Mother India (Hindi: मदर इंडिया, Urdu: مدر انڈیا) is a 1957 Hindi film epic, written and directed by Mehboob Khan and starring Nargis, Sunil Dutt, Rajendra Kumar and Raaj Kumar. The film, a melodrama, is a remake of Mehboob Khan's earlier film, Aurat (1940). It is the story of a poverty-stricken village woman named Radha who, amid many other trials and tribulations, struggles to raise her sons and survive against an evil money-lender. Despite her hardship, she sets a goddess-like moral example of what it means to be an Indian woman, yet kills her own criminal son at the end for the greater moral good. She represents India as a nation in the aftermath of independence.

The film ranks among the all-time Indian box office hits and has been described as "an all-time Indian blockbuster" and "perhaps India's most revered film". The film won the National Film Award for Third Best Feature Film in 1958. Mother India belongs to a small collection of films, including Kismet (1943), Mughal-e-Azam (1960) and Sholay (1975) which continue to be watched daily throughout India and are considered to be definitive Hindi cultural film classics. The film was India's first submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1958 and was chosen as one of the five nominations for the category.^[1]

Plot[link]

The film begins with construction completion of a water canal to the village, set in the present. Radha (Nargis), as the 'mother' of the village, is asked to open the canal and remembers back to her past when she was newly married.

The wedding between Radha and Shamu (Raaj Kumar) was paid for by Radha's mother-in-law who raised a loan from the moneylender, Sukhilala. This event starts the spiral of poverty and hardship which Radha endures. The conditions of the loan are disputed, but the village elders decide in favour of the moneylender, after which Shamu and Radha are forced to pay three quarters of their crop as interest on the loan of 500 rupees. Whilst trying to bring more of their land into use to alleviate their poverty, Shamu's arms are crushed by a boulder. He is ashamed of his helplessness and is humiliated by others in the village; deciding that he is no use to his family, he leaves and does not return. Soon after, Radha's mother-in-law dies. Radha continues to work in the fields with her two sons and gives birth again. Sukhilala offers to help alleviate her poverty in return for Radha marrying him, but she refuses to "sell herself". A storm sweeps through the village, destroys the harvest, and kills Radha's youngest child. Though at first the villagers begin to migrate, they decide to stay and rebuild on the urging of Radha.

The film then skips forward several years to when Radha's two surviving children, Birju (Dutt) and Ramu (Rajendra Kumar), are young men. Birju, embittered by the exactions of Sukhilala since he was a child, takes out his frustrations by pestering the village girls, especially Sukhilala's daughter. Ramu, by contrast, has a calmer temper and is married soon after. Though he becomes a father, his wife is soon absorbed into the cycle of poverty in the family. Birju's anger finally becomes dangerous and, after being provoked, attacks Sukhilala and his daughter, lashing out at his family. He is chased out of the village and becomes a bandit. On the day of the wedding of Sukhilala's daughter, Birju returns to take his revenge. He kills Sukhilala and takes his daughter. Radha, who had promised that Birju would not do harm, shoots Birju, who dies in her arms. The film ends in the present day with her opening of the canal and reddish water flowing into the fields.

Cast[link]

• Nargis as Radha
• Sunil Dutt as Birju
• Rajendra Kumar as Ramu
• Raaj Kumar as Shamu (Radha's Husband)
• Kanhaiyalal as Sukhilala
• Jilloo Maa
• Kumkum as Champa
• Sheela Naik as Kamla
• Mukri as Shambu
• Azra as Chandra
• Master Sajid Khan as a young Birju
• Master Surendra as a young Ramu

Production[link]

Script[link]

The title of the film is taken from American author Katherine Mayo's 1927 polemical book Mother India, in which she attacked Indian society, religion and culture. The book created a sensation on three continents.^[2] Written against the demands for self-rule and Indian independence, Mayo pointed to the treatment of India's women, the untouchables, the animals, the dirt, and the character of its nationalistic politicians. Mayo singled out the "rampant" and fatally weakening sexuality of its males to be at the core of all problems, leading to masturbation, rape, homosexuality, prostitution, venereal diseases, and, most importantly, too early sexual intercourse and premature maternity. Mayo created an outrage across India, and her book was burned along with an effigy of its author.^[3] It was criticised by Mahatma Gandhi as a "report of a drain inspector sent out with the one purpose of opening and examining the drains of the country to be reported upon".^[4] The book prompted over fifty angry books and pamphlets to be published in response to Mother India to highlight Mayo's errors and false perception of Indian society which had become one of the most powerful influences on the American people's view of India in history.^[5]

Khan had the idea for the film and the title as early as 1952; in October that year, he approached the import authorities on a matter related to producing the film.^[6] In 1955, the Indian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Indian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting learned of the title of the forthcoming film and demanded that director Mehboob Khan send them the script for review, suspicious that the film was based on the book and a possible threat to national interest.^[7] The film team dispatched the script along with a two-page letter on 17 September 1955 saying:

"There has been considerable confusion and misunderstanding in regard to our film producing Mother India and Mayo's book. Not only are the two incompatible but totally different and indeed opposite. We have intentionally called our film Mother India, as a challenge to this book, in an attempt to evict from the minds of the people the scurrilous work that is Miss Mayo's book."^[8]

The script was thus intentionally written in a way which promoted the empowerment of women in Indian society, the power to resist the sexual advances of men, and the maintenance of a sense of moral dignity and purpose as individuals, contrary to what Mayo had claimed in her book. Khan drew upon inspiration from another American author, Pearl S. Buck and her books The Good Earth (1931) and The Mother (1934), which were made into feature films by Sidney Franklin in 1937 and 1940 respectively.^[8] Khan originally drew upon these influences in making the 1940 film Aurat, the original version of Mother India,^[9] although an unrelated Indian film had been directed under the name of Mother India in 1938.^[8] Khan worked diligently on the script and was aided with the dialogue by Wajahat Mirza and S. Ali Raza. Some of the stylistic elements to the 1957 film show similarities with the 1926 Vsevolod Pudovkin Soviet silent movie Mother (based on a novel by Maxim Gorky) and Our Daily Bread (1934), directed by King Vidor.^[10] In turn, the film would provide an inspiration for many later films, including Yash Chopra's Deewar, a breakthrough film for Amitabh Bachchan and would later be remade by the Telugu film industry as Bangaru Talli (1971) and in Tamil as Punniya Boomi (1978).^[10]

Filming[link]

Mehboob Studios

Several of the internal scenes for the film were shot at Mehboob Studios in Bandra, Bombay (now Mumbai) in 1956, although Mehboob Khan and cinematographer Faredoon A. Irani attempted to shoot as often as possible on location to try to make the film as realistic as possible, with a touch of splendour.^[11] Other scenes were shot in various cities in the states of Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Uttar Pradesh.^[12] Mehboob insisted that the film be shot in 35mm by cinematographer Irani.^[13] Contemporary cinematographer Anil Mehta has noted the mastery of Irani's cinematic techniques in shooting the film, including his "intricate tracks and pans, the detailed mise en scène patterns Irani conceived, even for brief shots – in the studios as well as on location".^[13] The film took about three years to make from early organisation, planning, and scripting to filming completion.^[14] In a November 1956 interview, after production for the film had wound down, Nargis described the film shoot and character portrayal as the most demanding of her career.^[15]

During filming, an accident occurred during the fire scene when the fire grew out of control and trapped Nargis. She was saved by co-star Sunil Dutt who quickly grabbed a blanket, plunged inside, and rescued her.^[16] Nargis fell in love with Dutt, who plays her son in the film, and they were married within a year.^[16] Playback singer Lata Mangeshkar reportedly donated her earnings of over one hundred rupees from the film to charitable causes she was involved with at the time, and on 5 October 1957 the production team, Indra Films, donated 300 rupees to a religious person in Delhi.^[17] The production team had planned the film release for Indian Independence Day on 15 August, but the film was released over two months later.^[18]

Themes[link]

The term "Mother India" has been defined as "a common icon for the emergent Indian nation in the early 20th century in both colonialist and nationalist discourse".^[19] The film, an archetypal nationalistic picture, was symbolic in that it demonstrated the euphoria of "Mother India" in a nation which had only been independent for 10 years, and it had a long-lasting cultural impact upon the Indian people.^[20] It had major significance in terms of the patriotism and the changing situation in the nation at the time, and how the country was functioning without British authority.^[21] Rosie Thomas highlighted the themes of "female chastity, modern nationalism and morality" as being central to the film, identifying the discourses around female sexuality, modern nationalism, and their political implications as they intersect.^[22][23] Lonely Planet described the film as "perhaps the most compelling film about the role of women in rural India, a moving tale about love, loss and the maternal bond".^[24]

The film draws upon Hindu mythology, with the deity-couple Krishna and his lover Radha, and the Hindu epic characters like Sita, Sati Savitri, and Draupadi.^[10][20] Nargis's Mother India is a metonymic representation of a Hindu woman, reflecting high Hindu values, with high moral values and the concept of what it means to be a mother to society through self-sacrifice.^[20] Mother India can also be seen as a metaphor of the trinity of mother, God, and a dynamic nation.^[25][26] In the wider context, her character is allegorical of what it means to be a mother in general.^[27][28] The Mother India figure is an icon in several respects, being associated with a goddess, her function as a wife, as a lover, and even compromising her femininity at the end of the film by playing the role of Vishnu the Preserver and Shiva the Destroyer, masculine gods.^[29] However, while aspiring to traditional Hindu values, it is important to note that the character of Mother India also represents the changing role of the mother in Indian films and an Indian society in that the mother is not always subservient or dependent on her husband, refining the relationship to the male gender or patriarchal social structures.^[30] There is considerable ambiguity in the film in which the mother figure acts as a provider, sacrificing aspects of her own life while also as a destroyer, annihilating her own son, something extremely rare in Hindi cinema.^[31]

Part of the major success of the film may be attributed to the importance of Indian womanhood with Indian cultural values and that the character of Mother India represents an ideological figure to the people, with her strong values and moral guidance, despite suffering from poverty and hardship, which is relevant to many.^[31] In his book, Terrorism, media, liberation, John David Slocum argues that like Satyajit Ray's classic masterpiece Pather Panchali (1955), Khan's Mother India has vied for alternative definitions of Indianness. However, he emphasises that the film is an overt mythologising and feminising of the nation in which Indian audiences around the globe have used their pure imagination to define it in the nationalistic context, given that in reality the storyline is about a poverty-stricken peasant from northern India, not than a true ideal of a modernising, powerful nation.^[32]

Jyotika Virdi has argued that in her chastity, Mother India channels her sexual desires into maternal love for her sons who effectively become "substitute erotic subjects".^[31] Parallels are drawn with Gandhi's personification of the Indian woman as a goddess, acquiring certain masculine traits as they gain power as the goddesses did in Hindu mythology, but it is a power which is made more subtle by their virtue and acquiescence.^[33] For instance, in a pamphlet published with the intention to introduce the film in the social context to western audiences, it described Indian women as being "an altar in India", that Indians "measure the virtue of their race by the chastity of their women", and that the "Indian mothers are the nucleus around which revolves the tradition and culture of ages."^[34]

While the nationalistic representation of Hindu values may seem unusual in that the "Mother India" figure was portrayed by a Muslim actress and directed by a Muslim director,^[20][35] people such as Salman Rushdie stated that Bombay cinema is "highly syncretic", and its "hyphenated Hindu-Muslim nature is present in not only its discourses and production practices but indeed its very ideology".^[36] Rushdie describes Nargis's portrayal of Mother India as follows:

"In Mother India, a piece of Hindu myth-making directed by a Muslim socialist, Mehboob Khan, the Indian peasant women is idealised as bride, mother, and producers of sons, as long-suffering, stoical, loving, redemptive, and conservatively wedded to the maintenance of the social status quo. But for Bad Birju, cast out from his mother's love, she becomes, as one critic mentioned, 'that image of an aggressive, treacherous, annihilating mothers who haunts the fantasy of Indian males."^[36]

Mother India's actions at the end of the film in shooting her own son Birju have been said to "rupture the traditional mother-son relationship in order to balance the moral universe".^[37] The shooting stance of Nargis at the end of the film is one of the all time iconic images of Hindi cinema. Parama Roy describes Nargis's identification with her role in the film as being "as much about Nargis dead as it is about Nargis alive" and highlights on-screen and off-screen real-life events in her own life which embodied her character of Radha.^[22] Roy and Das Guptar have seen Nargis's portrayal of a Hindu woman, being a Muslim, as an allegory of the increasing symbiosis of religions in a multicultural and multiethnic society. Mother India was warmly received by countries in the Arab world, and in Algeria the film was still packing cinema houses ten years after its release.^[37][38]

Reception[link]

The film premiered at the Liberty cinema in Bombay and in Calcutta during Diwali week on 25 October 1957 and ran for a whole year at the cinema.^[18][16][39] The film netted a reported Rs. 1,06,35,95,000 (inflation-adjusted as of 2004), making it the highest grossing Bollywood film ever at the time.^[40][41][42] The success of the film led to Khan naming his next film Son of India. Released in 1962, it was not well received.^[7][43]

Baburao Patel of Filmindia described Mother India after its release as "the greatest picture produced in India during forty and odd years of film-making" and later added that no other actress would have been able to perform the role as Nargis did.^[39] The film has since been described as "perhaps India's most revered film", a "cinematic epic" and Mehboob Khan's best known work.^[10][14] It has been described as an "all-time blockbuster", which ranks highly amongst India's most successful films.^[44] A 1983 Channel 4 documentary into Bombay cinema described the film as setting a benchmark in Indian cinema for subsequent films to aspire to.^[45] Mother India belongs to only a small collection of films, including Kismet (1943), Mughal-e-Azam (1960), Sholay (1975) and Hum Aapke Hain Koun...! (1994), which continue to be heavily watched daily throughout India and are viewed as definitive Hindi films with cultural significance.^[45][46] Mother India is still watched daily in cinemas across India today.^[47] It was also acclaimed across the Arab world, in the Middle East, parts of Southeast Asia and North Africa and continued to be shown in countries such as Algeria at least ten years after its release.^[38][45] It is ranked #80 in Empire magazines "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema" in 2010.^[48] In 2005, Indiatimes Movies ranked the movie amongst the Top 25 Must See Bollywood Films.^[49] It was also listed among the only two Hindi films in the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list (the other being Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge).^[50] It was ranked third in the British Film Institute's poll of "Top 10 Indian Films" of all time.^[51]

The film, Nargis, and Khan received numerous awards and nominations, and Nargis won the Filmfare Best Actress Award and became the first Indian woman to receive the Best Actress award at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.^[52] The film won the Filmfare Best Movie Award^[40] and scooped several other awards including Filmfare Best Director Award for Khan,^[53] Filmfare Best Cinematographer Award for Faredoon Irani,^[54] and Filmfare Best Sound Award for R. Kaushik.^[15] The film was India's first submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1958 and was chosen as one of the five nominations for the category.^[55] However, the submitted entry was dramatically different from the original version released in India. The version sent to the Academy was edited down to 120 minutes, cutting at least 40 minutes from the film for the benefit of a foreign audience. The 120-minute version was later distributed in the US and UK by Columbia Pictures.^[56] The film came close to winning the Academy Award but lost to Federico Fellini's Nights of Cabiria by a single vote.^[57]

Music[link]

The score and soundtrack for the movie was composed by Naushad, and the lyrics were penned by Shakeel Badayuni. It made the list of "100 Greatest Bollywood Soundtracks Ever", as compiled by Planet Bollywood, although was not particularly well received upon release, with critics believing it didn't match the high pitch and quality of the film.^[15][59] The soundtrack consists of 12 songs, and features vocals by Mohammed Rafi, Shamshad Begum, Lata Mangeshkar, Manna Dey, etc. Planet Bollywood gave the album 7.5 of 10 stars.^[60]

Mother India is the earliest example of a Hindi film containing Hollywood-style classical music in a film. An example is during the scene in which Birju runs away from his mother and rejects her motherly care and goodness.^[46] It features a powerful symphonic orchestra with strings, woodwinds and trumpets.^[46] This orchestral music contains extensive chromaticism, diminished seventh, and augmented scales which are played loudly.^[46] It also features violin tremolos. The piece is unmelodic and effectively creates tension over such a negative moment in the film.^[46] This use of a western-style orchestra in Indian cinema influenced many later films such as Mughal-e-Azam (1960), which features similar discordal orchestral music to create atmosphere at tense moments in the film.^[46] The song "Holi Aayi Re Kanhai", sung by Shamshad Begum, has been cited as a typical Hindi film song which is written for and sung by a female singer, with an emotional charge which appeals to a mass audience.^[61]

See also[link]

Bollywood portal

• List of submissions to the 30th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film
• List of Indian submissions for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Chatterjee, Gayatri (2002), Mother India, British Film Institute, ISBN 978-0-85170-917-8, http://books.google.com/books?id=FvAKAQAAMAAJ 
• Mishra, Vijay (2002), Bollywood cinema: temples of desire, Routledge, pp. 62–87, ISBN 978-0-415-93015-4, http://books.google.com/books?id=8Q8Z9Ukwn6EC&pg=PA65 
• Sinha, Mrinalini (2006), Specters of Mother India: the global restructuring of an Empire, Duke University Press, pp. 248–253, ISBN 978-0-8223-3795-9, http://books.google.com/books?id=xI2LClkTrFIC&pg=PA248 

External links[link]

• Mother India at the Internet Movie Database
• Mother India at the TCM Movie Database
• Mother India at AllRovi
• Mother India at Rotten Tomatoes
• Mother India at Bollywood Hungama

Republic of India Bhārat Gaṇarājya
Flag Emblem
Motto:  "Satyameva Jayate" (Sanskrit)    "Truth Alone Triumphs"[1]
Anthem:  Jana Gana Mana    "Thou Art the Ruler of the Minds of All People"[2]
National song: Vande Mataram         "I Bow to Thee, Mother"[a][1]
Area controlled by India is in dark green. Claimed but uncontrolled regions are in light green.
Capital		New Delhi 28°36.8′N 77°12.5′E / 28.6133°N 77.2083°E / 28.6133; 77.2083
Largest city		Mumbai
Official language(s)		Hindi, English Hindi in the Devanagari script is the official language of the Union and English an additional language for official work.[1]
Recognised regional languages		Eighth Schedule Assamese Bengali Bodo Dogri Gujarati Hindi Kannada Kashmiri Konkani Maithili Malayalam Manipuri Marathi Nepali Oriya Punjabi Sanskrit Santali Sindhi Tamil Telugu Urdu
National language(s)		none[3]
Demonym		Indian
Government		Federal parliamentary constitutional republic[1]
-	President	Pratibha Patil
-	Vice President	Mohammad Hamid Ansari
-	Prime Minister	Manmohan Singh (INC)
-	Speaker of the House	Meira Kumar (INC)
-	Chief Justice	S. H. Kapadia
Legislature		Parliament of India
-	Upper house	Rajya Sabha
-	Lower house	Lok Sabha
Independence		from the United Kingdom
-	Declared	15 August 1947
-	Republic	26 January 1950
Area
-	Total	3,287,263 km2 [b](7th) 1,269,219 sq mi
-	Water (%)	9.56
Population
-	2011 census	1,210,193,422[4] (2nd)
-	Density	369.1/km2 (31st) 956.1/sq mi
GDP (PPP)		2011 estimate
-	Total	$4.457 trillion[5] (3rd)
-	Per capita	$3,693[5] (129th)
GDP (nominal)		2011 estimate
-	Total	$1.676 trillion[5] (11th)
-	Per capita	$1,388[5] (140th)
Gini (2004)		36.8[6] (79th)
HDI (2011)		0.547[7] (medium) (134th)
Currency		Indian rupee () (INR)
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-	Summer (DST)	not observed (UTC+05:30)
Date formats		dd-mm-yyyy (AD)
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ISO 3166 code		IN
Internet TLD		.in other TLDs .ভারত .ભારત .भारत .ଭାରତ‌ .ਭਾਰਤ .இந்தியா .భారత్ بھارت.
Calling code		91

India (ⁱ/ˈɪndiə/), officially the Republic of India (Bhārat Gaṇarājya),^[c] is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the south-west, and the Bay of Bengal on the south-east, it shares land borders with Pakistan to the west;^[d] China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the north-east; and Burma and Bangladesh to the east. In the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives; in addition, India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a maritime border with Thailand and Indonesia.

Home to the ancient Indus Valley Civilisation and a region of historic trade routes and vast empires, the Indian subcontinent was identified with its commercial and cultural wealth for much of its long history.^[8] Four of the world's major religions—Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism—originated here, whereas Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islam arrived in the 1st millennium CE and also helped shape the region's diverse culture. Gradually annexed by and brought under the administration of the British East India Company from the early 18th century and administered directly by the United Kingdom from the mid-19th century, India became an independent nation in 1947 after a struggle for independence that was marked by non-violent resistance led by Mahatma Gandhi.

The Indian economy is the world's eleventh-largest by nominal GDP and third-largest by purchasing power parity (PPP). Following market-based economic reforms in 1991, India became one of the fastest-growing major economies; it is considered a newly industrialised country. However, it continues to face the challenges of poverty, illiteracy, corruption, and inadequate public healthcare. A nuclear weapons state and a regional power, it has the third-largest standing army in the world and ranks ninth in military expenditure among nations. India is a federal constitutional republic governed under a parliamentary system consisting of 28 states and 7 union territories. India is a pluralistic, multilingual, and multiethnic society. It is also home to a diversity of wildlife in a variety of protected habitats.

Etymology[link]

The name India is derived from Indus, which originates from the Old Persian word Hindu. The latter term stems from the Sanskrit word Sindhu, which was the historical local appellation for the Indus River.^[9] The ancient Greeks referred to the Indians as Indoi (Ινδοί), which translates as "the people of the Indus".^[10] The geographical term Bharat (pronounced [ˈbʱaːrət̪] ( listen)), which is recognised by the Constitution of India as an official name for the country, is used by many Indian languages in various subtle guises.^[11] The eponym of Bharat is Bharata, a mythological figure that Hindu scriptures describe as a legendary emperor of ancient India. Hindustan ([ɦɪnd̪ʊˈst̪aːn] ( listen)) was originally a Persian word that meant "Land of the Hindus"; prior to 1947, it referred to a region that encompassed northern India and Pakistan. It is occasionally used to solely denote India in its entirety.^[12][13]

History[link]

Ancient India[link]

The earliest anatomically modern human remains found in South Asia date from approximately 30,000 years ago.^[14] Nearly contemporaneous Mesolithic rock art sites have been found in many parts of the Indian subcontinent, including at the Bhimbetka rock shelters in Madhya Pradesh.^[15] Around 7000 BCE, the first known Neolithic settlements appeared on the subcontinent in Mehrgarh and other sites in western Pakistan.^[16] These gradually developed into the Indus Valley Civilisation,^[17] the first urban culture in South Asia;^[18] it flourished during 2500–1900 BCE in Pakistan and western India.^[19] Centred around cities such as Mohenjo-daro, Harappa, Dholavira, and Kalibangan, and relying on varied forms of subsistence, the civilisation engaged robustly in crafts production and wide-ranging trade.^[18]

Paintings at the Ajanta Caves in Aurangabad, Maharashtra, 6th century

During the period 2000–500 BCE, in terms of culture, many regions of the subcontinent transitioned from the Chalcolithic to the Iron Age.^[20] The Vedas, the oldest scriptures of Hinduism,^[21] were composed during this period,^[22] and historians have analysed these to posit a Vedic culture in the Punjab region and the upper Gangetic Plain.^[20] Most historians also consider this period to have encompassed several waves of Indo-Aryan migration into the subcontinent from the north-west.^[23][21][24] The caste system, which created a hierarchy of priests, warriors, and free peasants, but which excluded indigenous peoples by labeling their occupations impure, arose during this period.^[25] On the Deccan Plateau, archaeological evidence from this period suggests the existence of a chiefdom stage of political organisation.^[20] In southern India, a progression to sedentary life is indicated by the large number of megalithic monuments dating from this period,^[26] as well as by nearby traces of agriculture, irrigation tanks, and craft traditions.^[26]

In the late Vedic period, around the 5th century BCE, the small chiefdoms of the Ganges Plain and the north-western regions had consolidated into 16 major oligarchies and monarchies that were known as the mahajanapadas.^[27][28] The emerging urbanisation and the orthodoxies of this age also led to the resurgence of ancient Shramanic traditions of Buddhism and Jainism,^[29] both of which were independent religions.^[30] Buddhism, based on the teachings of Gautama Buddha attracted followers from all social classes excepting the middle;^[29][31] Jainism came into prominence around the same time during the life of its exemplar, Mahavira.^[32] In an age of increasing urban wealth, both religions held up renunciation as an ideal,^[33] and both established long-lasting monasteries.^[27] Politically, by the 3rd century BCE, the kingdom of Magadha had annexed or reduced other states to emerge as the Mauryan Empire.^[27] The empire was once thought to have controlled most of the subcontinent excepting the far south, but its core regions are now thought to have been separated by large autonomous areas.^[34][35] The Mauryan kings are known as much for their empire-building and determined management of public life as for Ashoka's renunciation of militarism and far-flung advocacy of the Buddhist dhamma.^[36][37]

The Sangam literature of the Tamil language reveals that, between 200 BCE and 200 CE, the southern peninsula was being ruled by the Cheras, the Cholas, and the Pandyas, dynasties that traded extensively with the Roman Empire and with West and South-East Asia.^[38][39] In North India, Hinduism asserted patriarchal control within the family, leading to increased subordination of women.^[40][27] By the 4th and 5th centuries, the Gupta Empire had created in the greater Ganges Plain a complex system of administration and taxation that became a model for later Indian kingdoms.^[41][42] Under the Guptas, a renewed Hinduism based on devotion rather than the management of ritual began to assert itself.^[43] The renewal was reflected in a flowering of sculpture and architecture, which found patrons among an urban elite.^[42] Classical Sanskrit literature flowered as well, and Indian science, astronomy, medicine, and mathematics made significant advances.^[42]

Medieval India[link]

The granite tower of Brihadeeswarar Temple in Thanjavur was completed in 1010 CE by Raja Raja Chola I.

The Indian early medieval age, 600 CE to 1200 CE, is defined by regional kingdoms and cultural diversity.^[44] When Harsha of Kannauj, who ruled much of the Indo-Gangetic Plain from 606 to 647 CE, attempted to expand southwards, he was defeated by the Chalukya ruler of the Deccan.^[45] When his successor attempted to expand eastwards, he was defeated by the Pala king of Bengal.^[45] When the Chalukyas attempted to expand southwards, they were defeated by the Pallavas from farther south, who in turn were opposed by the Pandyas and the Cholas from still farther south.^[45] No ruler of this period was able to create an empire and consistently control lands much beyond his core region.^[44] During this time, pastoral peoples whose land had been cleared to make way for the growing agricultural economy were accommodated within caste society, as were new non-traditional ruling classes.^[46] The caste system consequently began to show regional differences.^[46]

In the 6th and 7th centuries, the first devotional hymns were created in the Tamil language.^[47] They were imitated all over India and led to both the resurgence of Hinduism and the development of all modern languages of the subcontinent.^[47] Indian royalty, big and small, and the temples they patronised, drew citizens in great numbers to the capital cities, which became economic hubs as well.^[48] Temple towns of various sizes began to appear everywhere as India underwent another urbanisation.^[48] By the 8th and 9th centuries, the effects were felt in South-East Asia, as South Indian culture and political systems were exported to lands that became part of modern-day Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Java.^[49] Indian merchants, scholars, and sometimes armies were involved in this transmission; South-East Asians took the initiative as well, with many sojourning in Indian seminaries and translating Buddhist and Hindu texts into their languages.^[49]

After the 10th century, Muslim Central Asian nomadic clans, using swift-horse cavalry and raising vast armies united by ethnicity and religion, repeatedly overran South Asia's north-western plains, leading eventually to the establishment of the Islamic Delhi Sultanate in 1206.^[50] The sultanate was to control much of North India, and to make many forays into South India. Although at first disruptive for the Indian elites, the sultanate largely left its vast non-Muslim subject population to its own laws and customs.^[51][52] By repeatedly repulsing Mongol raiders in the 13th century, the sultanate saved India from the devastation visited on West and Central Asia, setting the scene for centuries of migration of fleeing soldiers, learned men, mystics, traders, artists, and artisans from that region into the subcontinent, thereby creating a syncretic Indo-Islamic culture in the north.^[53][54] The sultanate's raiding and weakening of the regional kingdoms of South India paved the way for the indigenous Vijayanagara Empire.^[55] Embracing a strong Shaivite tradition and building upon the military technology of the sultanate, the empire came to control much of peninsular India,^[56] and was to influence South Indian society for long afterwards.^[55]

Early modern India[link]

Scribes and artists in the Mughal court, 1590–1595

In the early 16th century, northern India, being then under mainly Muslim rulers,^[57] fell again to the superior mobility and firepower of a new generation of Central Asian warriors.^[58] The resulting Mughal Empire did not stamp out the local societies it came to rule, but rather balanced and pacified them through new administrative practices^[59][60] and diverse and inclusive ruling elites,^[61] leading to more systematic, centralised, and uniform rule.^[62] Eschewing tribal bonds and Islamic identity, especially under Akbar, the Mughals united their far-flung realms through loyalty, expressed through a Persianised culture, to an emperor who had near-divine status.^[61] The Mughal state's economic policies, deriving most revenues from agriculture^[63] and mandating that taxes be paid in the well-regulated silver currency,^[64] caused peasants and artisans to enter larger markets.^[62] The relative peace maintained by the empire during much of the 17th century was a factor in India's economic expansion,^[62] resulting in greater patronage of painting, literary forms, textiles, and architecture.^[65] Newly coherent social groups in northern and western India, such as the Marathas, the Rajputs, and the Sikhs, gained military and governing ambitions during Mughal rule, which, through collaboration or adversity, gave them both recognition and military experience.^[66] Expanding commerce during Mughal rule gave rise to new Indian commercial and political elites along the coasts of southern and eastern India.^[66] As the empire disintegrated, many among these elites were able to seek and control their own affairs.^[67]