a genuinely original Mughal style evolved. The new style brought a change of emphasis in subject matter. Traditional Persian painting had been concerned mainly with the illustration of literary classics such as the shahnameh, Nizami's Khamseh and Jami's Yusuf va Zulaykha. Mughal painters - many of whom were Hindus - shifted their focus from illustrating the great classics of Persian literature to new subjects such as the life of Akbar and his court, as well as the representation of nature, landscape and portraiture.
The most distinctive work in Akbar's ateliers was the series of illustrations commissioned for Abdul Fazl's Akbarnameh. This series demonstrates the unique and superb qualities of the nascent Mughal School and set it far apart from its Safavid or Timurid precursors. In this series, crowded and bustling scenes of men and animals are full of vigor and movement; the use of color is uninhibited; and detail is finely observed. The languid is rejected.
Unlike Babur or Humayun, Akbar had both the time and the resources to build on a monumental scale. Most of the monuments were constructed in or near Agra rather than in Delhi, Hambly writes. Akbar did not have great affection for Delhi, although most important Mughal structures had been built there. For Akbar, Delhi must have been a city of unhappy memories - the scene of his father's death and his own narrow escape from an assassination attempt. Moreover, the principal landmarks in Delhi - the Purana Qala, the city walls and gateways - commemorated the greatness of Shir Shah whom Akbar considered as the usurper of his father's kingdom. Since Delhi was the capital of both the Lodi Sultanate and the Shir Shah Sur dynasty, the city was always restless and hostile to the Mughals. In light of these circumstances, Akbar must have found Agra a more attractive residence.
Akbar initially ruled from Delhi, but two years later he moved to Agra. The city was renamed Akbarabad in his honor and became the greatest city in the empire. The main part of the city lay on the west bank of the Yamuna and was provided with a drainage system to control the flow of rainwater. A new city wall was erected, and the old mud-brick fortress used by the Lodis was built again in 1565 of sandstone. The building's red color, write Blair and Bloom, gives rise to its modern name, the Red Fort. Blair and Bloom note that the fort follows the irregular, semicircular plan of its predecessor. On the city side, it is enclosed by a moat and a double wall that is broken by the Delhi Gate on the west and the Amar Singh Gate on the south. The two massive gates are distinguished by rows of arched niches and stunning veneer in red and white marble with highlights in blue glazed tile.
According to the historian Abdul Fazl, construction of the fort was supervised by Muhammad Qasim Khan, who is credited with various feats of civilc engineering and who bore the dual titles, Master of the Land and Sea (mir-I barr wa bahr) and Master of Pyrotechnics (mir-Iatish).
Two palaces are located to the southeast of the Red Fort, the Akbar Mahal and the Jahangiri Mahal. Like the gates, the outer facade of the Jahangiri Mahal is articulated with an orderly series of blind niches and panels filled with geometric motifs. In contrast to the calm austerity of the exterior, many of the interior surfaces are extravagantly decorated in carved stone, painted and carved stucco, and tile. The geometric patterns on screens and flat panels in the Jahangiri Mahal derive from Timurid designs.
A similar synthesis of diverse architectural traditions could be seen on a larger scale at Fatehpur Sikri founded in 1571. The city was known as Fathabad (City of Victory), a Persian name which was soon supplanted in popular usage by the Indianized form, Fatehpur Sikri. Most of the major constructions at Fatehpur Sikri date to the 14 years when the city served as Akbar's principal residence.
The city contained imperial gardens, rest-houses, residences for the nobility, and an experimental school dedicated to the study of language acquisition in childhood. Within the city, the buildings are set in two distinct ways. The service buildings - such as the caravanseri, the mint or factory, and a long bazaar (chahar-suq) - are set perpendicular to the southwest/northeast axis of the ridge. The imperial section of the city, which includes one of the largest congregational mosques in India, as well as a residential and administrative area known as the palace (dawlatkhana), is set at an angle to the ridge and aligns with the qibla, write Blair and Bloom.
Akbar's tomb in Sikandara is set in a vast garden (about 760 square yards) enclosed by a high wall and divided by water channels. The red sandstone gateway on the south side, write Blair and Bloom, is crowned by four white marble minarets. It is boldly decorated in white, gray and black marble that is set in panels with geometric designs and large-scale floral arabesques which resemble the patterns on textiles. The numerous Persian verses in the frame around the arch, write Blair and Bloom, compare the tomb and its garden to paradise. They were designed by Abd al-Haqq Shirazi who was awarded the title Amanat Khan (Trustworthy Noble) and who was responsible for many of the inscriptions on the Taj Mahal.
The tomb is a pyramidal arrangement of three tiers of red sandstone pavilions with domed pavilions (chatris) at the corners. On top is an open court containing the emperor's marble cenotaph surrounded by pierced marble screens, write Blair and Bloom. The white color of the marble, continue Blair and Bloom, contrasts sharply with the red sandstone used elsewhere. The play of light and shadow over the increasingly delicate superstructure contrasts with the powerful massing of the basement.
With its receding stories of pillared galleries, write Blair and Bloom, Akbar's tomb belongs to the indigenous tradition of trabeate construction used for palaces, while the podium, with its vaulted bays, vestibule decorated with painted plaster, and high portals whose strong intarsia reproduced the effect of tile, maintains the Timurid tradition of vaulted masonry.
Because of his ideal of cultural synthesis and religious diversity, Akbar reserved a unique place for himself in Indian history.

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India in the 16-th century presented a fragmented picture of rulers, both Muslim and Hindu, who lacked concern for their subjects and who failed to create a common body of laws or institutions. Outside developments also played a role in shaping events. The circumnavigation of Africa by the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama in 1498 allowed Europeans to challenge Arab control of the trading routes between Europe and Asia. In Central Asia and Afghanistan, shifts in power pushed Babur of Ferghana (in present-day Uzbekistan) southward, first to Kabul and then to India. The dynasty he founded endured for more than three centuries.
Claiming descent from both Genghis Khan and Timur, Babur combined strength and courage with a love of beauty,and military ability with cultivation. Babur concentrated on gaining control of northwestern India. He did so in 1526 by defeating the last Lodhi sultan at the First battle of Panipat, a town north of Delhi. Babur then turned to the tasks of persuading his Central Asian followers to stay on in India and of overcoming other contenders for power, mainly the Rajputs and the Afghans. He succeeded in both tasks but died shortly thereafter in 1530. The Mughal Empire was one of the largest centralized states in premodern history and was the precursor to the British Indian Empire.

The Taj Mahal - the most famous structure in India built during Mughal Era
The perennial question of who was the greatest of the six "Great Mughals" receives varying answers in present-day Pakistan and India. Some favour Babur the pioneer and others his great-grandson, Shah Jahan (r. 1628-1658), builder of the Taj Mahal and other magnificent buildings. The other two towering figures of the era by general consensus were Akbar (r. 1556-1605) and Aurangzeb (r. 1658-1707). Both rulers expanded the empire greatly and were able administrators. However, Akbar was known for his religious tolerance and administrative genius, whereas Aurangzeb was a zealous ruler and fierce proselytizer of orthodox Islam across the heterodox Indian landscape.
Babur's favorite son Humayun took the reins of the empire after his father succumbed to disease at the young age of forty-seven. However, he lacked his father's craftiness and athleticism. Though he could be a formidable warrior when he chose to be, he was more laid back and indolent. He also was addicted to opium and depended on it for solace much more than a king with insecure borders should indulge in. He also made the mistake of trusting his three brothers, which served as a lesson to future Mughal rulers, who would not repeat this folly. Humayun made his brother Prince Kamran the regent in Kabul, who quickly added Panjab under his control. Humayun, appearing to be weak, did not object and this emboldened his two other brothers, Askari and Hindal to seek more independence.
Humayun's first campaign was to confront a Sher Khan Sur, an Afghan, who was quietly expanding his territory in the east. Half way through the counter offensive Humayun had to abandon it and concentrate on Gujarat, where a threat from Ahmed Shah had to be squelched. In this he succeeded and annexed Gujarat and Malwa. Champaner and the great fort of Mandu followed next. Following this great triumph, Humayun made another tactical error in installing his brother Prince Askari in Ahmadabad instead of the defeated Ahmed Shah as a feudatory. To savor his victory, Humayun celebrated in Mandu fort for many months, binging on opium and spending too much time in the company of his favourites. When he finally headed home to Agra, he found his brother Askari at his doorstep making a serious bid for the throne. Though his older brother thwarted this effort, Askari was pardoned, which only exhibited royal weakness to his loyal subjects.
Humayun again fell into one of his many periods of laziness and lassitude and resorted to his pipe and playmates. All this time he also neglected to confront Sher Khan Sur, who was gathering land and feudatories in the east. As an administrator Sher Khan was far superior to Humayun. In 1539, Humayun and Sher Khan met in battle in Chausa, between Varanasi and Patna. Humayun barely escaped with his own life and in the next year, in 1540, his army of 40,000 lost to the Afghan army of 15,000 of Sher Khan. Humayun's brothers refused to help him and he found himself a fugitive in Rajastan and Sindh.
Finally, the Shah of Iran, Shah Tamasp, gave him refuge in Persia. Of course, Humayun put his famous diamond to full diplomatic use because Shah Tamasp was a lover of diamonds. Koh-I-Noor, would serve as the bribe that the Shah Tamasp needed to support Humayun with a large Persian military offensive on Sher Khan Sur in 1544. Humayun found fraternal opposition again in Kandahar, where he was stalled for eight years but eventually won back Afghanistan.
Sher Khan had now become the monarch in Delhi under the name Sher Shah Sur and ruled from 1540 to 1545. He consolidated his kingdom form Panjab to Bengal (first one to enter Bengal after Ala-ud-din Khilji did more than two centuries earlier). But Sher Shah tragically died in an accidental explosion of gunpowder during an offensive in Kalinjar. A superb administrator, he was credited to have organized the government and military in such a way that future Mughal kings used it as their own models. He also added to the fort in Delhi (supposed site of Indraprastha), first started by Humayun, and now called the Purana Qila or the old fort. He built the mosque Qila-I-Kuhna there that was a masterpiece of the period, though only parts of it have survived.
The charred remains of Sher Shah were taken to a tomb in Sahasaram, midway between Varanasi and Gaya. Although rarely visited, it is another glorious triumph in architecture that the future great Mughal builders like Akbar, Jahangir and Shah Jahan tried to emulate. Massive in scale, three stories and fifty meters high, it appears as much a palace as a mausoleum. Sher Shah's son Islam Shah held on to power until 1553 and following his death the Sur dynasty lost most of its clout due factious strife and severe famine.
In 1554, Humayun attacked the confused and divided state of Sur rulers and in 1555 claimed Delhi again. But in 1556 tragedy struck the Mughals when Humayun tripped and fell to his death while descending the steps after gazing at the stars (he was a keen astronomer) from the rooftop of Sher Shah's Delhi palace. Thus Humayun ruled in India barley for ten years and died at the age of forty-eight, leaving behind a thirteen-year-old boy, Akbar as his heir. As a tribute to his father, Akbar later built the Humayun's tomb in Delhi (completed in 1571), from red sandstone, of majestic outline that would become the precursor of future Mughal architecture. Akbar's mother and Humayun's wife Hamida Begum personally supervised the building of the tomb.
Akbar succeeded his father, Humayun (r. 1530-1540 and 1555-1556), whose rule was interrupted by the Afghan Sur Dynasty, which rebelled against him. It was only just before his death that Humayun was able to regain the empire and leave it to his son. In restoring and expanding Mughal rule, Akbar based his authority on the ability and loyalty of his followers, irrespective of their religion. In 1564 the jizya on non-Muslims was abolished, and bans on temple building and Hindu pilgrimages were lifted.
Akbar's methods of administration reinforced his power against two possible sources of challenge-the Afghan-Turkish aristocracy and the traditional interpreters of Islamic law, the ulama. He created a ranked imperial service based on ability rather than birth, whose members were obliged to serve wherever required. They were remunerated with cash rather than land and were kept away from their inherited estates, thus centralizing the imperial power base and assuring its supremacy. The military and political functions of the imperial service were separate from those of revenue collection, which was supervised by the imperial treasury. This system of administration, known as the mansabdari, was based on loyal service and cash payments and was the backbone of the Mughal Empire; its effectiveness depended on personal loyalty to the emperor and his ability and willingness to choose, remunerate, and supervise.
Akbar declared himself the final arbiter in all disputes of law derived from the Qur'an and the sharia. He backed his religious authority primarily with his authority in the state. In 1580 he also initiated a syncretic court religion called the Din-i-Ilahi (Divine Faith). In theory, the new faith was compatible with any other, provided that the devotee was loyal to the emperor. In practice, however, its ritual and content profoundly offended orthodox Muslims. The ulama found their influence undermined. The concept of Islam as a superior religion with a historic mission in the world appeared to be compromised. The syncretism of the court and its tolerance of both Hindus and unorthodox Shia sects among Muslims triggered a reaction among Sunni Muslims. In the fratricidal war of succession that closed the reign of Akbar's grandson Shah Jahan in 1658.
Prince Salim (b. 1569 of Hindu Rajput princess from Amber), who would later be known as Emperor Jahangir showed signs of restlessness at the end of a long reign by his father Akbar. During the absence of his father from Agra he pronounced himself as the king and turned rebellious. Akbar was able to wrestle the throne back but the prince was showing no signs of remorse. There was also an unconfirmed story of strained relationship between father and son due to Salim's amorous advances to an ordinary dancing girl. Deeply in love and enchanted by the dancing girl, Anarkali, who was of common birth, Salim was ready to make her his queen. This union, surprisingly, was said to have been unacceptable to Akbar and the girl was abducted and executed. Though the historians do not mention the existence of such a girl called Anarkali, the folklore certainly has survived. This also might have exacerbated the strain between the monarch and the prince.
Salim did not have to worry about his sibling's aspirations to the throne. His two brothers, Murad and Daniyal, had both died early from alcoholism. Ironically a similar fate would await Salim at the end of his reign when he also succumbed to the ill effects of excessive drinking. But his challenge came from a surprising member of his family. His son Khusrau was favoured by the nobles and made an attempt to unseat Salim, who by 1602 had proclaimed himself as the emperor and renamed himself Jahangir (World Conqueror). Khusrau laid siege to Lahore but was captured by Jahangir and blinded. The cruelty of the previous Sultans of Delhi had now pervaded into the Mughal emperors. Hitherto unknown fraternal and filial murder and torture at the time of succession was to become the norm and almost expected in the kingdom. Jahangir explained that a king should consider no man his relation and sovereignty did not regard the relation between father and son. Treacherous perfidy during succession would not shock any future Mughal heirs.
Jahangir began his era as a Mughal emperor after the death of Akbar in the year 1605. He considered his third son Prince Khurram (future Shah Jahan-born 1592 of Hindu Rajput princess Manmati), his favourite. Rana of Mewar and Prince Khurram had a standoff that resulted in a treaty acceptable to both parties. Khurram was kept busy with several campaigns in Bengal and Kashmir. Jahangir claimed the victories of Khurram - Shah Jahan as his own. However, Kandahar, which had been won by Akbar, was lost to Persia's Shah Abbas. Further defeats were handed in Northern Afghanistan. Some success was at hand in the Deccan when an African slave, Malik Ambar, brought from Baghdad, serving under the sultante of Ahmadnagar, helped Khurram-Shah Jahan.
The monarch meanwhile was basking in the glory of his son's victories. He also had unlimited sources of revenue largely due to a systematic organization of the administration by his father, Akbar. The opulence of the Mughals had reached its pinnacle during Jahangir and Shah Jahan's rule, thanks to Akbar's foresight. Jahangir built his famous gardens in Kashmir and spent much time relaxing and delegating his work to others. One such person was Jahangir's wife, Nur Jahan, whom he married in 1611. She was the thirty-year-old widow of one of his Afghan nobles. Her father, Persian born Itimad-ud-Daula became a minister and closest advisor to the emperor. Very able Nur Jahan along with her father and brother Asaf Khan, who was a successful general, ran the kingdom. Jahangir was the monarch in absentia. Addicted to alcohol, he was content to let his wife govern.
After the fiasco in Kandahar, the relationship between Khurram and Jahangir soured. Khurram suspected that Nur Jahan favoured her son-in-law Prince Shariyar (son of Jahangir from a slave), who was married to her daughter Ladli Begum, from her first marriage. Khurram was in rebellion with his father and in this the African slave Malik Ambar and Nur Jahan's brother Asaf Khan aided him. Khurram- Shah Jahan was married to Asaf Khan's daughter Mumtaz Mahal. Prince Shariyar was murdered and Nur Jahan spent her last years building a tomb for her father Itimad-ud-Daula in Agra. She could have little influence over the willful Shah Jahan or her niece Mumtaz Mahal.
Jahangir had kept a diary that can pass marginally as memoirs. He describes inane and insignificant details of his garden and daily happenings around the palace. It only serves to give a glimpse of the emperor's life in a superficial way. Though not a soldier, Jahangir was an ardent patron of Mughal art and an avid builder. He built Akbar's five-tiered tomb in Sikandra. The emperor kept busy building in Lahore, Allahabad and Agra. While the de facto emperor, Nur Jahan was attending to administrative details, Jahangir found solace in loitering in his gardens and appreciating art and nature.
The darkest incident of his rule perhaps was the disposition of a peaceful leader of newly formed religion called Sikhism. Akbar had watched the blossoming of the new religion founded by Guru Nanak, with fascination. Jahangir, in a controversy with its leader, was responsible for the death of Sikh Guru Arjan Singh (who died in Mughal prison) and this would have lasting consequences for future Mughal emperors. The peaceful religion of Sikhism would turn militant later when Jahangir's grandson Aurangzeb murdered the ninth Sikh Guru Tegh Bahadur. Jahangir, the laid back emperor died in 1627 from alcohol abuse and Prince Khurram-Shah Jahan's reign as the emperor began.
Prince Khurram, who would later be known as Emperor Shah Jahan, ascended to the throne after a tumultuous succession battle worthy of a Mughal Prince. His own father,Jahangir, had already handicapped Khusrau, when the son aspired to unseat the father. Younger brother Prince Khurram promptly had him killed, as fraternal ambitions were not to be encouraged, even though the wretched Prince Khusrau was blind. Prince Shariyar, Nur Jahan's son-in-law had lost his bid to the throne and murdered by Khurram's father-in-law, Asaf Khan (also Nur Jahan's brother). Another brother Parwiz was of no consequence.
With the wealth created by Akbar, the Mughal kingdom was probably the richest in the world. Prince Khurram gave himself the title of Shah Jahan, the ‘King of the World' and this was the name that was immortalized by history. With his imagination and aspiration, Shah Jahan gained a reputation as an aesthete par excellence. He built the black marble pavilion at the Shalimar Gardens in Srinagar and a white marble palace in Ajmer. He also built a tomb for his father, Jahangir in Lahore and built a massive city Shahajanabad in Delhi but his imagination surpassed all Mughal glory in his most famous building Taj Mahal. It was in Shahajanabad that his daughter Roshanara built the marketplace called Chandni Chowk. His beloved wife Arjuman Banu (daughter of Asaf Khan and niece of Nur Jahan) passed away while delivering their fourteenth child in the year 1631. The distraught emperor started building a memorial for her the following year. The Taj Mahal, named for Arjuman Banu, who was called Mumtaz Mahal, became one of the Seven Wonders of the World. The beauty of the white marble structure is unsurpassed. Almost four hundred years later it still is the awe inspiring place where lovers hold hands and swoon over each other. The thrill one feels at the first sight of Taj Mahal through its main archway is beyond description.
The great Juma Masjid built by him was the largest in India at the time. Shah Jahan also built or renovated forts in Delhi and in Agra. White marble chambers that served as living quarters and other halls for public audiences are examples of classic Mughal architecture. Here in Agra fort, Shah Jahan would spend eight of his last years as a prisoner of his son, Aurangzeb shuffling between the hallways of the palace, squinting at the distant silhouette of his famous Taj Mahal on the banks of River Jamuna.
Shah Jahan's earlier years were spent in doing his father's bidding in various campaigns and territorial expansion. However, the territories gained were significant only in a symbolic way. In fact, land and prestige was lost in Kandahar and Northern Afghanistan. The dream of Babur to extend the empire into and beyond Afghanistan into the homeland of the Timurs in Samarkhand was permanently shelved by his progeny, after the humiliating defeats in Kandahar in the hands of Persian king. Never again would a Mughal venture into the northwest. In Deccan, Shah Jahan had initial failures in the hands of an African habshi (Negro) slave from Baghdad, a Malik Ambar, who was under the Bijapur sultan. Later, however, he joined Shah Jahan and helped him quell the threat from his brothers who had aspirations to conquer the throne. Golconda (Hyderabad) and Bijapur (Karnataka), two powerful states of the south were forced to become vassal states but were left alone to govern as they pleased. At least on paper Shah Jahan's empire had extended deep into the south in Deccan and beyond. The cover of Mughal suzerainty only helped the southern sultanates to extend their borders well into Chola heartland of Tamil Nadu and Mysore. Muslim rule, now effectively extended to the mouth of Kaveri River.
Though Khurram was the favoured son of Jahangir in his earlier days, the influence of Nur Jahan on the emperor had a deleterious effect on his relationship with his father. She was trying to prop up her own son-in-law, a brother of Shah Jahan as the legal heir. This alarmed Shah Jahan and with the help of his father-in-law and Malik Ambar he was able to muscle his way into Delhi and pronounce himself the emperor. In September of 1657, Shah Jahan, in his waning years, suffered from acute constipation and rumours of his imminent death spread rapidly through the land. The potential successors to the throne, four brothers, were alarmed and moved with haste to claim the throne. His third son Aurangzeb eventually claimed the empire, in the year 1658. Shah Jahan would recover from his illness only to spend his last days as an old and decrepit man, imprisoned by his son Aurangzeb, in the fort in Agra. There he was to remain in house arrest for eight years watching the magnificent monument he had built for his beloved wife Mumtaz. Shah Jahan died in the year 1666, at age seventy-four, eight years after losing his throne to his son. He was interned in the Taj Mahal, next to his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal.The aristocracy supported the austere military commander Aurangzeb against his learned and eclectic brother Dara Shikoh, whom Aurangzeb defeated in battle and later had decapitated in 1662.
Aurangzeb's reign ushered in the decline of the Mughal Empire. Aurangzeb, who in the latter half of his long rule assumed the title «Alamgir» or «world-seizer», was known for aggressively expanding the empire's frontiers and for his militant enforcement of orthodox Sunni Islam. He hated non-believers and destroyed many Hindu and Buddhist temples throughout India. During his reign, the Mughal empire reached its greatest extent, although it is likely that his policies also led to its dissolution. Still, there is some belief that his policies may have slowed the decline of the Empire rather than precipitated it. Although he was an outstanding general and a rigorous administrator, Mughal fiscal and military standards declined as security and luxury increased. Land rather than cash became the usual means of remunerating high-ranking officials, and divisive tendencies in his large empire further undermined central authority.
Extent of Mughal empire in the late 1600s: the Mughals ruled all but the southern tip of the subcontinent.
In 1679 Aurangzeb reimposed the hated jizyah on Hindus. Coming after a series of other taxes and also discriminatory measures favouring Sunni Muslims this action by the emperor, incited rebellion among Hindus and others in many parts of the empire-Jat, Sikh, and Rajput forces in the north and Maratha forces in the Deccan. The emperor managed to crush the rebellions in the north, but at a high cost to agricultural productivity and to the legitimacy of Mughal rule. Aurangzeb was compelled to move his headquarters to Daulatabad in the Deccan to mount a costly campaign against Maratha guerrilla fighters led by Shivaji, which lasted twenty-six-years until he died in 1707 at the age of ninety. Aurangzeb, oppressed by a sense of failure, isolation, and impending doom, lamented that in life he «came alone» and would «go as a stranger».
In the century - and one-half that followed, effective control by Aurangzeb's successors weakened. Succession to imperial and even provincial power, which had often become hereditary, was subject to intrigue and force. The mansabdari system gave way to the zamindari system, in which high-ranking officials took on the appearance of hereditary landed aristocracy with powers of collecting rents. As Delhi's control waned, other contenders for power emerged and clashed, thus preparing the way for the eventual British takeover.

Later Mughals
When Aurangzeb died close to the age of ninety, there were seventeen legitimate claimants to the throne that included not only his sons but also his grandsons and great grandsons. After the death of the emperor two brothers fought near Agra (in the same battle site that Aurangzeb had fought his brother Dara Shikoh. Prince Muazzam prevailed and killed his brother Prince Azam Shah and assumed the title Bahadur Shah I (or Shah Alam I). Another brother entered the fight a year later and was killed. Bahadur Shah was well in his sixties when he took control of the empire and soon died in 1712. During those five years he was busy fighting the insurgents in Rajastan and Panjab. Then in 1708 the last Sikh guru, Gobind Singh disappred by his spiritul power . Sikhs under Guru Gobind Singh had already transformed into a radical group after the execution of Guru Teg Bahadur by Aurangzeb. A year later a Banda Bahadur relentlessly stormed Muslim towns and became a thorn on the Mughal emperor's side.
Bahadur Shah's son Jahandar Shah succeeded after his death. However, during his tenure he gained a reputation as a womanizing drunk whose outrageous mistress Lal Kunwar took full advantage of the emperor's condition and enriched herself as well as her brood. Jahandar Shah was killed in 1713 and then Bahadur's grandson Farrukhsiyar acceded to the throne. With the help of two brothers called Saiyids, Farrukhsiyar restored some sanity to the Mughal rule. Later the Saiyids became intolerable to the emperor and one of them was sent away from Delhi to Deccan and the other was kept in constant watch in Delhi. In Deccan Saiyid Husain Ali Khan colluded with the Marathas and attacked Delhi and using trickery and intrigue seized Farrukhsiyar in the Red Fort. The emperor was blinded and caged and later poisoned as well as stabbed to death. However, prior to his death, Farrukhsiyar had the dubious distinction of aiding the British to have a firm foothold in India, by signing the much-coveted farman (an imperial directive) that would seal the future of British takeover of India.
A wretched youth, Shah Jahan II was made to occupy the throne after the murder of Farrukhsiyar but his rule lasted only three months. The Saiyids enthroned another pawn, Muhammad Shah as the Mughal emperor. He had an unexpected reign of close to thirty years. The Saiyids were disposed off but the emperor had little penchant for ruling. It was during his rule the notorious raids of Delhi by Nadir shah of Persia and the Afghan Ahmad Shah Abdali took place.
Marathas were now constantly attacking Delhi. Of more consequence and humiliating was the plunder of Delhi by Nadir Shah. A Timur descendent, Nadir Shah usurped the throne in Persia and seized Kandahar and Kabul. He marched through Panjab and was invited by Muhammad Shah as a guest to Delhi (only because he had neither the will nor the resources to fight him). Within forty-eight hours, using a lame excuse, Nadir Shah ordered a general massacre of Delhi citizens and looted every bit of wealth they could extort out of the royalty as well as Delhi's citizenry. Nadir Shah remained in Delhi for forty eighty days and departed with millions worth of gold, jewelry and coins. Even the emperor's throne, the bejeweled peacock throne of Shah Jahan was packed on elephants and carried away to Persia. Another prize, the Koh-I-nur diamond (Humayun's diamond now passed back into Persian hands). To add insult to injury, the Shah humiliated the emperor by re-crowning him as the Mughal emperor in an ignoble celebration. Later an Afghani, Ahmad Shah Abdali started his incursions into Delhi just for the purpose of looting the capital. In a series of attacks starting in 1748 until 1761, Abdali would not only pillage and loot Delhi, he also cleaned out Mathura, Kashmir and cities in Panjab. From the east the British defeated the Nawab of Bengal and occupied the state of Bengal. The vast Mughal Empire was coming undone at its seams. The fortunes of the British in India were intertwined with the misfortunes of the Mughals.
The raids by Nadir Shah and repeated incursions of Abdali resulted in quick disposal of the next two emperors Ahmad Shah and Alamgir II until in 1759 Shah Alam II ascended the throne. His reign would last several decades. However, he would preside over more loss of territory to the British. When the Nawab of Bengal lost to Robert Clive, Shah Alam II was forced to recognize Clive as a diwan (chancellor) and Bengal slipped to the British hands permanently. Shah Alam II ruled well until his eighties and died as sightless wretch dressed in rags when an army from Bengal led by General Gerald Lake stormed Delhi and Agra. The Marathas like Scindias, Holkars and the Nagpur Bhonsles also had to relinquish power to the British and the British would now boast that they were complete masters of the whole of India.
In 1806 Shah Alam's son Akbar Shah II acceded to the much diminished empire of the Mughals and ruled until 1837. His son Bahadur Shah Zafar II would be the last emperor of Mughals before the British deposed him in 1858 and the Mughal dynasty would officially come to a dishonourable end. During the Indian Rebellion of 1857, Bahadur Shah II was forced to take the side of the mutineers though he had no power to affect the outcome of the events. The mutineers had outwitted his British sponsors and now the emperor neither had the troops nor the competence. He had no choice but to join the winning side. However, the success of the mutineers was soon reversed and the octogenarian (he was eighty-two years old) was relieved of his empire and deposed in 1858. The British also unleashed a flurry of revenge attacks on Delhi as well as luckless Bahadur Shah. Two of his sons and a grandson were shot while in custody. The emperor was then exiled to Rangoon in Burma where he died in obscurity in 1862.
The glory of the Mughal kingdom established in 1526 by the tiger from Kabul, Babur would end in 1858 and India's fate was in the hands another expansionist foreign force, the imperial British.

Arrival of the Europeans
Vasco da Gama led the first documented European expedition to India, sailing into Calicut on the southwest coast in 1498. In 1510 the Portuguese captured Goa, which became the seat of their activity. Under Admiral Alfonso de Albuquerque, Portugal successfully challenged Arab power in the Indian Ocean and dominated the sea routes for a century. Jesuits came to convert, to converse, and to record observations of India. The Protestant countries of the Netherlands and England, upset by the Portuguese monopoly, formed private trading companies at the turn of the seventeenth century to challenge the Portuguese.
Mughal officials permitted the new carriers of India's considerable export trade to establish trading posts (factories) in India. The Dutch East India Company concentrated mainly on the spice trade from present-day Indonesia. Britain's East India Company carried on trade with India. The French East India Company also set up factories.
An engraving titled «Sepoy Indian troops dividing the spoils after their mutiny against British rule» gives a contemporary view of events from the British perspective.
During the wars of the 18-th century, the factories served not only as collection and transshipment points for trade but also increasingly as fortified centres of refuge for both foreigners and Indians. British factories gradually began to apply British law to disputes arising within their jurisdiction. The posts also began to grow in area and population. Armed company servants were effective protectors of trade. As rival contenders for power called for armed assistance and as individual European adventurers found permanent homes in India, British and French companies found themselves more and more involved in local politics in the south and in Bengal. Plots and counterplots climaxed when British East India Company forces, led by Robert Clive, decisively defeated the larger but divided forces of Nawab Sira-jud-Dawlah at Plassey (Pilasi) in Bengal in 1757.
The tale of the Marathas' rise to power and their eventual fall contains all the elements of a thriller: adventure, intrigue, and romanticism. Maratha chieftains were originally in the service of Bijapur sultans in the western Deccan, which was under siege by the Mughals.

Shivaji Bhonsle (1627-1680) a tenacious and fierce fighter recognized as the «father of the Maratha nation», took advantage of this conflict and carved out his own principality near Pune, which later became the Maratha capital. Adopting guerrilla tactics, he waylaid caravans in order to sustain and expand his army, which soon had money, arms, and horses. Shivaji led a series of successful assaults in the 1660s against Mughal strongholds, including the major port of Surat. In 1674 he assumed the title of «Lord of the Universe» at his elaborate coronation, which signaled his determination to challenge the Mughal forces as well as to reestablish a Hindu kingdom in Maharashtra, the land of his origin. Shivaji's battle cries were swaraj (translated variously as freedom, self-rule, independence), swadharma (religious freedom), and goraksha (cow protection). Aurangzeb relentlessly pursued Shivaji's successors between 1681 and 1705 but eventually retreated to the north as his treasury became depleted and as thousands of lives had been lost either on the battlefield or to natural calamities. In 1717 a Mughal emissary signed a treaty with the Marathas confirming their claims to rule in the Deccan in return for acknowledging the fictional Mughal suzerainty and remission of annual taxes. Yet the Marathas soon captured Malwa from Mughal control and later moved east into Orissa and Bengal; southern India also came under their domain. Recognition of their political power finally came when the Mughal emperor invited them to act as auxiliaries in the internal affairs of the empire and still later to help the emperor in driving the Afghans out of Punjab.
The Marathas, despite their military prowess and leadership, were not equipped to administer the state or to undertake socioeconomic reform. Pursuing a policy characterized by plunder and indiscriminate raids, they antagonized the peasants. They were primarily suited for stirring the Maharashtrian regional pride rather than for attracting loyalty to an all-India confederacy. They were left virtually alone and without supplies before the invading Afghan forces, headed by Ahmad Shah Abdali (later called Ahmad Shah Durrani), who routed them on the blood-drenched battlefield at Third Battle of Panipat|Panipat in 1761. The shock of defeat hastened the break-up of their loosely knit confederacy into five independent states and extinguished the hope of Maratha dominance in India.

The Nizams of Hyderabad
Maratha raids into Berar, Kandesh, Gujarat and Malwa resumed after the death of Aurangzeb, and loosened Mughal control in the Deccan. In 1724 Asaf Jah, the Mughal Nizam ul Mulk, or viceroy, of the Deccan, defeated several contenders for control of the Mughal southern provinces, and established himself of ruler of an independent state with its capital at Hyderabad. He and his successors ruled as hereditary Nizams, and their state, known as Hyderabad after the capital, outlasted the Mughal empire, persisting until it was incorporated into newly -independent India in 1948.The state of Hyderabad was formed by Nizam-ul-Mulk Asaf Jahi in 1724.He was a strong ruler & established an orderly system of administration.He also attempted to reform the revenue system.The dynasty founded by him came to be known as the Asaf Jahi dynasty.His successors were known as Nizams...

The Afghan defeat of the Maratha armies accelerated the breakaway of Punjab from Delhi and helped the founding of Sikh overlordship in the northwest. Rooted in the bhakti movements that developed in the second century B.C. but swept across North India during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the teachings of the Sikh gurus appealed to the hard-working peasants. Facing extended persecution from the Mughals, the Sikhs, under Guru Gobind Singh formed the Khalsa (Army of Pure). The khalsa rose up against the economic and political repressions in Punjab toward the end of Aurangzeb's rule. Guerrilla fighters took advantage of the political instability created by the Persian and Afghan onslaught against Delhi, enriching themselves and expanding territorial control. By the 1770s, Sikh hegemony extended from the Indus in the west to the Yamuna in the east, from Multan in the south to Jammu in the north. But the Sikhs, like the Marathas, were a loose, disunited, and quarrelsome conglomerate of twelve kin-groups. It took Ranjit Singh (1780-1839),an individual with modernizing vision and leadership, to achieve supremacy over the other kin-groups and establish his kingdom in which Sikhs, Hindus, and Muslims lived together in comparative equality and increasing prosperity. Ranjit Singh employed European officers and introduced strict military discipline into his army before expanding into Afghanistan, Kashmir, and Ladakh.

An Indian depiction of a 17-th century Dutch ship off the Coromandel Coast
The quest for wealth and power brought Europeans to Indian shores in 1498 when Vasco da Gama, the Portuguese voyager, arrived in Calicut (modern Kozhikode, Kerala) on the west coast. In their search for spices and Christian converts, the Portuguese challenged Arab supremacy in the Indian Ocean, and, with their galleons fitted with powerful cannons, set up a network of strategic trading posts along the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf. In 1510 the Portuguese took over the enclave of Goa, which became the center of their commercial and political power in India and which they controlled for nearly four and a half centuries.

Economic competition among the European nations led to the founding of commercial companies in England (the East India Company, founded in 1600) and in the Netherlands (Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie - the United East India Company, founded in 1602), whose primary aim was to capture the spice trade by breaking the Portuguese monopoly in Asia. Although the Dutch, with a large supply of capital and support from their government, preempted and ultimately excluded the British from the heartland of spices in the East Indies (modern-day Indonesia), both companies managed to establish trading «factories» (actually warehouses) along the Indian coast. The Dutch, for example, used various ports on the Coromandel Coast in South India, especially Pulicat (about twenty kilometers north of Madras), as major sources for slaves for their plantations in the East Indies and for cotton cloth as early as 1609. (The English, however, established their first factory at what today is known as Madras only in 1639.) Indian rulers enthusiastically accommodated the newcomers in hopes of pitting them against the Portuguese. In 1619 Jahangir granted them permission to trade in his territories at Surat (in Gujarat) on the west coast and Hughli (in West Bengal) in the east. These and other locations on the peninsula became centers of international trade in spices, cotton, sugar, raw silk, saltpeter, calico, and indigo.
English company agents became familiar with Indian customs and languages, including Persian, the unifying official language under the Mughals. In many ways, the English agents of that period lived like Indians, intermarried willingly, and a large number of them never returned to their home country. The knowledge of India thus acquired and the mutual ties forged with Indian trading groups gave the English a competitive edge over other Europeans. The French commercial interest--Compagnie des Indes Orientales (East India Company, founded in 1664) - came late, but the French also established themselves in India, emulating the precedents set by their competitors as they founded their enclave at Pondicherry (Puduchcheri) on the Coromandel Coast.
In 1717 the Mughal emperor, Farrukhsiyar (r. 1713-1719), gave the British - who by then had already established themselves in the south and the west--a grant of thirty-eight villages near Calcutta, acknowledging their importance to the continuity of international trade in the Bengal economy. As did the Dutch and the French, the British brought silver bullion and copper to pay for transactions, helping the smooth functioning of the Mughal revenue system and increasing the benefits to local artisans and traders.
The fortified warehouses of the British brought extraterritorial status, which enabled them to administer their own civil and criminal laws and offered numerous employment opportunities as well as asylum to foreigners and Indians. The British factories successfully competed with their rivals as their size and population grew. The original clusters of fishing villages (Madras and Calcutta) or series of islands (Bombay) became headquarters of the British administrative zones, or presidencies as they generally came to be known. The factories and their immediate environs, known as the White-town, represented the actual and symbolic preeminence of the British - in terms of their political power - as well as their cultural values and social practices; meanwhile, their Indian collaborators lived in the Black-town, separated from the factories by several kilometres.
The British company employed sepoys - European-trained and European-led Indian soldiers - to protect its trade, but local rulers sought their services to settle scores in regional power struggles. South India witnessed the first open confrontation between the British and the French, whose forces were led by Robert Clive and François Dupleix, respectively. Both companies desired to place their own candidate as the nawab, or ruler, of Arcot, the area around Madras. At the end of a protracted struggle between 1744 and 1763, when the Peace of Paris was signed, the British gained an upper hand over the French and installed their man in power, supporting him further with arms and lending large sums as well. The French and the British also backed different factions in the succession struggle for Mughal viceroyalty in Bengal, but Clive intervened successfully and defeated Nawab Siraj-ud-daula in the Battle of Plassey (Palashi, about 150 kilometres north of Calcutta) in 1757. Clive found help from a combination of vested interests that opposed the existing nawab: disgruntled soldiers, landholders, and influential merchants whose commercial profits were closely linked to British fortunes.
Later, Clive defeated the Mughal forces at Buxar (Baksar, west of Patna in Bihar) in 1765, and the Mughal emperor (Shah Alam, r. 1759-1806) conferred on the company administrative rights over Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa, a region of roughly 25 million people with an annual revenue of 40 million rupees (for current value of the rupee). The imperial grant virtually established the company as a sovereign power, and Clive became the first British governor of Bengal.
Besides the presence of the Portuguese, Dutch, British, and French, there were two lesser but noteworthy colonial groups. Danish entrepreneurs established themselves at several ports on the Malabar coast and the Coromandel coast notably Tranquebar, in the vicinity of Calcutta, and inland at Patna between 1695 and 1740. Austrian enterprises were set up in the 1720s on the vicinity of Surat in modern-day southeastern Gujarat. As with the other non-British enterprises, the Danish and Austrian enclaves were taken over by the British between 1765 and 1815.

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The Lotus of Bahapur
Since its inauguration to public worship in December 1986, the Baha'i House of Worship in New Delhi, India has drawn to its portals more than 50 million visitors, making it the most visited edifice in the world, its numbers surpassing those of the visitors to the Eiffel Tower and even the Taj Mahal. The maximum number of visitors the Temple has received in a single day has been 150 000. They have come regardless of the scorching summer heat of Delhi which rises above 40?C during the months of June to September, and have braced the chill and cold rains that Delhi experiences during winter. These visitors have admired the beautiful lotus form of the Temple, and have been fascinated by the teachings of the Baha'i Faith impressed by its tenets of the oneness of God, oneness of religions and oneness of mankind.
This «House of Worship of the Indian subcontinent» joins six other Baha'i temples around the world. Each of these Houses of Worship, while sharing some basic design concepts, has its own distinct cultural identity embodying the principle of unity in diversity. The lotus, the national flower of India, is a recurring symbol in the religious architecture of the Indian subcontinent. This ancient symbol has been given a modern and contemporary form in the structure of the Baha'i House of Worship drawing into its sanctum sanctorum people from all races, religious backgrounds and culture from around the globe.
To the people of India the lotus flower signifies purity and peace, a representation of the Manifestation of God. Rising pure and unsullied above stagnant, muddy waters, the Indians have seen this flower as worthy of emulation, teaching them to be detached from material preoccupations. It is because this flower is so revered in Indian mythology and cultures that its translation into the design of a temple has caught the attention of the people at large.
The structure of the House of Worship is composed of three ranks of nine petals; each springing from a podium which elevates the building above the surrounding plain. The first two ranks curve inward, embracing the inner dome; the third layer curves outward to form canopies over the nine entrances. The petals, constructed of reinforced white concrete cast in place, are clad in white marble panels, performed to surface profiles and patterns related to the geometry. The double layered interior dome, modelled on the innermost portion of the lotus, is comprised of 54 ribs with concrete shells between. The central hall is ringed by nine arches that provide the main support for the superstructure. Nine reflecting pools surround the building on the outside, their form suggesting the green leaves of the lotus flower.
In the raising of the House of Worship in New Delhi traditional Indian means of construction were employed coupled with the most modern Western engineering design. Fariborz Sahba, Canadian architect of Iranian origin, spent 10 years in designing and project management, and with the help of a team of about 800 engineers, technicians, artisans and workers brought to realisation one of the most complicated constructions in the world. The conversion of the lotus into structural designs and working drawings alone took the architect and his structural consultant Messrs. Flint and Neil Partnership nearly 18 months of work.
Translating the geometry of the design, in which there are virtually no straight lines, into the actual structure presented particular challenges in designing and erecting the framework. Not only was it difficult to align, so as to produce accurately the complex double-curved surfaces and their intersections, but the closeness of the petals severely restricted work space. Nevertheless the task was carried out entirely by the local labourers. Before assembling the temporary works for the roof, a number of full-scale mock-ups were constructed to check the feasibility of the proposed methods of construction, geometric form, practicality of fixing the complex reinforcement, entrance and inner leaves, and interior dome elements. Forms and their supports for all the petals were designed to withstand pressures from continuous concreting. To avoid construction joints, petals were concreted in a continuous operation for approximately 48 hours. Concrete was carried up the staging by women bearing 50-pound loads in baskets balanced on their heads. All the steel reinforcing for the shells of the lotus petals was galvanised to avoid rust stains on the white concrete in the prevailing humid conditions, and guarantee the life of the delicate shell structure of 6 to 18 cm thick shells of the petals.
Ventilation and cooling are based on techniques traditional to the Indian subcontinent. Fresh air, cooled as it passes over the fountains and pools, is drawn in through openings in the basement, up into the central hall, and expelled through a vent at the top of the interior dome. During the humid season a set of exhaust fans in the basement recycles air from the main hall into the cool basement and back.
India is well endowed with human resources. This resource was amply utilised and most of the work was carried out by a work force of almost 700 people, including 400 carpenters at a time, using the most traditional techniques and equipment to achieve the highest quality and sophisticated construction. People have marvelled that such a modern and complex design could be built in India. The architect in fact believes that this design could not have been executed anywhere else because it is rare to find the combination of traditional craftsmanship, pride in one's work, empathy for spiritual undertaking, perseverance under all odds and ample patience, as can be found in the people of India. As commented by progressive Architecture of USA in their article on the Baha'i Temple «It goes to prove that high-tech concepts do not always demand high-tech solutions».
When the temple was first opened to the general public on January 1, 1987 they flocked to the «Lotus Temple», as they fondly call it, from sheer curiosity. The vast lawns, the massive white structure, the high ceiling Prayer Hall, and a temple without idols standing so close to an ancient Hindu temple aroused the interest of all and sundry. The Indian visitors, from the most sophisticated to the most simple, expressed perplexity at the absence of any idols. It has been a hard task since explaining to them that the all-pervasive Almighty cannot be put in any limited form. Often the visitors ask the guides where the object of adoration is. In their simplicity some have placed flowers before the lectern used during regular prayer services.
Over the years the visitors from India have begun to understand that the purpose of the Baha'i House of Worship is to unite the hearts of the people and bring them closer to their Creator. Many a visitor has penned his impressions in the Visitor's Book maintained in the Library of the Temple. Some of these are reproduced to convey the impression the Temple and the Baha'i teachings are making on the visitors.
«Few temples radiate the atmosphere of sublimity, peace and calm so necessary to elevate a devotee spiritually as the Baha'i House of Worship.»
«My visit has aroused great interest in the teachings of Baha'u'llah. That harmony is the primary purpose of religion is the teaching that has impressed most.»
«I am deeply impressed by the humanism and universalism of the Baha'i religion.»
«Every time I come here I feel totally at peace. I like the philosophy of the Baha'i Faith and the devotion of all the volunteers...»
Not only have there been millions of visitors from India, but also large numbers from most countries of the world have also paid a visit to the House of Worship, and continue to visit. Besides the hundreds of thousands of visitors from all walks of life, a great number of dignitaries - Heads of State, Government Ministers, Ambassadors, Heads of foreign missions, diplomats, leaders of religion, scholars, academicians, artists and other prominent people have been received at the House of Worship. And many have commented that one has not seen India if one has not visited the Baha'i Temple in New Delhi.
The Temple also continues to be a source of great interest to the media, both the print and the audio-visual media. It has been featured in television programmes not only in India, but also countries like Russia and China. The Baha'i World Centre Library has archived more than 500 publications which have carried information on the Indian Temple in the form of articles, interviews with the Architect and write-ups extolling the structure as a marvel of 20-th century architecture.
The House of Worship has won praise in numerous architectural and engineering journals for its innovative design. Twentieth Century Architecture, an anthology of the most outstanding structures of the twentieth century lists the Lotus Temple as one of the three major architectural achievements of the year 1987. The 1994 edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica, in its «Architecture» section gives recognition to the Temple as an outstanding achievement of the time...
The dedication of the Baha'i House of Worship of the Indian sub-continent has indeed been a momentous event. Millions have crossed its threshold. Some have come as tourists, others to spend some time at a beautiful spot, many more have come with reverence in their hearts, touching the steps leading into the Prayer Hall in the traditional Indian manner. Many have been perplexed by the absence of deities inside the central auditorium, still others have appreciated the fact that it symbolises the unity of all religions. Whatever impression these millions have gathered, one thing is certain - the House of Worship has touched a spiritual chord in the hearts of the people of India in particular, and people around the world in general. Many visitors have called it a symbol of integration, where differences submerge and dissolve to create a wonderful calm. Its purpose has beautifully been summed up by Mr. Hooshmand Fatheazam, one of the members of the highest administrative body of the Baha'i Faith, during his visit in October 1987. He wrote in the Visitor's Book: «Here is love and devotion crystallised in stone. This magnificent edifice is a befitting tribute to the peoples of India whose never-ending quest for spiritual advancement has inspired so many generations. May the fragrance of love and unity emanating from this heavenly «Lotus of Bahapur» perfume the hearts and souls of diverse people and bind them together in praise of their Creator.»

Lotus Temple
Baha`i Temple is known as one of the most beautiful architectural temples in India. Popularly called Lotus Temple as it is built in the shape of a Lotus flower and reaches a height of more than 40m. It was completed in 1986 and one can enjoy its exquisite beauty even from a kilometre distance, at night.

An Architectural Grandeur
This grand temple is termed by many as the Taj of modern India. It belongs to the Baha`i sect and is now a significant landmark of Delhi. The structure is made of pure white marble in the shape of a half-opened lotus and is surrounded by delicately manicured lawns.
This architectural wonder is made of a combination of marble, cement, sand and dolomite. One can see 27 giant white petals of marble in a lotus shape, springing from nine pools and walkways indicative of the nine unifying spiritual paths of the Baha'i faith. People of any faith can enter this temple to offer their prayers.

The Uniqueness Of Baha`i Faith
The Baha'i House of Worship is dedicated to the oneness of all religions and mankind. Its doors are open to people of all faiths, races and cultural backgrounds. Subsidiary buildings that afford relief to the suffering, sustenance to the poor, shelter to the traveller, solace to the deprived and education to the ignorant will abound around the House of Worship.
There are no clergymen in the Baha'i Faith and its service consists of prayers and readings of selections from Baha'i scriptures.The Baha`i religion is an independent one and not a sect of any other religion's manifestion.
The Baha`is lay great emphasis on prayer and meditation. These, they believe are important instruments for the progress of the human soul, both in this world and the next. The Baha'i`is pray to one God, the Creator of the Universe.
The act of praying is described as «Conversation with God» and meditation is perceived as the 'Key for opening the doors of mysteries'. In that state, man withdraws himself from all outside objects and immerses himself in the ocean of spiritual life.
In the Baha`i Holy Writings, there are prayers for all occasions and can be offered individually or collectively. A great importance is given to prayers as it is revealed in all the Scriptures. But the Baha`i Writings specify that the mere act of praying is not sufficient. The inspiration drawn from one's prayers must be translated into action that promotes the well-being of humanity.
The temple represents the Baha`i faith, which is broad in its outlook, scientific in the influence it exerts on the hearts and minds of men. It signifies the purity and the universality of the lord and equality of all religions. Visited by over four million people, annually, this gleaming lotus-like marble structure is located on Bahapur Hills and it is the seventh and most recent Baha'i houses of worship in the world.

Lotus Temple
Kalkaji in South Delhi, close to Kalkaji Temple
A Pilgrimage Centre, where people from all the faith come for meditation and obtaining peace.
Shaped like a Lotus, the Lotus Temple is located in Kalkaji in the south of Delhi. Made of marble, cement, dolomite and sand, the temple is the modern architectural wonder of India. An ideal place for meditation and obtaining peace and tranquility, the temple is visited by people from all walks of life. The Lotus Temple is a very recent architectural marvel of the Bahai faith. The Bahai Faith is the youngest of the world's independent religions. Its founder, Bahadullah (1817-1892), is regarded by Bahais as the most recent in the line of Messengers of God that stretches back beyond recorded time and that includes Abraham, Moses, Buddha, Zoroaster, Christ and Muhammad.
The history of the Bahai Faith in India started with the inception of the Faith in Iran when the Báb (literally, the Gate) inaugurated a new era in the history of the human race. The Bab Himself had appointed one of the Indian believers as the «Letter of Living» in 1844-1845, the first year of His Ministry. Since then, India is spiritually connected with the Bahai Faith.
The Architecture Fariborz Sahba, Canadian architect of Iranian origin, spent 10 years in designing and project management, and with the help of a team of about 800 engineers, technicians, artisans and workers brought to realization one of the most complicated constructions in the world. The structure of the House is composed of three ranks of nine petals; each springing from a podium elevating the building above the surrounding plain. The first two ranks curve inward, embracing the inner dome; the third layer curves outward to form canopies over the nine entrances. The petals, constructed of reinforced white concrete cast in place, are clad in white marble panels, performed to surface profiles and patterns related to the geometry. Nine arches that provide the main support for the superstructure ring the central hall. Nine reflecting pools surround the building on the outside, their form suggesting the green leaves of the lotus flower. Translating the geometry of the design, in which there are virtually no straight lines, into the actual structure presented particular challenges in designing and erecting the framework.
The delicate and sleek architecture is built in two layers. The first layer consists of nine white marble-covered petals pointing towards heaven, while the second layer of nine petals serves to conceal the portals. When seen from a short distance, it looks like a fabulous example of origami work. The interior, especially, the Hall of Worship, conforms to that of all Bahai temples and is so silent that even a low whisper echoes loudly in the structure. No religious icons are housed here except the copies of the Holy Scriptures and wooden pews. The construction of the temple was completed in 1986.

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 Jews in India

The Jews of India aren't one singular community. Among themselves they are divided into different communities. Each community has its own different culture, background and origin. Each community claims its arrival in India in different ways and it is not always clear how they really came to India. The three main Jewish communities of India are: Bene Israel, Cochini and Baghdadi. Besides there were Ashkenazi Jews and a community in east India which claim Israeli origin and call themselves Bne Menashe. The first three communities had some social religious connections with each other but most of the social religious connections of each community were within their own community and they regarded the other as «outsiders».

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A small religious community, which exists mostly in Mumbai, is Zoroastrianism. The follower is called Parsi because the religion arrived in India from Persia. This religion was established by Zarathustra in 6th or 7th century BC. The followers of this religion exiled from Iran in the 7th century AD. because of religious persecutions by the Muslims. They arrived in Gujarat region of India. The Parsis believe in the existence of one invisible God. They believe that there is a continuous war between the good forces (forces of light) and the evil forces (forces of darkness). The good forces will win if people will do good deeds think good and speak well. God is represented in their temples through fire, which symbolizes light. The holiest place for them is the village of Udvada in Gujarat, India. The holy language of the Parsis is an ancient language spoken in Iran, Avesta. The Parsis believe that fire, water, air and earth are pure element to be preserved and therefore they do not cremate or bury their dead ones but leave them on high towers, specially built for this purpose, to be eaten by hawks and crows. The Parsis are less then 0.02% of India's population but their contribution to India is much more than their proportion in India's population. Some Parsis were main figures in establishing the Indian Nationalist movement. They were the pioneers in establishing the modern Indian industry. The rich Parsi families contributed enormously to establish institutions of all kinds in India. Even today some of the bigger finance houses in India belong to followers of this religion.

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About 2.5% of India's population are Christians. Christianity arrived in India almost about the same period as it arrived in Europe, meaning about 2000 years ago. Christianity originates in Israel. The first Christians were Jews and in the beginning Christianity was seen as a Jewish cult. Most of the Apostles of Christians acted in Europe to convert the Europeans to Christianity. But one of the Apostles, St. Judas Thomas, arrived in India and converted Indians to Christianity. St. Thomas was a carpenter and a disciple of Jesus. He was brought to India by a merchant to build a temple. St. Thomas arrived in Kerala, in south India in 52 AD. He succeeded in converting local Indians to Christianity. His converts were called Syrian Christians. One assumption says that some of the Syrian Christians were actually Jews converted by St. Judas Thomas to Christianity. The disciples of Jesus at first intended to convince the Jews to adopt the philosophy of Jesus as new Judaism. Later on other Christian saints arrived to India as missioners. But most of the Indian were converted to Christianity by the missionaries who arrived in India with the European powers from 15th century.
The European powers arrived in India for commercial reasons, especially spices. But they also started converting local Indians to Christianity. Five European countries sent their representatives to India, Great Britain; France; Denmark; Netherlands and Portugal. Of the five European powers the Portuguese were most enthusiast to baptize Indians. The Portuguese were the first European power to arrive in India. Their first ship, under the leadership of Vasco DaGama, arrived in south India in 1498 after it had circled the whole continent of Africa. The Portuguese inspired by the Pope's order to baptize people around the world not only fought wars against the local Indian rulers, but they even tried to enforced their Roman Catholic prayers on Syrian Christians.
After many wars the Portuguese were defeated by local rulers and they had only one big pocket of control in India, Goa. The Portuguese not only fought the Indian rulers, but they also fought against other European powers in India especially Dutch and English. Many Portuguese churches in Kerala were turned into English and Dutch churches after they were captured by these powers.
The English missionaries started acting in India at a much later period. The British, unlike the Portuguese, didn't allow the missionaries to enter their territory in the beginning. The British arrived in India in 1600 and they allowed the missionaries to enter their territory only from 1813. The British allowed different churches to establish missionaries in their territory. The missionaries didn't only spread Christianity, but they also did humanitarian deeds giving the needy basic necessities of life like food, clothes and shelter. The missionaries also built schools in India and many of them even today have Christian or European originated name. The British church missionaries succeeded less than the Portuguese in converting Indians to Christianity, but unlike the Portuguese who tried to enforce Christianity, these Protestant converts were voluntary. The Portuguese were also aware of the Indian custom according to which the wife followed her husband's faith and therefore married their men to Indian women.
There are about 30 million Christians in India. The major centers of Christianity in India are Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Goa, Manipur and Mizoram. There is also a big community of Christians in Mumbai. The main division of Christians in India is like in the Christian world, Protestants and Catholic. There are also different denomination among them, Syrian Church, Armenian Church, Anglican Church and others. Most of the India Christians were converted by the Portuguese. There is also an Anglo-Indian community in India.

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Buddhism evolved in India. There were periods in India's past when Buddhism was dominant in India. Today less then 1% of India's population is Buddhist. Buddhism has more followers in countries east of India.
Buddhism was established in about 500 BC. Buddhism began with a prince called Siddhartha Gautama. Siddhartha belonged to an aristocratic family. As a prince he had lot of wealth. He never left his palace. At some point Siddharta began to leave his palace and behold for the first time poverty, sickness and misery. After seeing this Siddharta lost interest in his spoiled life and left his palace forever and gave his rich personal belongings to the needy. He joined a group of ascetics who were searching for enlightenment. In those days people searching for enlightenment believed that this could be gained only by people who were capable of resisting their basic needs. These people almost did not eat anything and almost starved themselves to death. Siddharta also adopted this path of searching enlightenment. But at some point he came to a conclusion that this was neither the way towards enlightenment nor the spoiled life he had as a prince was the right path towards enlightenment. According to him the right path was somewhere in the middle and he called it the 'middle path'.
In order to focus on his enlightenment search, Buddha sat under a fig tree and after fighting many temptations he got his enlightenment. In his region 'enlightened' people were called Buddha. And so Siddharta was named Buddha. According to Buddha's theory life is a long suffering. The suffering is caused because of the passions people desire to accomplish. The more one desires and the less he accomplishes the more he suffers. People who do not accomplish their desirable passions in their lives will be born again to this life circle which is full of suffering and so will distant themselves from the world of no suffering - Nirvana.
To get Nirvana, one has to follow the eight-fold path which are to believe right, desire right, think right, live right, do the right efforts, think the right thoughts, behave right and to do the right meditation.
Buddhism emphasis non- violence. Buddha attacked the Brahmanic custom of animal slaughtering during religious ceremonies. Religiously the Buddhists are vegetarians. But a strong narrative in India claims that Buddha, died because he ate a sick animal. Buddhism does not have a God, nor is it atheistic. Many Buddhists keep images of Buddha. Buddha is not seen as the first prophet of the religion, but as the fourth prophet of the religion.
There are two main doctrines in Buddhism, Mahayana and Hinayana. Mahayana Buddhist believe that the right path of a follower will lead to the redemption of all human beings. The Hinayana believe that each person is responsible for his own fate. Along with these doctrines there are other Buddhist beliefs like 'Zen Buddhism' from Japan and the 'Hindu Tantric Buddhism' from Tibet. Zen Buddhism is a mixture of Buddhism as it arrived from India to Japan and original Japanese beliefs. The Hindu Tantric Buddhism is a mixture of Indian Buddhism and original Tibetian beliefs which existed among the Tibetians before the arrival of Buddhism in Tibet, among it magic, ghosts and tantras (meaningless mystical sentences).

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Религиите в Индия
Индуизъм
Преди три хиляди години диви арийски племена нахлули в Индия от север и се установили в района на сегашен Пенджаб. Тези племена вече имали добре организирана религия и жреци, които заемали високо място в обществената йерархия. В по-голямата си част тяхната религия се състояла от митове, поеми и химни. С течение на времето повечето от тях били събрани в свещени книги на санскритски език. Те се делят на две групи: СРУТИ (разсъждения) и СМИТРИ (спомени). Срути съдържа химни, поеми и молитви, докато Смитри се състои от притчи и правила.
Индуизмът е смесица от религията на тези племена и местните религии, изповядвани в Индия отпреди 3000 години. Днес той има повече от 400 милиона последователи по света, най-вече в Индия, както и хиляди разновидности, защото индуизмът е гъвкава религия. При все, че всички индуси вярват в БРАМА, абсолютната движеща сила на Вселената, те също така вярват в много по-второстепенни свръхестествени същества, които са различни за различните райони. Има няколко основни индуистки начала, общи за всички последователи на тази религия.

Превъплъщения. Всички индуисти вярват в превъплъщението. Това означава, че след смъртта душата преминава в друга форма на живот, и то многократно, докато не се освободи от този цикъл. Три неща са необходими за освобождаването на душата: философия (или знание), религиозни дела и молитви или медитация.

Кастово деление. Повечето последователи на индуизма приемат една строга система на класово деление, наречена кастова. Според нея всеки човек трябва да заеме онова място в живота, което му е отредено по рождение. Невъзможно е да се премине от една каста в друга. Все пак индусите като цяло допускат, че принципът КАРМА (според делата) оказва влияние на тяхната съдба в различните превъплъщения.

Индуистки секти
Има три основни индуистки секти. Те се кланят на някои от по-второстепенните богове.

ВИШНУ. Сектата, която се прекланя пред Вишну, пазителя на живота, се дели всъщност на 10 по-малки секти, защото Вишну е бог с 10 различни превъплъщения. Всяка верска общност или отделен вярващ индивид в дадено населено място може да избира между Мация рибата, Карма костенурката, Вараха глигана, Нарасимха човека-лъв, Ваман джуджето, Парасурама принца със секира, Рама принца, Кришна първия мъдрец, Буда последния мъдрец или Калки мъдреца на бъдещето.
Четиридневния празник Дивали, с който започва индуската Нова година, е в чест на бога Вишну и съпругата му Лакшми, богинята на плодородието.

ШИВА. Шива е бог, почитан най-вече от кашмирците и тамилите. Той е бог с две лица. Наречен Разрушителят, той често е изобразяван като страшна фигура, заобиколена от зли демони. В същото време понякога го представят като животворна сила със спокойно и любещо лице.

ШАКТИ. Тя е майка - богиня, почитана в Бенгалия и Асам. Шакти също е богиня с много лица. Гневна и отмъстителна, тя се появява като Кали или Дарга - зла стара жена, възседнала демон. Но тя се явява и като благодетелка - красива млада жена, известна като Парвати или Ума. Празникът Дасера, който се провежда всяка година в края на септември и трае 10 дни, е в чест на превъплъщението на Шакти като лошата боганя Дарга.

Други индийски религии
В индийския регион съществуват и други религии, включително ислямът и християнството. Тук са се зародили още три религии, които впоследствие са се разпространили и по други места.

СИКХИТЕ. Сикхската религия е възникнала през XV в. Създадена е от един учител, или гуру, на име НАНАК. Тя съчетава елементи от исляма и индуизма, като има и някои свои специфични принципи. Свещените книги на сикхизма се наричат Гуру Грант Сахиб.
Сикхските деца отбелязват пълнолетие с церемония, която ги въвежда в Халса - общността на чистите. Момчетата получават името Синг (лъв), а момичетата - Каур (принцеса). Ортодоксалните сикхи трябва да имат дълга коса и брада (кеш), да носят гребен (канга) и сабя (кирпан), а също къси гащи (кача) и лента (кара). Сикхите се смятат за много добри воини.

ДЖАЙНИТЕ. Джайнизмът е много толерантна религия. Джайните вярват, че всички живи същества имат душа и не бива да им се причинява вреда. Те не ядат месо. Най-ревностните последователи отместват насекомите от пътя си, за да не ги настъпят, и носят маски, за да не погълнат случайно някое летящо насекомо. Подобно на индуистите, те вярват в прераждането, но не вярват в никакви богове. Това в което вярват, е вечната Вселена, от която всички живи твари са неразделна част.

ПАРСИТЕ. Парсите са наследили религията си от древната ЗОРОАСТРИЙСКА религия в Персия (сега Иран), възникнала преди около 2600 години. Те вярват в един бог - АХУРА МАЗДА. Живот след смъртта е възможен за онези, които са били добри и почтени хора приживе. Свещен огън гори непрекъснато в техните храмове. Парсите не погребват мъртъвците си, защото смятат, че смъртта като дело на злото ще оскверни земята. Те поставят умрелите на високи кули, където хищните птици ги изяждат.

Religions in India
India known as the land of spirituality and philosophy, was the birthplace of some religions, which even exist today in the world.
The most dominant religion in India today is Hinduism. About 80% of Indians are Hindus. Hinduism is a colorful religion with a vast gallery of Gods and Goddesses. Hinduism is one of the ancient religions in the world. It is supposed to have developed about 5000 years ago. Later on in ancient period other religions developed in India.
Around 500 BC two other religions developed in India, namely, Buddhism and Jainism. Today only about 0.5% of Indians are Jains and about 0.7% are Buddhist. In ancient times Jainism and specially Buddhism were very popular in India. Indians who accepted Buddhist philosophy spread it not only within the Indian sub-continent but also to kingdoms east and south of India.
These three ancient religions, Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, are seen as the molders of the India philosophy. In 'modern' period new religions were also established in India.
One comparatively new religion in India is Sikhism and it was established in the 15th century. About 2% of Indians are Sikhs. There were other attempts to create new religions in India but they did not always succeed. For example, a Moghul emperor, Akbar, who reigned between 1556 - 1605, tried to establish a new religion, Din- E- Elahi, but it did not survive. There are other religious philosophies whose believers see themselves as a separate religion, but they do not always get this recognition. For example Lingayat of south India see themselves as a different religion, while others see them as a sect of Hinduism. There are also some tribal communities who demand to be recognized as separate religion from Hinduism. In the 19th century some Hindu reformers tried to remodel Hinduism to adjust it to modern period.
Along with the religions that developed in India, there are followers of non- Indian religions. The largest non-Indian religion is Islam. They are about 12% of India's population. Christians are more then 2% of India's population. There are also Zoroastrians who even though make less then 0.01% of India's population, are known around India. There are also a few thousand Jews in India. Judaism and Christianity might have arrived in India before they arrived in Europe.

India History
India in the past - its rulers
Different parts of India have different histories and legends. Indians in different parts of the country look at their past from a different point of view than Indians in other parts of India. Indian history has a past of over thousands of years. The Hindus record their religious history at over millions of year. They believe that the world is created and destroyed every few million years. Religious Hindus and some Hindu historians record their present history at over 7000 years. This belief is different from the accepted general history which claims Indian history to be shorter than 5000 years.
In general Indian history different kingdoms were established in different parts of India, some by foreign invaders. The first known invaders of India were Aryans (also mentioned sometimes as Indo-Aryans). It is believed that the Aryans arrived in north India somewhere from Iran and southern Russia at around 1500 B. C. The Aryans fought and pushed the local people called Dravidians southwards. The Aryans are referred to in Indian history as fair skinned people who pushed the dark skinned Dravidians southwards (see also Aryans and Dravidians - a controversial issue).
The north Indians are considered to be the descendants of the Aryans and the south Indians are considered descendants of the Dravidians. Even today the most basic division of the Indian society is of north Indian Aryans and south Indian Dravidians. But this division isn't proper. Many Indians emigrated from one part of India to other parts of India and not all local people of north India were pushed southwards by the Aryans. Some stayed and served the Aryans and others moved to live in the forests and the jungles of north India. There were also other foreign immigrations and invaders who arrived mainly in north India. Many Dravidians consider themselves as original Indians and their culture as the original culture of India. They also feel that their culture is discriminated by the north Indians (see also Regional parties).
After the Aryans many others invaded India. Alexander the Great and other Greeks arrived in India. The ancient Persian Empire expanded its boundaries up to India. But the Persian Empire like Alexander the Great, didn't arrive to the center of present India but to present day Pakistan and up to the borders of present India. But there were other Greeks who arrived in India and established kingdoms in India. Others to arrive in ancient India were Scythians, Kushans and Huns. These invaders also established some kingdoms in India. At a much later period there were Muslim invaders - Turks, Arabs, Afghans and others. And of course the Europeans - Portuguese, Danish, Dutch, French and English. In between Indians also established their own kingdoms and empires. These different kingdoms fought among themselves to expand their kingdom boundaries. But never in Indian history was there a kingdom that ruled the whole of India. These different kingdoms that were established in different parts in India created different aspects of Indian history for different regions of India.
Different regions of India adore different heroes and empires from India's past. For example people from Maharashtra in west India adore the Maratha Empire which was created in Maharashtra and ruled over large parts of India in the 17th and 18th century. Their most respected hero is Shivaji who created the Maratha Empire. People of Tamil Nadu have their own Tamil originated heroes and empires like the Chola Empire that ruled south India and some parts of north India between the 9th to 13th century. For some period the Cholas also reigned over parts of south Asia, including Sri Lanka, and some islands now parts of Malaysia and Indonesia. At other periods in Indian history other empires were established from Tamil Nadu among them the Pandya Empire and the Pallava Empire.
Two famous empires from Bihar in north-east India were Gupta and Maurya Empires, which ruled most of north India and large parts of south India. One of the Mauryan Emperors, Asoka, had perhaps the largest Indian Empire which covered almost the whole of present India. The Maurya Empire existed somewere between 4th century B. C. till 1st century B. C. The Gupta Empire existed between 4th century A. D. till 7th century A. D.

There were many other empires which were established at different periods in different parts of India and reigned over large parts of India. In south India the Vijayanagar Empire was established in the 14th century. In central India the Bahmani Empire was also established in the 14th century. Alongside with the empires, there were also small kingdoms which ruled on small parts of India. In present day Rajasthan there were many such kingdoms and their rulers belonged to the Rajput caste. The Rajputs even today symbolize the warrior castes of India. These kingdoms sometimes were completely independent and at other times acted as autonomies of bigger empires. Some of these kingdoms came into existence after a collapse of bigger empire and sometimes after a mutiny in a bigger empire. The Bahmani Empire broke up into five kingdoms. The world famous Moghul Empire from the Delhi-Agra region collapsed into many small kingdoms and into Maratha Empire.
The Moghuls are perhaps the most famous of the Indian Empires which ever existed. At their height they controlled the whole of north India, present day Pakistan and large parts of south India. In their empire they had many kings and rulers who were subjected to them. In west India, there were many local rulers who were subjected to the Moghul Empire. These rulers of West India were called Maratha (or Maharatha). Till the Moghul Empire, different Maratha rulers acted sometimes as independent rulers and at other times subjected to different larger kingdoms or empires including the Moghuls.
When Aurangzeb attained the Moghul throne, the empire began its first step towards collapsing. Aurangzeb was a religious and fanatic Muslim. He tried to enforce Islam and Islamic law on his citizens. As a result the Marathas under the leadership of Shivaji revolted and declared independence. Shivaji was also nominated emperor of the Marathas. The Marathas enlarged their empire by taking control over more Moghul territories and other rulers territories.
After Shivaji's death in 1680 the Maratha people had lot of interior crisis. Sometimes the different Maratha parties acted as one power and at other times as separate independent powers sometimes fighting each other. After Aurengzeb's death in 1707 the Moghuls started collapsing into separate independent kingdoms even though there was always a acting Moghul Emperor. In this period of chaos in the Moghul and Maratha empires, some European powers - English, French, Dutch, Danish and Portuguese - began controlling Indian territories.
Among these European powers the Portuguese arrived first in India in 1498 via sea after they had circled the whole of the African continent. The Portuguese had to circle the whole of African continent because in those days the Muslim Ottoman Empire of Turkey which ruled the middle east caused lots of problems to European Christian merchants who tried to pass through their land. Therefore the Europeans tried to find other routes to reach India. Columbus tried to get to India while sailing westwards from Europe. Columbus presumed that because the earth is round he would eventually get to India while sailing westwards, instead he found the continent of America whose existence was not known then to the Europeans. Columbus thought that he had arrived in India and called the natives Indians.
The Europeans came to India because of commercial reasons. The Indian sub-continent was then world famous for its spices. Local rulers leased to the Europeans, land so that they could build factories. Later on the Europeans got permits from local leaders to build forts around their factories. The Europeans then established forces to protect their interests. The next step of the European was occupying Indian land with these armies and so one of the European powers, the British, became the rulers of India.
The British control of India was a result of several factors. The Portuguese who along with their business tried to enforce Roman Catholicism on Indian(including the Syrian Christians) were defeated by local rulers sometimes in collaboration with Protestant European powers. But still the Portuguese remained in India with small pockets. Their main center in India was Goa. The Dutch and the Danes left India for their reasons. The two main European powers that remained in India were British and French. These two powers tried different ways to control India and to defeat each other.
The kingdoms of India, especially in north India, sought with the collapse of the Moghul Empire, patronage of another Empire. The French and the British both tried to fill this place. The British succeeded more than the French in convincing the local leaders. But not all Indian rulers were interested in British patronage or British rule on Indian soil. The Sikhs in north India, Marathas rulers in west India and kingdom of Mysore in south India were among those who opposed the British rule.
The British succeeded in defeating the Indian rulers (some of whom got also French assistance against the British) and became the rulers of India. But the French like the Portuguese remained in India with small pockets and both these powers remained in India even after the British left India in 1947.
The British ruled India via two administrative systems. One was ‘Provinces' and the other ‘Princely States'. Provinces were British territories completely under British control. Princely States were states in British India with local ruler or king with honorary titles like Maharaja, Raja, Maharana, Rana, Nizam, Badshah and other titles meaning king or ruler in different Indian languages. These rulers were subjected to the British Empire.
During India's independence in 1947 there were 562 Princely States and 11 Provinces.

World Religions
Arrival of Non-Indian religions into India
India, well known as the land of spirituality and philosophy, was the birthplace of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism among other religions. Along with the religions that developed in India, there are also followers of religions of non- Indian origins. Among these religions are Islam, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Bahaism and Judaism. The followers of these different religions arrived in India at different times.
The largest religion of non-Indian origin is Islam. They are about 12% of India's population. Muslims who arrived in India converted Indians to Islam. Islam was spread in India through two means, peaceful and sword. The first spreaders of Islam in India were individuals who saw in spreading Islam a holy precept. They used peaceful means to convert to Islam. But most of Indians are believed to have converted to Islam through the sword, which means the Muslim invaders gave the Indians an option to choose between death and Islam. The different Muslim rulers of India also brought into their kingdoms Muslim mercenaries, businessmen and slaves from different parts of the world like Russia, Afghanistan, Turkey, Arab countries and Africa. These people remained in India, married local Indians and converted them to Islam.
Like the Muslims, the Christians, who arrived to India also converted Indians to their religion, Christianity. Christians are about 2.5% of India's population. Most of the Indians were converted to Christianity by the missionaries who arrived in India with the European powers from 15th century. Of the European powers, the Portuguese were most enthusiast to baptize Indians. But Christianity did not arrive in India with the arrival of European missionaries. It reached India almost 2000 years ago.
Christianity originates in Israel. One of the Apostles (the 12 chief disciples of Jesus), St. Judas Thomas, was a carpenter. He was brought to India by a merchant to build a temple. St. Thomas arrived in Kerala, in south India in 52 AD. He succeeded in converting local Indians to Christianity. His converts were called Syrian Christians. One assumption says that some of the Syrian Christians were actually local Jews converted by St. Judas Thomas to Christianity. The disciples of Jesus at first intended to convince the Jews to adopt the philosophy of Jesus as new Judaism. Therefore they arrived to regions where Jews had settled in the world. Among these regions where Jews had settled was India. Two Apostles are believed to have arrived in India for this purpose. St. Judas Thomas arrived in Kerala in south India and St. Bartholomew in western Maharashtra in west India.
Judaism is probably the oldest religion of non-Indian origin to arrive in India. Today there are also a few thousand Jews in India. Judaism and Christianity might have arrived in India before they reached Europe.
The different Jewish communities of India, Bene Israel, Cochini, Baghdadi and Bne Menashe claims their arrival in India in different ways and it is not always clear how they really came to India. The Bene Israel, which is the largest Jewish community of India, lived earlier in the villages of west Maharashtra. They are believed to exist in India for over 2000 years. The Cochini Jews in south India also claim that their first forefathers arrived in India over 2000 years ago during King Solomon's rule. The Bne Menashe of East India who claim to origin from the 'Lost Tribes' arrived much later in India. The Bne Menashes arrived in east India from China and Myanmar (Burma). In the late 18th century, Jews from Arab countries and Iran arrived in India because of religious persecutions in their countries. They were called collectively as Baghdadi Jews.
Two other religions that arrived in India because of religious persecutions in their countries were Zoroastrianism and Bahaism. Both of them arrived from Iran.
Zoroastrians, who even though make less then 0.01% of India's population, are well known around India. The followers of this religion are called Parsis because they arrived from Persia (Iran). The followers of this religion exiled from Iran in the 7th century AD. They arrived in Gujarat in west India. In the 20th century followers of the Bahai religion arrived in India because of religious persecution in Iran.
Religions of India
1. Hinduism
2. Buddhism
3. Jainism
4. Christianity
5. Islam
6. Zoroastrianism
7. Sikhism
8. Judaism
9. Bahá'í Faith

Hinduism
The Sri Venkateshwara temple at Tirupati is the most visited temple in India
A Jain temple in Kochi
The Nasrani Menorah, the symbol of the Knanaya community in South India.
The Jama Masjid, Delhi is one of the largest mosques in the world.
The Harimandir Sahib, known popularly as the Golden Temple, is a sacred shrine for Sikhs.
The adherents of Hinduism form the largest religious community in India, numbering approximately 900 million and comprising 80.5% of the population. About 50 million Hindus of Indian origin are living abroad (notably the USA, Fiji, Mauritius, UK and South Africa). Hinduism in India has a long and varied history. Indeed, India is the birth-place of Hinduism and the history of Hinduism is as old as that of India herself. Hinduism is a set of practices of the people of India. The word Hindu is derived from the word Sindhu and signifies a person coming from the land of the river Sindhu (i.e., India). Hinduism has origins of around 2500 BCE. Modern Hinduism has taken the form of a religion due to other religious influences. However, it is known as a "way of life" rather than a religion. It differs from other religions by the fact that it does not have a single founder, a specific theological system, a single system of morality, or a central religious organisation.
Despite attacks and invasions by various Arab and Afghan empires during and after the 7th century CE, Hinduism has survived. The reason is said to be the in-built tolerance and inclusiveness in Hinduism.
Further information: Hinduism, Hindu, and Vedic religion

Buddhism
Buddhism, known in ancient India as Buddha Dharma, originated in northern India in what is today the state of Bihar. It rapidly gained adherents during the Buddha's lifetime. It was also the religion of the rich and the upper classes and hence Up to the 9th century, Indian followers numbered in the hundreds of thousands only compared to other religions which numbered in millions. While the exact cause of the decline of Buddhism in India is disputed, it is known that the mingling of Hindu and Buddhist societies in India and the rise of Hindu Vedanta movements began to compete against Buddhism. Many believe that Hinduism's adaptation to Buddhism resulted in Buddhism's rapid decline. Also, Muslim invaders are recorded to have caused massive devastation on monasteries, libraries, and statuary, as they did on Hindu religious life. Many Indian Buddhist populations remained intact in or migrated to places like Sri Lanka, Tibet, and other Asian countries. The loss of main centers of pilgrimage and supplanting the upper class by new islamic upper class caused the decline of Buddhism in India.
Recently, a revival of Buddhism in India has made significant progress. In 1956, B. R. Ambedkar, a princely state official during the Indian struggle for independence from the United Kingdom, and thousands of his followers converted to Buddhism in protest against the caste system. Subsequent mass conversions on a lesser scale have occurred since then. Three-quarters of these "neo-Buddhists" live in Maharashtra. Alongside these converts are the Vajrayana Buddhists of Ladakh, Sikkim, and Arunachal Pradesh, a small number of tribal peoples in the region of Bengal, and Tibetan refugees. Today around 8 million Buddhists live in India.

Jainism
Jainism, along with Hinduism, Buddhism and Sikhism, is one of the four major Dharmic religions originating in India. In general, Jains are extremely well-represented despite comprising only 0.4% (around 4.2 million) of India's total population. Many of India's Jains are affluent, and almost all are well off. As such, it can be said that they hold power and wealth disproportionate to their small population. According to the India Census 2001, Jains have the highest literacy rate (In respect to religious affiliation) of 94.1% compared to the national average of 64.8%.

Christianity
Christianity, according to tradition arrived in India in the first century (c.52-85AD) through the apostle Thomas. The chronicle of his mission in India is recorded in the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas, and the lesser-known Apocalypse of Thomas. In these books, Judas Thomas is regarded as the "Twin" of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, alleging that since this Thomas was identical in look to Christ, he was equal in piety. The apostle completed the conversion of a Malabar prince, and founded a church on the prince's grounds. According to the Gospel of Thomas, he later was buried in the foundation of that building, located by tradition near Mumbai (formerly Bombay).
The events of Thomas' mission in India has been explored by scholars for centuries. They question whether the event was historically accurate, or in tradition of building the Indian Christian communities growing along the Malabar coast.
Christianity was later consolidated in India, by the arrival of Syriac Jewish-Christians now known as Knanaya people in the second century A.D. This ancient ethnic Christian community of Kerala is known as Nasrani or Syrian Christian. The Nasrani people and especially the Knanaya people within the Nasranis have strong Jewish historical ties. Their form of Christianity is one of the most ancient: Syriac Christianity which is also known as the Eastern Orthodox Church and referred to in India as Saint Thomas Christians. It should be noted that the term "Saint Thomas Christians" is a loose term that many non-Nasranis Christians in Kerala are often labeled. The vast majority of Christians in Kerala are not the original Nasrani/Knanaya but indigenous local converts.[citation needed]Roman Catholicism reached India during the period of European colonization, which began in 1498 when the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama arrived on the Malabar coast. Christian missionary activity increased in the early 1800s. Today Christianity is the third largest religion of India making up 2 - 2.9% of the population. Christians are most prevalent in the southern states like Kerala and Tamil Nadu, northeastern states such as Nagaland, Mizoram and in western state Goa.

Islam
Islam arrived in India as early as the 8th century A.D. During the following decades, Islam contributed greatly to the cultural enhancement of an already rich Indian culture, shaping not only the shape of Northern Indian classical music (Hindustani, a melding of Indian and Middle Eastern elements) but encouraging a grand tradition of Urdu (a melding of Hindi, Arabic and Persian languages) literature both religious and secular. Among other monuments, the Taj Mahal is a gift of the Mughals. As of 2001, there are about 130 million Muslims in India who are scattered throughout the country, with the highest concentrations being in the states of Jammu and Kashmir, Kerala, West Bengal, Assam and parts of the Gangetic plain. Uttar Pradesh in the Gangetic plain has the highest population of Muslims in one state. India has the third largest population of Muslims in the world after Indonesia and Pakistan.

Zoroastrianism
Parsi Navjote ceremony (rites of admission into the Zoroastrian faith)
Main article: Parsis, the Zoroastrians of the Indian subcontinent.
Subsequent to the fall of the Persian Empire, after which Zoroastrianism was gradually supplanted by Islam, many Zoroastrians fled to other regions in the hope of preserving their religious tradition. Among them were several groups who migrated to Gujarat, on the western shores of the Indian subcontinent, where they finally settled. The descendants of those refugees are today known as the Parsis.
In contrast to their co-religionists elsewhere, in India the Zoroastrians enjoyed tolerance and even admiration from other religious communities. From the 19th century onward, the Parsis gained a reputation for their education and widespread influence in all aspects of society, partly due to the divisive strategy of British colonialism which favored certain minorities. As such, Parsis are generally more affluent than other Indians and are stereotypically viewed as among the most Anglicised and "Westernised" of Indian minority groups. They have also played an instrumental role in the economic development of the country over many decades; several of the best-known business conglomerates of India are run by Parsi-Zoroastrians, including the Tata, Godrej, and Wadia families.
As of the census of 2001, the Parsis represent approximately 0.006% of the total population of India, with a concentration in and around the city of Mumbai (previously known as Bombay). Due to a low birth rate and high rate of immigration, demographic trends project that by the year 2020 the Parsis will number only 23,000 or 0.0002% of the total population of India. The Parsis will then cease to be called a community and will be labelled a 'tribe'.

Sikhism
Sikhism, was founded in India's northwestern Punjab region about 400 years ago. As of 2001 there were 19.3 million Sikhs in India. Many of today's Sikhs are situated in Punjab, the largest Sikh province in the world and the ancestral home of Sikhs. There are also significant populations of Sikhs in the neighboring states of Haryana and New Delhi. The most famous Sikh temple is the Golden Temple, located in Amritsar, Punjab. Many Sikhs serve in the Indian Army. The current prime minister of India, Manmohan Singh, is a Sikh. Punjab is the spiritual home of Sikhs and is the only state in India where Sikhs form a majority.

Judaism
Jews in India
Trade contacts between the Mediterranean region and the west coast of India probably led to the presence of small Jewish settlements in India as long ago as the early first millennium B.C. In Kerala a community of Jews tracing its origin to the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 has remained associated with the cities of Kodungallur (formerly known as Cranganore) and Kochi (formerly known as Cochin) for at least 1,000 years. The Paradesi Synagogue in Kochi, rebuilt in 1568, is in the architectural style of Kerala but preserves the ritual style of the Sephardic rite, with Babylonian and Yemenite influence as well. The Jews of Kochi, concentrated mostly in the old "Jew Town," were completely integrated into local culture, speaking Malayalam and taking local names while preserving their knowledge of Hebrew and contacts with Southwest Asia. A separate community of Jews, called the Bene Israel, had lived along the Konkan Coast in and around Bombay, Pune, and Ahmadabad for almost 2,000 years. Unlike the Kochi Jews, they became a village-based society and maintained little contact with other Jewish communities. They always remained within the Orthodox Jewish fold, practicing the Sephardrew is coolite without rabbis, with the synagogue as the center of religious and cultural life. Following trade routes established by the expansion of the British Empire, a third group of Jews, the Baghdadi Jews immigrated to India, settling primarily in Bombay and Calcutta. Many of the Baghdadi traders became wealthy and participated prominently in the economic leadership of these growing cities. As a result of religious pressure elsewhere, including the forced conversions of Mashhad (see Muslim Jew), their numbers were increased by religious refugees. The Baghdadis came mostly from the Ottoman Empire, Persia, and Afghanistan.
The population of the Kochi Jews, always small, had decreased from 5,000 in 1951 to about fifty in the early 1990s. During the same period, the Bene Israel decreased from about 20,000 to 5,000, while the Baghdadi Jews declined from 5,000 to 250. Emigration to Australia, Israel, the United Kingdom, and North America accounts for most of this decline. According to the 1981 Indian census, there were 5,618 Jews in India, down from 5,825 in 1971. The 1991 census showed a further decline to 5,271, most of whom lived in Maharashtra and Kerala.
The Knanaya and Nasrani Christian groups also have strong historical ties to Judaism.

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Rajiv Ratna Gandhi (Hindi: राजीव गान्धी) (20 August 1944 - 21 May 1991), the eldest son of Indira and Feroze Gandhi, was the 6th Prime Minister of India (and the 3rd from their family) from his mother's death on 31 October 1984 until his resignation on 2 December 1989 following a general election defeat. Becoming the Prime Minister of India at the age of 40, he is the youngest person to date to hold that office.

Rajiv Gandhi worked as a professional pilot for Indian Airlines before coming into politics. He was married to Sonia Maino, an Italian national he had met while in college. He remained aloof from politics despite his mother being the Indian Prime Minister, and it was only following the death of his younger brother Sanjay Gandhi in 1980, that Rajiv was convinced to enter politics. Upon the assassination of his mother in 1984 by religious fanatics, Congress party leaders convinced him to become the new Prime Minister. Rajiv Gandhi led the Congress to a major election victory in 1984 soon after, amassing the largest majority in Parliament. He had the public image of being young, modern and Mr. Clean - an honest leader free of machine politics and corruption. He began dismantling the License Raj - government quotas, tariffs and permit regulations on economic activity - modernized the telecommunications industry, the education system, expanded science and technology initiatives and improved relations with the United States. He also was responsible for sending Indian troops for peace efforts in Sri Lanka, which soon ended in open conflict with the LTTE, forcing Rajiv to pull Indian forces out. The Bofors scandal broke his honest, corruption-free image and resulted in a major defeat for his party in the 1989 elections.
Rajiv Gandhi remained the Congress leader till the elections in 1991. He was assassinated while campaigning, by a female suicide bomber who sought revenge for his intervention against the LTTE. His Italian-born widow Sonia Gandhi became the leader of the Congress party in 1998, and led the party to victory in the 2004 elections. His son Rahul Gandhi is a member of parliament.

Rajiv Gandhi was born in India's most famous political family. His grandfather was the Indian independence leader Jawaharlal Nehru, who would become India's first Prime Minister after independence. Rajiv and his younger brother Sanjay were raised in Allahabad and Delhi, but suffered from the separation of their mother, who lived with Nehru to care for him, and their father Feroze Gandhi. Even as his parents were reconciled in 1958, Feroze died from a heart attack in 1959. Rajiv finished his high school education from the Doon school and attended college at the Imperial College London and Cambridge University, but he did not receive a degree. At Cambridge, he met and fell in love with an Italian student Sonia Maino. Maino's family opposed the match, but Maino came to India to Rajiv and they married in 1969.
Gandhi began working for Indian Airlines as a professional pilot even as his mother became Prime Minister in 1966. He exhibited no interest in politics and did not live regularly with his mother in Delhi at the Prime Minister's residence. In 1970, his wife gave birth to Rahul, his first child, and in 1972, Priyanka, his second child and only daughter. Even as Gandhi remained aloof, his younger brother Sanjay became a close advisor to their mother.

It was following his younger brother's death in 1980 that Rajiv was pressured by Congress politicians and his mother to enter politics. Rajiv and his wife were both opposed to the idea, and Rajiv even publicly stated that he would not contest for his brother's seat, but he finally accepted his mother's urging and announced his candidacy for Parliament. His entry was criticized by many in the press, public and opposition political parties, who saw the role of Nehru's dynasty intensifying in Indian politics.
Elected for Sanjay's Lok Sabha (parliamentary) constituency of Amethi in Uttar Pradesh state in February 1981, Rajiv became an important political advisor to his mother. It was widely perceived that Indira Gandhi was grooming Rajiv for the prime minister's job, and Rajiv soon became the president of the Youth Congress - the Congress party's youth wing.

Rajiv was in Orissa when Indira Gandhi was assassinated on 31 October 1984. Top Congress leaders, as well as President Zail Singh pressed Rajiv to become India's Prime Minister, within hours of his mother's assassination by two of her Sikh bodyguards. Some accuse him of not doing enough to stop the anti-Sikh riots which ensued, killing more than 5,000 people. Commenting on the violence, he said, «When a giant tree falls, the earth below shakes». Many Congress politicians were blamed for orchestrating the violence. Assuming office, Rajiv asked President Zail Singh to dissolve Parliament and hold fresh elections. Rajiv Gandhi also officially became the President of the Congress.
Owing largely to the feelings of sympathy in wake of Indira's murder, the Congress party won a landslide victory - the margin of majority in Parliament was the largest in Indian history, giving Rajiv absolute control of government. Rajiv Gandhi also benefited from his youth and a general perception of being Mr. Clean, or free of a background in corrupt, machine politics. Rajiv thus revived hopes and enthusiasm amongst the Indian public for the Congress.
Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi began leading in a direction significantly different from Indira Gandhi's socialism. He improved bilateral relations with the United States - long strained owing to Indira's socialism and close friendship with the USSR - and expanded economic and scientific cooperation. He increased government support for science and technology and associated industries, and reduced import quotas, taxes and tariffs on technology-based industries, especially computers, airlines, defence and telecommunications. He introduced measures significantly reducing the License Raj - allowing businesses and individuals to purchase capital, consumer goods and import without red-tape and bureaucratic restrictions. In 1986, Rajiv announced a national education policy to modernize and expand higher education programs across India.
Rajiv authorized an extensive police and Army campaign against the militants in Punjab. A state of martial law existed in the region, and civil liberties, commerce and tourism were greatly disrupted. There are many accusations of human rights violations by police officials in this period, but the militancy was brought under control. It is alleged that even as the situation in Punjab came under control, the Indian government was offering arms and training to the LTTE rebels fighting the Government of Sri Lanka. The Indo-Sri Lanka Peace Accord was signed by Rajiv Gandhi and the Sri Lankan President J.R.Jayewardene, in Colombo on July 29, 1987. The very next day, on July 30, 1987, Rajiv Gandhi was criminally assaulted publicly by a Sinhalese naval rating named Vijayamunige Rohana de Silva, while receiving honor guard. Though the embarrassed Sri Lankan President J.R.Jayewardene initially attempted to pass off the bizarre assault as "Rajiv tripped a little and slightly lost his balance", Rajiv Gandhi while enroute to New Delhi asserted to J.N.Dixit who was in charge of arranging that disastrous visit, «What is all this nonsensical speculation. Of course, I was hit.»
Rajiv's government suffered a major setback when its efforts to arbitrate between the Government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE rebels backfired. As per the peace accords signed in 1987, the LTTE would disarm to the Indian Peace Keeping Force which was sent to Sri Lanka. But distrust and a few incidents of conflict broke out into open fighting between the LTTE militants and Indian soldiers. Over a thousand Indian soldiers were killed, and pressure increased from the Sri Lankan government and nationalist politicians on the Indians to cease to interfere in the domestic crisis. Rajiv Gandhi withdrew the Indian soldiers in a situation which clearly pointed at the failure of Indian diplomacy and military tactics.

Rajiv's finance minister, Vishwanath Pratap Singh uncovered compromising details about government and political corruption, to the consternation of Congress leaders. Transferred to the Defence ministry, Singh uncovered what became known as the Bofors scandal, involving tens of millions of dollars - concerned alleged payoffs by the Swedish Bofors arms company through an Italian businessman and Gandhi family associate, Ottavio Quattrocchi, in return for Indian contracts. Upon the uncovering of the scandal, Singh was conspicuously dismissed from office, and later from Congress membership. Rajiv Gandhi himself was later personally implicated in the scandal, when the investigation was continued by Narasimhan Ram and Chitra Subramaniam of The Hindu newspaper, shattering his image as an honest politician.
V. P. Singh's image as an exposer of government corruption made him very popular with the public, and opposition parties united under his name to form the Janata Dal coalition. In the 1989 elections, the Congress suffered a major setback. With the support of Indian communists and the Bharatiya Janata Party, V. P. Singh and his Janata Dal formed a government. Rajiv Gandhi became the Leader of the Opposition, while remaining Congress president. It is speculated that Rajiv and Congress leaders engineered the collapse of V. P. Singh's government in 1990 by promising support to Chandra Shekhar, a high-ranking leader in the Janata Dal. Rajiv's Congress offered outside support briefly to Chandra Sekhar, who became Prime Minister. But this support was withdrawn in 1991 and fresh elections were announced. Rajiv Gandhi Was the founder of Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya System in the year 1986.

Rajiv Gandhi's last public meeting was at Tiruttani. Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in Sriperumbudur on May 21, 1991, a city close to Chennai, whilst campaigning for a UCPI candidate in Tamil Nadu. The assassination was carried out by the suicide bomber Thenmuli Rajaratnam (aka «Dhanu»). Dhanu was widely believed to have been a LTTE member, meaning that the act was carried out with the acknowledgement of the LTTE leadership. In 2006, this was implicitly confirmed by the LTTE when the top negotiator for the group, Anton Balasingham, told the private Indian channel NDTV that the killing was a «great tragedy, a monumental historical tragedy for which we deeply regret».
In 1998 an Indian court convicted 26 people in the conspiracy to assassinate Gandhi. The conspirators, who consisted of Tamil Tigers from Sri Lanka and their Indian allies, had sought to stop Gandhi from getting elected in the then upcoming elections. They wanted to stop him from sending Indian troops into Sri Lanka as he had done in 1987 (where he was assaulted by a Sinhalese nationalist sailor, Wijayamuni Wijitha Rohana, while inspecting a guard of honour) to help enforce a peace accord.
Those troops ended up fighting the Tamil separatist guerrillas. His death brought the ailing Congress Party back into power in the 1991 general election on a similar wave of feeling as had followed his mother's assassination. He was awarded the Bharat Ratna posthumously in 1991. A magnificent memorial, christened Veer Bhumi was constructed at his cremation spot.

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Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (Gujarati: મોહનદાસ કરમચંદ ગાંધી) (2 October 1869 - 30 January 1948) was a major political and spiritual leader of India and the Indian Independence Movement. He is considered the father of India, and is often affectionately referred to as "Bapu," meaning father in Gujarati. He was the pioneer[1] and perfector of Satyagraha - resistance through mass civil disobedience strongly founded upon ahimsa (total non-violence) came to be one of the strongest driving philosophies of the Indian Independence Movement, and has inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. Gandhi is commonly known and addressed in India and worldwide as Mahatma Gandhi (Hindi: महात्मा, / məhatma /; from Sanskrit, Mahatma: Great Soul) and as Bapu (in many Indian languages, Father).
A Gujarati, English-educated lawyer, Gandhi first employed his ideas of peaceful civil disobedience in the Indian community's struggle for civil rights in South Africa. Upon his return to India, Gandhi organised poor farmers and labourers to protest oppressive taxation and widespread discrimination. Leading the Indian National Congress, Gandhi led a nationwide campaign for the alleviation of poverty, for the liberation of Indian women, for brotherhood amongst communities of differing religions and ethnicity, for an end to untouchability and caste discrimination, and for the economic self-sufficiency of the nation, but above all for Swaraj - the independence of India from foreign domination. Gandhi famously led Indians in the disobedience of the salt tax through the 400 kilometre (248 miles) Dandi Salt March in 1930, and in an open call for the British to Quit India in 1942. He spent his final years fighting for communal peace and harmony amongst Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs.
Throughout, Gandhi remained committed to non-violence and truth even in the most extreme situations. Gandhi was a student of Hindu philosophy and lived simply, organizing an ashram that was self-sufficient in its needs. He made his own clothes - the traditional Indian dhoti and shawl, woven with a charkha - and lived on a simple vegetarian diet. He used rigorous fasts - abstaining from food and water for long periods - for self-purification as well as a means of protest. Gandhi's life and teachings inspired Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Steve Biko, Nelson Mandela and Aung San Suu Kyi and, respectively, the American Civil Rights Movement, civil rights struggles in South Africa and Myanmar. His criticism of many aspects of western modernity (such as modern technology and industrialization) in that it harmed the poor and benefited the rich has also earned him the reputation of a development critic whose thinking has inspired many later political thinkers.
Gandhi is honoured as the Father of the Nation in India, a title first given him by Subhash Chandra Bose. Gandhi's birthday on October 2 is annually commemorated as Gandhi Jayanti, and is a national holiday.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born into the Hindu Modh Vanik family in Porbandar, Gujarat, India, in 1869. He was the son of Karamchand Gandhi, the diwan (Prime Minister) of Porbandar, and Putlibai, Karamchand's fourth wife, a Hindu of the Pranami Vaishnava order. Karamchand's first two wives, who each bore him a daughter, died from unknown reasons (rumored to be in childbirth). His third wife was deemed incapacitated and gave her permission to Karamchand for him to marry again. Growing up with a devout mother and surrounded by the Jain influences of Gujarat, Gandhi learned from an early age the tenets of non-injury to living beings, vegetarianism, fasting for self-purification, and mutual tolerance between members of various creeds and sects. He was born into the vaishya, or business, caste.
In May 1883, at the age of 13, Gandhi was married through his parents' arrangement to Kasturba Makhanji (also spelled "Kasturbai" or known as "Ba"), who was his age. They had four sons: Harilal Gandhi, born in 1888; Manilal Gandhi, born in 1892; Ramdas Gandhi, born in 1897; and Devdas Gandhi, born in 1900. Gandhi was a mediocre student in his youth at Porbandar and later Rajkot. He barely passed the matriculation exam for Samaldas College at Bhavanagar, Gujarat. He was also unhappy at the college, because his family wanted him to become a barrister. He leapt at the opportunity to study in England, which he viewed as "a land of philosophers and poets, the very centre of civilisation."
At the age of 18 on September 4, 1888, Gandhi went to University College London to train as a barrister. His time in London, the Imperial capital, was influenced by a vow he had made to his mother in the presence of a Jain monk Becharji, upon leaving India to observe the Hindu precepts of abstinence from meat, alcohol, and promiscuity. Although Gandhi experimented with adopting "English" customs - taking dancing lessons for example - he could not stomach his landlady's mutton and cabbage. She pointed him towards one of London's few vegetarian restaurants. Rather than simply go along with his mother's wishes, he read about, and intellectually embraced vegetarianism. He joined the Vegetarian Society, was elected to its executive committee, and founded a local chapter. He later credited this with giving him valuable experience in organizing institutions. Some of the vegetarians he met were members of the Theosophical Society, which had been founded in 1875 to further universal brotherhood and devoted to the study of Buddhist and Hindu Brahmanistic literature. They encouraged Gandhi to read the Bhagavad Gita. Not having shown a particular interest in religion before, he read works of and about Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism, Islam and other religions. He returned to India after being admitted to the bar of England and Wales, but had limited success establishing a law practice in Bombay, later applying and being turned down for a part-time job as a high school teacher. He ended up returning to Rajkot to make a modest living drafting petitions for litigants but was forced to close down that business as well when he ran afoul of a British officer. In his autobiography, he describes this incident as a kind of unsuccessful lobbying attempt on behalf of his older brother. It was in this climate that (in 1893) he accepted a year-long contract from an Indian firm to a post in Natal, South Africa.

At this point in his life, Gandhi was a mild-mannered, diffident and politically indifferent individual. He had read his first newspaper at the age of 18, and was prone to stage fright while speaking in court. South Africa changed him dramatically, as he faced the discrimination that was commonly directed at blacks and Indians in that country. One day in court in the city of Durban, the magistrate asked him to remove his turban. Gandhi refused to do so and stormed out of the courtroom. In another incident, he was thrown off a train at Pietermaritzburg, after refusing to move from the first class coach to a third class compartment while holding a valid first class ticket. Later, travelling further on by stagecoach, he was beaten by a driver for refusing to travel on the footboard to make room for a European passenger. He suffered other hardships on the journey as well, including being barred from many hotels on account of his race. These incidents have been acknowledged by several biographers as a turning point in his life that would serve as the catalyst for his activism later in life. It was through witnessing first-hand the racism, prejudice and injustice against Indians in South Africa that Gandhi started to question his people's status, and his own place in society.
At the end of his contract, Gandhi prepared to return to India. However, at a farewell party in his honour in Durban, he happened to glance at a newspaper and learned that a bill was being considered by the Natal Legislative Assembly to deny the right to vote to Indians. When he brought this up with his hosts, they lamented that they did not have the expertise necessary to oppose the bill, and implored Gandhi to stay and help them. He circulated several petitions to both the Natal Legislature and the British Government in opposition to the bill. Though unable to halt the bill's passage, his campaign was successful in drawing attention to the grievances of Indians in South Africa. Supporters convinced him to remain in Durban to continue fighting against the injustices levied against Indians in South Africa. He founded the Natal Indian Congress in 1894, with himself as the Secretary. Through this organization, he moulded the Indian community of South Africa into a homogeneous political force, publishing documents detailing Indian grievances and evidence of British discrimination in South Africa. Gandhi returned briefly to India in 1896 to bring his wife and children to live with him in South Africa. When he returned in January 1897, a white mob attacked and tried to lynch him. In an early indication of the personal values that would shape his later campaigns, he refused to press charges on any member of the mob, stating it was one of his principles not to seek redress for a personal wrong in a court of law.
In 1913 he started a newspaper called the Indian Opinion. At the onset of the South African War, Gandhi argued that Indians must support the war effort in order to legitimize their claims to full citizenship, organizing a volunteer ambulance corps of 300 free Indians and 800 indentured labourers called the Indian Ambulance Corps, one of the few medical units to serve wounded black South Africans. He himself was a stretcher-bearer at the Battle of Spion Kop, and was decorated. At the conclusion of the war, however, the situation for the Indians did not improve, but continued to deteriorate. In 1906, the Transvaal government promulgated a new Act compelling registration of the colony's Indian population. At a mass protest meeting held in Johannesburg on 11th September that year, Gandhi adopted his methodology of satyagraha (devotion to the truth), or non-violent protest, for the first time, calling on his fellow Indians to defy the new law and suffer the punishments for doing so, rather than resist through violent means. This plan was adopted, leading to a seven-year struggle in which thousands of Indians were jailed (including Gandhi himself on many occasions), flogged, or even shot, for striking, refusing to register, burning their registration cards, or engaging in other forms of non-violent resistance. While the government was successful in repressing the Indian protesters, the public outcry stemming from the harsh methods employed by the South African government in the face of peaceful Indian protesters finally forced South African General Jan Christiaan Smuts to negotiate a compromise with Gandhi. In May 1915, Gandhi founded an ashram on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, India and called it Satyagrah Ashram (also known as Sabarmati Ashram). There lodged twenty five men and women who took vows of truth, celibacy, ahimsa, nonpossession, control of the palate, and service of the Indian people.

As he had done in the South African War, Gandhi urged support of the British in World War I and was active in encouraging Indians to join the army. His rationale, opposed by many others, was that if he desired the full citizenship, freedoms and rights in the Empire, it would be wrong not to help in its defence. He spoke at the conventions of the Indian National Congress, but was primarily introduced to Indian issues, politics and the Indian people by Gopal Krishna Gokhale, at the time one of the most respected leaders of the Congress Party.
Gandhi's first major achievements came in 1918 with the Champaran agitation and Kheda Satyagraha, although in the latter he was involved at par with Sardar Vallabhai Patel, who acted as his right-hand and leader of the rebels. In Champaran, a district in the state of Bihar, he organized civil resistance on the part of tens of thousands of landless farmers and serfs, and poor farmers with small lands, who were forced to grow indigo and other cash crops instead of the food crops necessary for their survival. Suppressed by the militias of the landlords (mostly British), they were given measly compensation, leaving them mired in extreme poverty. The villages were kept extremely dirty and unhygienic, and alcoholism, untouchability and purdah were rampant. Now in the throes of a devastating famine, the British levied an oppressive tax which they insisted on increasing in rate. The situation was desperate. In Kheda in Gujarat, the problem was the same. Gandhi established an ashram there, organizing scores of his veteran supporters and fresh volunteers from the region. He organized a detailed study and survey of the villages, accounting the atrocities and terrible episodes of suffering, including the general state of degenerate living. Building on the confidence of villagers, he began leading the clean-up of villages, building of schools and hospitals and encouraging the village leadership to undo and condemn many social evils, as accounted above.
But his main assault came as he was arrested by police on the charge of creating unrest and was ordered to leave the province. Hundreds of thousands of people protested and rallied outside the jail, police stations and courts demanding his release, which the court unwillingly granted. Gandhi led organized protests and strikes against the landlords, who with the guidance of the British government, signed an agreement granting more compensation and control over farming for the poor farmers of the region, and cancellation of revenue hikes and collection until the famine ended. It was during this agitation, that Gandhi was addressed by the people as Bapu (Father) and Mahatma (Great Soul). In Kheda, Patel represented the farmers in negotiations with the British, who suspended revenue collection and granted relief. All prisoners were released. Gandhi's resulting fame spread all over the nation.

In Punjab, the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of civilians by British troops caused deep trauma to the nation, and increased public anger and acts of violence. Gandhi criticized both the actions of the British, and the retaliatory violence of Indians. He authored the resolution offering condolences to British civilian victims and condemning the riots, which after initial opposition in the party, was accepted after Gandhi made an emotional speech pushing forth his principle that all violence was evil and could not be justified. But it was after the massacre and violence that Gandhi's mind focused upon obtaining complete self-government and control of all Indian government institutions, maturing soon into Swaraj or complete individual, spiritual, political independence. Gandhi was invested with executive authority on behalf of the Indian National Congress in December 1921. Under Gandhi's leadership, the Congress was reorganized with a new constitution, with the goal of Swaraj. Membership in the party was opened to anyone prepared to pay a token fee. A hierarchy of committees was set up to improve discipline, transforming the party from an elite organization to one of mass national appeal. Gandhi expanded his non-violence platform to include the swadeshi policy - the boycott of foreign-made goods, especially British goods. Linked to this was his advocacy that khadi (homespun cloth) be worn by all Indians instead of British-made textiles. Gandhi exhorted Indian men and women, rich or poor, to spend time each day spinning khadi in support of the independence movement. This was a strategy to inculcate discipline and dedication to weed out the unwilling and ambitious, and include women in the movement at a time when many thought that such activities were not "respectable" for women. In addition to boycotting British products, Gandhi urged the people to boycott British educational institutions and law courts, to resign from government employment, and to forsake British titles and honours.
"Non-cooperation" enjoyed wide-spread appeal and success, increasing excitement and participation from all strata of Indian society, yet just as the movement reached its apex, it ended abruptly as a result of a violent clash in the town of Chauri Chaura, Uttar Pradesh, in February 1922. Fearing that the movement was about to take a turn towards violence, and convinced that this would be the undoing of all his work, Gandhi called off the campaign of mass civil disobedience. Gandhi was arrested on March 10, 1922, tried for sedition, and sentenced to six years. Beginning on March 18, 1922, he only served about two years of the sentence, being released in February 1924 after an operation for appendicitis. Without Gandhi's uniting personality, the Indian National Congress began to splinter during his years in prison, splitting into two factions, one led by Chitta Ranjan Das and Motilal Nehru favouring party participation in the legislatures, and the other led by Chakravarti Rajagopalachari and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, opposing this move. Furthermore, cooperation among Hindus and Muslims, which had been strong at the height of the nonviolence campaign, was breaking down. Gandhi attempted to bridge these differences through many means, including a three-week fast in the autumn of 1924, but with limited success.
Gandhi stayed out of the limelight for most of the 1920s, preferring to resolve the wedge between the Swaraj Party and the Indian National Congress, and expanding initiatives against untouchability, alcoholism, ignorance and poverty. He returned to the fore in 1928. The year before, the British government appointed a new constitutional reform commission under Sir John Simon numbering not a single Indian in its ranks. The result was a boycott of the commission by Indian political parties. Gandhi pushed through a resolution at the Calcutta Congress in December 1928 calling on the British government to grant India dominion status or face a new campaign of non-violence with complete independence for the country as its goal. Gandhi had moderated the views of younger men like Subhas Chandra Bose and Jawaharlal Nehru, who sought a demand for immediate independence, but also modified his own call to a one year wait, instead of two. The British did not respond. On December 31, 1929, the flag of India was unfurled in Lahore. January 26, 1930 was celebrated by the Indian National Congress, meeting in Lahore as India's Independence Day. This day was commemorated by almost every other Indian organization. Making good on his word in March 1930, he launched a new satyagraha against the tax on salt, highlighted by the famous Salt March to Dandi from March 12 to April 6, 1930, marching 400 kilometres (248 miles) from Ahmedabad to Dandi, Gujarat to make his own salt. Thousands of Indians joined him on this march to the sea. This campaign was one of his most successful, resulting in the imprisonment of over 60,000 people.
The government, represented by Lord Edward Irwin, decided to negotiate with Gandhi. The Gandhi-Irwin Pact was signed in March 1931. In it, the British Government agreed to set all political prisoners free in return for the suspension of the civil disobedience movement. Furthermore, Gandhi was invited to attend the Round Table Conference in London as the sole representative of the Indian National Congress. The conference was a disappointment to Gandhi and the nationalists as it focused on the Indian princes and Indian minorities rather than the transfer of power. Furthermore, Lord Irwin's successor, Lord Willingdon, embarked on a new campaign of repression against the nationalists. Gandhi was again arrested, and the government attempted to destroy his influence by completely isolating him from his followers. This tactic was not successful. In 1932, through the campaigning of the Dalit leader B. R. Ambedkar, the government granted untouchables separate electorates under the new constitution. In protest, Gandhi embarked on a six-day fast in September 1932, successfully forcing the government to adopt a more equitable arrangement via negotiations mediated by the Dalit cricketer turned political leader Palwankar Baloo. This began a new campaign by Gandhi to improve the lives of the untouchables, whom he named Harijans, the children of God. On May 8, 1933 Gandhi began a 21-day fast of self-purification to help the Harijan movement. In the summer of 1934, three unsuccessful attempts were made on his life.
When the Congress Party chose to contest elections and accept power under the Federation scheme, Gandhi decided to resign from party membership. He did not at all disagree with the party's move, but felt that if he resigned, his popularity with Indians would cease to stifle the party's membership, that actually varied from communists, socialists, trade unionists, students, religious conservatives, to those with pro-business convictions. Gandhi also did not want to prove a target for Raj propaganda by leading a party that had temporarily accepted political accommodation with the Raj. Gandhi returned to the head in 1936, with the Nehru presidency and the Lucknow session of the Congress. Although Gandhi desired a total focus on the task of winning independence and not speculation about India's future, he did not restrain the Congress from adopting socialism as its goal. Gandhi had a clash with Subhas Bose, who had been elected to the presidency in 1938. Gandhi's main issues with Bose were his lack of commitment to democracy, and lack of faith in non-violence. Bose won his second term despite Gandhi's criticism, but left the Congress when the All-India leaders resigned en masse in protest of his abandonment of principles introduced by Gandhi.

World War II broke out in 1939 when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. Initially, Gandhi had favored offering "non-violent moral support" to the British effort, but other Congress leaders were offended by the unilateral inclusion of India into the war, without consultation of the people's representatives. All Congressmen elected to office resigned en masse. After lengthy deliberations, Gandhi declared that India could not be party to a war ostensibly being fought for democratic freedom, while that freedom was denied in India herself. As the war progressed, Gandhi increased his demands for independence, drafting a resolution calling for the British to Quit India. This was Gandhi's and the Congress Party's most definitive revolt aimed at securing the British exit from Indian shores.
Gandhi was criticized by some Congressmen and other Indian political groups, both pro-British and anti-British. Some felt that opposing Britain in its life-death struggle was immoral, and others felt that Gandhi wasn't doing enough. Quit India became the most forceful movement in the history of the struggle, with mass arrests and violence on an unprecedented scale. Thousands of freedom fighters were killed or injured in police firing, and hundreds of thousands were arrested. Gandhi and his supporters made it clear they would not support the war effort unless India was granted immediate independence. He even clarified that this time the movement would not be stopped if individual acts of violence were committed, saying that the "ordered anarchy" around him was "worse than real anarchy". He called on all Congressmen and Indians to maintain discipline in ahimsa, and Karo Ya Maro (Do or Die) in the cause of ultimate freedom. Gandhi and the entire Congress Working Committee were arrested in Bombay by the British on August 9, 1942. Gandhi was held for two years in the Aga Khan Palace in Pune. It was here that Gandhi suffered two terrible blows in his personal life - his 42 year old secretary Mahadev Desai died of a heart attack 6 days later, then his wife Kasturba died after 18 months imprisonment. He was released before the end of the war because of his failing health and necessary surgery; the Raj did not want him to die in prison and enrage the entire nation beyond control. Although the ruthless suppression of the movement by British forces brought relative order to India by the end of 1943, Quit India succeeded in its objective. At the end of the war, the British gave clear indications that power would be transferred to Indian hands, and Gandhi called off the struggle, and the Congress leadership and around 100,000 political prisoners were released. In February 1944 Kasturbai Gandhi died in prison and six weeks later Gandhi suffered a severe malaria attack. During this time Gandhi's health continually deteriorated to the point that the government on May 6, 1944 decided to release him.

Gandhi advised the Congress to reject the proposals the British Cabinet Mission offered in 1946, as he was deeply suspicious of the grouping proposed for Muslim-majority states - Gandhi viewed this as a precursor to partition. However, this became one of the few times the Congress broke from Gandhi's advice (not his leadership though), as Nehru and Patel knew that if the Congress did not approve the plan, the control of government would pass to the Muslim League. Between 1946 and 1947, over 5,000 people were killed in violence. Gandhi was vehemently opposed to any plan that partitioned India into two separate countries. Many Muslims in India lived side by side with Hindus and Sikhs, and were in favour of a united India. But Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of the Muslim League, commanded widespread support in West Punjab, Sindh, NWFP and East Bengal. The partition plan was approved by the Congress leadership as the only way to prevent a wide-scale Hindu-Muslim civil war. Congress leaders knew that Gandhi would viscerally oppose partition, and it was impossible for the Congress to go ahead without his agreement, for Gandhi's support in the party and throughout India was strong. Gandhi's closest colleagues had accepted partition as the best way out, and Sardar Patel endeavoured to convince Gandhi that it was the only way to avoid civil war. A devastated Gandhi gave his assent.

On the day of the transfer of power, Gandhi did not celebrate independence with the rest of India, but was alone in Calcutta, mourning the partition and working to end the violence. After India's independence, Gandhi focused on Hindu-Muslim peace and unity. He conducted extensive dialogue with Muslim and Hindu community leaders, working to cool passions in northern India, as well as in Bengal. Despite the Indo-Pakistani War of 1947, he was troubled when the Government decided to deny Pakistan the Rs. 55 crores due as per agreements made by the Partition Council. Leaders like Sardar Patel feared that Pakistan would use the money to bankroll the war against India. Gandhi was also devastated when demands resurged for all Muslims to be deported to Pakistan, and when Muslim and Hindu leaders expressed frustration and an inability to come to terms with one another. He launched his last fast-unto-death in Delhi, asking that all communal violence be ended once and for all, and that the payment of Rs. 55 crores be made to Pakistan. Gandhi feared that instability and insecurity in Pakistan would increase their anger against India, and violence would spread across the borders. He further feared that Hindus and Muslims would renew their enmity and precipitate into an open civil war. After emotional debates with his life-long colleagues, Gandhi refused to budge, and the Government rescinded its policy and made the payment to Pakistan. Hindu, Muslim and Sikh community leaders, including the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Hindu Mahasabha assured him that they would renounce violence and call for peace. Gandhi thus broke his fast by sipping orange juice.

On 30 January 1948, on his way to a prayer meeting, Gandhi was shot dead in Birla House, New Delhi, by Nathuram Godse. Godse was a Hindu radical with links to the extremist Hindu Mahasabha, who held Gandhi responsible for weakening India by insisting upon a payment to Pakistan. Godse and his co-conspirator Narayan Apte were later tried and convicted, and on 15 November 1949, were executed. Gandhi's memorial (or Samādhi) at Rāj Ghāt, New Delhi, bears the epigraph, (Devanagiri: हे ! राम or, Hé Rām), which may be translated as «Oh God». These are widely believed to be Gandhi's last words after he was shot, though the veracity of this statement has been disputed by many. Jawaharlal Nehru addressed the nation through radio:
«Friends and comrades, the light has gone out of our lives, and there is darkness everywhere, and I do not quite know what to tell you or how to say it. Our beloved leader, Bapu as we called him, the father of the nation, is no more. Perhaps I am wrong to say that; nevertheless, we will not see him again, as we have seen him for these many years, we will not run to him for advice or seek solace from him, and that is a terrible blow, not only for me, but for millions and millions in this country.»

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