Colonial India

Indian culture is more than five thousand years old. Its great epics were composed before the year A.D. 200, and magnificent art and architecture were created in the 4th and 5th centuries A.D. Beginning in the 10th century, Muslim raiders attacked and weakened the Buddhist kingdoms, and for the next several hundred years a series of Muslim kingdoms controlled what is now called the Indian subcontinent. By 1500, Europeans were also competing for control of Indian trade. In 1857, India became subject to British rule. Like South Africa, Indians found themselves governed by a white minority from another country and culture, whose governance was guided by racism and religious intolerance. India remained a British colony until 1947, when a long campaign of peaceful civil disobedience led by Mohandas Gandhi persuaded Britain to return control of the country to its own people. India was divided into two separate nations...