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 Outline on the  Indian Revolution
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  The Mughal Empire was established in 1526 when a central Asian leader named Babur defeated Ibrahim Lodi, the last sultan of Delhi
 
  Babur, a descendant of both Timur & the Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan, estb the Mughal Empire in India
 
  Babur's grandson Akbar became the greatest Mughal emperor, ruling from 1556 to 1605, making India among the most powerful nations in the world at that time
 
  Akbar was a tolerant ruler who expanded his empire as far west as what is now Afghanistan and as far south as the Godavari River in central India
 
  A Muslim, Akbar won over the Hindus of India by making many of their leaders government administrators and military commanders, and by giving them honors
 
  The first European explorer to reach India was Vasco da Gama of Portugal who arrived in Calicut in 1498
 
  In 1600, Queen Elizabeth I of England granted a charter for the formation of a company to open trade with India and East Asia
 
  By the mid-1700's, little remained of the Mughal Empire, and since there was no effective central power, the Europeans in India prospered
 
  At the Battle of Plassey in 1757, the forces of the East India Company, defeated the army of the Mughal governor of Bengal
 
  The British victory at Plassey was the starting point of the British Empire in India, though at that time most of the country still remained under the rule of Indian princes
 
  Over the next 100 years, however, British political influence and territorial control expanded & Indian resentment against British rule grew
 
  Land taxes imposed by the British caused many difficulties for farmers & large numbers of people went hungry when British land reforms took away land from many Indian people
 
  Many Indians resented what they regarded as a growing British interference in Indian customs and religion  
  In 1857, the Indian people rebelled starting w/ what is sometimes called the Sepoy Rebellion or Sepoy Mutiny where Indian soldiers called sepoys revolted after British officers instructed them to bite open rifle cartridges believed to have been greased with cow and hog fat which was taboo to the Indians
 
  The Sepoy Rebellion was defeated & the British government decided to govern India directly through a regime that is now called the British Raj which means rule or administration  
  In 1876, Queen Victoria of Britain was given the title Empress of India by the British Parliament  
  Although the British did not further expand their territory within India, they were involved in several wars in which they used Indian troops including the Second Afghan War (1878-1881) which established the border w/ Afghanistan, & the Third Burmese War (1885) which made Burma (now Myanmar) a province of India  
 
 In the second half of the 1800's, the British built railroad, telephone, and telegraph systems in India, established universities, & enlarged the Indian irrigation system, but agricultural production improved only slightly. 
 
 
 Poverty levels remained high & the British spent little money on elementary education and did little to promote industrialization
 
  The ideology of Indian nationalism rose because Indians did not generally feel content about British rule in India  
  Struggle for the loyalty, the common interests of the Indian population was intense btwn the Muslims & the Hindus  
  In 1905, when the British divided the state of Bengal into separate Hindu and Muslim sections, these groups protested w/ a boycott of British goods & a series of bombings & shootings  
  In an effort to stop the violence, the British introduced the Morley-Minto Reforms of 1909 which allowed Indians to elect representatives to the provincial legislative councils & resulted in the reunification w/ Bengal in 1911  
  When World War I broke out in 1914, Britain declared that India was also at war with Germany & Indian troops fought in many parts of the world.   
  In return for support, the British promised more reforms and agreed to let Indians have a greater role in political affairs, never-the-less protests against the British continued  
  In March 1919, the British passed the Rowlatt Acts to try to control protests in India which attempted to restrict the political liberties and rights of Indians, including the right to trial by jury, but demonstrations against the government increased in response to the acts  
  The Amritsar Massacre, in which the British shot 400 unarmed protesters, proved to be the turning point when, from then on Indians demanded complete independence from British rule  
  By 1920, Mohandas K. Gandhi had become a leader in the Indian independence movement and in the Indian National Congress, which had become the most important Indian political organization  
  Gandhi's program asked Indians to boycott British goods, to refuse to pay taxes, to stop using British schools, courts, and government services, & to use nonviolent disobedience, also known as nonviolent noncooperation  
  The salt march, where Gandhi led hundreds of followers on a 240-mile march to the sea, where they made salt from sea water, and other acts of civil disobedience in the early 1930's led the British to give the Indian people more political power  
  The Government of India Act of 1935 created a new constitution which gave provincial legislatures control over lawmaking in the provinces  
  The Muslim League became more politically active as Muhammad Ali Jinnah organized Muslims, won seats in the legislature & demanded that a new country, Pakistan, be carved out of India for Muslims  
  During World War II (1939-1945), Britain declared war on Germany on Sept. 3, 1939 & as it had done before, in World War I, Britain again said that India was also at war with Germany  
  Indian leaders were angered because they had not been consulted & members of the Indian National Congress demanded immediate self-govt instead, and they refused to support the war effort  
  Nevertheless, India was already helping Britain by fighting in Africa and the Middle East,  & by providing coffee, tea, rice, and wheat, contributed in part to the Bengal famine of 1943, in which about 3 million Indians died  
  When Japanese troops had captured Burma, which was a province of India, & invaded eastern India in March 1944, thousands of Indian troops decided to aid the Japanese in the hope of driving the British out of India, but British and Indian troops soon drove them back  
  The Indian leaders who refused to support the British in WW2, were jailed, but at the conclusion of the war in 1945, Congress leaders were released and negotiations for independence were resumed  
  To show its strength and to warn the British not to make a separate agreement with the Congress, the Muslim League declared Aug. 16, 1946, as Direct Action Day during which they held nationwide demonstrations calling for the establishment of Pakistan  
  In 1947, Indian and British leaders agreed to partition (divide) the country into India and Pakistan because they saw no other way of bringing to an end the violence between Hindus and Muslims  
  Pakistan became an independent nation on Aug. 14, 1947 & India became an independent nation on Aug. 15, 1947  
  More than 10 million people became refugees, as Hindus and Sikhs in Pakistan fled to India, and Muslims in India fled to Pakistan but about half a million people were killed in Hindu-Muslim riots  
 
 Gandhi was assassinated on Jan 30, 1948 by a Hindu fanatic who hated Gandhi for his tolerance toward Muslims and disagreed with Gandhi's policy of nonviolence
 
 
 While the nonviolent protests organized by Gandhi had brought about much social & econ disruption, & they did divide the populace, there was not the kind of damage, violence, & divisiveness as is often brought about by war
 
  The Indian Rev is significant because it wrested power from the British, one of the most powerful nations on Earth, through non-violent protest & the use of the British's own laws about freedom against them  
  The Indians used the British ideals of democracy, freedom, & the rule of law against them, demanding their own democracy, freedom, & the rule of law  
 
 India instituted a representative parliament based on a Western model, w/ multiparty elections
 
 
 Nehru, a Hindu, was India's first elected Prime Minister
 
 
 India has not experienced a stable process of development
 
 
 The Indian govt has struggle to maintain control in a country were regional divisions remain pronounced
 
  The level of pol freedom in India is high as measured by the diversity of views which can be publicly expressed, & by the types of pol orgs that can be legally formed  
  India has made little progress in reducing extreme poverty, eliminating official corruption, providing health & welfare facilities, & in the level of illiteracy in India is high  
  Indian econ dev following the revolution was low & well below the level of population expansion  
  In India, ag reform was less than successful in increasing production & eliminating starvation because there was never a major redistribution of land to peasants from the ancient, family manors  
  India is following a typical path seen even today in the major Western nations where a successful middle class has grown, an even more successful upper class has remained in power, & a lower class continues to exist on the edge of starvation  
  For many young democracies such as India, a major area of conflict is how to eliminate poverty even as the rest of the nation prospers  
 
 Kashmir is fought over by Indian & Pakistan to this day, fueling a nuclear buildup
 
  Analysis of the Indian Rev:  
  The Indian Rev is seen as historically important because it 
-  established the most populous democratic nation in the world, because 
-  was done w/o a major rev war 
-  was fought against Britain, another powerful democratic state, & because 
-  invalidated the concept of colonialism, even benign colonialism		  
  The Indian Rev validates many of Farley's necessary conditions for rev in that:  
  -  the Indian peasants & upper classes were dissatisfied because of high taxes, poverty, oppression of the populace by the military, & a general discontent w/ British colonialism  
  -  while communications were difficult in 20th century India, it was still possible given the mail, newspapers, etc. & since much of the rev occurred in the cities, the people were close to each other  
  -  the people & leaders had survived centuries of repression by the British  
  -  while the people feared the Britain because it was so powerful, they had their beliefs in justice & equality to inspire them, & leaders such as Gandhi who pointed out that the ideal of freedom & democracy which the British professed, was not being practiced in India  
  -  the Indian people had barely adequate resources, but were bolstered by the support of all classes, religious & ethnic groups against the British  
  The Indian Rev validates many of Marx's factors affecting rev in that  
  -  the Indian peasants & all Indian groups experienced contradiction because India was a complex mix of ancient Indian feudalism, British colonialism, & some forms of capitalism  
  -  the Indian peasants had class consciousness in that they lived through the many contradictions because for decades Gandhi & others  had spread ideals of individualism, freedom, & Indian nationalism to the general populace  
  -  the historical circumstances of the strength of the British, the rise of the bourgeoisie class, & the victory of the British in many wars all contributed to the fact that it took over a century for the Indians to free themselves from British rule  
  -  the Indian peasants had a strong political org in the form of the colonial govt which was run by the Indians but dominated by the British  
  -  there was a high level of ethnic, religious conflict btwn Muslims & Hindus which hindered the rev  
  The Indian Rev validates Johnson's theory in that 20th century was in disequilibrium because of the contradiction btwn the British ideal of freedom & democracy & the reality of oppression, exploitation & colonialism in India  
  Johnson notes that loss in a war sets the old regime up for rev, & in the case of the Indian Rev, the British had been losing their empire since WW1 but had, never-the-less, won many wars w/ the help of Indians & thus this strength made the Indians realize that they could not win freedom by force   

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