One of the largest countries on the globe, India embodies an ancient and highly distinctive civilization. It is home to Hinduism, one of the major world religions. The military, political, and economic leader in its area, by 2004 India was rapidly becoming a twenty-first-century global economic powerhouse.

History

India, which includes most of the historical cultural area of pre-modern India, inherited a high civilization that developed more than 5,000 years ago in the Indus (now part of Pakistan) and, to a lesser certain extent, the Gangetic Valley. At about 1500 B.C.E. a series of invasions by Indo-Aryan peoples led to a synthesis with the native civilization. Minor Arab incursion began around C.E. 800, followed by larger Muslim invasions from the northwest starting in the twelfth century. Muslims soon became the dominant political group in northern India. European merchants and adventurers began arriving in the sixteenth century, and by the...