India

India (Bhārat) Hindustan The Republic of India since 1950 after independence was achieved in 1947 when the Federal Union of India (and Dominion of India) was created. Although the English East India Company had established its first trading post on the west coast of India in 1608, the first step in the creation of a British Empire in India was only taken as a result of the victory of Robert Clive (1725–74) at the Battle of Plassey in 1757. At this time the Company desired no territory other than Bengal; it was intent only on trade. However, the collapse of the Mughal Empire and the lack of cohesion of the Marathas allowed the British to fill the vacuum and more territory was gradually acquired. Nevertheless, at the time of independence British India comprised no more than three‐fifths of the subcontinent and 562 princely states also existed. From 1526 the pre‐eminent power in India was the Muslim Mughal Empire, Mughal being the Urdu version of Mughul, the Persian word for Mongol, since the rulers were partly descended from the Mongol leaders, Genghis Khan^† and Tamerlane^†. The empire began to fragment at the beginning of the 18th century, although its emperors retained their title with ever‐diminishing power until the Indian Mutiny in 1857–8. In 1858 the East India Company relinquished power over India to the British crown. The Mughal Empire incorporated the Muslim Sultanate of Delhi which had been established in 1206, Turkish and Afghan Muslim warlords overpowering several major and minor Hindu kingdoms from the 12th century. The name India is taken from the River Indus along which the first agricultural settlements took root. Darius I (550–486 bc), Persian emperor (522–486 bc), included among his territories ‘Hidhu’ which was probably from the Sanskrit word sindhu ‘the sea’. Here it referred to a great river, the Indus, the s giving way to h in the ancient Persian before being dropped altogether. Somewhat ironically, the Indus does not now flow through India, rising in Tibet and flowing through Kashmir and Pakistan to the Arabian Sea. The Aryans, who had settled over the whole of northern India by c.600 bc and brought with them the language of Sanskrit, became known as Hindus. In due course ‘India’, a Greek and Latin term for ‘the country of the River Indus’, spread from just being the region along the river to the whole of the peninsula. Bhārat (or Bhāratavarsha in full), first used officially in 1947, is taken from the most important Aryan tribe, the Bhārata, which was probably the name of its first king. Hindustan ‘Place of the Hindus’ was the Turkish and Mughal name for India. The expression ‘Indian file’ does not come from India but from the Native Americans whose practice it was to walk in single file in the footsteps of the person in front, the last man erasing the footprints to foil trackers.