# indianepics

> A scroll-driven historical atlas of the Indian subcontinent from the Itihasa to 2026: 9 chapters, 120 dated and sourced events, two tracks (tradition and evidence), English and Hindi, open data (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Every page has a Markdown twin at the same path with `.md` instead of a trailing slash. The whole corpus is in [llms-full.txt](https://indianepics.online/llms-full.txt). Negative years are BCE. Tradition events carry told time (yugas), never a calendar date; evidence events carry a year range with an honest uncertainty.

## Chapters

- [Itihasa and Purana](https://indianepics.online/chapter/itihasa.md): Tradition track (3 events)
- [Indus and Veda](https://indianepics.online/chapter/indus-vedic.md): c. 2600 to 400 BCE (8 events)
- [The Mauryan Empire](https://indianepics.online/chapter/maurya.md): c. 321 to 185 BCE (7 events)
- [Gupta and the classical age](https://indianepics.online/chapter/classical.md): c. 180 BCE to 750 CE (10 events)
- [Cholas to the Sultanate](https://indianepics.online/chapter/medieval.md): c. 750 to 1500 CE (11 events)
- [The Mughals and their rivals](https://indianepics.online/chapter/mughal.md): 1526 to 1760 CE (8 events)
- [Company rule](https://indianepics.online/chapter/company.md): 1757 to 1858 (18 events)
- [Crown and the freedom struggle](https://indianepics.online/chapter/raj.md): 1858 to 1947 (32 events)
- [The Republic and its states](https://indianepics.online/chapter/republic.md): 1947 to today (23 events)

## Events

### Itihasa and Purana

- [Ayodhya, city of Rama](https://indianepics.online/event/ayodhya.md): The Ramayana's capital of Kosala, Rama's birthplace and seat, on the Sarayu.
- [Dwarka, Krishna's western city](https://indianepics.online/event/dwarka.md): Krishna's capital on the Saurashtra coast, which the Mahabharata says the sea swallowed after his death.
- [Kurukshetra, field of the Mahabharata war](https://indianepics.online/event/kurukshetra.md): The eighteen-day war between the Pandavas and Kauravas, and the setting of the Bhagavad Gita.

### Indus and Veda

- [Dholavira and its reservoirs](https://indianepics.online/event/dholavira.md): On an island in the Rann of Kutch, a walled Harappan city stores monsoon water in rock-cut reservoirs and leaves ten large signs by its north gate.
- [Mohenjo-daro, the planned city](https://indianepics.online/event/mohenjo-daro.md): One of the largest Harappan cities rises on the Indus: baked-brick houses, covered drains, a citadel with the Great Bath, and no palace or temple yet found.
- [Lothal and the dock debate](https://indianepics.online/event/lothal.md): A small Harappan town near the Gulf of Khambhat, with a large brick basin its excavator called a dockyard and others read as a reservoir.
- [Harappa and the end of the cities](https://indianepics.online/event/harappa-decline.md): From about 1900 BCE the big Indus cities shrink and empty, and at Harappa a smaller settlement buries its dead in a new style, called Cemetery H.
- [The Rigveda and the land of seven rivers](https://indianepics.online/event/rigveda-sapta-sindhu.md): Hymns in Vedic Sanskrit are composed in the greater Punjab; the pin is the Ravi, where Rigveda 7.18 sets the battle of the ten kings.
- [Painted Grey Ware villages of the doab](https://indianepics.online/event/painted-grey-ware.md): Fine grey pottery painted in black marks the farming villages of the later Vedic Ganga-Yamuna doab; Hastinapur is its key excavated site.
- [Rajagriha and the sixteen great realms](https://indianepics.online/event/rajagriha-magadha.md): Magadha's hill-ringed capital rises among sixteen rival kingdoms and republics; the Buddha and Mahavira both teach here.
- [The Buddha's first sermon at Sarnath](https://indianepics.online/event/buddha-sarnath.md): In the deer park near Varanasi the Buddha preaches his first sermon to five ascetics; its date depends on which chronology of his life is right.

### The Mauryan Empire

- [Taxila, crossroads of the north-west](https://indianepics.online/event/taxila-learning.md): Gandhara's chief city: once Persian, host to Alexander in 326 BCE, then a Mauryan provincial seat governed by a prince.
- [Chandragupta takes Magadha](https://indianepics.online/event/chandragupta-magadha.md): Chandragupta Maurya overthrows the Nanda king and rules from Pataliputra; later tradition credits his minister Chanakya with the plan.
- [Treaty with Seleucus](https://indianepics.online/event/seleucid-treaty.md): Seleucus Nicator gives Chandragupta lands along the Indus under a marriage pact and receives five hundred war elephants.
- [The Great Stupa at Sanchi](https://indianepics.online/event/sanchi-stupa.md): Ashoka's brick stupa, doubled in size and cased in stone in the 2nd century BCE, and given carved gateways around the turn of the era.
- [The Kalinga war](https://indianepics.online/event/kalinga-war.md): Ashoka conquers Kalinga; his Rock Edict XIII counts the dead and deported and records his remorse and turn to dhamma.
- [The edicts of Ashoka](https://indianepics.online/event/ashoka-edicts.md): Rock and pillar edicts in Prakrit, Greek and Aramaic, from Kandahar to Karnataka; the oldest deciphered, datable writing from India.
- [Pushyamitra ends the dynasty](https://indianepics.online/event/maurya-fall.md): The general Pushyamitra kills the last Maurya, Brihadratha, at a review of the army and founds the Shunga dynasty.

### Gupta and the classical age

- [Sangam poetry and the Tamil kings](https://indianepics.online/event/sangam-madurai.md): Tamil poets of love and war compose the Sangam anthologies under the Chera, Chola and Pandya kings, while Roman ships trade at Muziris and Arikamedu.
- [Gautamiputra Satakarni and the Nashik caves](https://indianepics.online/event/satavahana-nashik.md): A queen mother's inscription at Nashik praises her son Gautamiputra Satakarni for crushing the Shakas and restoring Satavahana power.
- [Kanishka and the first Buddha images](https://indianepics.online/event/kanishka-mathura.md): Kanishka's Kushan empire joins Bactria to the Ganga plain; at Mathura and in Gandhara sculptors make some of the earliest images of the Buddha.
- [Chandragupta I and the Gupta era](https://indianepics.online/event/gupta-era-320.md): The Gupta era begins in 319-320 CE, most likely with Chandragupta I's accession; coins show his marriage to a Licchavi princess.
- [Samudragupta's Allahabad pillar](https://indianepics.online/event/allahabad-pillar.md): Harishena's Sanskrit eulogy on an Ashokan pillar lists the kings Samudragupta uprooted, the southern kings he freed, and the tributaries beyond.
- [Nalanda mahavihara](https://indianepics.online/event/nalanda.md): A monastery founded under Kumaragupta I grows into a Buddhist university that draws scholars from China, Korea and Tibet until the 13th century.
- [The painted caves of Ajanta](https://indianepics.online/event/ajanta-caves.md): Under the Vakataka king Harishena, monks and courtiers cut new caves above the Waghora and paint them with the Jataka stories.
- [Aryabhata writes the Aryabhatiya](https://indianepics.online/event/aryabhata-499.md): At twenty-three, Aryabhata completes a compact Sanskrit treatise on mathematics and astronomy, with a value of pi and a rotating Earth.
- [Harsha's Kannauj](https://indianepics.online/event/harsha-kannauj.md): Harshavardhana rules the north from Kannauj, is turned back at the Narmada by Pulakeshin II, and hosts the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang.
- [Pallava Mamallapuram](https://indianepics.online/event/mamallapuram.md): At the Pallava port east of Kanchipuram, granite is cut into cave shrines, monolithic rathas and a vast relief, and the Shore Temple rises by the sea.

### Cholas to the Sultanate

- [The temples of Khajuraho](https://indianepics.online/event/khajuraho.md): Between about 950 and 1050 the Chandela kings build dozens of Hindu and Jain temples at Khajuraho; some twenty survive.
- [Rajaraja's temple at Thanjavur](https://indianepics.online/event/rajaraja-thanjavur-1010.md): Rajaraja I consecrates the Brihadisvara at Thanjavur in 1010, a granite temple whose walls record the lands and gifts of a growing Chola state.
- [Rajendra's Gangaikonda Cholapuram](https://indianepics.online/event/rajendra-gangaikonda.md): After his army reaches the Ganga, Rajendra I builds a capital named for the feat; in 1025 his fleet raids Srivijaya across the Bay of Bengal.
- [Mahmud of Ghazni at Somnath](https://indianepics.online/event/somnath-1026.md): In January 1026 Mahmud of Ghazni sacks the Somanatha temple on the Saurashtra coast, the most remembered of his raids into India.
- [The battles of Tarain](https://indianepics.online/event/tarain-1192.md): Prithviraj Chauhan beats Muhammad of Ghur at Tarain in 1191 and loses to him on the same field in 1192, opening the Ganga plain to the Ghurids.
- [The Qutb Minar and the Delhi Sultanate](https://indianepics.online/event/qutb-minar.md): Around 1199 Aibak begins a victory tower beside Delhi's first great mosque; Iltutmish completes it as Delhi becomes the seat of a sultanate.
- [Alauddin Khalji takes Chittor](https://indianepics.online/event/alauddin-chittor-1303.md): Seven months after leaving Delhi, Alauddin Khalji takes the Guhila fortress of Chittor on 26 August 1303, extending the Sultanate into Mewar.
- [The move to Daulatabad](https://indianepics.online/event/daulatabad-1327.md): In 1327 Muhammad bin Tughluq makes Devagiri, renamed Daulatabad, a second capital and sends Delhi's elite south; by about 1335 the court is back.
- [Vijayanagara is founded](https://indianepics.online/event/vijayanagara-1336.md): Tradition dates to 1336 the kingdom the brothers Harihara and Bukka founded on the Tungabhadra; it would dominate the south for two centuries.
- [The Bahmani sultanate](https://indianepics.online/event/bahmani-1347.md): On 3 August 1347 rebel Deccan amirs proclaim Alauddin Hasan Bahman Shah sultan; ruling from Gulbarga, he ends Delhi's hold on the Deccan.
- [Timur sacks Delhi](https://indianepics.online/event/timur-delhi-1398.md): Timur routs the Tughluq army outside Delhi on 17 December 1398 and sacks Siri, Jahanpanah and Old Delhi; the Sultanate never regains its reach.

### The Mughals and their rivals

- [First Battle of Panipat](https://indianepics.online/event/panipat-1526.md): Babur's field guns and flanking cavalry break Ibrahim Lodi's army; the Delhi Sultanate ends and the Mughal line begins.
- [Akbar's city at Fatehpur Sikri](https://indianepics.online/event/fatehpur-sikri.md): Akbar's capital of 1571-85, where debates in the Ibadat Khana brought Sunni and Shia scholars, Brahmins, Jains and Jesuits before him.
- [The English factory at Surat](https://indianepics.online/event/surat-factory.md): After an English victory over the Portuguese off Swally, Jahangir confirms the East India Company's right to trade at Surat.
- [Shah Jahan builds the Taj Mahal](https://indianepics.online/event/taj-mahal.md): Shah Jahan's tomb for Mumtaz Mahal, built over two decades on the Yamuna in white Makrana marble.
- [Shivaji crowned at Raigad](https://indianepics.online/event/shivaji-coronation.md): Shivaji is crowned Chhatrapati at Raigad, making his Maratha state a sovereign kingdom outside the Mughal order.
- [Aurangzeb takes Golconda](https://indianepics.online/event/golconda-1687.md): After an eight-month siege the last Deccan sultanate falls to Aurangzeb, carrying the empire close to its greatest extent.
- [Guru Gobind Singh founds the Khalsa](https://indianepics.online/event/khalsa-1699.md): At Vaisakhi the tenth Guru initiates the Panj Piare and gives the Sikh community its martial, egalitarian form.
- [Battle of Plassey](https://indianepics.online/event/plassey-1757.md): Clive's Company army defeats Siraj ud-Daulah when Mir Jafar's troops stand aside; the Company becomes the power behind Bengal's throne.

### Company rule

- [Battle of Buxar](https://indianepics.online/event/buxar-1764.md): Munro's Company army defeats Mir Qasim, Shuja-ud-Daula and Shah Alam II; a year later the emperor grants the Company the diwani of Bengal.
- [The Regulating Act and Warren Hastings](https://indianepics.online/event/regulating-act-1773.md): Parliament puts the Company's Indian government under a Governor-General at Calcutta; Warren Hastings becomes the first in 1774.
- [The Permanent Settlement](https://indianepics.online/event/permanent-settlement-1793.md): Cornwallis fixes Bengal's land revenue in perpetuity and makes the zamindars owners of the land, whose estates are sold if they fall behind.
- [Fall of Srirangapatna](https://indianepics.online/event/srirangapatna-1799.md): Company and Hyderabad troops storm Tipu Sultan's island capital on 4 May; Tipu dies at the walls and Mysore is partitioned.
- [The Great Trigonometrical Survey begins](https://indianepics.online/event/great-arc-1802.md): On 10 April 1802 William Lambton lays a 12 km baseline near Madras, the start of the survey that mapped India and measured Everest.
- [The Vellore mutiny](https://indianepics.online/event/vellore-mutiny-1806.md): Sepoys in Vellore fort rise against new dress rules on 10 July and kill over a hundred British troops; Gillespie's cavalry retakes the fort by morning.
- [The end of the Peshwa](https://indianepics.online/event/maratha-war-1818.md): After Khadki and Koregaon, Baji Rao II surrenders in June 1818; the Peshwa's lands are annexed and the Maratha confederacy ends.
- [Sati abolished, English adopted](https://indianepics.online/event/bentinck-reforms-1829.md): Bentinck outlaws sati in Bengal in December 1829; in 1835, after Macaulay's Minute, the Company's education funds go to English-medium teaching.
- [Conquest of Sindh](https://indianepics.online/event/sindh-1843.md): Charles Napier defeats the Talpur amirs at Miani and Dubba near Hyderabad, and the Company annexes Sindh and the lower Indus.
- [Lapse and annexation](https://indianepics.online/event/doctrine-of-lapse.md): Dalhousie annexes states whose rulers die without a natural heir, from Satara in 1848 to Jhansi and Nagpur in 1854, and takes Awadh in 1856.
- [Annexation of the Punjab](https://indianepics.online/event/punjab-annexation-1849.md): After the second Anglo-Sikh war Dalhousie annexes Ranjit Singh's kingdom on 29 March; the boy Maharaja Duleep Singh is made to give up the Koh-i-Noor.
- [The first train, and the telegraph](https://indianepics.online/event/railway-1853.md): On 16 April 1853 the first passenger train runs 34 km from Bori Bunder to Thane; by 1856 telegraph wires link Calcutta, Agra, Bombay and Madras.
- [Mangal Pandey at Barrackpore](https://indianepics.online/event/barrackpore-1857.md): On 29 March sepoy Mangal Pandey of the 34th Bengal Native Infantry attacks his officers on parade; he is hanged on 8 April and his regiment disbanded.
- [Meerut to Delhi](https://indianepics.online/event/delhi-1857.md): Sepoys rise at Meerut on 10 May and ride to Delhi to proclaim Bahadur Shah Zafar; the British retake the city in September and exile him to Rangoon.
- [Kanpur, 1857](https://indianepics.online/event/kanpur-1857.md): Nana Sahib's forces besiege Wheeler's entrenchment; the survivors are killed at Satichaura Ghat and the Bibighar, and Havelock retakes the city in July.
- [Lucknow and Begum Hazrat Mahal](https://indianepics.online/event/lucknow-1857.md): Awadh rises; the British are besieged in the Residency for nearly five months while Begum Hazrat Mahal rules in her son's name until March 1858.
- [Kunwar Singh of Jagdishpur](https://indianepics.online/event/kunwar-singh-1857.md): The aged zamindar of Jagdishpur leads the Danapur mutineers, besieges Arrah, fights across north India and dies at home in April 1858.
- [Rani Lakshmibai and Tatya Tope](https://indianepics.online/event/lakshmibai-1858.md): Hugh Rose storms Jhansi in April 1858; the Rani and Tatya Tope seize Gwalior, where she dies fighting in June; Tope is hanged in 1859.

### Crown and the freedom struggle

- [The Crown takes over](https://indianepics.online/event/queens-proclamation-1858.md): On 1 November 1858 Canning reads the Queen's Proclamation at Allahabad; the Company's rule ends and India passes to the Crown.
- [The Great Famine of 1876 to 1878](https://indianepics.online/event/famine-1876.md): Drought across the Deccan and the south kills an estimated 5 to 10 million people; the 1880 Famine Commission leads to India's first famine codes.
- [Phadke's rising and the Chapekar brothers](https://indianepics.online/event/phadke-chapekar.md): Vasudev Balwant Phadke's armed band raids the country around Pune in 1879; in 1897 the Chapekar brothers shoot plague commissioner Rand.
- [The Ilbert Bill and the first Congress](https://indianepics.online/event/congress-1885.md): After the European outcry against the Ilbert Bill, 72 delegates meet in Bombay on 28 December 1885 as the first Indian National Congress.
- [Birsa Munda's ulgulan](https://indianepics.online/event/birsa-ulgulan.md): Birsa Munda leads the Munda rising of 1899 to 1900 against landlords, missions and the Raj; he dies in Ranchi jail aged about 25.
- [The partition of Bengal and Swadeshi](https://indianepics.online/event/bengal-partition-1905.md): Curzon splits Bengal in 1905; a Calcutta Town Hall meeting answers with a boycott of British goods, and the partition is reversed in 1911.
- [The Muslim League and separate electorates](https://indianepics.online/event/muslim-league-1906.md): The All-India Muslim League is founded at Dacca on 30 December 1906; the Morley–Minto reforms of 1909 give Muslims separate electorates.
- [Khudiram Bose and Tilak's trial](https://indianepics.online/event/muzaffarpur-1908.md): A bomb meant for a magistrate kills two Englishwomen at Muzaffarpur; Khudiram Bose is hanged, and Tilak is sent to Mandalay for his articles on it.
- [Savarkar and the Cellular Jail](https://indianepics.online/event/cellular-jail-1911.md): V. D. Savarkar reaches Port Blair's Cellular Jail in 1911 with two life sentences; he and his brother are moved to mainland jails in 1921.
- [The Delhi Durbar and a new capital](https://indianepics.online/event/delhi-durbar-1911.md): At the 1911 Durbar George V announces that the capital will move from Calcutta to Delhi and Bengal will be reunited; New Delhi opens in 1931.
- [The Komagata Maru and the Ghadar rising](https://indianepics.online/event/komagata-maru-1914.md): Turned away from Vancouver, the Komagata Maru's passengers are fired on at Budge Budge in 1914; a planned Ghadar mutiny in the Punjab fails in 1915.
- [Home Rule and the Lucknow Pact](https://indianepics.online/event/lucknow-pact-1916.md): Tilak and Annie Besant launch Home Rule leagues in 1916; at Lucknow that December the Congress and the Muslim League agree a joint scheme.
- [Champaran and Kheda](https://indianepics.online/event/champaran-1917.md): Gandhi defies an order to leave Champaran in April 1917 and takes up the indigo tenants' case; in 1918 he leads Kheda's farmers against revenue.
- [The Rowlatt Act and Jallianwala Bagh](https://indianepics.online/event/jallianwala-1919.md): On 13 April 1919 troops under General Dyer fire on a crowd in Jallianwala Bagh; the official toll is 379 dead, Indian estimates about 1,000.
- [Non-cooperation, Khilafat and Chauri Chaura](https://indianepics.online/event/non-cooperation-1920.md): Congress and the Khilafat committees launch non-cooperation in 1920; after a crowd burns Chauri Chaura police station in 1922, Gandhi calls it off.
- [Alluri Sitarama Raju and the Rampa rising](https://indianepics.online/event/rampa-1922.md): Alluri Sitarama Raju leads the hill peoples of the Godavari agency against forest laws, raiding police stations in 1922; he is killed in May 1924.
- [The Vaikom satyagraha](https://indianepics.online/event/vaikom-1924.md): From March 1924 volunteers court arrest on the roads around Vaikom temple, barred to Ezhavas and Dalits; three of the four roads open in 1925.
- [The Kakori train action](https://indianepics.online/event/kakori-1925.md): On 9 August 1925 Hindustan Republican Association members stop a train at Kakori and seize government cash; four of them are hanged in December 1927.
- [The Mahad satyagraha](https://indianepics.online/event/mahad-1927.md): On 20 March 1927 Ambedkar leads Dalits to drink from Mahad's Chavdar tank, open to all by law; that December the Manusmriti is burned there.
- [The Bardoli satyagraha](https://indianepics.online/event/bardoli-1928.md): Bardoli's farmers refuse a 22 per cent rise in land revenue in 1928; an inquiry cuts it to about 6 per cent, and Vallabhbhai Patel becomes Sardar.
- [Simon go back, and Bhagat Singh](https://indianepics.online/event/bhagat-singh-1931.md): Lajpat Rai dies after a police beating at Lahore's Simon protest in 1928; Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev are hanged in Lahore jail in March 1931.
- [The Salt March](https://indianepics.online/event/dandi-1930.md): Gandhi and 78 marchers walk about 390 km from Sabarmati to Dandi and break the salt law on 6 April 1930, opening civil disobedience.
- [The Chittagong armoury raid](https://indianepics.online/event/surya-sen-chittagong-1930.md): Surya Sen's Indian Republican Army seizes Chittagong's armouries on 18 April 1930; Sen is caught in 1933 and hanged in January 1934.
- [The Round Tables and the Poona Pact](https://indianepics.online/event/poona-pact-1932.md): Gandhi fasts in Yerwada jail against separate electorates for the depressed classes; on 24 September 1932 Ambedkar accepts reserved seats instead.
- [The Government of India Act 1935](https://indianepics.online/event/goi-act-1935.md): The 1935 Act gives the provinces elected governments in 1937; its all-India federation never forms, but much of the Act passes into the Constitution.
- [Quit India](https://indianepics.online/event/quit-india-1942.md): On 8 August 1942 the Congress passes the Quit India resolution at Gowalia Tank; by the next morning its leaders are jailed and the country rises.
- [The Bengal famine](https://indianepics.online/event/bengal-famine-1943.md): Wartime Bengal starves in 1943; the 1945 inquiry counts about 1.5 million dead, later estimates run to 3 million, and the causes are still argued.
- [Subhas Bose and the Indian National Army](https://indianepics.online/event/ina-1943.md): Bose leads the INA alongside Japan; its flag flies at Moirang in April 1944 before defeat at Imphal, and his death in 1945 has been disputed ever since.
- [Simla and the Cabinet Mission](https://indianepics.online/event/cabinet-mission-1946.md): Talks at Simla in 1945 and the Cabinet Mission plan of May 1946 try to keep India united in a loose federation; both founder on Congress–League mistrust.
- [The INA trials and the naval mutiny](https://indianepics.online/event/rin-mutiny-1946.md): The Red Fort trials of three INA officers stir protest in 1945; in February 1946 ratings of the Royal Indian Navy mutiny at Bombay and Karachi.
- [Direct Action Day](https://indianepics.online/event/direct-action-1946.md): The League's Direct Action Day on 16 August 1946 becomes days of killing in Calcutta; more than 4,000 die, and violence spreads to Noakhali and Bihar.
- [Mountbatten's 3 June plan](https://indianepics.online/event/dominion-plan-1947.md): On 3 June 1947 Mountbatten announces that British India will be partitioned; the handover is brought forward to August and Parliament passes the act in July.

### The Republic and its states

- [Independence](https://indianepics.online/event/independence-1947.md): The Indian Independence Act takes effect at midnight on 15 August; Nehru tells the Constituent Assembly India keeps its tryst with destiny.
- [Partition and the Radcliffe Line](https://indianepics.online/event/partition-1947.md): The Radcliffe award, published two days after independence, splits Punjab and Bengal; about 14.5 million people cross the new lines.
- [The Constitution comes into force](https://indianepics.online/event/constitution-1950.md): On 26 January India becomes a sovereign democratic republic; its constitution, drafted under B. R. Ambedkar, is the world's longest.
- [The first general election](https://indianepics.online/event/first-election-1951.md): The first votes are cast in snowbound Chini on 25 October 1951; by February 1952 an electorate of 173 million has chosen the first Lok Sabha.
- [States Reorganisation Act](https://indianepics.online/event/states-reorganisation-1956.md): After Potti Sriramulu's fatal fast and the Fazl Ali commission, India is redrawn into 14 states and 6 union territories, largely by language.
- [Bombay State becomes Maharashtra and Gujarat](https://indianepics.online/event/bombay-split-1960.md): The Samyukta Maharashtra and Mahagujarat movements split bilingual Bombay State into Maharashtra and Gujarat on 1 May.
- [The war with China](https://indianepics.online/event/sino-indian-war-1962.md): China attacks in Ladakh and the North-East Frontier on 20 October; after a month of Indian defeats it declares a ceasefire and keeps Aksai Chin.
- [The Green Revolution begins](https://indianepics.online/event/green-revolution-1966.md): Mexican dwarf wheat, tube wells and fertiliser lift Punjab's wheat harvest from 1.9 to 5.6 million tonnes between 1965 and 1972.
- [The 1971 war and Bangladesh](https://indianepics.online/event/bangladesh-1971.md): After nine months of civil war and ten million refugees, Indian troops and the Mukti Bahini reach Dhaka; Pakistan's eastern command surrenders on 16 December.
- [Nuclear tests at Pokhran](https://indianepics.online/event/pokhran-tests.md): India sets off a "peaceful nuclear explosion" on 18 May 1974, then five devices on 11 and 13 May 1998, and declares itself a nuclear weapon state.
- [The Emergency](https://indianepics.online/event/emergency-1975.md): Two weeks after a court voids her election, Indira Gandhi has a national emergency proclaimed on 25 June 1975; civil liberties are suspended for 21 months.
- [The Bhopal gas disaster](https://indianepics.online/event/bhopal-1984.md): On the night of 2-3 December 1984 methyl isocyanate leaks from Union Carbide's pesticide plant; thousands die in the crowded settlements around it.
- [Economic liberalisation](https://indianepics.online/event/liberalisation-1991.md): Facing a balance-of-payments crisis, the Rao government devalues the rupee, scraps most industrial licensing and opens trade.
- [Ayodhya, 1992 to 2024](https://indianepics.online/event/ayodhya-1992.md): Kar sevaks demolish the Babri Masjid on 6 December 1992; after a 2019 Supreme Court verdict, a Ram temple on the site is consecrated on 22 January 2024.
- [The Kargil war](https://indianepics.online/event/kargil-1999.md): Pakistani troops occupy heights on India's side of the Line of Control above Kargil; by 26 July 1999 the Indian Army has retaken them.
- [Aadhaar and the digital state](https://indianepics.online/event/aadhaar-2010.md): Ranjana Sonawane of Tembhli receives the first Aadhaar number on 29 September 2010; by April 2016 a billion of the biometric IDs have been issued.
- [Telangana becomes the 29th state](https://indianepics.online/event/telangana-2014.md): After a movement going back to 1969, Andhra Pradesh is split on 2 June; Hyderabad serves as joint capital for up to ten years.
- [Jammu and Kashmir reorganised; Ladakh a union territory](https://indianepics.online/event/ladakh-2019.md): Article 370 is made inoperative in August; on 31 October Jammu and Kashmir becomes two union territories, one of them Ladakh.
- [Clash in the Galwan valley](https://indianepics.online/event/galwan-2020.md): Indian and Chinese troops fight with clubs and stones on the night of 15 June 2020; twenty Indian soldiers die, the first border deaths in 45 years.
- [Chandrayaan-3 lands near the lunar south pole](https://indianepics.online/event/chandrayaan-3.md): Launched from Sriharikota on 14 July, Vikram lands near 69°S on 23 August, at the time the closest soft landing to the Moon's south pole.
- [The 2024 general election](https://indianepics.online/event/election-2024.md): Some 640 million people vote in seven phases; the BJP wins 240 seats, short of a majority, and Narendra Modi begins a third term at the head of the NDA.
- [Pahalgam and Operation Sindoor](https://indianepics.online/event/operation-sindoor-2025.md): Gunmen kill 26 people near Pahalgam on 22 April 2025; India strikes nine sites in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir on 7 May; firing stops on 10 May.
- [Census 2027 begins](https://indianepics.online/event/census-2027.md): India's first census since 2011 opens with houselisting on 1 April 2026; it is the first digital count, and its second phase will also record caste.

## Optional

- [Source repository](https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics)
- [Verification log](https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics/blob/main/content/VERIFICATION.md): what was checked, against which sources, and what remains open
- [Sitemap](https://indianepics.online/sitemap.xml)


---

# Itihasa and Purana
**इतिहास और पुराण**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/chapter/itihasa/
- Track: tradition
- Stops: Satya Yuga, Treta Yuga, Dvapara Yuga, Kali Yuga


Before the dated record there is the told one. The Puranas describe four ages, the yugas, lasting from 432,000 to 1,728,000 years each. Tradition places Rama's Ayodhya in the Treta Yuga, and the Mahabharata sets the war at Kurukshetra at the junction of the Dvapara and the Kali.

This track pins that geography on the same map as the archaeological record, labelled plainly as tradition. It is not dated on the year axis, and the two tracks never share a scale. Toggle it off if you only want the evidence.

## Events (3)

- Treta Yuga (Ramayana) (Treta Yuga) — [Ayodhya, city of Rama](https://indianepics.online/event/ayodhya.md): The Ramayana's capital of Kosala, Rama's birthplace and seat, on the Sarayu.
- Dvapara Yuga (Harivamsa, Mahabharata) (Dvapara Yuga) — [Dwarka, Krishna's western city](https://indianepics.online/event/dwarka.md): Krishna's capital on the Saurashtra coast, which the Mahabharata says the sea swallowed after his death.
- End of the Dvapara Yuga (Mahabharata) (Dvapara Yuga) — [Kurukshetra, field of the Mahabharata war](https://indianepics.online/event/kurukshetra.md): The eighteen-day war between the Pandavas and Kauravas, and the setting of the Bhagavad Gita.


# Ayodhya, city of Rama
**अयोध्या, राम की नगरी**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/ayodhya/
- Chapter: [Itihasa and Purana](https://indianepics.online/chapter/itihasa.md)
- Track: tradition (Itihasa-Purana; told time, not a calendar date)
- When: Treta Yuga (Ramayana) (Treta Yuga)
- Where: Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh (26.8, 82.2)
- Tags: religion

## Summary

The Ramayana's capital of Kosala, Rama's birthplace and seat, on the Sarayu.

रामायण में कोसल की राजधानी, सरयू तट पर राम की जन्मभूमि और राजगद्दी।

## Account

The Valmiki Ramayana opens in Ayodhya, capital of the Ikshvaku kings of Kosala, and returns there for Rama's coronation.

Excavations by B. B. Lal in the late 1970s and by the ASI in 2003 found occupation going back at least to the Northern Black Polished Ware phase of the first millennium BCE. The Treta Yuga of tradition lies far beyond anything archaeology can date, which is why the two sit on separate tracks here.

## Sources

- Valmiki Ramayana, Bala Kanda (Critical edition, Oriental Institute, Baroda (1960-75))
- B. B. Lal, excavations at Ayodhya (1975-80) (Archaeology of the Ramayana Sites project)
- ASI, excavation report on Ayodhya (2003) (Excavation led by B. R. Mani for the Allahabad High Court)

## Image

A View of Part of the City of Oud. William Hodges, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AAyodhya_seen_from_the_river_Ghaghara%2C_Uttar_Pradesh._Coloure_Wellcome_V0050436.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Dwarka, Krishna's western city
**द्वारका, कृष्ण की नगरी**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/dwarka/
- Chapter: [Itihasa and Purana](https://indianepics.online/chapter/itihasa.md)
- Track: tradition (Itihasa-Purana; told time, not a calendar date)
- When: Dvapara Yuga (Harivamsa, Mahabharata) (Dvapara Yuga)
- Where: Dwarka, Gujarat (22.24, 68.97)
- Tags: religion, trade

## Summary

Krishna's capital on the Saurashtra coast, which the Mahabharata says the sea swallowed after his death.

सौराष्ट्र तट पर कृष्ण की राजधानी, जिसे महाभारत के अनुसार उनके देहावसान के बाद समुद्र ने निगल लिया।

## Account

Dwarka closes the Krishna cycle: the city he founded on the coast after leaving Mathura, and the city the sea took back once the Yadavas had destroyed one another.

S. R. Rao, surveying the seabed from 1983, dated submerged walls to the second millennium BCE and identified them with Krishna's city. Later work by the National Institute of Oceanography places the stone anchors and structures in the historical and medieval periods, and excavation in the town in 1963 found occupation from about the 2nd century BCE. The tradition is older than anything securely dated there.

## Sources

- Harivamsa, Vishnu Parva (Founding of Dvaraka)
- Mahabharata, Mausala Parva (The sea floods Dvaraka after Krishna's death; critical edition, BORI Pune)
- S. R. Rao, The Lost City of Dvaraka (1999) (Offshore surveys for the National Institute of Oceanography from 1983)
- Gaur, Sundaresh and Tripati, 'An ancient harbour at Dwarka', Current Science 86(9), 2004, pp. 1256-60 — https://www.jstor.org/stable/i24104106

## Image

Dwarkadheesh temple. Scalebelow, CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ADwarkadheesh_temple.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Kurukshetra, field of the Mahabharata war
**कुरुक्षेत्र, महाभारत युद्धभूमि**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/kurukshetra/
- Chapter: [Itihasa and Purana](https://indianepics.online/chapter/itihasa.md)
- Track: tradition (Itihasa-Purana; told time, not a calendar date)
- When: End of the Dvapara Yuga (Mahabharata) (Dvapara Yuga)
- Where: Kurukshetra, Haryana (29.97, 76.88)
- Tags: war, religion

## Summary

The eighteen-day war between the Pandavas and Kauravas, and the setting of the Bhagavad Gita.

पांडवों और कौरवों का अठारह दिन का युद्ध, और भगवद्गीता की भूमि।

## Account

The Mahabharata's war is fought on the plain of Kurukshetra, about 160 km north of Delhi, and the Bhagavad Gita is set on the field before the first day's fighting.

Painted Grey Ware settlements of roughly 1200 to 600 BCE cluster in the same Kuru country, and B. B. Lal found the ware at sites the epic names, Hastinapura among them. That is as close as archaeology comes to the story: it shows the region was settled in the right era, not that the war took place.

## Sources

- Mahabharata, Bhishma Parva (Critical edition, BORI Pune)
- Painted Grey Ware sites of the Kuru region (B. B. Lal, Ancient India 10-11 (1954-55))

## Image

Brahma Sarovar. Ratnadeep Chaskar, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABrahma_Sarovar.JPG

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Indus and Veda
**सिंधु और वेद**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/chapter/indus-vedic/
- Track: evidence
- Span: 2600 BCE to 400 BCE


Around 2600 BCE towns along the Indus and the Ghaggar-Hakra became cities: baked-brick houses on planned streets, covered drains, standard weights, and a script on seals that has not been deciphered. Mohenjo-daro, Harappa, Dholavira and Lothal traded from Afghanistan to the Gulf. After about 1900 BCE the large cities emptied, and settlement shifted east towards the Yamuna and south into Gujarat.

The Rigveda, probably composed in the greater Punjab between about 1500 and 1200 BCE and handed down orally for centuries before it was written, is the oldest Indian text that can be read. It describes cattle-herding clans and no cities, and it cannot be securely tied to any excavated site. Over the following centuries iron, Painted Grey Ware villages and then walled towns spread across the Ganga plain. By the fifth century BCE the sixteen great kingdoms and republics of the Buddhist lists, the mahajanapadas, contested the north, and the Buddha and Mahavira taught in their capitals.

The map draws no boundary for this chapter. There is no clear evidence that the Harappans formed a single state, and the Vedic clans and early kingdoms left no record of borders. The pins mark excavated sites; where a pin stands for a region, the event says so.

## Events (8)

- 2600 BCE – 1900 BCE (± 100 years) — [Dholavira and its reservoirs](https://indianepics.online/event/dholavira.md): On an island in the Rann of Kutch, a walled Harappan city stores monsoon water in rock-cut reservoirs and leaves ten large signs by its north gate.
- 2500 BCE – 1900 BCE (± 100 years) — [Mohenjo-daro, the planned city](https://indianepics.online/event/mohenjo-daro.md): One of the largest Harappan cities rises on the Indus: baked-brick houses, covered drains, a citadel with the Great Bath, and no palace or temple yet found.
- 2400 BCE – 1900 BCE (± 100 years) — [Lothal and the dock debate](https://indianepics.online/event/lothal.md): A small Harappan town near the Gulf of Khambhat, with a large brick basin its excavator called a dockyard and others read as a reservoir.
- 1900 BCE – 1300 BCE (± 100 years) — [Harappa and the end of the cities](https://indianepics.online/event/harappa-decline.md): From about 1900 BCE the big Indus cities shrink and empty, and at Harappa a smaller settlement buries its dead in a new style, called Cemetery H.
- 1500 BCE – 1200 BCE (± 200 years) — [The Rigveda and the land of seven rivers](https://indianepics.online/event/rigveda-sapta-sindhu.md): Hymns in Vedic Sanskrit are composed in the greater Punjab; the pin is the Ravi, where Rigveda 7.18 sets the battle of the ten kings.
- 1200 BCE – 600 BCE (± 100 years) — [Painted Grey Ware villages of the doab](https://indianepics.online/event/painted-grey-ware.md): Fine grey pottery painted in black marks the farming villages of the later Vedic Ganga-Yamuna doab; Hastinapur is its key excavated site.
- 600 BCE – 400 BCE (± 50 years) — [Rajagriha and the sixteen great realms](https://indianepics.online/event/rajagriha-magadha.md): Magadha's hill-ringed capital rises among sixteen rival kingdoms and republics; the Buddha and Mahavira both teach here.
- 530 BCE – 440 BCE (± 20 years) — [The Buddha's first sermon at Sarnath](https://indianepics.online/event/buddha-sarnath.md): In the deer park near Varanasi the Buddha preaches his first sermon to five ascetics; its date depends on which chronology of his life is right.


# Dholavira and its reservoirs
**धोलावीरा और उसके जलाशय**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/dholavira/
- Chapter: [Indus and Veda](https://indianepics.online/chapter/indus-vedic.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 2600 BCE – 1900 BCE (± 100 years)
- Where: Dholavira, Khadir island, Kutch, Gujarat (23.887, 70.213)
- Tags: state-formation, science

## Summary

On an island in the Rann of Kutch, a walled Harappan city stores monsoon water in rock-cut reservoirs and leaves ten large signs by its north gate.

कच्छ के रण के एक द्वीप पर परकोटे वाला हड़प्पा नगर, जो चट्टान काटकर बने जलाशयों में बरसाती पानी सँजोता था और उत्तरी द्वार पर दस बड़े चिह्न छोड़ गया।

## Account

J. P. Joshi of the Archaeological Survey found the site in 1967-68, and R. S. Bisht excavated it in thirteen seasons between 1989 and 2005. Inside its walls lay a citadel, a middle town and a lower town, and around them a chain of reservoirs cut into the rock and fed by two seasonal streams, the Manhar and the Mansar: water engineering in one of the driest corners of the Harappan world. UNESCO dates the occupation to about 3000 to 1500 BCE; the range shown is the mature urban phase.

On the map it is what UNESCO calls the southern centre of the Harappan world, within reach of the Gulf of Kutch and the sea routes to Oman and Mesopotamia. Near the north gate lay a fallen signboard of ten signs cut from white gypsum, each about 37 cm tall: the largest signs known in the Indus script. Like every other Indus inscription, it is unread.

## Sources

- UNESCO World Heritage List: Dholavira, a Harappan City (inscribed 2021) — https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1645/
- Bisht, R. S., Excavations at Dholavira, 1989-90 to 2004-05 (Archaeological Survey of India, 2015)

## Image

Dholavira. Rahul Zota, CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ADholavira.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Mohenjo-daro, the planned city
**मोहनजोदड़ो, एक नियोजित नगर**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/mohenjo-daro/
- Chapter: [Indus and Veda](https://indianepics.online/chapter/indus-vedic.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 2500 BCE – 1900 BCE (± 100 years)
- Where: Mohenjo-daro, Larkana, Sindh (Pakistan) (27.329, 68.138)
- Tags: state-formation, trade

## Summary

One of the largest Harappan cities rises on the Indus: baked-brick houses, covered drains, a citadel with the Great Bath, and no palace or temple yet found.

सिंधु के तट पर सबसे बड़े हड़प्पा नगरों में से एक: पकी ईंटों के घर, ढकी नालियाँ, महास्नानागार वाला दुर्ग, पर अब तक कोई महल या मंदिर नहीं मिला।

## Account

R. D. Banerji of the Archaeological Survey began digging the mound in 1922. In 1924 John Marshall announced that it and Harappa belonged to one forgotten civilisation, and his excavations through the 1920s exposed a city laid out in blocks, with a raised citadel to the west and a lower town to the east. The Great Bath, a watertight brick tank sealed with bitumen, is its best-known building; nothing has been securely identified as a palace or a temple.

For the map it is the type site of Indus urbanism, nearly 600 km south-west of Harappa and built to the same brick proportions and the same system of weights. How it was governed is unknown. Estimates of its population, and the question of whether the Indus cities formed one state or many, are argued from silent evidence, because the script on its seals has not been deciphered.

## Sources

- Marshall, J. (ed.), Mohenjo-daro and the Indus Civilization (1931) — https://archive.org/details/dli.ministry.17386
- UNESCO World Heritage List: Archaeological Ruins at Moenjodaro — https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/138/
- Kenoyer, J. M., Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley Civilization (1998)

## Image

Great bath view Mohenjodaro. Saqib Qayyum, CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AGreat_bath_view_Mohenjodaro.JPG

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Lothal and the dock debate
**लोथल और गोदी पर बहस**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/lothal/
- Chapter: [Indus and Veda](https://indianepics.online/chapter/indus-vedic.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 2400 BCE – 1900 BCE (± 100 years)
- Where: Lothal, Ahmedabad district, Gujarat (22.521, 72.249)
- Tags: trade, science

## Summary

A small Harappan town near the Gulf of Khambhat, with a large brick basin its excavator called a dockyard and others read as a reservoir.

खंभात की खाड़ी के पास एक छोटा हड़प्पा नगर, जिसके बड़े ईंट के बेसिन को उत्खननकर्ता ने गोदी कहा और दूसरे विद्वान जलाशय मानते हैं।

## Account

S. R. Rao excavated Lothal from 1955 to 1960. Beside the town lay a brick-lined basin more than 200 m long with an inlet channel and a spillway, which he identified as a tidal dock reached from the Sabarmati and Bhogavo rivers. Around it were a warehouse platform, a workshop making carnelian beads, and a seal of the Persian Gulf type.

The dock is contested. In 1968 Lawrence Leshnik argued that the basin was a freshwater reservoir, and later studies have gone both ways. Either reading shows the Harappan reach into Gujarat and towards the sea; the range shown is Lothal's Harappan phase.

## Sources

- UNESCO Tentative List: Archaeological remains of a Harappa Port-Town, Lothal (2014) — https://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/5918/
- Rao, S. R., Lothal and the Indus Civilization (1973)
- Leshnik, L. S., 'The Harappan port at Lothal: another view', American Anthropologist 70 (1968)

## Image

Lothal Dockyard. Raveesh Vyas, CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ALothal_Dockyard.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Harappa and the end of the cities
**हड़प्पा और नगरों का अंत**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/harappa-decline/
- Chapter: [Indus and Veda](https://indianepics.online/chapter/indus-vedic.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1900 BCE – 1300 BCE (± 100 years)
- Where: Harappa, Sahiwal district, Punjab (Pakistan) (30.629, 72.864)
- Tags: state-formation, trade

## Summary

From about 1900 BCE the big Indus cities shrink and empty, and at Harappa a smaller settlement buries its dead in a new style, called Cemetery H.

लगभग 1900 ई.पू. से सिंधु के बड़े नगर सिकुड़ने और उजड़ने लगे, और हड़प्पा की छोटी बस्ती अपने मृतकों को एक नई रीति से दफ़नाने लगी, जिसे 'कब्रिस्तान एच' कहा जाता है।

## Account

Harappa, on an old course of the Ravi, was the first Indus city to be excavated, by Daya Ram Sahni in 1921, and gave the civilisation its name. After about 1900 BCE the standard weights, the seals and the script fall out of use there and across the Indus plain. Harappa shrinks, and its people bury their dead in a new style, some in painted urns, in the graveyard excavators called Cemetery H.

On the map the decline is a shift as much as an end: settlements multiply to the east, in Haryana and the upper Ganga-Yamuna doab, and in Gujarat, while Sindh and the Cholistan desert empty. The cause is contested. Mortimer Wheeler's picture of Aryan invaders sacking the cities has been abandoned for lack of evidence. Later explanations combine a weakening monsoon, rivers that shifted or dried, the Ghaggar-Hakra among them, and the loss of long-distance trade.

## Sources

- Giosan, L. et al., 'Fluvial landscapes of the Harappan civilization', PNAS 109 (2012) — https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1112743109
- Kenoyer, J. M., Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley Civilization (1998)
- Possehl, G. L., The Indus Civilization: A Contemporary Perspective (2002)

## Image

Harappa Ruins - III. Hassan Nasir, CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AHarappa_Ruins_-_III.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# The Rigveda and the land of seven rivers
**ऋग्वेद और सप्त सिंधु**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/rigveda-sapta-sindhu/
- Chapter: [Indus and Veda](https://indianepics.online/chapter/indus-vedic.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1500 BCE – 1200 BCE (± 200 years)
- Where: Ravi (Parushni) river near Lahore, Punjab (Pakistan) (31.6, 74.28)
- Tags: language, religion

## Summary

Hymns in Vedic Sanskrit are composed in the greater Punjab; the pin is the Ravi, where Rigveda 7.18 sets the battle of the ten kings.

वैदिक संस्कृत के सूक्त बृहत्तर पंजाब में रचे गए; पिन रावी (परुष्णी) पर है, जहाँ ऋग्वेद 7.18 दस राजाओं का युद्ध बताता है।

## Account

The Rigveda's ten books of hymns were composed over several centuries and passed down orally, with great precision, long before they were written. Its geography is the Sapta Sindhu, the Indus and the rivers of the Punjab. The river hymn, 10.75, names streams from the Ganga in the east to the Kubha (Kabul) and Gomati (Gomal) in the west, and Hymn 7.18 places King Sudas's victory over ten kings on the Parushni, the Ravi. The pin stands for that region, not a site.

The date is an estimate. Most scholars put the bulk of the hymns around 1500 to 1200 BCE, from the language's closeness to the Avestan of Iran, from the Indic god names in a Mitanni treaty of about 1380 BCE, and because iron first appears only in later Vedic texts. The hymns describe cattle-keeping clans and no cities, and no excavated site can be tied to them. Whether their Sarasvati is the Ghaggar-Hakra, and how Indo-Aryan speakers came to the Punjab, are among the most argued questions in Indian history.

## Sources

- Jamison, S. W. and Brereton, J. P. (trans.), The Rigveda: The Earliest Religious Poetry of India (2014), introduction
- Witzel, M., 'Rgvedic history: poets, chieftains and polities', in Erdosy (ed.), The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia (1995)
- Griffith, R. T. H. (trans.), The Hymns of the Rigveda, vol. 2 (1897) — https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.195722 (Books 7 to 10, including hymn 7.18 and the river hymn 10.75)

## Image

Rigveda MS2097. Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ARigveda_MS2097.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Painted Grey Ware villages of the doab
**दोआब के चित्रित धूसर मृद्भांड वाले गाँव**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/painted-grey-ware/
- Chapter: [Indus and Veda](https://indianepics.online/chapter/indus-vedic.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1200 BCE – 600 BCE (± 100 years)
- Where: Hastinapur, Meerut district, Uttar Pradesh (29.16, 78.01)
- Tags: state-formation

## Summary

Fine grey pottery painted in black marks the farming villages of the later Vedic Ganga-Yamuna doab; Hastinapur is its key excavated site.

काले रंग से चित्रित महीन धूसर मृद्भांड उत्तर वैदिक गंगा-यमुना दोआब के कृषक गाँवों की पहचान हैं; हस्तिनापुर इसका प्रमुख उत्खनित स्थल है।

## Account

Painted Grey Ware was first noticed in the 1940s excavations at Ahichchhatra and defined by B. B. Lal's dig at Hastinapur in 1950-52. More than a thousand sites have been recorded, mostly small villages between the Sutlej and the middle Ganga, with rice and barley, cattle and horses, and at many of them iron tools. It is the archaeology of the later Vedic age, when the centre of the Vedic world moved east from the Punjab to the Kuru and Panchala lands.

Lal found that a Ganga flood had cut away part of the Painted Grey Ware settlement at Hastinapur and linked it to the Puranic statement that King Nichakshu moved his capital to Kaushambi after Hastinapura was washed away. That link, and the matching of these sites with the cities of the Mahabharata, belong to the tradition track. The range here comes from stratigraphy and radiocarbon, which place the ware between about 1200 and 600 BCE.

## Sources

- Lal, B. B., 'Excavation at Hastinapura and other explorations in the Upper Ganga and Sutlej basins, 1950-52', Ancient India 10-11 (1954-55) — https://archive.org/details/ancientindianumb0000unse_j8r7
- Erdosy, G., Urbanisation in Early Historic India (1988)

## Image

Painted Grey Ware - Sonkh - 1000-600 BCE - Showcase 6-15 - Prehistory and Terracotta Gallery - Government Museum - Mathura 2013-02-24 6461. Biswarup Ganguly, CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3APainted_Grey_Ware_-_Sonkh_-_1000-600_BCE_-_Showcase_6-15_-_Prehistory_and_Terracotta_Gallery_-_Government_Museum_-_Mathura_2013-02-24_6461.JPG

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Rajagriha and the sixteen great realms
**राजगृह और सोलह महाजनपद**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/rajagriha-magadha/
- Chapter: [Indus and Veda](https://indianepics.online/chapter/indus-vedic.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 600 BCE – 400 BCE (± 50 years)
- Where: Rajgir (Rajagriha), Nalanda district, Bihar (25.03, 85.42)
- Tags: state-formation, political, religion

## Summary

Magadha's hill-ringed capital rises among sixteen rival kingdoms and republics; the Buddha and Mahavira both teach here.

सोलह प्रतिद्वंद्वी राज्यों और गणराज्यों के बीच पहाड़ियों से घिरी मगध की राजधानी; बुद्ध और महावीर दोनों ने यहाँ उपदेश दिए।

## Account

Buddhist and Jain texts list sixteen mahajanapadas, great realms, across the north from Gandhara to Anga. Some were ruled by kings; others, like the Vajji confederacy of Vaishali, by assemblies of clans. Northern Black Polished Ware, punch-marked coins and fortified towns appear in the archaeology of the same centuries. Magadha, with iron ore in the hills to its south and the Ganga trade to its north, absorbed its neighbours one by one.

Rajagriha, ringed by five hills and a stone wall some 40 km round, was its capital under Bimbisara and his son Ajatashatru. The Buddha spent many rainy seasons here, and the first Buddhist council is said to have met in the Saptaparni cave after his death. Mahavira, the twenty-fourth Jain tirthankara, also taught here, and Jain tradition places his death at Pawapuri, a short way to the north-east. His dates move with the Buddha's: the Jain tradition's 527 BCE for his death is earlier than most historians accept. Ajatashatru's successors moved the capital to Pataliputra on the Ganga.

## Sources

- Chakrabarti, D. K., The Archaeology of Ancient Indian Cities (1995)
- Thapar, R., Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300 (2002)
- Anguttara Nikaya, list of the sixteen mahajanapadas (Buddhist canon; a source for the political list, not for dates)

## Image

Cyclopian wall, Rajgir. (5457385482). Chandan Singh from India, CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ACyclopian_wall%2C_Rajgir._(5457385482).jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# The Buddha's first sermon at Sarnath
**सारनाथ में बुद्ध का पहला उपदेश**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/buddha-sarnath/
- Chapter: [Indus and Veda](https://indianepics.online/chapter/indus-vedic.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 530 BCE – 440 BCE (± 20 years)
- Where: Sarnath, near Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh (25.381, 83.024)
- Tags: religion

## Summary

In the deer park near Varanasi the Buddha preaches his first sermon to five ascetics; its date depends on which chronology of his life is right.

वाराणसी के पास मृगदाव में बुद्ध ने पाँच तपस्वियों को पहला उपदेश दिया; इसकी तिथि इस पर निर्भर है कि उनके जीवन का कौन-सा कालक्रम सही है।

## Account

Buddhist tradition holds that after his enlightenment at Bodh Gaya the Buddha walked to the deer park at Isipatana, now Sarnath, and there set the wheel of the dhamma in motion in a sermon to five former companions. Two to three centuries later Ashoka raised a pillar at the site, crowned by the lion capital that India adopted as its state emblem in 1950; the Dhamek stupa beside it was rebuilt in its present form in the Gupta period.

The year is genuinely uncertain. The long chronology, worked out from the Sri Lankan chronicles, puts the Buddha's death around 483 BCE, which places the first sermon, forty-five years earlier, around 528 BCE. The short chronology, favoured by many historians since the 1980s, follows the northern Buddhist count of about a century between his death and Ashoka, and puts his death around 400 BCE and the sermon in the mid-fifth century. The range shown spans both. On the map, Bodh Gaya, Sarnath, Rajagriha and Kushinagar trace the Buddha's world in the middle Ganga plain, between Kosala and Magadha.

## Sources

- Bechert, H. (ed.), When Did the Buddha Live? The Controversy on the Dating of the Historical Buddha (1995)
- Hultzsch, E., Inscriptions of Asoka (1925) — https://archive.org/details/InscriptionsOfAsoka.NewEditionByE.Hultzsch (Sarnath pillar edict and Rummindei pillar inscription)

## Image

Dhamek Stupa, 2025. Hardy Explorer, CC0 (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ADhamek_Stupa%2C_2025.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# The Mauryan Empire
**मौर्य साम्राज्य**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/chapter/maurya/
- Track: evidence
- Span: 340 BCE to 180 BCE
- Boundary shown: maurya-260bce (approximate unless marked traced)

In the generation after Alexander's retreat from the Punjab, Chandragupta Maurya took Magadha and the north-west, in an order still argued over, and built the first state to span most of the subcontinent. His grandson Ashoka's rock and pillar edicts are the oldest deciphered, datable writing in India, and they speak in the emperor's own voice.

The map shows the empire near its greatest extent around 260 BCE. The outline is approximate: Mauryan control was a web of roads, garrisons and tribute rather than a surveyed border.

## Events (7)

- 326 BCE – 316 BCE (± 5 years) — [Taxila, crossroads of the north-west](https://indianepics.online/event/taxila-learning.md): Gandhara's chief city: once Persian, host to Alexander in 326 BCE, then a Mauryan provincial seat governed by a prince.
- 321 BCE (± 5 years) — [Chandragupta takes Magadha](https://indianepics.online/event/chandragupta-magadha.md): Chandragupta Maurya overthrows the Nanda king and rules from Pataliputra; later tradition credits his minister Chanakya with the plan.
- 305 BCE – 303 BCE (± 2 years) — [Treaty with Seleucus](https://indianepics.online/event/seleucid-treaty.md): Seleucus Nicator gives Chandragupta lands along the Indus under a marriage pact and receives five hundred war elephants.
- 268 BCE – 232 BCE (± 10 years) — [The Great Stupa at Sanchi](https://indianepics.online/event/sanchi-stupa.md): Ashoka's brick stupa, doubled in size and cased in stone in the 2nd century BCE, and given carved gateways around the turn of the era.
- 261 BCE (± 4 years) — [The Kalinga war](https://indianepics.online/event/kalinga-war.md): Ashoka conquers Kalinga; his Rock Edict XIII counts the dead and deported and records his remorse and turn to dhamma.
- 258 BCE – 242 BCE (± 3 years) — [The edicts of Ashoka](https://indianepics.online/event/ashoka-edicts.md): Rock and pillar edicts in Prakrit, Greek and Aramaic, from Kandahar to Karnataka; the oldest deciphered, datable writing from India.
- 185 BCE (± 5 years) — [Pushyamitra ends the dynasty](https://indianepics.online/event/maurya-fall.md): The general Pushyamitra kills the last Maurya, Brihadratha, at a review of the army and founds the Shunga dynasty.


# Taxila, crossroads of the north-west
**तक्षशिला, उत्तर-पश्चिम का संगम**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/taxila-learning/
- Chapter: [The Mauryan Empire](https://indianepics.online/chapter/maurya.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 326 BCE – 316 BCE (± 5 years)
- Where: Taxila, Punjab (Pakistan) (33.74, 72.79)
- Tags: trade, language, science

## Summary

Gandhara's chief city: once Persian, host to Alexander in 326 BCE, then a Mauryan provincial seat governed by a prince.

गांधार का प्रमुख नगर: पहले फ़ारसी साम्राज्य का अंग, 326 ई.पू. में सिकंदर का पड़ाव, फिर एक राजकुमार के अधीन मौर्य प्रांतीय केंद्र।

## Account

Taxila sat on the road from Bactria to the Ganges, in a province the Persian kings had ruled. Alexander's army was received there in 326 BCE, and within a decade or so the city was Mauryan; Ashoka's Kalinga edicts name Takhasila, with Ujjeni, as a seat from which a prince sent out officials.

Marshall's excavations at Sirkap turned up an Aramaic inscription of the Mauryan period, probably Ashokan: the chancery language of the Persian empire still at work under an Indian one. Kharoshthi, the local script derived from Aramaic, carried Gandhari Prakrit for centuries after. The Buddhist Jatakas remember Taxila as a place students travelled to for teachers; no single "university" has been found in the ground.

## Sources

- Marshall, Taxila, vol. I (1951) — https://archive.org/details/in.gov.ignca.27254
- Arrian, Anabasis 5.8 (Alexander received at Taxila by its king, Taxiles (Ambhi))
- Kalinga Separate Edict I, in Hultzsch, Inscriptions of Asoka (1925) — https://archive.org/details/InscriptionsOfAsoka.NewEditionByE.Hultzsch (Officials sent out from Takhasila)

## Image

SirkapJainTemple. Dawoodmajoka, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASirkapJainTemple.JPG

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Chandragupta takes Magadha
**चंद्रगुप्त ने मगध जीता**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/chandragupta-magadha/
- Chapter: [The Mauryan Empire](https://indianepics.online/chapter/maurya.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 321 BCE (± 5 years)
- Where: Pataliputra (Patna), Bihar (25.61, 85.14)
- Tags: political

## Summary

Chandragupta Maurya overthrows the Nanda king and rules from Pataliputra; later tradition credits his minister Chanakya with the plan.

चंद्रगुप्त मौर्य ने नंद राजा को हटाकर पाटलिपुत्र से शासन किया; बाद की परंपरा इसका श्रेय उनके मंत्री चाणक्य को देती है।

## Account

The date is conventional. Greek writers, who call him Sandrokottos, put his rise in the years after Alexander; Buddhist and Jain texts agree on the generation, not the year, and whether he took Magadha or the Punjab first is still argued. Chanakya, the scheming minister of the play Mudrarakshasa, comes from Indian sources written centuries later, not from the Greeks.

Megasthenes, Seleucus's envoy to the Mauryan court, describes Pataliputra as a timber-walled city where the Son met the Ganges. It stayed the capital for the whole dynasty.

## Sources

- Thapar, Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas (1961)
- Justin, Epitome of Pompeius Trogus 15.4 (Sandracottus takes power in India after Alexander)
- Megasthenes, Indica (fragments in Arrian and Strabo) (Palimbothra at the meeting of the Ganges and the Erannoboas (Son))

## Image

Sarnath capital. Chrisi1964, CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASarnath_capital.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Treaty with Seleucus
**सेल्यूकस से संधि**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/seleucid-treaty/
- Chapter: [The Mauryan Empire](https://indianepics.online/chapter/maurya.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 305 BCE – 303 BCE (± 2 years)
- Where: Kabul valley (Paropamisadae) (34.52, 69.18)
- Tags: political, war

## Summary

Seleucus Nicator gives Chandragupta lands along the Indus under a marriage pact and receives five hundred war elephants.

सेल्यूकस निकेटर ने वैवाहिक संधि के तहत सिंधु के किनारे के प्रदेश चंद्रगुप्त को दिए और बदले में पाँच सौ युद्ध-हाथी पाए।

## Account

Strabo says Seleucus gave Chandragupta part of the country along the Indus that Alexander had taken from the Persians, among the Paropamisadae, Arachosia and Gedrosia, "in consequence of a marriage contract", and received five hundred elephants. Appian adds only that the two kings fought, came to terms and became related by marriage.

How much land changed hands is argued: older accounts give Chandragupta the whole of those satrapies, some recent ones much less. Arachosia at least was Mauryan by Ashoka's reign, which is why his Greek and Aramaic edicts turn up at Kandahar some fifty years later. The elephants helped Seleucus win at Ipsus in 301 BCE.

## Sources

- Strabo, Geography 15.2.9 — http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0239:book=15:chapter=2:section=9
- Appian, Syriaca 55 — https://www.livius.org/sources/content/appian/appian-the-syrian-wars/appian-the-syrian-wars-11/
- Plutarch, Life of Alexander 62 (Androcottus gives Seleucus five hundred elephants)
- Schwartzberg, A Historical Atlas of South Asia, plate III.B.4 — https://dsal.uchicago.edu/reference/schwartzberg/ (Maps the limit of the territories ceded after 305 BCE)

## Image

Seleuco I Nicatore. Unknown, CC BY-SA 2.0 it (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/it/deed.en), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASeleuco_I_Nicatore.JPG

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# The Great Stupa at Sanchi
**साँची का महास्तूप**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/sanchi-stupa/
- Chapter: [The Mauryan Empire](https://indianepics.online/chapter/maurya.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 268 BCE – 232 BCE (± 10 years)
- Where: Sanchi, Madhya Pradesh (23.48, 77.74)
- Tags: religion, art

## Summary

Ashoka's brick stupa, doubled in size and cased in stone in the 2nd century BCE, and given carved gateways around the turn of the era.

अशोक का ईंटों का स्तूप, जिसे दूसरी सदी ई.पू. में दोगुना कर पत्थर से मढ़ा गया और ईसवी सन् के आरंभ के आसपास नक़्क़ाशीदार तोरण मिले।

## Account

The brick core, about half the present diameter, is attributed to Ashoka because it stands beside a Mauryan pillar carrying his edict against schism in the sangha. In the 2nd century BCE, probably under the Shungas, the mound was doubled in size and cased in stone, with a railing and terrace.

The four gateways came in the late 1st century BCE or early 1st century CE. One carries the gift inscription of Ananda, foreman of the artisans of the king Satakarni, which ties them to the Satavahanas, though whether that dynasty then ruled Vidisha is debated. Almost everything a visitor sees is post-Mauryan; only the core is Ashoka's.

## Sources

- Marshall and Foucher, The Monuments of Sanchi (1940) — https://archive.org/details/monumentsofsanch01john
- UNESCO World Heritage List: Buddhist Monuments at Sanchi — https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/524/

## Image

Sanchi Great Stupa Torana. Tom Maloney from London, United Kingdom, CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASanchi_Great_Stupa_Torana.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# The Kalinga war
**कलिंग युद्ध**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/kalinga-war/
- Chapter: [The Mauryan Empire](https://indianepics.online/chapter/maurya.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 261 BCE (± 4 years)
- Where: Dhauli, Odisha (20.19, 85.84)
- Tags: war, political

## Summary

Ashoka conquers Kalinga; his Rock Edict XIII counts the dead and deported and records his remorse and turn to dhamma.

अशोक ने कलिंग जीता; तेरहवाँ शिलालेख मृतकों और बंदियों की गिनती के साथ उसका पश्चाताप और धम्म की ओर मुड़ना दर्ज करता है।

## Account

Eight years after his consecration, by the edict's own count, Ashoka annexed Kalinga: 150,000 people carried away, 100,000 killed and many times that number dead. Rock Edict XIII, cut at Shahbazgarhi, Mansehra, Kalsi and elsewhere, is the only first-person account of a Mauryan war, and it turns the conquest into a confession. The year depends on the date of his consecration, itself uncertain by a few years.

In Kalinga the emperor said nothing of it. At Dhauli, below a rock-cut elephant, and at Jaugada, Rock Edicts XI to XIII are left out and two separate edicts addressed to Kalinga's officials stand in their place, most likely because the account of the killing was not one to post in the conquered province. The pin marks the edict; the battlefield is not known.

## Sources

- Rock Edict XIII (Shahbazgarhi, Mansehra, Kalsi) and the Kalinga Separate Edicts, in Hultzsch, Inscriptions of Asoka (1925) — https://archive.org/details/InscriptionsOfAsoka.NewEditionByE.Hultzsch

## Image

Ashokan Rock Edict. Rohit Agarwal, CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AAshokan_Rock_Edict.JPG

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# The edicts of Ashoka
**अशोक के अभिलेख**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/ashoka-edicts/
- Chapter: [The Mauryan Empire](https://indianepics.online/chapter/maurya.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 258 BCE – 242 BCE (± 3 years)
- Where: Girnar rock edict, Junagadh, Gujarat (21.525, 70.48)
- Tags: political, language, religion

## Summary

Rock and pillar edicts in Prakrit, Greek and Aramaic, from Kandahar to Karnataka; the oldest deciphered, datable writing from India.

प्राकृत, यूनानी और अरामी में कंधार से कर्नाटक तक शिलालेख और स्तंभलेख; भारत का सबसे पुराना पढ़ा जा चुका, तिथि-निर्धारित लेखन।

## Account

Ashoka dated his edicts by regnal year, from the tenth (the Greek and Aramaic bilingual at Kandahar) to the twenty-seventh (Pillar Edict VII), which gives roughly 258 to 242 BCE if his consecration fell around 268. The Girnar rock carries all fourteen Major Rock Edicts, and the find-spots, from Kandahar in the north-west to Karnataka in the south, are the best evidence for the empire's reach.

James Prinsep read the Brahmi script in 1837, starting from short donor inscriptions at Sanchi and moving on to the Delhi pillar; the same year George Turnour identified the edicts' "Devanampiya Piyadasi" with the Ashoka of the Sri Lankan chronicles. The name Ashoka itself was found on an edict only in 1915, at Maski.

## Sources

- Hultzsch, Inscriptions of Asoka (Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum I, 1925) — https://archive.org/details/InscriptionsOfAsoka.NewEditionByE.Hultzsch
- Prinsep and Turnour, papers in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. 6 (1837)

## Image

Ashoka Rock Edict at Junagadh. Jadia gaurang at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AAshoka_Rock_Edict_at_Junagadh.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Pushyamitra ends the dynasty
**पुष्यमित्र ने मौर्य वंश का अंत किया**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/maurya-fall/
- Chapter: [The Mauryan Empire](https://indianepics.online/chapter/maurya.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 185 BCE (± 5 years)
- Where: Pataliputra (Patna), Bihar (25.61, 85.14)
- Tags: political

## Summary

The general Pushyamitra kills the last Maurya, Brihadratha, at a review of the army and founds the Shunga dynasty.

सेनापति पुष्यमित्र ने सेना के निरीक्षण के दौरान अंतिम मौर्य राजा बृहद्रथ को मारकर शुंग वंश की स्थापना की।

## Account

Bana's Harshacharita, written some eight centuries later, says Pushyamitra struck down his master while parading the army before him. The Puranas give the Mauryas 137 years, which from a start around 321 BCE puts the end near 185.

Half a century after Ashoka the empire had shrunk to its Gangetic heartland. The north-west fell to the Indo-Greeks and the Deccan to the Satavahanas; that plural map is where the next chapter begins.

## Sources

- Bana, Harshacharita, ch. 6 (Pushyamitra kills his master while showing him the army)
- Puranic king lists (Vayu, Matsya) (137 years for the Mauryas, 36 for Pushyamitra)

## Image

Gajalaxmi - Medallion - 2nd Century BCE - Red Sand Stone - Bharhut Stupa Railing Pillar - Madhya Pradesh - Indian Museum - Kolkata 2012-11-16 1837 Cropped. Biswarup Ganguly, CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AGajalaxmi_-_Medallion_-_2nd_Century_BCE_-_Red_Sand_Stone_-_Bharhut_Stupa_Railing_Pillar_-_Madhya_Pradesh_-_Indian_Museum_-_Kolkata_2012-11-16_1837_Cropped.JPG

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Gupta and the classical age
**गुप्त और शास्त्रीय युग**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/chapter/classical/
- Track: evidence
- Span: 180 BCE to 750 CE
- Boundary shown: gupta-400ce (approximate unless marked traced)

After the Mauryas, power in the subcontinent was plural and regional: the Satavahanas in the Deccan; Indo-Greeks, Shakas and then the Kushans in the north-west; the Chera, Chola and Pandya kings of the Tamil country. From about 320 CE the Guptas built the largest state of the fourth and fifth centuries, centred on the Ganga plain. The same centuries produced Aryabhata's astronomy, the monastery at Nalanda, the Ajanta paintings under Vakataka patrons and, on most scholars' dating, Kalidasa's poetry. In the seventh century Harsha ruled much of the north from Kannauj while the Chalukyas of Badami and the Pallavas of Kanchi contested the south.

The outline is the Gupta empire near its widest, under Chandragupta II around 400 to 415 CE, after the defeat of the western Kshatrapas brought Malwa and Gujarat under Gupta rule. It is approximate. Samudragupta's inscription on the Allahabad pillar describes rings of kings who were uprooted, captured and released, or made to pay tribute, not a border; the line drawn here is the zone of direct rule and leaves the tributaries outside.

## Events (10)

- 100 BCE – 250 CE (± 100 years) — [Sangam poetry and the Tamil kings](https://indianepics.online/event/sangam-madurai.md): Tamil poets of love and war compose the Sangam anthologies under the Chera, Chola and Pandya kings, while Roman ships trade at Muziris and Arikamedu.
- 106 CE – 130 CE (± 50 years) — [Gautamiputra Satakarni and the Nashik caves](https://indianepics.online/event/satavahana-nashik.md): A queen mother's inscription at Nashik praises her son Gautamiputra Satakarni for crushing the Shakas and restoring Satavahana power.
- 127 CE – 150 CE (± 5 years) — [Kanishka and the first Buddha images](https://indianepics.online/event/kanishka-mathura.md): Kanishka's Kushan empire joins Bactria to the Ganga plain; at Mathura and in Gandhara sculptors make some of the earliest images of the Buddha.
- 319 CE – 320 CE — [Chandragupta I and the Gupta era](https://indianepics.online/event/gupta-era-320.md): The Gupta era begins in 319-320 CE, most likely with Chandragupta I's accession; coins show his marriage to a Licchavi princess.
- 350 CE – 375 CE (± 15 years) — [Samudragupta's Allahabad pillar](https://indianepics.online/event/allahabad-pillar.md): Harishena's Sanskrit eulogy on an Ashokan pillar lists the kings Samudragupta uprooted, the southern kings he freed, and the tributaries beyond.
- 415 CE – 455 CE (± 10 years) — [Nalanda mahavihara](https://indianepics.online/event/nalanda.md): A monastery founded under Kumaragupta I grows into a Buddhist university that draws scholars from China, Korea and Tibet until the 13th century.
- 460 CE – 480 CE (± 20 years) — [The painted caves of Ajanta](https://indianepics.online/event/ajanta-caves.md): Under the Vakataka king Harishena, monks and courtiers cut new caves above the Waghora and paint them with the Jataka stories.
- 499 CE — [Aryabhata writes the Aryabhatiya](https://indianepics.online/event/aryabhata-499.md): At twenty-three, Aryabhata completes a compact Sanskrit treatise on mathematics and astronomy, with a value of pi and a rotating Earth.
- 606 CE – 647 CE — [Harsha's Kannauj](https://indianepics.online/event/harsha-kannauj.md): Harshavardhana rules the north from Kannauj, is turned back at the Narmada by Pulakeshin II, and hosts the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang.
- 630 CE – 728 CE (± 10 years) — [Pallava Mamallapuram](https://indianepics.online/event/mamallapuram.md): At the Pallava port east of Kanchipuram, granite is cut into cave shrines, monolithic rathas and a vast relief, and the Shore Temple rises by the sea.


# Sangam poetry and the Tamil kings
**संगम काव्य और तमिल राजा**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/sangam-madurai/
- Chapter: [Gupta and the classical age](https://indianepics.online/chapter/classical.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 100 BCE – 250 CE (± 100 years)
- Where: Madurai, Tamil Nadu (9.92, 78.12)
- Tags: language, art, trade

## Summary

Tamil poets of love and war compose the Sangam anthologies under the Chera, Chola and Pandya kings, while Roman ships trade at Muziris and Arikamedu.

चेर, चोल और पांड्य राजाओं के समय तमिल कवियों ने प्रेम और युद्ध के संगम काव्य रचे, जब रोमन जहाज़ मुज़िरिस और अरिकमेडु में व्यापार करते थे।

## Account

The eight anthologies and ten long poems of classical Tamil, later called Sangam literature, divide poetry into akam, the inner world of love, and puram, the outer world of kings, war and patronage. A later legend told of three literary academies, the last at Madurai, the Pandya capital. The poems themselves name Chera, Chola and Pandya kings and dozens of chieftains, and describe Yavana ships bringing gold and wine for pepper.

Their date is argued from that trade. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, Roman amphorae at Arikamedu and hoards of Roman coins put its busiest years in the first and second centuries CE, and most scholars place the core of the poems between about the first century BCE and the third century CE. Excavations at Keeladi, about 12 km south-east of Madurai, have found a brick-built settlement and potsherds scratched in Tamil-Brahmi. How early it begins is disputed. The report on the Archaeological Survey's first two seasons there, in 2014-16, proposed the eighth century BCE, and in May 2025 the Survey asked its author to justify that, suggesting the earliest phase lay not much before 300 BCE.

## Sources

- Hart, G. L., The Poems of Ancient Tamil: Their Milieu and Their Sanskrit Counterparts (1975)
- Zvelebil, K., The Smile of Murugan: On Tamil Literature of South India (1973)
- Schoff, W. H. (trans.), The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (1912) — https://archive.org/details/peripluserythra00schogoog
- Janardhanan, A., 'Archaeologist refuses to revise Keeladi report, writes back to ASI', Indian Express, 25 May 2025 — https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/chennai/archaeologist-refuses-to-revise-keeladi-report-writes-back-to-asi-quoting-excavations-integrity-10026841/ (The Keeladi dating dispute)

## Image

Keeladi Archaeological Site. 02. Saif Arash, CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AKeeladi_Archaeological_Site._02.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Gautamiputra Satakarni and the Nashik caves
**गौतमीपुत्र सातकर्णि और नासिक की गुफाएँ**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/satavahana-nashik/
- Chapter: [Gupta and the classical age](https://indianepics.online/chapter/classical.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 106 CE – 130 CE (± 50 years)
- Where: Pandavleni caves, Nashik, Maharashtra (19.941, 73.748)
- Tags: political, state-formation

## Summary

A queen mother's inscription at Nashik praises her son Gautamiputra Satakarni for crushing the Shakas and restoring Satavahana power.

नासिक में राजमाता गौतमी बलश्री का अभिलेख अपने पुत्र गौतमीपुत्र सातकर्णि की प्रशंसा करता है, जिसने शकों को हराकर सातवाहन सत्ता लौटाई।

## Account

The Satavahanas ruled the western Deccan from Pratishthana, modern Paithan, and grew rich on the trade between the Ganga plain, the Deccan and the ports of the west coast. Before Gautamiputra Satakarni, the Kshaharata Shaka ruler Nahapana, whose family left inscriptions in the caves at Nashik and Karle, held the coast and the Nashik country. Gautamiputra defeated him and restruck his silver coins in his own name; a hoard found at Jogalthembi near Nashik in 1906, most of it restruck, shows it happened.

The inscription in Cave 3 at Nashik, set up by his mother Gautami Balashri in the nineteenth regnal year of her grandson Vasishthiputra Pulumavi, calls Gautamiputra the destroyer of Shakas, Yavanas and Pahlavas and lists the regions he ruled. The Satavahana chronology is disputed: a long chronology begins the dynasty in the third century BCE, a short one in the first. Proposed dates for Gautamiputra's reign run from about 60-85 CE to 106-130 CE; the range shown follows the later, more often cited dating, with a wide margin.

## Sources

- Senart, E., 'The inscriptions in the caves at Nasik', Epigraphia Indica 8 (1905-06) — https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.69971
- Shastri, A. M., The Satavahanas and the Western Kshatrapas (1998)

## Image

Pandavleni Caves Nashik. Katyare, CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3APandavleni_Caves_Nashik.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Kanishka and the first Buddha images
**कनिष्क और बुद्ध की आरंभिक प्रतिमाएँ**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/kanishka-mathura/
- Chapter: [Gupta and the classical age](https://indianepics.online/chapter/classical.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 127 CE – 150 CE (± 5 years)
- Where: Mathura, Uttar Pradesh (27.49, 77.67)
- Tags: political, art, religion

## Summary

Kanishka's Kushan empire joins Bactria to the Ganga plain; at Mathura and in Gandhara sculptors make some of the earliest images of the Buddha.

कनिष्क का कुषाण साम्राज्य बैक्ट्रिया को गंगा के मैदान से जोड़ता है; मथुरा और गांधार में मूर्तिकार बुद्ध की आरंभिक प्रतिमाएँ गढ़ते हैं।

## Account

The Kushans came from Bactria, north of the Hindu Kush, and under Kanishka held both Purushapura, modern Peshawar, and Mathura. The Rabatak inscription, found in Afghanistan in 1993, lists Saketa, Kaushambi and Pataliputra under Kanishka's rule, 'as far as' Champa. His coins put Greek, Iranian and Indian gods side by side, the Buddha among them, and a headless statue of him in a long Central Asian coat was found at Mat, north of Mathura.

The red sandstone workshops of Mathura and the grey schist carvers of Gandhara produced, in these decades, some of the earliest images of the Buddha in human form; which school came first has been argued for a century. So was Kanishka's date, with proposals from 78 to 278 CE, until Harry Falk's reading of an astronomical text in 2001 put the start of his era at 127 CE. Most historians have since accepted it. How far his rule reached into the Ganga plain depends on how far Rabatak is trusted.

## Sources

- Sims-Williams, N. and Cribb, J., 'A new Bactrian inscription of Kanishka the Great', Silk Road Art and Archaeology 4 (1995-96)
- Falk, H., 'The yuga of Sphujiddhvaja and the era of the Kusanas', Silk Road Art and Archaeology 7 (2001)

## Image

Kanishka enhanced. Biswarup Ganguly, CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AKanishka_enhanced.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Chandragupta I and the Gupta era
**चंद्रगुप्त प्रथम और गुप्त संवत**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/gupta-era-320/
- Chapter: [Gupta and the classical age](https://indianepics.online/chapter/classical.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 319 CE – 320 CE
- Where: Pataliputra (Patna), Bihar (25.61, 85.14)
- Tags: political, state-formation

## Summary

The Gupta era begins in 319-320 CE, most likely with Chandragupta I's accession; coins show his marriage to a Licchavi princess.

गुप्त संवत 319-320 ई. में आरंभ होता है, संभवतः चंद्रगुप्त प्रथम के राज्यारोहण से; सिक्कों पर लिच्छवि राजकुमारी से उसका विवाह अंकित है।

## Account

Gupta inscriptions are dated in an era whose first year began in 319-320 CE. Fleet fixed the epoch in 1888 from the dated inscriptions and al-Biruni's eleventh-century account of it. The first of the family to take the title maharajadhiraja, king of great kings, was Chandragupta I, and the era is generally counted from his accession, though no inscription says so.

Gold coins of the king-and-queen type show Chandragupta with Kumaradevi and name her people, the Licchavis, the old ruling clan of Vaishali; his son Samudragupta called himself the daughter's son of the Licchavis. The marriage probably brought the Guptas land and prestige in north Bihar. Whether the coins were struck by Chandragupta or by his son in his memory is debated, and where the family began, Magadha or the country around Prayaga, is unknown.

## Sources

- Fleet, J. F., Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, vol. 3: Inscriptions of the Early Gupta Kings and Their Successors (1888) — https://archive.org/details/india.history.resource.498
- Thapar, R., Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300 (2002)

## Image

Queen Kumaradevi and King Chandragupta I on a coin. Uploadalt, CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AQueen_Kumaradevi_and_King_Chandragupta_I_on_a_coin.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Samudragupta's Allahabad pillar
**समुद्रगुप्त का प्रयाग स्तंभ-लेख**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/allahabad-pillar/
- Chapter: [Gupta and the classical age](https://indianepics.online/chapter/classical.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 350 CE – 375 CE (± 15 years)
- Where: Allahabad Fort, Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh (25.431, 81.875)
- Tags: political, war, language

## Summary

Harishena's Sanskrit eulogy on an Ashokan pillar lists the kings Samudragupta uprooted, the southern kings he freed, and the tributaries beyond.

अशोक के स्तंभ पर हरिषेण की संस्कृत प्रशस्ति उन राजाओं की सूची देती है जिन्हें समुद्रगुप्त ने उखाड़ा, जिन दक्षिणी राजाओं को छोड़ा, और सीमांत करदाता।

## Account

The pillar already carried Ashoka's edicts when Harishena, Samudragupta's minister, had a long prashasti in Sanskrit verse and prose cut on it, probably in the third quarter of the fourth century. It is the nearest thing to a map the Guptas left: kings of Aryavarta violently uprooted; twelve kings of Dakshinapatha, from Kosala to Kanchi, captured and then released; forest chiefs made servants; and frontier kingdoms and republics, from Samatata and Kamarupa to the Malavas and Yaudheyas, paying tribute. Even the Kushan and Shaka rulers and the king of Simhala are said to have sent gifts.

It is a eulogy, so the rings of power it describes are claims, and the southern campaign left no other trace. The pillar's own history is layered: Jahangir added his genealogy in 1605, and whether it always stood at Prayaga or was brought from Kaushambi is debated.

## Sources

- Fleet, J. F., Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, vol. 3 (1888), no. 1 — https://archive.org/details/india.history.resource.498
- Thapar, R., Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300 (2002)

## Image

Ashoka Pillar, Allahabad, 1870. Thomas A. Rust, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AAshoka_Pillar%2C_Allahabad%2C_1870.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Nalanda mahavihara
**नालंदा महाविहार**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/nalanda/
- Chapter: [Gupta and the classical age](https://indianepics.online/chapter/classical.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 415 CE – 455 CE (± 10 years)
- Where: Nalanda, Bihar (25.136, 85.443)
- Tags: religion, science

## Summary

A monastery founded under Kumaragupta I grows into a Buddhist university that draws scholars from China, Korea and Tibet until the 13th century.

कुमारगुप्त प्रथम के समय स्थापित विहार एक बौद्ध विश्वविद्यालय बना, जहाँ 13वीं शताब्दी तक चीन, कोरिया और तिब्बत से विद्वान आते रहे।

## Account

Xuanzang, who studied here in the 630s, was told that the monastery was begun by a king Shakraditya, and he is usually identified with the Gupta emperor Kumaragupta I, who ruled from about 415 to 455 and whose title Mahendraditya means the same thing: Shakra and Mahendra are both names of Indra. Later Gupta kings, Harsha and the Pala kings of Bengal added monasteries, temples and the revenues of villages; the excavated ruins are a row of brick monasteries facing a row of temples.

Nalanda taught Buddhist philosophy, logic, grammar and medicine, and its teachers shaped the Buddhism of Tibet. It declined as royal patronage moved to the Pala foundations at Vikramashila and Odantapuri, and was sacked around 1200. Blaming Bakhtiyar Khalji is an inference: the nearest account, Minhaj-i Siraj's of about 1260, describes his storming of a fortress-college at 'Bihar', probably Odantapuri, and does not name Nalanda. In 1234-36 the Tibetan pilgrim Dharmasvamin found the abbot, then over ninety, teaching some seventy monks in the ruins. Alexander Cunningham identified the site in the 1860s.

## Sources

- UNESCO World Heritage List: Archaeological Site of Nalanda Mahavihara at Nalanda, Bihar (inscribed 2016) — https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1502/
- Watters, T., On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India, 629-645 A.D., vol. 2 (1905) — https://archive.org/details/pli.kerala.rare.17899
- Hwui Li, The Life of Hiuen-Tsiang, trans. S. Beal (1914) — https://archive.org/details/india.history.resource.87995
- Minhaj-i Siraj, Tabakat-i-Nasiri, trans. H. G. Raverty, vol. 1 (1873-81) — https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.23988 (pp. 551-552, the storming of the fortress-college of Bihar)
- Roerich, G. (trans.), Biography of Dharmasvamin, ed. A. S. Altekar (1959) — https://archive.org/details/pbkf-biography-of-dharmasvamin-chag-lo-tsa-ba-chos-rje- (Nalanda in 1234-36)

## Image

Monastery 5 - Nalanda Mahavihara (1). Sumitsurai, CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AMonastery_5_-_Nalanda_Mahavihara_(1).jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# The painted caves of Ajanta
**अजंता की चित्रित गुफाएँ**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/ajanta-caves/
- Chapter: [Gupta and the classical age](https://indianepics.online/chapter/classical.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 460 CE – 480 CE (± 20 years)
- Where: Ajanta caves, Maharashtra (20.552, 75.703)
- Tags: art, religion

## Summary

Under the Vakataka king Harishena, monks and courtiers cut new caves above the Waghora and paint them with the Jataka stories.

वाकाटक राजा हरिषेण के समय भिक्षुओं और दरबारियों ने वाघोरा नदी के ऊपर नई गुफाएँ कटवाईं और उन्हें जातक कथाओं से चित्रित किया।

## Account

Ajanta's thirty or so caves are cut into a horseshoe of cliff above the Waghora river. The first group, including Caves 9 and 10 with the site's earliest paintings, dates from the second and first centuries BCE. After a long gap a second campaign added most of the caves and nearly all the paintings that survive, with inscriptions naming a minister and a feudatory of the Vakataka king Harishena.

Walter Spink argued that this second phase was compressed into a few decades, about 460 to 480 CE, and stopped abruptly when Vakataka power collapsed; that is the range shown. Others spread it into the sixth century. The Vakatakas were allied to the Guptas by marriage but were not their subjects, which is why the Gupta outline on the map leaves Ajanta out. They came to European notice in 1819, when a British cavalry officer, John Smith, came upon them while hunting.

## Sources

- UNESCO World Heritage List: Ajanta Caves — https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/242/
- Spink, W. M., Ajanta: History and Development, vol. 1 (2005)

## Image

Ajanta caves panorama 2010. Marcin Białek, CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AAjanta_caves_panorama_2010.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Aryabhata writes the Aryabhatiya
**आर्यभट और आर्यभटीय**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/aryabhata-499/
- Chapter: [Gupta and the classical age](https://indianepics.online/chapter/classical.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 499 CE
- Where: Kusumapura, identified with Pataliputra (Patna), Bihar (25.597, 85.18)
- Tags: science

## Summary

At twenty-three, Aryabhata completes a compact Sanskrit treatise on mathematics and astronomy, with a value of pi and a rotating Earth.

तेईस वर्ष की आयु में आर्यभट ने गणित और खगोल पर एक संक्षिप्त संस्कृत ग्रंथ पूरा किया, जिसमें पाई का मान और घूमती पृथ्वी की बात है।

## Account

The Aryabhatiya dates itself: Aryabhata writes that he was twenty-three when 3,600 years of the Kali age had passed, which is 499 CE. In 121 verses it gives pi as 3.1416, a table of sines, a method for indeterminate equations, and an astronomy in which the Earth turns on its axis while the stars stand still. It sets out, it says, the knowledge honoured at Kusumapura, which the seventh-century commentator Bhaskara I identifies with Pataliputra.

Its methods were carried on by astronomers in Kerala for a thousand years and reached Arabic astronomy. Where Aryabhata was born is not known: Bhaskara calls him a man of Ashmaka in the Deccan, and Kerala also claims him. The modern notion that he headed Nalanda rests on no early evidence.

## Sources

- Clark, W. E. (trans.), The Aryabhatiya of Aryabhata (1930) — https://archive.org/details/The_Aryabhatiya_of_Aryabhata_Clark_1930
- Plofker, K., Mathematics in India (2009)

## Image

2064 aryabhata-crp. Own work, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3A2064_aryabhata-crp.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Harsha's Kannauj
**हर्षवर्धन का कन्नौज**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/harsha-kannauj/
- Chapter: [Gupta and the classical age](https://indianepics.online/chapter/classical.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 606 CE – 647 CE
- Where: Kannauj, Uttar Pradesh (27.055, 79.918)
- Tags: political, religion

## Summary

Harshavardhana rules the north from Kannauj, is turned back at the Narmada by Pulakeshin II, and hosts the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang.

हर्षवर्धन ने कन्नौज से उत्तर भारत पर शासन किया, नर्मदा पर पुलकेशिन द्वितीय ने उसे रोका, और चीनी यात्री ह्वेनसांग उसका अतिथि बना।

## Account

Harsha became king of Thanesar in 606, the first year of the Harsha era, and soon took over Kannauj, which became the city every north Indian power fought for over the next three centuries. His court poet Bana wrote a prose life of him, the Harshacharita, and three Sanskrit plays are credited to the king himself.

Xuanzang spent years in his realm and describes great assemblies at Kannauj and at Prayaga, where the king gave away his treasure every five years. Harsha's push into the Deccan was stopped on the Narmada by the Chalukya king Pulakeshin II, whose Aihole inscription of 634 boasts of it. How much of the north Harsha really ruled is debated: his direct rule seems to have covered much of the Ganga plain, with kings beyond it acknowledging him, and his realm did not survive his death in 647.

## Sources

- Watters, T., On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India, 629-645 A.D., vol. 1 (1904) — https://archive.org/details/pli.kerala.rare.17898
- Devahuti, D., Harsha: A Political Study (1970)

## Image

Harshavardhana Circa AD 606-647. CNG Coins, CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AHarshavardhana_Circa_AD_606-647.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Pallava Mamallapuram
**पल्लवों का मामल्लपुरम**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/mamallapuram/
- Chapter: [Gupta and the classical age](https://indianepics.online/chapter/classical.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 630 CE – 728 CE (± 10 years)
- Where: Shore Temple, Mamallapuram, Tamil Nadu (12.617, 80.199)
- Tags: art, religion, trade

## Summary

At the Pallava port east of Kanchipuram, granite is cut into cave shrines, monolithic rathas and a vast relief, and the Shore Temple rises by the sea.

कांचीपुरम के पूर्व में पल्लव बंदरगाह पर ग्रेनाइट को काटकर गुफा-मंदिर, एकाश्म रथ और विशाल शिला-उत्कीर्णन बने, और समुद्र तट पर तट मंदिर उठा।

## Account

The town takes its name from Mamalla, a title of Narasimhavarman I (c. 630-668), the Pallava king who defeated the Chalukyas and took their capital Vatapi in 642. Under him and his successors the granite outcrops by the sea were cut into cave shrines, monolithic temples called rathas, five of them in one group, and a relief carved across the face of two great boulders. Around 700 Narasimhavarman II Rajasimha built the Shore Temple in dressed stone at the water's edge.

The port linked Kanchipuram, the Pallava capital, with Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia, where the Khmer, Thai and Javanese scripts descend from Pallava letter forms. Much here was left unfinished, and the great relief has long been read two ways: as Arjuna's penance or as the descent of the Ganga.

## Sources

- UNESCO World Heritage List: Group of Monuments at Mahabalipuram — https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/249/
- Harle, J. C., The Art and Architecture of the Indian Subcontinent (1994)

## Image

The Shore Temple Mamallapuram. Paulwalker96, CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AThe_Shore_Temple_Mamallapuram.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Cholas to the Sultanate
**चोल से सल्तनत तक**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/chapter/medieval/
- Track: evidence
- Span: 750 CE to 1500 CE
- Boundary shown: tughlaq-1330 (approximate unless marked traced)

From the eighth century no single power held the whole north. The Gurjara-Pratiharas, Palas and Rashtrakutas fought over Kannauj, while in the south the Cholas built a state that conquered northern Sri Lanka and sent a naval expedition against Srivijaya in Southeast Asia. Armies from Ghazni raided the plains in the early eleventh century, and after Tarain in 1192 Ghurid commanders took Delhi, where a sultanate founded in 1206 passed through five dynasties.

Under the Khaljis and Muhammad bin Tughluq the Sultanate reached further south than any earlier state based in the north, then within a generation lost the far south to the Madurai sultans and Vijayanagara, and the Deccan to the Bahmanis. Timur's sack of Delhi in 1398 left it a regional kingdom, held by the Sayyids and then the Lodis until Babur took it in 1526.

The outline is the Delhi Sultanate around 1330, at its greatest reach. It is one of the least certain shapes on this site: in Ma'bar the Sultan's writ lasted barely a dozen years, in the Deccan under thirty, and Bengal was independent by 1338.

## Events (11)

- 950 CE – 1050 CE (± 10 years) — [The temples of Khajuraho](https://indianepics.online/event/khajuraho.md): Between about 950 and 1050 the Chandela kings build dozens of Hindu and Jain temples at Khajuraho; some twenty survive.
- 1003 CE – 1010 CE (± 1 years) — [Rajaraja's temple at Thanjavur](https://indianepics.online/event/rajaraja-thanjavur-1010.md): Rajaraja I consecrates the Brihadisvara at Thanjavur in 1010, a granite temple whose walls record the lands and gifts of a growing Chola state.
- 1022 CE – 1035 CE (± 2 years) — [Rajendra's Gangaikonda Cholapuram](https://indianepics.online/event/rajendra-gangaikonda.md): After his army reaches the Ganga, Rajendra I builds a capital named for the feat; in 1025 his fleet raids Srivijaya across the Bay of Bengal.
- 1026 CE — [Mahmud of Ghazni at Somnath](https://indianepics.online/event/somnath-1026.md): In January 1026 Mahmud of Ghazni sacks the Somanatha temple on the Saurashtra coast, the most remembered of his raids into India.
- 1191 CE – 1192 CE — [The battles of Tarain](https://indianepics.online/event/tarain-1192.md): Prithviraj Chauhan beats Muhammad of Ghur at Tarain in 1191 and loses to him on the same field in 1192, opening the Ganga plain to the Ghurids.
- 1199 CE – 1220 CE (± 5 years) — [The Qutb Minar and the Delhi Sultanate](https://indianepics.online/event/qutb-minar.md): Around 1199 Aibak begins a victory tower beside Delhi's first great mosque; Iltutmish completes it as Delhi becomes the seat of a sultanate.
- 1303 CE — [Alauddin Khalji takes Chittor](https://indianepics.online/event/alauddin-chittor-1303.md): Seven months after leaving Delhi, Alauddin Khalji takes the Guhila fortress of Chittor on 26 August 1303, extending the Sultanate into Mewar.
- 1327 CE – 1335 CE (± 1 years) — [The move to Daulatabad](https://indianepics.online/event/daulatabad-1327.md): In 1327 Muhammad bin Tughluq makes Devagiri, renamed Daulatabad, a second capital and sends Delhi's elite south; by about 1335 the court is back.
- 1336 CE – 1346 CE — [Vijayanagara is founded](https://indianepics.online/event/vijayanagara-1336.md): Tradition dates to 1336 the kingdom the brothers Harihara and Bukka founded on the Tungabhadra; it would dominate the south for two centuries.
- 1347 CE — [The Bahmani sultanate](https://indianepics.online/event/bahmani-1347.md): On 3 August 1347 rebel Deccan amirs proclaim Alauddin Hasan Bahman Shah sultan; ruling from Gulbarga, he ends Delhi's hold on the Deccan.
- 1398 CE – 1399 CE — [Timur sacks Delhi](https://indianepics.online/event/timur-delhi-1398.md): Timur routs the Tughluq army outside Delhi on 17 December 1398 and sacks Siri, Jahanpanah and Old Delhi; the Sultanate never regains its reach.


# The temples of Khajuraho
**खजुराहो के मंदिर**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/khajuraho/
- Chapter: [Cholas to the Sultanate](https://indianepics.online/chapter/medieval.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 950 CE – 1050 CE (± 10 years)
- Where: Kandariya Mahadeva temple, Khajuraho, Madhya Pradesh (24.8525, 79.9199)
- Tags: art, religion

## Summary

Between about 950 and 1050 the Chandela kings build dozens of Hindu and Jain temples at Khajuraho; some twenty survive.

लगभग 950 से 1050 के बीच चंदेल राजाओं ने खजुराहो में दर्जनों हिंदू और जैन मंदिर बनवाए; इनमें से लगभग बीस आज भी खड़े हैं।

## Account

An inscription dated 953–54 CE, set up under the Chandela king Dhanga, records that his father Yashovarman built a temple to Vishnu as Vaikuntha, the one known as the Lakshmana temple. The Kandariya Mahadeva, the largest temple at the site, is generally dated to around 1030. The towers rise in clustered peaks meant to suggest a mountain range, and the walls carry hundreds of figures, of which the erotic panels are a small share.

The Chandelas ruled Jejakabhukti, the later Bundelkhand, from the forts of Kalinjar and Mahoba. Khajuraho was a temple town, not a stronghold, and it lay off the main roads, which may be why so much of it stood. It was little known beyond the region until a British officer, T. S. Burt, visited it in 1838.

What the erotic sculpture meant is debated: tantric ritual, protection for the building, courtly display, or a picture of the world outside the sanctum. No contemporary text explains it.

## Sources

- UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Khajuraho Group of Monuments — https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/240/
- Epigraphia Indica, vol. I (1892) — https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.69993 (Kielhorn's edition of the Khajuraho inscriptions, including the Lakshmana temple inscription of Vikrama year 1011 (953–54 CE))
- Desai, Khajuraho (2000)

## Image

The Kandariya Mahadeva Temple, Khajuraho, Madhya Pradesh. Taru23, CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AThe_Kandariya_Mahadeva_Temple%2C_Khajuraho%2C_Madhya_Pradesh.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Rajaraja's temple at Thanjavur
**तंजावुर में राजराज का मंदिर**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/rajaraja-thanjavur-1010/
- Chapter: [Cholas to the Sultanate](https://indianepics.online/chapter/medieval.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1003 CE – 1010 CE (± 1 years)
- Where: Brihadisvara temple, Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu (10.7828, 79.1318)
- Tags: art, religion, state-formation

## Summary

Rajaraja I consecrates the Brihadisvara at Thanjavur in 1010, a granite temple whose walls record the lands and gifts of a growing Chola state.

राजराज प्रथम ने 1010 में तंजावुर के बृहदीश्वर मंदिर की प्रतिष्ठा की; इसकी दीवारों पर बढ़ते चोल राज्य की भूमि और दान अंकित हैं।

## Account

Building began around 1003, and Rajaraja consecrated the temple himself in his twenty-fifth regnal year, 1009–10. Its tower rises about 60 metres over the ground. Inscriptions on the temple and its enclosure list villages across the Kaveri delta and beyond that owed it paddy, gold and service. One of them names, one by one, the 400 temple women Rajaraja brought from other Chola temples, and the dancing-masters, musicians, tailors, goldsmiths and others assigned to serve it.

Thanjavur marks the moment the Cholas became the dominant power of the peninsula. Rajaraja had taken the Pandya and Chera countries, Gangavadi in southern Karnataka and northern Sri Lanka, where Anuradhapura was sacked and Polonnaruwa became a Chola provincial seat; his inscriptions also claim the "twelve thousand ancient islands" of the sea, usually read as the Maldives.

The dates are secure; the scale of the state is argued over. Nilakanta Sastri read the temple records as the work of a centralised bureaucracy. Burton Stein read them as a segmentary state, in which the king's ritual authority ran far beyond the reach of his officials.

## Sources

- UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Great Living Chola Temples — https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/250/ (Begun possibly in Rajaraja's 19th regnal year (1003–04) and consecrated in his 25th (1009–10); vimana 59.82 m)
- Hultzsch, South Indian Inscriptions, vol. II, part III (1895) — https://archive.org/details/india.history.resource.335 (No. 66, Rajaraja's list of the 400 temple women and the other servants of the temple)
- Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas, vol. I (1935) (In copyright in India until 2036; Digital Library of India scan not linked.)
- Stein, Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India (1980)

## Image

Brihadisvara Temple, Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu, India (2016) 042. Nandhinikandhasamy, CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABrihadisvara_Temple%2C_Thanjavur%2C_Tamil_Nadu%2C_India_(2016)_042.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Rajendra's Gangaikonda Cholapuram
**राजेंद्र का गंगैकोंड चोलपुरम**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/rajendra-gangaikonda/
- Chapter: [Cholas to the Sultanate](https://indianepics.online/chapter/medieval.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1022 CE – 1035 CE (± 2 years)
- Where: Gangaikonda Cholapuram, Tamil Nadu (11.2063, 79.4486)
- Tags: war, trade, state-formation

## Summary

After his army reaches the Ganga, Rajendra I builds a capital named for the feat; in 1025 his fleet raids Srivijaya across the Bay of Bengal.

सेना के गंगा तक पहुँचने के बाद राजेंद्र प्रथम ने इस विजय के नाम पर नई राजधानी बसाई; 1025 में उसके बेड़े ने बंगाल की खाड़ी पार कर श्रीविजय पर धावा बोला।

## Account

Between about 1019 and 1022 a Chola army marched north through Kalinga to the Ganga, defeated the Pala king Mahipala, and brought back Ganga water. Rajendra took the title Gangaikonda, he who took the Ganga, and built a new capital with a great temple, completed in 1035, and an embanked tank, the Cholagangam. The city stayed the Chola capital for some two hundred and fifty years; little of it survives but the temple.

In 1025 a fleet sailed against Srivijaya, whose ports controlled the straits between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. Rajendra's inscriptions list the places taken, among them Srivijaya itself, usually placed at Palembang, Kadaram (Kedah) and Tambralinga. It was a raid, not a conquest: no Chola administration followed, and Chola grants to the Buddhist monastery that Srivijaya's kings had founded at the Chola port of Nagapattinam continued.

The motive is argued. Some historians see a war for the sea routes in which Tamil merchant guilds had a stake; others see a plundering expedition meant to fill the treasury and display the king's reach.

## Sources

- Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas, vol. I (1935) (In copyright in India until 2036; Digital Library of India scan not linked.)
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Great Living Chola Temples — https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/250/ (Gangaikondacholisvaram completed in 1035)
- Kulke, Kesavapany and Sakhuja (eds.), Nagapattinam to Suvarnadwipa: Reflections on the Chola Naval Expeditions to Southeast Asia (2009)

## Image

Gangaikonda Cholapuram 236. PP Yoonus (ppyoonus@yahoo.co.in), CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AGangaikonda_Cholapuram_236.JPG

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Mahmud of Ghazni at Somnath
**सोमनाथ पर महमूद ग़ज़नवी**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/somnath-1026/
- Chapter: [Cholas to the Sultanate](https://indianepics.online/chapter/medieval.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1026 CE
- Where: Somnath, Prabhas Patan, Gujarat (20.888, 70.401)
- Tags: war, religion

## Summary

In January 1026 Mahmud of Ghazni sacks the Somanatha temple on the Saurashtra coast, the most remembered of his raids into India.

जनवरी 1026 में महमूद ग़ज़नवी ने सौराष्ट्र तट पर सोमनाथ मंदिर को लूटा; भारत पर उसके हमलों में यह सबसे अधिक याद किया जाता है।

## Account

Mahmud left Ghazni in the autumn of 1025, crossed the desert from Multan, passed the Chaulukya capital at Anahilavada, whose king Bhima fled, and reached Somnath in early January 1026. Ibn al-Athir describes the breaking of the idol, more than fifty thousand dead and a treasure worth over two million dinars; Mahmud went home through Sindh. He held no territory in Gujarat. His state was centred on Ghazni and Khurasan and reached into the Punjab, and raids like this helped pay for it.

On the map Somnath is a raid, not a frontier. The Chaulukya king Bhima I returned once Mahmud had gone, and an inscription of 1169 at Prabhas Patan records the temple's rebuilding under Kumarapala.

How the raid was remembered is contested. Romila Thapar has shown that the Persian accounts grow more elaborate over the centuries, that local Sanskrit and Jain sources say little about it, and that the idea of a lasting Hindu trauma owes much to Lord Ellenborough's 1842 proclamation about the gates of Somnath, the debate it set off in Britain, and the temple's reconstruction after independence.

## Sources

- Thapar, Somanatha: The Many Voices of a History (2004)
- Elliot and Dowson, The History of India as Told by Its Own Historians, vol. II (1869) — https://archive.org/details/india.history.resource.629 (Appendix: Ibn al-Athir's Kamil al-Tawarikh on the Somnath campaign, with later Persian accounts)

## Image

2015 Somnath Jyotirlinga temple Prabhas Patan. Ms Sarah Welch, CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3A2015_Somnath_Jyotirlinga_temple_Prabhas_Patan.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# The battles of Tarain
**तराइन के युद्ध**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/tarain-1192/
- Chapter: [Cholas to the Sultanate](https://indianepics.online/chapter/medieval.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1191 CE – 1192 CE
- Where: Taraori, Karnal, Haryana (29.78, 76.94)
- Tags: war, political

## Summary

Prithviraj Chauhan beats Muhammad of Ghur at Tarain in 1191 and loses to him on the same field in 1192, opening the Ganga plain to the Ghurids.

1191 में पृथ्वीराज चौहान ने तराइन में ग़ोर के मुहम्मद को हराया, पर 1192 में उसी मैदान पर हार गए; इससे ग़ोरियों के लिए गंगा का मैदान खुल गया।

## Account

Prithviraj, the Chahamana king of Ajmer, with Govind Rai of Delhi among his allies, defeated a Ghurid army near Tarain, north of Delhi, in 1191. Muhammad of Ghur returned the next year with a larger force built around mounted archers and won. Within two years his commander Qutb al-Din Aibak held Delhi, Ghurid armies had defeated the Gahadavala king of Kannauj, and by about 1204 Bakhtiyar Khalji had reached Bengal.

The aftermath is told in conflicting ways. Minhaj, writing around 1260, says Prithviraj was captured as he fled and put to death. Hasan Nizami, writing half a century earlier, says he was spared, then beheaded when he was caught plotting, and that his son was given Ajmer. Coins carrying both Prithviraj's name and Muhammad's are read by some historians as evidence of a brief vassal phase; others think the Ghurids kept his name on familiar coinage to get their own accepted. The story of a blinded Prithviraj killing his captor at Ghazni comes from the much later Prithviraj Raso and is legend.

## Sources

- Elliot and Dowson, The History of India as Told by Its Own Historians, vol. II (1869) — https://archive.org/details/india.history.resource.629 (Extracts from Minhaj's Tabakat-i Nasiri and Hasan Nizami's Taj al-Ma'athir)
- Talbot, The Last Hindu Emperor: Prithviraj Cauhan and the Indian Past, 1200–2000 (2016)

## Image

Prithviraj Chauhan painting. Orang srang17, CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3APrithviraj_Chauhan_painting.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# The Qutb Minar and the Delhi Sultanate
**क़ुतुब मीनार और दिल्ली सल्तनत**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/qutb-minar/
- Chapter: [Cholas to the Sultanate](https://indianepics.online/chapter/medieval.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1199 CE – 1220 CE (± 5 years)
- Where: Qutb Minar, Mehrauli, Delhi (28.5245, 77.1855)
- Tags: state-formation, art, religion

## Summary

Around 1199 Aibak begins a victory tower beside Delhi's first great mosque; Iltutmish completes it as Delhi becomes the seat of a sultanate.

लगभग 1199 में ऐबक ने दिल्ली की पहली बड़ी मस्जिद के पास विजय-मीनार शुरू की; इल्तुतमिश ने इसे पूरा किया, जब दिल्ली सल्तनत की राजधानी बनी।

## Account

The mosque later called Quwwat al-Islam was raised in the 1190s inside the citadel the Tomaras and Chahamanas had held, and its own inscription says it was built from the materials of twenty-seven temples. The minar beside it went up in stages: Aibak built the first storey, Iltutmish added three, and Firuz Shah Tughluq replaced the top storey with two after lightning struck it in 1368. It stands 72.5 metres. In the courtyard is an iron pillar of the Gupta period, brought here from elsewhere and some eight hundred years older than the mosque.

When Muhammad of Ghur was killed in 1206 his Indian commanders divided his conquests. Aibak ruled from Lahore; it was Iltutmish, from about 1211, who made Delhi the seat of an independent sultanate. Later sultans built a succession of cities nearby, among them Siri, Tughlaqabad, Jahanpanah and Firozabad, which is why the sultanate's capital survives as a scatter of ruins across Delhi.

Historians disagree over how to read the reused temple stone: as a deliberate display of conquest, as builders' practical recycling, or as both at once.

## Sources

- UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Qutb Minar and its Monuments, Delhi — https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/233/ (Minar 72.5 m high; mosque built of material from some twenty temples)
- Page, An Historical Memoir on the Qutb, Delhi (Memoirs of the Archaeological Survey of India 22, 1926) — https://archive.org/details/tdl.23113-an-historical-memoir-on-the-qutb
- Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History (1999)

## Image

Qutb Minar 2011. Sfu, CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AQutb_Minar_2011.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Alauddin Khalji takes Chittor
**अलाउद्दीन ख़िलजी का चित्तौड़ पर अधिकार**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/alauddin-chittor-1303/
- Chapter: [Cholas to the Sultanate](https://indianepics.online/chapter/medieval.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1303 CE
- Where: Chittorgarh fort, Rajasthan (24.8863, 74.647)
- Tags: war, political

## Summary

Seven months after leaving Delhi, Alauddin Khalji takes the Guhila fortress of Chittor on 26 August 1303, extending the Sultanate into Mewar.

दिल्ली से कूच के सात महीने बाद, 26 अगस्त 1303 को अलाउद्दीन ख़िलजी ने गुहिलों का चित्तौड़ दुर्ग जीत लिया और सल्तनत को मेवाड़ तक फैला दिया।

## Account

Alauddin marched from Delhi at the end of January 1303 and entered the fort on 26 August. Amir Khusrau, who was with the army, says the Rana fled and then surrendered, that the Sultan ordered some 30,000 people killed, and that he renamed the fort Khizrabad after his son. In the same years Alauddin threw back repeated Mongol invasions of the Punjab and the Delhi region, and fixed grain and market prices in the capital so that he could keep a large standing army on modest pay.

His general Malik Kafur then took Delhi's armies further south than any before them: to Devagiri, to the Kakatiya capital Warangal in 1310, and into the Hoysala and Pandya countries in 1311. These campaigns mostly brought tribute rather than direct rule, but they opened the way for the annexation of Devagiri in 1318 and the Tughluq conquests of the 1320s.

The best-known story of Chittor, that Alauddin besieged it to seize Queen Padmini and that the fort's women burned themselves rather than be taken, comes from Malik Muhammad Jayasi's poem Padmavat of 1540, and most historians treat it as legend. Khusrau, Barani and Isami, writing within decades of the siege, do not mention her.

## Sources

- Amir Khusrau, Khaza'in al-Futuh, tr. Habib, The Campaigns of Alauddin Khilji (1931) (Translation in copyright in India until 2032; Digital Library of India scan not linked.)
- Elliot and Dowson, The History of India as Told by Its Own Historians, vol. III (1871) — https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.458719 (Khusrau's Tarikh-i 'Alai (Khaza'in al-Futuh) on the march of 8 Jumada II 702 and the capture of 11 Muharram 703; Barani's Tarikh-i Firoz Shahi)
- Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History (1999)

## Image

Chittorgarh fort. Ssjoshi111, CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AChittorgarh_fort.JPG

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# The move to Daulatabad
**राजधानी दिल्ली से दौलताबाद**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/daulatabad-1327/
- Chapter: [Cholas to the Sultanate](https://indianepics.online/chapter/medieval.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1327 CE – 1335 CE (± 1 years)
- Where: Daulatabad fort, Maharashtra (19.9428, 75.2133)
- Tags: political, state-formation

## Summary

In 1327 Muhammad bin Tughluq makes Devagiri, renamed Daulatabad, a second capital and sends Delhi's elite south; by about 1335 the court is back.

1327 में मुहम्मद बिन तुग़लक़ ने देवगिरि को दौलताबाद नाम देकर दूसरी राजधानी बनाया और दिल्ली के अभिजात वर्ग को दक्षिण भेजा; लगभग 1335 तक दरबार लौट आया।

## Account

Devagiri, the hill fortress of the Yadava kings, had been annexed in 1318. From it the Sultan could govern the new Deccan provinces, which by the late 1320s stretched east to Warangal and south to Madurai. He ordered the officials, scholars and Sufis of Delhi to move there, about a thousand kilometres away. Barani, writing a generation later, says not a cat or a dog was left in Delhi; most historians take that as rhetoric and think the order fell on the Muslim elite rather than the whole city.

The transfer did not hold. By about 1335 the Sultan was back in Delhi, but many of the migrants stayed, and their families supplied much of the governing class of the Deccan's next state. Ma'bar broke away around 1335, Bengal in 1338, and the Deccan itself in 1347.

## Sources

- Elliot and Dowson, The History of India as Told by Its Own Historians, vol. III (1871) — https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.458719 (Barani's Tarikh-i Firoz Shahi on the transfer to Daulatabad)
- Ibn Battuta, Travels in Asia and Africa 1325–1354, tr. Gibb (1929) — https://archive.org/details/the-travels-of-ibn-battuta-1929
- Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History (1999)

## Image

Daulatabad fort and Chand Minar. Vinat, CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ADaulatabad_fort_and_Chand_Minar.JPG

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Vijayanagara is founded
**विजयनगर की स्थापना**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/vijayanagara-1336/
- Chapter: [Cholas to the Sultanate](https://indianepics.online/chapter/medieval.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1336 CE – 1346 CE
- Where: Virupaksha temple, Hampi, Karnataka (15.335, 76.46)
- Tags: state-formation, political

## Summary

Tradition dates to 1336 the kingdom the brothers Harihara and Bukka founded on the Tungabhadra; it would dominate the south for two centuries.

परंपरा के अनुसार 1336 में हरिहर और बुक्का भाइयों ने तुंगभद्रा तट पर राज्य की नींव रखी, जो दो सदियों तक दक्षिण पर छाया रहा।

## Account

The year 1336 comes from later tradition. The first secure records of the Sangama brothers as independent rulers are grants of the 1340s, among them a Sringeri inscription of 1346 in which the brothers gather to celebrate Harihara's conquest of the land "from the eastern to the western ocean". The city they built around the Virupaksha temple at Hampi became one of the largest in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century India, described by Persian, Italian and Portuguese visitors, until its army was defeated at Talikota in 1565 and the city sacked.

On the map, Vijayanagara and the Bahmani sultanate to its north divided the Deccan after the Tughluq withdrawal, and fought for two centuries over the Raichur doab between the Krishna and the Tungabhadra.

The founders' origins are disputed. One tradition makes them officers of the Kakatiya king of Warangal and then of Kampili, who were captured by Muhammad bin Tughluq, converted to Islam, sent back to govern the region, and reconverted under the sage Vidyaranya. Historians are divided over the conversion story; those who reject it see the brothers as local commanders in Hoysala service. Since the nineteenth century the question has also been a contest between Telugu and Kannada claims on the empire.

## Sources

- UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Group of Monuments at Hampi — https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/241/
- Sewell, A Forgotten Empire (Vijayanagar): A Contribution to the History of India (1900) — https://archive.org/details/a-forgotten-empire
- Eaton, A Social History of the Deccan, 1300–1761 (2005)

## Image

Hampi - Hemakuta Hill, Virupaksha Temple. Ingo Mehling, CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AHampi_-_Hemakuta_Hill%2C_Virupaksha_Temple.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# The Bahmani sultanate
**बहमनी सल्तनत**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/bahmani-1347/
- Chapter: [Cholas to the Sultanate](https://indianepics.online/chapter/medieval.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1347 CE
- Where: Gulbarga (Kalaburagi) fort, Karnataka (17.336, 76.832)
- Tags: state-formation, political

## Summary

On 3 August 1347 rebel Deccan amirs proclaim Alauddin Hasan Bahman Shah sultan; ruling from Gulbarga, he ends Delhi's hold on the Deccan.

3 अगस्त 1347 को विद्रोही दक्कनी अमीरों ने अलाउद्दीन हसन बहमन शाह को सुल्तान घोषित किया; गुलबर्गा से शासन कर उसने दक्कन पर दिल्ली की पकड़ तोड़ दी।

## Account

The revolt began in 1345 among the centurion amirs, officers of the Deccan provinces whom Muhammad bin Tughluq had threatened with punishment. They seized Daulatabad and raised one of their number, Ismail Mukh, to the throne; he stood down in favour of the commander Hasan, who took the title Alauddin Bahman Shah. Hasan made Gulbarga his capital, and his successors moved to Bidar in the 1420s.

The Bahmani state set the Deccan's political line for two centuries: a sultanate north of the Krishna facing Vijayanagara across the Raichur doab. When it broke up between 1490 and 1527 into the sultanates of Bijapur, Ahmadnagar, Berar, Golconda and Bidar, they inherited the same frontier.

The dynasty's name is argued over. Its court claimed descent from Bahman, a legendary king of ancient Iran; Firishta repeats a story that Hasan had once served a Brahmin astrologer named Gangu, hence the name Hasan Gangu. Modern historians treat the Gangu story as legend and the Persian genealogy as a claim to prestige.

## Sources

- Firishta, tr. Briggs, History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, vol. II — https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.57894 (Hasan crowned on Friday 24 Rabi' al-Akhir 748; Briggs's margin prints 12 August, but the Hijri date and the weekday both give 3 August 1347. Also the Gangu story)
- Eaton, A Social History of the Deccan, 1300–1761 (2005)

## Image

Great Mosque in Gulbarga Fort.. Dayal, Deen, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AGreat_Mosque_in_Gulbarga_Fort..jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Timur sacks Delhi
**तैमूर द्वारा दिल्ली की लूट**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/timur-delhi-1398/
- Chapter: [Cholas to the Sultanate](https://indianepics.online/chapter/medieval.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1398 CE – 1399 CE
- Where: Siri, Delhi (28.5507, 77.2196)
- Tags: war, political

## Summary

Timur routs the Tughluq army outside Delhi on 17 December 1398 and sacks Siri, Jahanpanah and Old Delhi; the Sultanate never regains its reach.

17 दिसंबर 1398 को तैमूर ने दिल्ली के बाहर तुग़लक़ सेना को हराया और सीरी, जहाँपनाह व पुरानी दिल्ली को लूटा; सल्तनत फिर कभी पहले जैसी विस्तृत न हो सकी।

## Account

Timur crossed the Indus in September 1398 and sacked towns across the Punjab. Before the battle he had a great number of prisoners killed; his court historians put it at 100,000. After defeating Sultan Nasir al-Din Mahmud and his minister Mallu Iqbal, his army plundered the three walled cities of Delhi for days and left early in 1399 with captives. Yazdi says Timur reserved all the stonemasons for the great mosque he planned at Samarkand.

The Sultanate survived as a regional state. The Sayyids, who ruled from 1414 as nominal deputies of Timur's son, held little beyond Delhi. Bahlul Lodi, from 1451, rebuilt it into a kingdom of the Punjab and the Ganga plain, and Sikandar Lodi made Agra his capital; Gujarat, Malwa, Jaunpur and Bengal went their own way. The Lodis' Delhi fell to Babur, Timur's descendant, at Panipat in 1526.

The numbers come from Timur's court historians, who wrote to glorify him, and no independent count exists. Historians accept a massacre on a very large scale and treat the figures as uncertain.

## Sources

- Elliot and Dowson, The History of India as Told by Its Own Historians, vol. III (1871) — https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.458719 (Extracts from Sharaf al-Din Yazdi's Zafarnama and the Malfuzat-i Timuri, the memoirs attributed to Timur, which most modern scholars regard as a later compilation)
- Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History (1999)

## Image

Timur defeats the sultan of Delhi. Bhora, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ATimur_defeats_the_sultan_of_Delhi.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# The Mughals and their rivals
**मुग़ल और उनके प्रतिद्वंद्वी**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/chapter/mughal/
- Track: evidence
- Span: 1500 CE to 1760 CE
- Boundary shown: mughal-1700 (approximate unless marked traced)

Babur came down from Kabul with matchlocks, field guns and Central Asian cavalry, and his descendants ruled from Kabul to the Deccan for the better part of two centuries. Akbar's administration, Shah Jahan's architecture and Aurangzeb's wars set the frame that the Marathas, the Sikh misls and the European trading companies would inherit.

The outline is the empire around 1700, its largest and most overstretched. Within fifty years the Marathas held the centre, the Nawabs ran Bengal and Awadh, and a trading company had an army.

## Events (8)

- 1526 CE — [First Battle of Panipat](https://indianepics.online/event/panipat-1526.md): Babur's field guns and flanking cavalry break Ibrahim Lodi's army; the Delhi Sultanate ends and the Mughal line begins.
- 1571 CE – 1585 CE — [Akbar's city at Fatehpur Sikri](https://indianepics.online/event/fatehpur-sikri.md): Akbar's capital of 1571-85, where debates in the Ibadat Khana brought Sunni and Shia scholars, Brahmins, Jains and Jesuits before him.
- 1613 CE — [The English factory at Surat](https://indianepics.online/event/surat-factory.md): After an English victory over the Portuguese off Swally, Jahangir confirms the East India Company's right to trade at Surat.
- 1632 CE – 1653 CE — [Shah Jahan builds the Taj Mahal](https://indianepics.online/event/taj-mahal.md): Shah Jahan's tomb for Mumtaz Mahal, built over two decades on the Yamuna in white Makrana marble.
- 1674 CE — [Shivaji crowned at Raigad](https://indianepics.online/event/shivaji-coronation.md): Shivaji is crowned Chhatrapati at Raigad, making his Maratha state a sovereign kingdom outside the Mughal order.
- 1687 CE — [Aurangzeb takes Golconda](https://indianepics.online/event/golconda-1687.md): After an eight-month siege the last Deccan sultanate falls to Aurangzeb, carrying the empire close to its greatest extent.
- 1699 CE — [Guru Gobind Singh founds the Khalsa](https://indianepics.online/event/khalsa-1699.md): At Vaisakhi the tenth Guru initiates the Panj Piare and gives the Sikh community its martial, egalitarian form.
- 1757 CE — [Battle of Plassey](https://indianepics.online/event/plassey-1757.md): Clive's Company army defeats Siraj ud-Daulah when Mir Jafar's troops stand aside; the Company becomes the power behind Bengal's throne.


# First Battle of Panipat
**पानीपत का पहला युद्ध**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/panipat-1526/
- Chapter: [The Mughals and their rivals](https://indianepics.online/chapter/mughal.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1526 CE
- Where: Panipat, Haryana (29.39, 76.97)
- Tags: war, political

## Summary

Babur's field guns and flanking cavalry break Ibrahim Lodi's army; the Delhi Sultanate ends and the Mughal line begins.

बाबर की तोपों और घुड़सवारों ने इब्राहिम लोदी की सेना तोड़ी; दिल्ली सल्तनत समाप्त, मुग़ल वंश आरंभ।

## Account

Babur dates the battle to Friday 8 Rajab 932, which Beveridge's translation gives as 20 April 1526; many modern accounts say 21 April. Ibrahim Lodi died on the field. Babur's own figures, about 12,000 men against 100,000, are a victor's numbers; what is clear is that carts lashed into a line sheltered his matchlocks and guns while his cavalry wheeled round the flanks.

He had tried and failed to hold Samarkand; he held Hindustan instead, and set down in his Turki memoir an unsparing list of what it lacked, from good horses and grapes to ice, baths and candles.

## Sources

- Baburnama, tr. Beveridge (1922), vol. 2 — https://archive.org/details/baburnamainengli02babuuoft (Friday 8 Rajab 932, given as 20 April 1526)
- Baburnama, tr. Thackston (1996)

## Image

The battle of Panipat and the death of Sultan Ibrāhīm, the last of the Lōdī Sultans of Delhi. Ẓahīr ud-Dīn Muḥammad Bābur (1483-1530) It contains 30 mostly full-page miniatures in fine Mughal style by at least two different artists., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AThe_battle_of_Panipat_and_the_death_of_Sultan_Ibr%C4%81h%C4%ABm%2C_the_last_of_the_L%C5%8Dd%C4%AB_Sultans_of_Delhi.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Akbar's city at Fatehpur Sikri
**अकबर की फ़तेहपुर सीकरी**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/fatehpur-sikri/
- Chapter: [The Mughals and their rivals](https://indianepics.online/chapter/mughal.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1571 CE – 1585 CE
- Where: Fatehpur Sikri, Uttar Pradesh (27.09, 77.66)
- Tags: political, religion, art

## Summary

Akbar's capital of 1571-85, where debates in the Ibadat Khana brought Sunni and Shia scholars, Brahmins, Jains and Jesuits before him.

1571-85 तक अकबर की राजधानी, जहाँ इबादतख़ाने की बहसों में सुन्नी और शिया आलिम, ब्राह्मण, जैन और जेसुइट सम्राट के सामने आए।

## Account

Akbar began the city in 1571 on the ridge at Sikri, home of the Sufi Shaikh Salim Chishti, who had foretold the birth of his son Salim. The Ibadat Khana, built in 1575, began as a hall for Muslim scholars and was opened to other faiths; the first Jesuit mission arrived in 1580.

The Buland Darwaza, the great south gate of the mosque, is usually tied to the conquest of Gujarat in 1573, but its main inscription, dated 1601, celebrates the conquest of Khandesh in the Deccan. Akbar left for Lahore in 1585 to watch the north-west frontier and the court never settled here again; the popular story that the city was abandoned for want of water is disputed.

## Sources

- Abu'l Fazl, Akbarnama, tr. Beveridge, vol. 3 — https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.55650
- UNESCO World Heritage List: Fatehpur Sikri — https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/255/

## Image

Fatehput Sikiri Buland Darwaza gate 2010. Marcin Białek, CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AFatehput_Sikiri_Buland_Darwaza_gate_2010.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# The English factory at Surat
**सूरत में अंग्रेज़ी कोठी**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/surat-factory/
- Chapter: [The Mughals and their rivals](https://indianepics.online/chapter/mughal.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1613 CE
- Where: Surat, Gujarat (21.17, 72.83)
- Tags: trade, colonial

## Summary

After an English victory over the Portuguese off Swally, Jahangir confirms the East India Company's right to trade at Surat.

स्वाली के पास पुर्तगालियों पर अंग्रेज़ों की जीत के बाद जहाँगीर ने ईस्ट इंडिया कंपनी को सूरत में व्यापार का अधिकार दिया।

## Account

Thomas Best's ships beat off a Portuguese squadron at Swally, Surat's roadstead, in November 1612. The Mughal governor then agreed terms, a farman from Jahangir ratifying them reached Best in January 1613, and Thomas Aldworth stayed on to run the factory: a trading house, not a fort.

The Company spent most of its first century as one trader among Portuguese, Dutch, Armenian and Gujarati rivals, and Surat remained its chief Indian base until Bombay took over in the 1680s. Thomas Roe's embassy to Jahangir in 1615-19 won firmer terms.

## Sources

- Foster (ed.), The Voyage of Thomas Best to the East Indies, 1612-14 (Hakluyt Society, 1934) — https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.505027
- Letters Received by the East India Company from its Servants in the East, vol. 1 (1602-13) — https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.38607

## Image

Surat castleE. Carmichael, John (Around 1751); Grose, John Henry (Around 1750-1783), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASurat_castleE.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Shah Jahan builds the Taj Mahal
**शाहजहाँ ने ताजमहल बनवाया**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/taj-mahal/
- Chapter: [The Mughals and their rivals](https://indianepics.online/chapter/mughal.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1632 CE – 1653 CE
- Where: Taj Mahal, Agra, Uttar Pradesh (27.175, 78.042)
- Tags: art, religion

## Summary

Shah Jahan's tomb for Mumtaz Mahal, built over two decades on the Yamuna in white Makrana marble.

यमुना तट पर मकराना के सफ़ेद संगमरमर से बना मुमताज़ महल का मक़बरा, जिसे शाहजहाँ ने दो दशकों में बनवाया।

## Account

Mumtaz Mahal died in childbirth at Burhanpur in 1631, and work on her tomb began in 1632. Shah Jahan held the twelfth anniversary of her death at the finished mausoleum on 6 February 1643, which Koch takes as its official completion; the gateway, mosque, guest house and outer courts took about ten years more.

The empire at its richest: white marble hauled from Makrana in Rajasthan, red sandstone from the Fatehpur Sikri quarries, and semi-precious stones from across Asia cut into the inlay.

## Sources

- Koch, The Complete Taj Mahal and the Riverfront Gardens of Agra (2006)
- UNESCO World Heritage List: Taj Mahal — https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/252/

## Image

Taj Mahal in March 2004. Dhirad, picture edited by J. A. Knudsen, CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ATaj_Mahal_in_March_2004.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Shivaji crowned at Raigad
**रायगढ़ में शिवाजी का राज्याभिषेक**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/shivaji-coronation/
- Chapter: [The Mughals and their rivals](https://indianepics.online/chapter/mughal.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1674 CE
- Where: Raigad Fort, Maharashtra (18.23, 73.44)
- Tags: political, war

## Summary

Shivaji is crowned Chhatrapati at Raigad, making his Maratha state a sovereign kingdom outside the Mughal order.

रायगढ़ में शिवाजी का छत्रपति के रूप में राज्याभिषेक; मराठा राज्य मुग़ल व्यवस्था से बाहर एक संप्रभु राज्य बना।

## Account

The coronation on 6 June 1674 (Jyeshtha shuddha 13, Shaka 1596) was a legal act as much as a ceremony. Gaga Bhatt of Varanasi presided, after first affirming Shivaji's Kshatriya descent, and the new king began a regnal era of his own and struck coins in his name.

It turned the son of a Bijapur jagirdar into a sovereign who could grant land, take tribute and treat with the Mughals, Bijapur and the English as an equal. A second, Tantric coronation followed that autumn, after his mother Jijabai's death twelve days after the first was taken as an ill omen.

## Sources

- Sabhasad Bakhar (c. 1697) (Krishnaji Anant Sabhasad's chronicle, written for Rajaram)
- Gordon, The Marathas 1600-1818 (1993)

## Image

Raigad fort towers. rohit gowaikar, CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ARaigad_fort_towers.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Aurangzeb takes Golconda
**औरंगज़ेब ने गोलकुंडा जीता**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/golconda-1687/
- Chapter: [The Mughals and their rivals](https://indianepics.online/chapter/mughal.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1687 CE
- Where: Golconda Fort, Hyderabad, Telangana (17.38, 78.4)
- Tags: war, political

## Summary

After an eight-month siege the last Deccan sultanate falls to Aurangzeb, carrying the empire close to its greatest extent.

आठ महीने की घेराबंदी के बाद अंतिम दक्कनी सल्तनत औरंगज़ेब के हाथ आई; साम्राज्य अपने अधिकतम विस्तार के निकट पहुँचा।

## Account

Bijapur fell in 1686 and Golconda in 1687. The fort held from early in the year until September, when a gate was opened from within; Abul Hasan Qutb Shah ended his days a prisoner at Daulatabad.

The outline on the map, c. 1700, is the empire after these conquests. It is also the point at which the cost of the Deccan wars, above all against the Marathas, began to tell on the treasury and the army.

## Sources

- Saqi Must'ad Khan, Maasir-i-Alamgiri, tr. Sarkar (1947) — https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.1426

## Image

Golconda Fort and Hyderabad city. iMahesh, CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AGolconda_Fort_and_Hyderabad_city.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Guru Gobind Singh founds the Khalsa
**गुरु गोबिंद सिंह ने ख़ालसा की स्थापना की**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/khalsa-1699/
- Chapter: [The Mughals and their rivals](https://indianepics.online/chapter/mughal.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1699 CE
- Where: Anandpur Sahib, Punjab (31.24, 76.5)
- Tags: religion, political

## Summary

At Vaisakhi the tenth Guru initiates the Panj Piare and gives the Sikh community its martial, egalitarian form.

वैसाखी पर दसवें गुरु ने पंज प्यारों को अमृत छकाया और सिख पंथ को ख़ालसा रूप दिया।

## Account

The Khalsa was founded amid war with the hill rajas and Mughal commanders. Sikh tradition gives the day as Vaisakhi 1699 and the place as Anandpur, where Takht Sri Kesgarh Sahib now stands; the detailed accounts of the ceremony come from Sikh writers of the following decades rather than from eyewitness records.

Within a century the Khalsa held the Punjab against the Afghans, and in 1799 Ranjit Singh took Lahore.

## Sources

- Grewal, The Sikhs of the Punjab (1990)

## Image

Keshgarh Sahib Gurudwara at Anandpur Sahib. Hari Singh from Ilford, Essex, UK, CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AKeshgarh_Sahib_Gurudwara_at_Anandpur_Sahib.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Battle of Plassey
**प्लासी का युद्ध**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/plassey-1757/
- Chapter: [The Mughals and their rivals](https://indianepics.online/chapter/mughal.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1757 CE
- Where: Plassey battlefield, near Palashi, West Bengal (23.8, 88.25)
- Tags: war, colonial, political

## Summary

Clive's Company army defeats Siraj ud-Daulah when Mir Jafar's troops stand aside; the Company becomes the power behind Bengal's throne.

मीर जाफ़र की सेना के अलग खड़े रहने से क्लाइव की कंपनी सेना ने सिराजुद्दौला को हराया; कंपनी बंगाल की गद्दी के पीछे की असली ताक़त बनी।

## Account

23 June 1757, by a mango grove on the Bhagirathi. Clive had about 3,000 men against an army many times larger, but Mir Jafar, promised the throne, kept his troops out of the fight, and the day was decided by defection as much as by fire.

A small battle with a large consequence. Buxar in 1764 and the grant of the Diwani in 1765 followed, and with them the right to collect the revenue of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, which paid for the Company's armies from then on.

## Sources

- Marshall, Bengal: The British Bridgehead (1987)

## Image

Lord Clive meeting with Mir Jafar after the Battle of Plassey. Francis Hayman, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ALord_Clive_meeting_with_Mir_Jafar_after_the_Battle_of_Plassey.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Company rule
**कंपनी राज**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/chapter/company/
- Track: evidence
- Span: 1757 CE to 1858 CE
- Boundary shown: british-india-1805 (approximate unless marked traced)

Plassey in 1757, Buxar in 1764 and the grant of the diwani in 1765 made a trading company the ruler of Bengal. Over the next century it fought and annexed its way across the subcontinent: large parts of Tipu's Mysore in 1792 and 1799, the Peshwa's lands in 1818, Sindh in 1843, the Punjab in 1849, Awadh in 1856. Where it did not annex it made treaties, and the princes it left in place became subordinate allies with a British Resident at court.

The Company also built the instruments of the later state: a land revenue fixed in perpetuity on Bengal's zamindars, the Great Trigonometrical Survey, English-language education, railways and the telegraph. The rising of 1857 ended its rule, and in 1858 Parliament transferred its territories to the Crown.

The outline is Company territory around 1805, after the defeat of Tipu Sultan and the Second Anglo-Maratha War of 1803 to 1805: Bengal, Bihar and coastal Orissa, the Ganga-Yamuna doab up to Delhi, and the Madras Presidency. It leaves out the scattered Bombay territories and the allied states. It is approximate, after Schwartzberg's plate on the expansion of British power from 1766 to 1819.

## Events (18)

- 1764 CE – 1765 CE — [Battle of Buxar](https://indianepics.online/event/buxar-1764.md): Munro's Company army defeats Mir Qasim, Shuja-ud-Daula and Shah Alam II; a year later the emperor grants the Company the diwani of Bengal.
- 1773 CE – 1774 CE — [The Regulating Act and Warren Hastings](https://indianepics.online/event/regulating-act-1773.md): Parliament puts the Company's Indian government under a Governor-General at Calcutta; Warren Hastings becomes the first in 1774.
- 1793 CE — [The Permanent Settlement](https://indianepics.online/event/permanent-settlement-1793.md): Cornwallis fixes Bengal's land revenue in perpetuity and makes the zamindars owners of the land, whose estates are sold if they fall behind.
- 1799 CE — [Fall of Srirangapatna](https://indianepics.online/event/srirangapatna-1799.md): Company and Hyderabad troops storm Tipu Sultan's island capital on 4 May; Tipu dies at the walls and Mysore is partitioned.
- 1802 CE — [The Great Trigonometrical Survey begins](https://indianepics.online/event/great-arc-1802.md): On 10 April 1802 William Lambton lays a 12 km baseline near Madras, the start of the survey that mapped India and measured Everest.
- 1806 CE — [The Vellore mutiny](https://indianepics.online/event/vellore-mutiny-1806.md): Sepoys in Vellore fort rise against new dress rules on 10 July and kill over a hundred British troops; Gillespie's cavalry retakes the fort by morning.
- 1817 CE – 1818 CE — [The end of the Peshwa](https://indianepics.online/event/maratha-war-1818.md): After Khadki and Koregaon, Baji Rao II surrenders in June 1818; the Peshwa's lands are annexed and the Maratha confederacy ends.
- 1829 CE – 1835 CE — [Sati abolished, English adopted](https://indianepics.online/event/bentinck-reforms-1829.md): Bentinck outlaws sati in Bengal in December 1829; in 1835, after Macaulay's Minute, the Company's education funds go to English-medium teaching.
- 1843 CE — [Conquest of Sindh](https://indianepics.online/event/sindh-1843.md): Charles Napier defeats the Talpur amirs at Miani and Dubba near Hyderabad, and the Company annexes Sindh and the lower Indus.
- 1848 CE – 1856 CE — [Lapse and annexation](https://indianepics.online/event/doctrine-of-lapse.md): Dalhousie annexes states whose rulers die without a natural heir, from Satara in 1848 to Jhansi and Nagpur in 1854, and takes Awadh in 1856.
- 1849 CE — [Annexation of the Punjab](https://indianepics.online/event/punjab-annexation-1849.md): After the second Anglo-Sikh war Dalhousie annexes Ranjit Singh's kingdom on 29 March; the boy Maharaja Duleep Singh is made to give up the Koh-i-Noor.
- 1853 CE – 1856 CE — [The first train, and the telegraph](https://indianepics.online/event/railway-1853.md): On 16 April 1853 the first passenger train runs 34 km from Bori Bunder to Thane; by 1856 telegraph wires link Calcutta, Agra, Bombay and Madras.
- 1857 CE — [Mangal Pandey at Barrackpore](https://indianepics.online/event/barrackpore-1857.md): On 29 March sepoy Mangal Pandey of the 34th Bengal Native Infantry attacks his officers on parade; he is hanged on 8 April and his regiment disbanded.
- 1857 CE – 1858 CE — [Meerut to Delhi](https://indianepics.online/event/delhi-1857.md): Sepoys rise at Meerut on 10 May and ride to Delhi to proclaim Bahadur Shah Zafar; the British retake the city in September and exile him to Rangoon.
- 1857 CE — [Kanpur, 1857](https://indianepics.online/event/kanpur-1857.md): Nana Sahib's forces besiege Wheeler's entrenchment; the survivors are killed at Satichaura Ghat and the Bibighar, and Havelock retakes the city in July.
- 1857 CE – 1858 CE — [Lucknow and Begum Hazrat Mahal](https://indianepics.online/event/lucknow-1857.md): Awadh rises; the British are besieged in the Residency for nearly five months while Begum Hazrat Mahal rules in her son's name until March 1858.
- 1857 CE – 1858 CE — [Kunwar Singh of Jagdishpur](https://indianepics.online/event/kunwar-singh-1857.md): The aged zamindar of Jagdishpur leads the Danapur mutineers, besieges Arrah, fights across north India and dies at home in April 1858.
- 1858 CE – 1859 CE — [Rani Lakshmibai and Tatya Tope](https://indianepics.online/event/lakshmibai-1858.md): Hugh Rose storms Jhansi in April 1858; the Rani and Tatya Tope seize Gwalior, where she dies fighting in June; Tope is hanged in 1859.


# Battle of Buxar
**बक्सर का युद्ध**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/buxar-1764/
- Chapter: [Company rule](https://indianepics.online/chapter/company.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1764 CE – 1765 CE
- Where: Buxar, Bihar (25.564, 83.978)
- Tags: war, colonial, political

## Summary

Munro's Company army defeats Mir Qasim, Shuja-ud-Daula and Shah Alam II; a year later the emperor grants the Company the diwani of Bengal.

मुनरो की कंपनी सेना ने मीर क़ासिम, शुजाउद्दौला और शाह आलम द्वितीय को हराया; एक वर्ष बाद बादशाह ने बंगाल की दीवानी कंपनी को सौंप दी।

## Account

On 22 October 1764 Hector Munro's army of about 7,000 broke the combined forces of Mir Qasim, the deposed Nawab of Bengal, Shuja-ud-Daula of Awadh and the Mughal emperor Shah Alam II beside the Ganga at Buxar. Plassey had been decided by a conspiracy; Buxar was won in the field, against the emperor himself.

By the treaties of Allahabad in August 1765 Clive returned most of Awadh to Shuja for an indemnity and took from Shah Alam the diwani, the right to collect the revenue of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, in return for a tribute of 26 lakh rupees a year. The Company became a Mughal revenue officer with its own army, and the revenue of the richest province paid for its wars from then on.

Historians differ on how much Buxar changed by itself. The Company was already the real power in Bengal after 1757; the diwani gave that power a legal form the Mughal world recognised.

## Sources

- Dodwell (ed.), The Cambridge History of India, vol. V: British India 1497-1858 (1929) — https://archive.org/details/cambridgehistory0005unse_q9a5
- Marshall, Bengal: The British Bridgehead, Eastern India 1740-1828 (1987)

## Image

Sir Hector Munro by David Martin. David Martin, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASir_Hector_Munro_by_David_Martin.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# The Regulating Act and Warren Hastings
**रेग्युलेटिंग एक्ट और वॉरेन हेस्टिंग्स**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/regulating-act-1773/
- Chapter: [Company rule](https://indianepics.online/chapter/company.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1773 CE – 1774 CE
- Where: Fort William, Calcutta (22.5565, 88.3383)
- Tags: colonial, political

## Summary

Parliament puts the Company's Indian government under a Governor-General at Calcutta; Warren Hastings becomes the first in 1774.

संसद ने कंपनी के भारतीय शासन को कलकत्ता में एक गवर्नर-जनरल के अधीन किया; 1774 में वॉरेन हेस्टिंग्स पहले गवर्नर-जनरल बने।

## Account

The Bengal famine of 1770 and a Company close to bankruptcy brought Parliament into the government of India for the first time. The Act, which received royal assent in June 1773, made the Governor of Bengal Governor-General of Fort William with a council of four, gave him a limited authority over Bombay and Madras in matters of war and peace, and set up a Supreme Court at Calcutta with judges sent from England.

Warren Hastings took office in October 1774 and governed until 1785, often outvoted by his own council. His years fixed Calcutta as the capital of British India, which it remained until 1911. Pitt's India Act of 1784 added a Board of Control in London.

His rule remains disputed. The hanging of Nanda Kumar in 1775, the Rohilla war and his treatment of Chait Singh of Benares and the Begums of Awadh led to his impeachment in 1788; after a trial lasting seven years he was acquitted in 1795.

## Sources

- East India Company Act 1772 (Regulating Act), 13 Geo. 3 c. 63, as enacted — https://www.legislation.gov.uk/apgb/Geo3/13/63/contents/enacted
- Forrest (ed.), Selections from the State Papers of the Governors-General of India: Warren Hastings (1910) — https://archive.org/details/selectionsfromst01forruoft

## Image

Warren Hastings greyscale. Unknown sourceUnknown source, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AWarren_Hastings_greyscale.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# The Permanent Settlement
**स्थायी बंदोबस्त**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/permanent-settlement-1793/
- Chapter: [Company rule](https://indianepics.online/chapter/company.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1793 CE
- Where: Calcutta, Bengal (22.572, 88.364)
- Tags: colonial, political

## Summary

Cornwallis fixes Bengal's land revenue in perpetuity and makes the zamindars owners of the land, whose estates are sold if they fall behind.

कॉर्नवालिस ने बंगाल का भू-राजस्व सदा के लिए तय किया और ज़मींदारों को भूमि का स्वामी बनाया; बकाया होने पर उनकी ज़मींदारी नीलाम होती थी।

## Account

Proclaimed on 22 March 1793 and enacted as Regulation I of that year, the settlement fixed the land revenue of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa for ever at the level of the decennial assessment of 1789-90, and recognised the zamindars who paid it as proprietors of the soil. An estate that missed a payment could be auctioned, and in the next two decades a large share of the old zamindaris changed hands.

The Company wanted a predictable revenue and a loyal landed class, and got both, at the expense of the cultivators, whose rights the settlement barely defined. Later British provinces chose differently: Madras and Bombay mostly settled directly with peasants under the ryotwari system, and the north-west with village communities.

Whether the settlement helped or held back Bengal's agriculture has been argued since the Fifth Report of 1812. Ranajit Guha traced its ideas to Philip Francis and the French physiocrats.

## Sources

- The Fifth Report from the Select Committee on the Affairs of the East India Company, 1812 (Firminger ed., 1917), vol. I — https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.206958
- Guha, A Rule of Property for Bengal (1963)

## Image

Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis. Thomas Gainsborough, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ALord_Cornwallis.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Fall of Srirangapatna
**श्रीरंगपट्टण का पतन**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/srirangapatna-1799/
- Chapter: [Company rule](https://indianepics.online/chapter/company.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1799 CE
- Where: Srirangapatna, Karnataka (12.422, 76.693)
- Tags: war, colonial, political

## Summary

Company and Hyderabad troops storm Tipu Sultan's island capital on 4 May; Tipu dies at the walls and Mysore is partitioned.

4 मई को कंपनी और हैदराबाद की सेनाओं ने टीपू सुल्तान की द्वीप-राजधानी पर धावा बोला; टीपू दीवारों पर मारा गया और मैसूर बाँट दिया गया।

## Account

The fourth Anglo-Mysore war was short. Richard Wellesley, the Governor-General, citing Tipu's approaches to the French, sent armies from Madras and Bombay together with the Nizam's contingent. General Harris laid siege to Srirangapatna, on an island in the Kaveri, in April 1799, and the breach was stormed on 4 May. Tipu's body was found that evening near the water gate.

Mysore was divided. The Company took Canara, Coimbatore and the coast; the Nizam took districts in the north, which he ceded to the Company in 1800; and Krishnaraja Wodeyar III, a boy of nearly five, was installed at Mysore as a subsidiary ally. After 1799 the Marathas were the last large independent power in the peninsula.

Tipu is remembered both as a moderniser who fought the Company to the end and as a ruler whose campaigns in Coorg and Malabar included forced conversions. Both records are documented. Karnataka's official celebration of his birth anniversary, held from 2015 and dropped in 2019, turned that argument into party politics.

## Sources

- Beatson, A View of the Origin and Conduct of the War with Tippoo Sultaun (1800) — https://archive.org/details/india.history.resource.153

## Image

The storming of Seringapatam 2. Unknown authorUnknown author, CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AThe_storming_of_Seringapatam_2.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# The Great Trigonometrical Survey begins
**महान त्रिकोणमितीय सर्वेक्षण का आरंभ**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/great-arc-1802/
- Chapter: [Company rule](https://indianepics.online/chapter/company.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1802 CE
- Where: St Thomas Mount, Chennai (13.005, 80.194)
- Tags: science, colonial

## Summary

On 10 April 1802 William Lambton lays a 12 km baseline near Madras, the start of the survey that mapped India and measured Everest.

10 अप्रैल 1802 को विलियम लैम्बटन ने मद्रास के पास 12 किमी लंबी आधार-रेखा नापी; इसी सर्वेक्षण ने भारत का मानचित्र बनाया और एवरेस्ट को नापा।

## Account

Lambton laid his first baseline across the flat ground between St Thomas Mount and Perumbakkam, about 7.5 miles long, measured with a steel chain. From it a chain of triangles was carried across the peninsula and then north along the meridian near 78 degrees east. George Everest, who succeeded him in 1823, extended this Great Arc from Cape Comorin to the foothills of the Himalaya.

The Survey of India's maps were built on these triangles for more than a century. The survey fixed positions and heights to a standard no earlier map approached, and turned territory the Company claimed into territory it could measure, tax and defend.

In 1852 computations in the survey's Calcutta office identified Peak XV, on the Nepal-Tibet border, as the highest mountain then known. The work is traditionally credited to the chief computer Radhanath Sikdar, though the well-known story of his announcement is anecdotal. Andrew Waugh published the height, 29,002 feet, in 1856, and the peak was named after Everest, over his own objection, in 1865.

## Sources

- Walker, Account of the Operations of the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India, vol. I (1870) — https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.176666
- Phillimore, Historical Records of the Survey of India, vol. I, 1800 to 1815 — https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.11481
- Keay, The Great Arc (2000)

## Image

William Lambton. Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AWilliam_Lambton.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# The Vellore mutiny
**वेल्लोर विद्रोह**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/vellore-mutiny-1806/
- Chapter: [Company rule](https://indianepics.online/chapter/company.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1806 CE
- Where: Vellore Fort, Tamil Nadu (12.921, 79.129)
- Tags: war, colonial, religion

## Summary

Sepoys in Vellore fort rise against new dress rules on 10 July and kill over a hundred British troops; Gillespie's cavalry retakes the fort by morning.

नई वर्दी के नियमों के विरोध में 10 जुलाई को वेल्लोर क़िले के सिपाहियों ने विद्रोह कर सौ से अधिक ब्रिटिश सैनिक मारे; सुबह तक गिलेस्पी के घुड़सवारों ने क़िला वापस ले लिया।

## Account

New regulations in the Madras army forbade caste marks and earrings, ordered chins shaved and introduced a round hat with a leather cockade, which Hindu and Muslim sepoys alike read as a step towards conversion. In the early hours of 10 July 1806 men of the three Madras battalions in Vellore fort, where Tipu Sultan's sons were held, killed fourteen of their officers and about 115 men of the 69th Regiment, and raised Tipu's flag.

Colonel Gillespie rode in from Arcot, some 25 kilometres away, blew in the gate and recaptured the fort the same morning. About 350 sepoys were killed and more were later executed, some blown from guns. The regulations were withdrawn, the Governor of Madras, Lord William Bentinck, was recalled, and Tipu's family was moved to Calcutta.

Fifty years before 1857, Vellore showed the Company the danger of touching its soldiers' religion. Historians disagree over whether it was a planned rising on behalf of Tipu's house or a spontaneous protest.

## Sources

- Papers relating to East India Affairs: Mutiny at Vellore (House of Commons, 1813) — https://archive.org/details/10213517bsb

## Image

Vellore Fort Moat. Tom Maisey, CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AVellore_Fort_Moat.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# The end of the Peshwa
**पेशवाई का अंत**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/maratha-war-1818/
- Chapter: [Company rule](https://indianepics.online/chapter/company.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1817 CE – 1818 CE
- Where: Shaniwar Wada, Pune (18.5195, 73.8553)
- Tags: war, colonial, political

## Summary

After Khadki and Koregaon, Baji Rao II surrenders in June 1818; the Peshwa's lands are annexed and the Maratha confederacy ends.

खड़की और कोरेगाँव के बाद जून 1818 में बाजीराव द्वितीय ने आत्मसमर्पण किया; पेशवा के इलाक़े कंपनी में मिला लिए गए और मराठा संघ का अंत हुआ।

## Account

The third Anglo-Maratha war grew out of the Company's campaign against the Pindaris in 1817 and the Peshwa's attack on the British Residency at Pune. Baji Rao II was beaten at Khadki on 5 November 1817, and the Union Jack went up over his palace at Shaniwar Wada on 17 November. The Bhonsle of Nagpur and the Holkar army were defeated within weeks, at Sitabuldi and Mahidpur.

Baji Rao surrendered to John Malcolm on 3 June 1818 and was pensioned off to Bithur near Kanpur, where his adopted son Nana Sahib grew up. The Peshwa's territories went to the Bombay Presidency, and a small state was revived at Satara for the Chhatrapati. The map of western and central India was now the Company's to draw.

On 1 January 1818 about 800 Company sepoys, many of them Mahars, held the village of Koregaon on the Bhima against a much larger part of the Peshwa's army, which broke off that night as General Joseph Smith's division approached. The British obelisk there records a victory; whether it was one or a standoff is disputed. Since Ambedkar's visit in 1927 the site has been a place of Dalit commemoration, and what it stands for is contested.

## Sources

- Blacker, Memoir of the Operations of the British Army in India during the Mahratta War of 1817, 1818 and 1819 (1821) — https://archive.org/details/india.history.resource.384
- The Hindu, How a British war memorial became a symbol of Dalit pride (2018) — https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/the-legend-of-the-1818-battle-of-bhima-koregaon/article22352514.ece

## Image

Shaniwar wada fort mansion pune 02. Mayurthopate, CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AShaniwar_wada_fort_mansion_pune_02.JPG

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Sati abolished, English adopted
**सती प्रथा का अंत, अंग्रेज़ी शिक्षा का आरंभ**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/bentinck-reforms-1829/
- Chapter: [Company rule](https://indianepics.online/chapter/company.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1829 CE – 1835 CE
- Where: Government House, Calcutta (22.5697, 88.3487)
- Tags: colonial, religion, language

## Summary

Bentinck outlaws sati in Bengal in December 1829; in 1835, after Macaulay's Minute, the Company's education funds go to English-medium teaching.

दिसंबर 1829 में बेंटिंक ने बंगाल में सती प्रथा को अवैध घोषित किया; 1835 में मैकॉले के शिक्षा संबंधी 'मिनट' के बाद कंपनी का शिक्षा-धन अंग्रेज़ी माध्यम की पढ़ाई को मिला।

## Account

Regulation XVII of 4 December 1829 declared the burning or burying alive of widows illegal and punishable in the Bengal Presidency; Madras and Bombay followed in 1830. Rammohun Roy had argued against the practice in print for more than a decade. Orthodox Calcutta appealed to the Privy Council against the ban, which dismissed the appeal in 1832.

On 2 February 1835 Thomas Babington Macaulay, law member of the Governor-General's council, wrote his Minute on Education, dismissing Sanskrit and Arabic learning and proposing to form a class "Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste". Bentinck's resolution of 7 March 1835 directed the Company's education funds to teaching in English, and Act XXIX of 1837 began replacing Persian in the courts and revenue offices with English and the local languages.

Both measures are read in two ways: as reforms Indian reformers had asked for, and as a colonial state's claim to remake Indian society. Lata Mani has argued that the sati debate was conducted over the heads of the women it concerned.

## Sources

- Sharp (ed.), Selections from Educational Records, Part I, 1781-1839 (1920) — https://archive.org/details/apwm_selections-from-educational-records-part-1-by-h.-sharp-1920-calcutta-superintend (Macaulay's Minute of 2 February 1835 and the resolution of 7 March 1835)
- The English Works of Raja Rammohun Roy (Ghose ed., 1901) — https://archive.org/details/theenglishworks01rammuoft
- Mani, Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial India (1998)

## Image

Portrait of Raja Ram Mohan Roylabel QS:Len,"Portrait of Raja Ram Mohan Roy". anonymous, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABust_portrait_of_the_Hindu_reformer_Ram_Mohan_Roy..jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Conquest of Sindh
**सिंध की विजय**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/sindh-1843/
- Chapter: [Company rule](https://indianepics.online/chapter/company.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1843 CE
- Where: Miani, north of Hyderabad, Sindh (Pakistan) (25.483, 68.395)
- Tags: war, colonial

## Summary

Charles Napier defeats the Talpur amirs at Miani and Dubba near Hyderabad, and the Company annexes Sindh and the lower Indus.

चार्ल्स नेपियर ने हैदराबाद के पास मियानी और दुब्बा में तालपुर अमीरों को हराया, और कंपनी ने सिंध व निचली सिंधु घाटी को मिला लिया।

## Account

Sindh's Talpur amirs had been made to let British armies cross their country to Afghanistan in 1838-39. After the disaster at Kabul, Charles Napier, sent to impose a harsher treaty, provoked a war. On 17 February 1843 his force of about 2,800 broke a far larger Baluch army at Miani, and on 24 March it won again at Dubba, also near Hyderabad. The pin marks Miani, about six miles north of the city beside the Fuleli. Sindh was annexed, governed by Napier until 1847, and then attached to the Bombay Presidency.

The conquest gave the Company the lower Indus and the port of Karachi, which grew, once railways reached it, into the Punjab's main port.

Even contemporaries thought the war unjust; Napier's own journal called the seizure a piece of rascality, if a useful one. The one-word dispatch "Peccavi" ("I have sinned") attributed to him was a joke printed in Punch.

## Sources

- W. F. P. Napier, The Conquest of Scinde (1845) — https://archive.org/details/pvpE_the-conquest-of-scinde-by-major-general-wfp-napier-london-1845-t-and-w-boone

## Image

The Battle of Meeanee, 17 February 1843 title QS:P1476,en:"The Battle of Meeanee, 17 February 1843 "label QS:Len,"The Battle of Meeanee, 17 February 1843 ". Edward Armitage, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AEdward_Armitage_(1817-96)_-_The_Battle_of_Meeanee%2C_17_February_1843_-_RCIN_407185_-_Royal_Collection.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Lapse and annexation
**हड़प नीति और विलय**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/doctrine-of-lapse/
- Chapter: [Company rule](https://indianepics.online/chapter/company.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1848 CE – 1856 CE
- Where: Nagpur, Maharashtra (21.146, 79.088)
- Tags: colonial, political

## Summary

Dalhousie annexes states whose rulers die without a natural heir, from Satara in 1848 to Jhansi and Nagpur in 1854, and takes Awadh in 1856.

डलहौज़ी ने बिना प्राकृतिक उत्तराधिकारी वाले राज्यों को हड़प लिया, 1848 में सतारा से 1854 में झाँसी और नागपुर तक, और 1856 में अवध भी ले लिया।

## Account

Hindu law let a ruler without sons adopt an heir. Dalhousie, Governor-General from 1848, held that a dependent state whose ruler died without a natural heir lapsed to the paramount power, and refused to recognise such adoptions: Satara in 1848, Jaitpur and Sambalpur in 1849, Udaipur in Chhattisgarh in 1852, and in 1854 Jhansi and the large Bhonsle kingdom of Nagpur, whose lands became the core of the Central Provinces. He also ended the pension of the last Peshwa's adopted son, Nana Sahib, and the title of the Nawab of the Carnatic.

Awadh was taken in February 1856 on a different ground, misgovernment, and the deposed Wajid Ali Shah moved to Calcutta, where he spent the rest of his life. The annexations filled in the Company's map, and each one left a dispossessed court: Jhansi, Nana Sahib's Bithur and Lucknow all became centres of the rising a year later.

The principle did not begin with Dalhousie; earlier governments had applied it to small states. What was new was its systematic use. The Crown abandoned it after 1858.

## Sources

- Arnold, The Marquis of Dalhousie's Administration of British India, vol. I (1862) — https://archive.org/details/TheMarquisOfDalhousieSAdministrationOfBritishIndiaVolI

## Image

Marquess of Dalhousie. Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AMarquess_of_Dalhousie.JPG

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Annexation of the Punjab
**पंजाब का विलय**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/punjab-annexation-1849/
- Chapter: [Company rule](https://indianepics.online/chapter/company.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1849 CE
- Where: Lahore Fort, Punjab (Pakistan) (31.588, 74.315)
- Tags: war, colonial, political

## Summary

After the second Anglo-Sikh war Dalhousie annexes Ranjit Singh's kingdom on 29 March; the boy Maharaja Duleep Singh is made to give up the Koh-i-Noor.

दूसरे आंग्ल-सिख युद्ध के बाद 29 मार्च को डलहौज़ी ने रणजीत सिंह का राज्य मिला लिया; बालक महाराजा दलीप सिंह से कोहिनूर ले लिया गया।

## Account

Ranjit Singh's death in 1839 left the strongest Indian state of its day to a run of short reigns and an army that made and unmade ministers. The first Anglo-Sikh war of 1845-46 cost the kingdom the Jalandhar doab and Kashmir, which the Company sold to Gulab Singh of Jammu. A revolt at Multan in 1848 became the second war; after the bloody stalemate at Chillianwala in January 1849 and defeat at Gujrat on 21 February, the Punjab was annexed by proclamation on 29 March.

Annexation brought the Company's frontier to the Khyber and the Afghan hills, the line the Raj would garrison for a century. The Punjab's new administrators built canals and recruited the regiments that helped retake Delhi in 1857.

Duleep Singh, then ten, was sent to England; he later returned to Sikhism and tried to go back to India. The Koh-i-Noor, surrendered under the last treaty of Lahore, has been in the British crown jewels since 1850. India has asked for it back since 1947, and Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan have also claimed it.

## Sources

- Papers relating to the Punjab, 1847-1849 (presented to Parliament, 1849) — https://archive.org/details/papersrelatingto00grea

## Image

Maharajah Duleep Singh. Franz Xaver Winterhalter, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ADalip_singh_winterhalter.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# The first train, and the telegraph
**पहली रेलगाड़ी और तार**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/railway-1853/
- Chapter: [Company rule](https://indianepics.online/chapter/company.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1853 CE – 1856 CE
- Where: Bori Bunder, Bombay (18.94, 72.835)
- Tags: science, trade, colonial

## Summary

On 16 April 1853 the first passenger train runs 34 km from Bori Bunder to Thane; by 1856 telegraph wires link Calcutta, Agra, Bombay and Madras.

16 अप्रैल 1853 को पहली यात्री रेलगाड़ी बोरी बंदर से ठाणे तक 34 किमी चली; 1856 तक तार लाइनों ने कलकत्ता, आगरा, बंबई और मद्रास को जोड़ दिया।

## Account

The Great Indian Peninsula Railway's first train, fourteen carriages behind three locomotives, left Bori Bunder in the afternoon of 16 April 1853 with about 400 passengers and ran 21 miles to Thane. The East Indian Railway opened its first line out of Howrah the next year. Dalhousie's railway minute of 1853 laid out the trunk routes, built by private companies on a guaranteed return of five per cent paid from Indian revenues.

The telegraph came at the same time. William O'Shaughnessy's line from Calcutta to Diamond Harbour opened in 1851, and by 1856 some 4,000 miles of wire connected Calcutta, Agra, Bombay, Madras and Peshawar. On 11 May 1857 the Delhi telegraph office sent the first warning of the rising up the line to the Punjab.

The guarantee system made Indian railways expensive and tied them to British industry, and nationalists from Dadabhai Naoroji onward counted them part of the drain of wealth. They also knit the subcontinent into a single market.

## Sources

- Danvers, Report to the Secretary of State for India in Council on Railways in India to the end of the year 1859 (1860) — https://archive.org/details/india.history.resource.109260
- Arnold, The Marquis of Dalhousie's Administration of British India, vol. I (1862) — https://archive.org/details/TheMarquisOfDalhousieSAdministrationOfBritishIndiaVolI
- Shridharani, Story of the Indian Telegraphs: A Century of Progress — https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.242905 (Diamond Harbour line 1851; 4,000 miles to Peshawar, Bombay and Madras by February 1856)

## Image

Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (Victoria Terminus). Joe Ravi, CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AChhatrapati_Shivaji_Terminus_(Victoria_Terminus).jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Mangal Pandey at Barrackpore
**बैरकपुर में मंगल पांडे**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/barrackpore-1857/
- Chapter: [Company rule](https://indianepics.online/chapter/company.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1857 CE
- Where: Barrackpore, West Bengal (22.76, 88.37)
- Tags: war, colonial

## Summary

On 29 March sepoy Mangal Pandey of the 34th Bengal Native Infantry attacks his officers on parade; he is hanged on 8 April and his regiment disbanded.

29 मार्च को 34वीं बंगाल नेटिव इन्फ़ैंट्री के सिपाही मंगल पांडे ने परेड मैदान पर अपने अफ़सरों पर हमला किया; 8 अप्रैल को उन्हें फाँसी दी गई और पलटन भंग कर दी गई।

## Account

Cartridges for the new Enfield rifle, rumoured to be greased with cow and pig fat, had already caused trouble at Barrackpore and Berhampore early in 1857. On the afternoon of 29 March Mangal Pandey, armed and calling on his comrades to join him, wounded the adjutant and a sergeant-major on the parade ground, while the quarter guard under Jemadar Ishwari Prasad stood by. Pandey shot himself when cornered but survived; he was court-martialled and hanged on 8 April, the jemadar on 21 April, and the 34th was disbanded in May.

Barrackpore saw the first armed attack on British officers in 1857, and it gave the British their name for the rebels, "Pandies". Six weeks later the rising began in earnest at Meerut.

What drove him is unclear. British accounts said he was intoxicated; nationalist history since Savarkar's book of 1909 made him the first martyr of a war of independence.

## Sources

- Kaye, A History of the Sepoy War in India, 1857-1858, vol. I — https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.1672
- Appendix to Papers relative to the Mutinies in the East Indies (House of Commons, 1857) — https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.94075

## Image

Mangal pandey gimp. IndianCow at English Wikipedia, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AMangal_pandey_gimp.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Meerut to Delhi
**मेरठ से दिल्ली**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/delhi-1857/
- Chapter: [Company rule](https://indianepics.online/chapter/company.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1857 CE – 1858 CE
- Where: Meerut Cantonment, Uttar Pradesh (28.99, 77.7)
- Tags: war, colonial, political

## Summary

Sepoys rise at Meerut on 10 May and ride to Delhi to proclaim Bahadur Shah Zafar; the British retake the city in September and exile him to Rangoon.

10 मई को मेरठ में सिपाहियों ने विद्रोह किया और दिल्ली जाकर बहादुर शाह ज़फ़र को अपना बादशाह माना; सितंबर में अंग्रेज़ों ने दिल्ली वापस ली और उन्हें रंगून निर्वासित किया।

## Account

On 9 May 1857 eighty-five troopers of the 3rd Light Cavalry who had refused the new cartridges were publicly shackled at Meerut. The next evening the regiments there rose, freed them, killed British officers and civilians, and rode through the night to Delhi, about 65 kilometres to the south-west. On 11 May they entered the Red Fort and asked the 81-year-old Bahadur Shah Zafar to lead them, and the rising took the Mughal emperor's name across the north.

Delhi held out through a summer siege by a British force on the Ridge, reinforced from the Punjab. The city was stormed between 14 and 20 September; Zafar surrendered at Humayun's tomb, two of his sons and a grandson were shot by William Hodson outside the gate since called the Khooni Darwaza, and much of the population was driven out. Tried by a military commission in the Red Fort in early 1858, Zafar was exiled to Rangoon, where he died in 1862.

Whether 1857 was a mutiny, a peasant war or a first war of independence has been argued ever since; in different places it was each of these. Zafar's own part, reluctant figurehead or real leader, is also disputed.

## Sources

- Proceedings on the Trial of Muhammad Bahadur Shah, Titular King of Delhi (1858; reprint 1895) — https://archive.org/details/dli.csl.7304
- Dalrymple, The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi 1857 (2006)

## Image

Bahadur Shah Zafar. Robert Tytler and Charles Shepard, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABahadur_Shah_Zafar.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Kanpur, 1857
**कानपुर, 1857**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/kanpur-1857/
- Chapter: [Company rule](https://indianepics.online/chapter/company.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1857 CE
- Where: Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh (26.4607, 80.3334)
- Tags: war, colonial

## Summary

Nana Sahib's forces besiege Wheeler's entrenchment; the survivors are killed at Satichaura Ghat and the Bibighar, and Havelock retakes the city in July.

नाना साहेब की सेना ने व्हीलर की मोर्चाबंदी घेरी; बचे हुए लोग सतीचौरा घाट और बीबीघर में मारे गए, और जुलाई में हैवलॉक ने शहर वापस ले लिया।

## Account

At Kanpur the Bengal regiments rose in early June and Nana Sahib, the adopted son of the last Peshwa, took their lead. General Wheeler's garrison and the European civilians held a poorly built entrenchment under fire for three weeks, then surrendered on a promise of safe passage by boat to Allahabad. On 27 June, at Satichaura Ghat, firing broke out as they embarked and most of the men were killed. About two hundred women and children held captive were killed at the Bibighar on 15 July, as Havelock's relief column approached; he beat Nana's army outside the city the next day and entered it on 17 July.

Kanpur hardened British opinion more than any other event of the war and was used to justify indiscriminate reprisals. Tatya Tope, Nana's commander, came back with the Gwalior contingent in November and briefly held most of the city.

Who gave the signal to fire at Satichaura has never been established, and whether Nana Sahib or his commanders planned it is disputed. By 1859 he had disappeared into Nepal; his fate is unknown.

## Sources

- Mowbray Thomson, The Story of Cawnpore (1859) — https://archive.org/details/storyofcawnpore00thom
- Holmes, A History of the Indian Mutiny (1898) — https://archive.org/details/historyofindian00holm

## Image

Slaughter Ghat, Cawnpore. Robert Christopher Tytler (1818-1872) and Harriet Tytler (1828-1907), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASlaughter_Ghat%2C_Cawnpore.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Lucknow and Begum Hazrat Mahal
**लखनऊ और बेगम हज़रत महल**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/lucknow-1857/
- Chapter: [Company rule](https://indianepics.online/chapter/company.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1857 CE – 1858 CE
- Where: The Residency, Lucknow (26.8606, 80.9264)
- Tags: war, colonial, political

## Summary

Awadh rises; the British are besieged in the Residency for nearly five months while Begum Hazrat Mahal rules in her son's name until March 1858.

अवध में विद्रोह; अंग्रेज़ लगभग पाँच महीने रेज़िडेंसी में घिरे रहे, और बेगम हज़रत महल मार्च 1858 तक अपने बेटे के नाम पर शासन करती रहीं।

## Account

Awadh had been annexed fifteen months before, and the rising there drew in not only the sepoys, many of whom were recruited in Awadh, but its dispossessed taluqdars and peasants. After defeat at Chinhat on 30 June 1857 the British garrison and civilians withdrew into the Residency, where Henry Lawrence was killed in the first days of the siege. Havelock and Outram fought their way in on 25 September but could not get out; Colin Campbell relieved and evacuated the Residency in November.

Begum Hazrat Mahal, a wife of the exiled Wajid Ali Shah, had her young son Birjis Qadr crowned in July and governed in his name. Lucknow fell to Campbell in March 1858. She fought on in the countryside, answered Queen Victoria's proclamation with one of her own, and died in exile in Kathmandu in 1879.

The British kept the ruined Residency as a memorial, its flag never lowered until 1947. Indian historians, Rudrangshu Mukherjee among them, have argued how far the rising in Awadh was a popular revolt rather than a mutiny.

## Sources

- Gubbins, An Account of the Mutinies in Oudh and of the Siege of the Lucknow Residency (1858) — https://archive.org/details/dli.ministry.00034
- Mukherjee, Awadh in Revolt, 1857-1858: A Study of Popular Resistance (1984)

## Image

Ruins of Residency Lucknow - 1880's. Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ARuins_of_Residency_Lucknow_-_1880's.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Kunwar Singh of Jagdishpur
**जगदीशपुर के कुँवर सिंह**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/kunwar-singh-1857/
- Chapter: [Company rule](https://indianepics.online/chapter/company.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1857 CE – 1858 CE
- Where: Jagdishpur, Bhojpur, Bihar (25.468, 84.42)
- Tags: war, colonial

## Summary

The aged zamindar of Jagdishpur leads the Danapur mutineers, besieges Arrah, fights across north India and dies at home in April 1858.

जगदीशपुर के बुज़ुर्ग ज़मींदार ने दानापुर के विद्रोही सिपाहियों का नेतृत्व किया, आरा को घेरा, उत्तर भारत में लड़ते रहे और अप्रैल 1858 में अपने घर लौटकर चल बसे।

## Account

Kunwar Singh, head of the Ujjainiya Rajput house of Jagdishpur and close to eighty, was deep in debt and in dispute with the Company's revenue administration when the regiments at Danapur mutinied on 25 July 1857. He took command, and his men besieged a handful of Britons and about fifty Sikh police in a fortified house at Arrah for a week, until a relief force broke through on 3 August.

Driven from Jagdishpur, he marched west into central India and the Doab, then turned back through Azamgarh to Bihar. Crossing the Ganga in April 1858 he was hit by a bullet and, by the best-known account, cut off his own wounded hand. He beat a British column near Jagdishpur on 23 April and died on 26 April; his brother Amar Singh fought on into 1859.

British and Indian historians have weighed his age, his debts and his motives differently. In Bihar he is the central hero of 1857, remembered as Veer Kunwar Singh.

## Sources

- Datta, Biography of Kunwar Singh and Amar Singh (1957) — https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.505614
- Lok Sabha Secretariat, Babu Veer Kunwar Singh (profile, 2022) — https://sansad.in/uploads/28042022_163217_1021206200_233e69c3e8.pdf

## Image

Kunvar singh. a steel engraving from 'The Indian Empire', Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AKunvar_singh.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Rani Lakshmibai and Tatya Tope
**रानी लक्ष्मीबाई और तात्या टोपे**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/lakshmibai-1858/
- Chapter: [Company rule](https://indianepics.online/chapter/company.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1858 CE – 1859 CE
- Where: Jhansi Fort, Uttar Pradesh (25.458, 78.575)
- Tags: war, colonial

## Summary

Hugh Rose storms Jhansi in April 1858; the Rani and Tatya Tope seize Gwalior, where she dies fighting in June; Tope is hanged in 1859.

अप्रैल 1858 में ह्यू रोज़ ने झाँसी पर धावा बोला; रानी और तात्या टोपे ने ग्वालियर पर क़ब्ज़ा किया, जहाँ जून में रानी लड़ते हुए मारी गईं; 1859 में टोपे को फाँसी दी गई।

## Account

Jhansi had been annexed under the doctrine of lapse in 1854, after the Company refused to recognise the son Lakshmibai's husband had adopted. When the garrison mutinied in June 1857 and the Europeans who had taken refuge in the fort were killed, she took over the government; whether she had any part in the killings is disputed. Hugh Rose's Central India Field Force besieged Jhansi from 24 March 1858, beat off Tatya Tope's relief army at the Betwa, and stormed the city in early April. The Rani escaped by night to Kalpi.

With Tatya Tope and Rao Sahib she seized Gwalior from the Company's ally Scindia on 1 June. Rose followed, and she was killed in a cavalry action at Kotah-ki-Serai on 17 or 18 June 1858; the sources differ on the day. Gwalior was retaken on 19 June. The pin is Jhansi fort; Gwalior is about 100 km to the north.

Tatya Tope kept a rebel army moving through Rajputana and central India for ten more months. Betrayed by Man Singh of Narwar, he was captured in April 1859 and hanged at Shivpuri. Claims by his descendants that another man was hanged in his place have never been substantiated.

## Sources

- Lowe, Central India during the Rebellion of 1857 and 1858 (1860) — https://archive.org/details/centralindiadur00lowegoog
- Holmes, A History of the Indian Mutiny (1898) — https://archive.org/details/historyofindian00holm

## Image

1857 jhansi fort2. Lala Deen Dayal (1844–1905)., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3A1857_jhansi_fort2.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Crown and the freedom struggle
**ब्रिटिश राज और स्वतंत्रता संग्राम**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/chapter/raj/
- Track: evidence
- Span: 1858 CE to 1947 CE
- Boundary shown: british-india-1909 (approximate unless marked traced)

In 1858 the Crown took over the Company's territories and army and promised the princes their thrones. For nearly ninety years India was governed from Calcutta and, after 1911, from Delhi, by a Viceroy answerable to a Secretary of State in London. A census every ten years from 1881, the famine codes and the Survey of India made it a state that counted and mapped its subjects in detail, and railways tied its provinces together.

Opposition grew from petitions into mass movements: the Congress of 1885, Swadeshi after the partition of Bengal, revolutionaries in Bengal, Maharashtra and the Punjab, Gandhi's satyagrahas from Champaran to Dandi, peasant and tribal risings, and the Quit India rising of 1942. Alongside ran the politics of separate electorates and the demand for Pakistan, which ended in partition in 1947.

The outline is the Indian Empire around 1909, after the Imperial Gazetteer atlas. British provinces and princely states are drawn as one shape, since a single ring cannot show the several hundred states inside it. It includes Burma, then a province of British India, and leaves out Aden (part of British India until 1937), Ceylon, Nepal, Bhutan and the island groups.

## Events (32)

- 1858 CE — [The Crown takes over](https://indianepics.online/event/queens-proclamation-1858.md): On 1 November 1858 Canning reads the Queen's Proclamation at Allahabad; the Company's rule ends and India passes to the Crown.
- 1876 CE – 1878 CE — [The Great Famine of 1876 to 1878](https://indianepics.online/event/famine-1876.md): Drought across the Deccan and the south kills an estimated 5 to 10 million people; the 1880 Famine Commission leads to India's first famine codes.
- 1879 CE – 1899 CE — [Phadke's rising and the Chapekar brothers](https://indianepics.online/event/phadke-chapekar.md): Vasudev Balwant Phadke's armed band raids the country around Pune in 1879; in 1897 the Chapekar brothers shoot plague commissioner Rand.
- 1883 CE – 1885 CE — [The Ilbert Bill and the first Congress](https://indianepics.online/event/congress-1885.md): After the European outcry against the Ilbert Bill, 72 delegates meet in Bombay on 28 December 1885 as the first Indian National Congress.
- 1899 CE – 1900 CE — [Birsa Munda's ulgulan](https://indianepics.online/event/birsa-ulgulan.md): Birsa Munda leads the Munda rising of 1899 to 1900 against landlords, missions and the Raj; he dies in Ranchi jail aged about 25.
- 1905 CE – 1911 CE — [The partition of Bengal and Swadeshi](https://indianepics.online/event/bengal-partition-1905.md): Curzon splits Bengal in 1905; a Calcutta Town Hall meeting answers with a boycott of British goods, and the partition is reversed in 1911.
- 1906 CE – 1909 CE — [The Muslim League and separate electorates](https://indianepics.online/event/muslim-league-1906.md): The All-India Muslim League is founded at Dacca on 30 December 1906; the Morley–Minto reforms of 1909 give Muslims separate electorates.
- 1908 CE — [Khudiram Bose and Tilak's trial](https://indianepics.online/event/muzaffarpur-1908.md): A bomb meant for a magistrate kills two Englishwomen at Muzaffarpur; Khudiram Bose is hanged, and Tilak is sent to Mandalay for his articles on it.
- 1911 CE – 1921 CE — [Savarkar and the Cellular Jail](https://indianepics.online/event/cellular-jail-1911.md): V. D. Savarkar reaches Port Blair's Cellular Jail in 1911 with two life sentences; he and his brother are moved to mainland jails in 1921.
- 1911 CE – 1931 CE — [The Delhi Durbar and a new capital](https://indianepics.online/event/delhi-durbar-1911.md): At the 1911 Durbar George V announces that the capital will move from Calcutta to Delhi and Bengal will be reunited; New Delhi opens in 1931.
- 1914 CE – 1915 CE — [The Komagata Maru and the Ghadar rising](https://indianepics.online/event/komagata-maru-1914.md): Turned away from Vancouver, the Komagata Maru's passengers are fired on at Budge Budge in 1914; a planned Ghadar mutiny in the Punjab fails in 1915.
- 1916 CE – 1917 CE — [Home Rule and the Lucknow Pact](https://indianepics.online/event/lucknow-pact-1916.md): Tilak and Annie Besant launch Home Rule leagues in 1916; at Lucknow that December the Congress and the Muslim League agree a joint scheme.
- 1917 CE – 1918 CE — [Champaran and Kheda](https://indianepics.online/event/champaran-1917.md): Gandhi defies an order to leave Champaran in April 1917 and takes up the indigo tenants' case; in 1918 he leads Kheda's farmers against revenue.
- 1919 CE — [The Rowlatt Act and Jallianwala Bagh](https://indianepics.online/event/jallianwala-1919.md): On 13 April 1919 troops under General Dyer fire on a crowd in Jallianwala Bagh; the official toll is 379 dead, Indian estimates about 1,000.
- 1920 CE – 1922 CE — [Non-cooperation, Khilafat and Chauri Chaura](https://indianepics.online/event/non-cooperation-1920.md): Congress and the Khilafat committees launch non-cooperation in 1920; after a crowd burns Chauri Chaura police station in 1922, Gandhi calls it off.
- 1922 CE – 1924 CE — [Alluri Sitarama Raju and the Rampa rising](https://indianepics.online/event/rampa-1922.md): Alluri Sitarama Raju leads the hill peoples of the Godavari agency against forest laws, raiding police stations in 1922; he is killed in May 1924.
- 1924 CE – 1925 CE — [The Vaikom satyagraha](https://indianepics.online/event/vaikom-1924.md): From March 1924 volunteers court arrest on the roads around Vaikom temple, barred to Ezhavas and Dalits; three of the four roads open in 1925.
- 1925 CE – 1927 CE — [The Kakori train action](https://indianepics.online/event/kakori-1925.md): On 9 August 1925 Hindustan Republican Association members stop a train at Kakori and seize government cash; four of them are hanged in December 1927.
- 1927 CE — [The Mahad satyagraha](https://indianepics.online/event/mahad-1927.md): On 20 March 1927 Ambedkar leads Dalits to drink from Mahad's Chavdar tank, open to all by law; that December the Manusmriti is burned there.
- 1928 CE — [The Bardoli satyagraha](https://indianepics.online/event/bardoli-1928.md): Bardoli's farmers refuse a 22 per cent rise in land revenue in 1928; an inquiry cuts it to about 6 per cent, and Vallabhbhai Patel becomes Sardar.
- 1928 CE – 1931 CE — [Simon go back, and Bhagat Singh](https://indianepics.online/event/bhagat-singh-1931.md): Lajpat Rai dies after a police beating at Lahore's Simon protest in 1928; Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev are hanged in Lahore jail in March 1931.
- 1930 CE – 1931 CE — [The Salt March](https://indianepics.online/event/dandi-1930.md): Gandhi and 78 marchers walk about 390 km from Sabarmati to Dandi and break the salt law on 6 April 1930, opening civil disobedience.
- 1930 CE – 1934 CE — [The Chittagong armoury raid](https://indianepics.online/event/surya-sen-chittagong-1930.md): Surya Sen's Indian Republican Army seizes Chittagong's armouries on 18 April 1930; Sen is caught in 1933 and hanged in January 1934.
- 1932 CE — [The Round Tables and the Poona Pact](https://indianepics.online/event/poona-pact-1932.md): Gandhi fasts in Yerwada jail against separate electorates for the depressed classes; on 24 September 1932 Ambedkar accepts reserved seats instead.
- 1935 CE – 1940 CE — [The Government of India Act 1935](https://indianepics.online/event/goi-act-1935.md): The 1935 Act gives the provinces elected governments in 1937; its all-India federation never forms, but much of the Act passes into the Constitution.
- 1942 CE – 1944 CE — [Quit India](https://indianepics.online/event/quit-india-1942.md): On 8 August 1942 the Congress passes the Quit India resolution at Gowalia Tank; by the next morning its leaders are jailed and the country rises.
- 1943 CE – 1944 CE — [The Bengal famine](https://indianepics.online/event/bengal-famine-1943.md): Wartime Bengal starves in 1943; the 1945 inquiry counts about 1.5 million dead, later estimates run to 3 million, and the causes are still argued.
- 1943 CE – 1945 CE — [Subhas Bose and the Indian National Army](https://indianepics.online/event/ina-1943.md): Bose leads the INA alongside Japan; its flag flies at Moirang in April 1944 before defeat at Imphal, and his death in 1945 has been disputed ever since.
- 1945 CE – 1946 CE — [Simla and the Cabinet Mission](https://indianepics.online/event/cabinet-mission-1946.md): Talks at Simla in 1945 and the Cabinet Mission plan of May 1946 try to keep India united in a loose federation; both founder on Congress–League mistrust.
- 1945 CE – 1946 CE — [The INA trials and the naval mutiny](https://indianepics.online/event/rin-mutiny-1946.md): The Red Fort trials of three INA officers stir protest in 1945; in February 1946 ratings of the Royal Indian Navy mutiny at Bombay and Karachi.
- 1946 CE — [Direct Action Day](https://indianepics.online/event/direct-action-1946.md): The League's Direct Action Day on 16 August 1946 becomes days of killing in Calcutta; more than 4,000 die, and violence spreads to Noakhali and Bihar.
- 1947 CE — [Mountbatten's 3 June plan](https://indianepics.online/event/dominion-plan-1947.md): On 3 June 1947 Mountbatten announces that British India will be partitioned; the handover is brought forward to August and Parliament passes the act in July.


# The Crown takes over
**कंपनी से ताज तक**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/queens-proclamation-1858/
- Chapter: [Crown and the freedom struggle](https://indianepics.online/chapter/raj.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1858 CE
- Where: Minto Park, Allahabad (25.4321, 81.8618)
- Tags: political, colonial

## Summary

On 1 November 1858 Canning reads the Queen's Proclamation at Allahabad; the Company's rule ends and India passes to the Crown.

1 नवंबर 1858 को कैनिंग ने इलाहाबाद में महारानी की घोषणा पढ़ी; कंपनी का शासन समाप्त हुआ और भारत सीधे ब्रिटिश ताज के अधीन आ गया।

## Account

The Government of India Act of 2 August 1858, passed after the rising of 1857, transferred the East India Company's territories, armies and debts to the Crown. A Secretary of State for India and a council in London replaced the Company's directors, and the Governor-General also became Viceroy. Lord Canning read the Queen's proclamation at a durbar on the riverside ground at Allahabad that was later named Minto Park and, after independence, Madan Mohan Malaviya Park. A commemorative pillar marks the spot.

The proclamation promised to honour treaties with the princes, to seek no more territory, to keep out of religious belief, and to admit subjects "of whatever race or creed" to office. Annexation by lapse ended. The princely states, about two-fifths of the subcontinent, stayed in place under British paramountcy, and this patchwork of direct and indirect rule is the map of the Raj until 1947.

The promise of equal office was slow to be kept. The Indian Civil Service examination was held only in London, and nationalists later quoted the proclamation back as a pledge broken.

## Sources

- Government of India Act 1858 (21 & 22 Vict. c. 106) — https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Vict/21-22/106/contents
- Proclamation by the Queen in Council to the Princes, Chiefs, and People of India, 1 November 1858 — https://archive.org/details/queens-proclamation

## Image

Image victoria proclamation1858c. Moving Here Migration Histories website (Archived), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AImage_victoria_proclamation1858c.JPG

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# The Great Famine of 1876 to 1878
**1876–78 का महाअकाल**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/famine-1876/
- Chapter: [Crown and the freedom struggle](https://indianepics.online/chapter/raj.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1876 CE – 1878 CE
- Where: Bellary, Madras Presidency (15.14, 76.92)
- Tags: colonial, political

## Summary

Drought across the Deccan and the south kills an estimated 5 to 10 million people; the 1880 Famine Commission leads to India's first famine codes.

दक्कन और दक्षिण भारत के सूखे में अनुमानतः 50 लाख से 1 करोड़ लोग मरे; 1880 के अकाल आयोग से भारत की पहली अकाल संहिताएँ बनीं।

## Account

The monsoon failed in 1876 over Madras, Bombay, Mysore and Hyderabad, and again in parts of the north the next year. Lytton's government held to free trade and economy. Grain kept moving out of famine districts by the new railways to where prices were higher, and Richard Temple, sent to direct relief, cut the ration on relief works to a pound of grain and an anna a day. William Cornish, Madras's sanitary commissioner, warned that the "Temple wage" was a starvation diet. On 1 January 1877, in the middle of the famine, Lytton held the Imperial Assemblage at Delhi to proclaim Victoria Empress of India.

The pin marks Bellary, one of the worst-hit districts of the Madras Presidency. The Famine Commission of 1880 under Richard Strachey recommended relief works paid at a living wage, early warning and a famine reserve, and its proposals became the provincial famine codes of the 1880s, the first rules in India binding the state to act in a famine.

The toll is an estimate, since most deaths went unregistered. The Famine Commission put excess deaths in British territory alone at 5.25 million for 1877 and 1878; the estimates for all of India that Mike Davis collects run from 6.1 to 10.3 million. How much of that was the drought and how much the policy is still argued: Davis puts the weight on doctrine and exports, others on the scale of the failure and the limits of transport.

## Sources

- Report of the Indian Famine Commission, Part I (1880) — https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.17292
- Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World (2001)

## Image

Famine in India Natives Waiting for Relief in Bangalore. Illustrated London News/scan by Adam63, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AFamine_in_India_Natives_Waiting_for_Relief_in_Bangalore.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Phadke's rising and the Chapekar brothers
**फड़के का विद्रोह और चापेकर बंधु**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/phadke-chapekar/
- Chapter: [Crown and the freedom struggle](https://indianepics.online/chapter/raj.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1879 CE – 1899 CE
- Where: Ganeshkhind Road, Pune (18.54, 73.836)
- Tags: political, colonial

## Summary

Vasudev Balwant Phadke's armed band raids the country around Pune in 1879; in 1897 the Chapekar brothers shoot plague commissioner Rand.

1879 में वासुदेव बलवंत फड़के के सशस्त्र दल ने पुणे के आसपास छापे मारे; 1897 में चापेकर बंधुओं ने प्लेग कमिश्नर रैंड को गोली मारी।

## Account

Phadke, a clerk in the military accounts office at Poona, raised a band mostly of Ramoshis, later joined by Kolis and Dhangars, after the famine of 1876 to 1878. From early 1879 they raided moneylenders and rich households, beginning at Dhamari in Shirur taluka, to pay for a rising and to feed famine-hit villages. He was captured on 20 July 1879 at Devar Navadgi in Kaladgi district, tried at Poona, and transported for life to Aden, where he died on 17 February 1883. British records called him a dacoit; Marathi memory calls him the father of armed revolt.

Bubonic plague spread through Poona in 1897. The special plague committee under W. C. Rand sent soldiers into homes to search for the sick, remove them to camps and burn infected property. On the night of 22 June 1897, after the Diamond Jubilee celebrations at Government House, Ganeshkhind, Damodar and Balkrishna Chapekar shot Rand and Lieutenant Ayerst on the road back into town. Ayerst died on the spot and Rand on 3 July.

Tilak, whose Kesari had attacked the plague measures, was convicted of sedition later that year, the first of his three trials. Damodar, Balkrishna and their brother Vasudeo Chapekar were hanged in 1898 and 1899.

## Sources

- PIB, Vasudev Balwant Phadke (2016) — https://www.pib.gov.in/newsite/printrelease.aspx?relid=148384
- Sedition Committee 1918, Report (Rowlatt report), chapter on Bombay — https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.285698

## Image

VasudevBalwantPhadkebust. No machine-readable author provided. Nichalp assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY 2.5 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AVasudevBalwantPhadkebust.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# The Ilbert Bill and the first Congress
**इल्बर्ट बिल और पहली कांग्रेस**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/congress-1885/
- Chapter: [Crown and the freedom struggle](https://indianepics.online/chapter/raj.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1883 CE – 1885 CE
- Where: Gokuldas Tejpal Sanskrit College, Gowalia Tank, Bombay (18.9618, 72.8112)
- Tags: political, colonial

## Summary

After the European outcry against the Ilbert Bill, 72 delegates meet in Bombay on 28 December 1885 as the first Indian National Congress.

इल्बर्ट बिल के विरुद्ध यूरोपीय विरोध के बाद 28 दिसंबर 1885 को बंबई में 72 प्रतिनिधि पहली भारतीय राष्ट्रीय कांग्रेस के रूप में जुटे।

## Account

Lytton's Vernacular Press Act of 14 March 1878 let magistrates seize Indian-language papers that printed "seditious" matter; English-language papers were exempt, and the Amrita Bazar Patrika of Calcutta switched to English almost overnight to escape it. Ripon, who succeeded Lytton in 1880, repealed it. In February 1883 his law member, Courtenay Ilbert, introduced a bill to let Indian district magistrates and sessions judges try European defendants. The planters and merchants of Calcutta campaigned against it so hard that in January 1884 the government gave way: a European could demand a jury at least half European.

Educated Indians drew the lesson that organisation counted. Surendranath Banerjea's National Conference met in Calcutta in December 1883, and two years later the Indian National Congress, moved from Poona by an outbreak of cholera, met at the Gokuldas Tejpal Sanskrit College by Gowalia Tank, with W. C. Bonnerjee presiding. Its first resolutions asked for civil service examinations in India as well as London, elected members on the legislative councils, and lower military spending.

A. O. Hume, a retired civil servant, did much of the organising. In words his biographer William Wedderburn printed in 1913, Hume called the Congress a "safety-valve for the escape of great and growing forces", and the phrase stuck. Later historians have given it less weight than the decade of Indian associations in Bombay, Poona, Calcutta and Madras that came before the Congress.

## Sources

- Hirschmann, 'White Mutiny': The Ilbert Bill Crisis in India and Genesis of the Indian National Congress (1980)
- Proceedings of the First Indian National Congress held at Bombay, 28 to 30 December 1885 (2nd ed., 1905) — https://archive.org/details/FirstIndianNationalCongress
- Wedderburn, Allan Octavian Hume, C.B., Father of the Indian National Congress (1913) — https://archive.org/details/allanoctavianhum00wedduoft

## Image

First meeting session of the Indian National Congress in Bombay, 1885. Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AFirst_meeting_session_of_the_Indian_National_Congress_in_Bombay%2C_1885.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Birsa Munda's ulgulan
**बिरसा मुंडा का उलगुलान**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/birsa-ulgulan/
- Chapter: [Crown and the freedom struggle](https://indianepics.online/chapter/raj.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1899 CE – 1900 CE
- Where: Ulihatu, Khunti (22.975, 85.491)
- Tags: political, colonial, religion

## Summary

Birsa Munda leads the Munda rising of 1899 to 1900 against landlords, missions and the Raj; he dies in Ranchi jail aged about 25.

बिरसा मुंडा ने 1899–1900 में ज़मींदारों, मिशनों और अंग्रेज़ी राज के विरुद्ध मुंडा विद्रोह का नेतृत्व किया; लगभग 25 वर्ष की आयु में राँची जेल में उनकी मृत्यु हुई।

## Account

The Munda villages of Chota Nagpur held land as khuntkatti, cleared and owned by the founding clan. Through the nineteenth century outside landlords, moneylenders and contractors, the dikus, turned many Mundas into tenants owing rent and forced labour, and the courts and missions offered little redress. Birsa, born around 1875 and schooled at the German mission in Chaibasa, began preaching in 1895 as a prophet of a reformed faith and of Munda rule, and his followers called him Dharti Aba, father of the earth.

The ulgulan, the great tumult, began on Christmas Eve 1899 with arrows shot into churches and at Christian congregations around Khunti, and in early January the rebels attacked the Khunti police station. On 9 January 1900 troops stormed Sail Rakab, a fortified hill beside Dombari Buru where Birsa's followers had gathered; the official count was ten killed, while Munda accounts put the dead at two hundred or more. Birsa was seized in the Porahat forest of Singhbhum on 3 February and died in Ranchi jail on 9 June 1900, officially of cholera. Ulihatu and nearby Chalkad both claim his birth; the pin marks Ulihatu, his family's village.

The Chota Nagpur Tenancy Act of 1908 recognised khuntkatti rights and restricted the sale of tribal land to outsiders. It survived an attempt to loosen it: amendments passed in 2016 to ease the transfer of tribal land were returned by the governor and withdrawn in 2017. Jharkhand was created on 15 November 2000, the date kept as Birsa's birthday, which since 2021 has also been observed nationally as Janjatiya Gaurav Divas.

## Sources

- Roy, The Mundas and Their Country (1912) — https://archive.org/details/dli.csl.5314
- Singh, Birsa Munda and His Movement, 1874–1901 (1983)

## Image

Birsa Munda Statue at Naya More. Manoj nav at English Wikipedia, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABirsa_Munda_Statue_at_Naya_More.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# The partition of Bengal and Swadeshi
**बंग-भंग और स्वदेशी**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/bengal-partition-1905/
- Chapter: [Crown and the freedom struggle](https://indianepics.online/chapter/raj.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1905 CE – 1911 CE
- Where: Town Hall, Calcutta (22.5681, 88.345)
- Tags: political, colonial

## Summary

Curzon splits Bengal in 1905; a Calcutta Town Hall meeting answers with a boycott of British goods, and the partition is reversed in 1911.

1905 में कर्ज़न ने बंगाल को बाँटा; कलकत्ता टाउन हॉल की सभा ने विदेशी माल के बहिष्कार से उत्तर दिया, और 1911 में विभाजन रद्द हुआ।

## Account

Curzon's partition, announced in July and in force from 16 October 1905, created the province of Eastern Bengal and Assam, Muslim-majority with its capital at Dacca, and left a western Bengal joined to Bihar and Orissa in which Bengali speakers were a minority. The stated reason was administrative. Officials' own notes show the political one: Home Secretary Herbert Risley wrote in 1904 that Bengal united was a power and Bengal divided would pull several different ways.

On 7 August 1905 a meeting at the Calcutta Town Hall resolved to boycott British goods. On 16 October Rabindranath Tagore led processions in which Hindus and Muslims tied rakhis on one another's wrists, and "Amar Sonar Bangla" dates from that year. Swadeshi brought national schools, Indian-owned mills and chemical works, bonfires of Manchester cloth, and a sharper politics: the Congress split between moderates and extremists at Surat in 1907, and some young men turned to bombs.

Many Muslims of eastern Bengal welcomed the new province and its capital at Dacca, where the Muslim League was founded in 1906. Its reversal was announced at the Delhi Durbar on 12 December 1911, and they took it as a betrayal; a university for Dacca was promised the next year in compensation.

## Sources

- Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal 1903–1908 (1973) (In copyright; the Digital Library of India scan is not linked.)
- Banglapedia, 'Partition of Bengal, 1905' — https://en.banglapedia.org/index.php/Partition_of_Bengal,_1905 (16 October 1905; Eastern Bengal and Assam with its capital at Dhaka; the 7 August boycott resolution; revocation announced at the Delhi Durbar, effective 1 April 1912.)

## Image

Town Hall - Kolkata 2011-12-18 0333. Biswarup Ganguly, CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ATown_Hall_-_Kolkata_2011-12-18_0333.JPG

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# The Muslim League and separate electorates
**मुस्लिम लीग और पृथक निर्वाचन**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/muslim-league-1906/
- Chapter: [Crown and the freedom struggle](https://indianepics.online/chapter/raj.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1906 CE – 1909 CE
- Where: Dhaka (23.725, 90.4)
- Tags: political, religion

## Summary

The All-India Muslim League is founded at Dacca on 30 December 1906; the Morley–Minto reforms of 1909 give Muslims separate electorates.

30 दिसंबर 1906 को ढाका में अखिल भारतीय मुस्लिम लीग की स्थापना हुई; 1909 के मॉर्ले–मिंटो सुधारों ने मुसलमानों को पृथक निर्वाचक मंडल दिए।

## Account

On 1 October 1906 a deputation of 35 Muslim notables led by the Aga Khan met the Viceroy, Minto, at Simla and asked that in any elected councils Muslims should choose their own representatives, in numbers reflecting their political importance and not only their share of the population. Minto agreed in principle. Three months later the All-India Muhammadan Educational Conference, meeting in Dacca at the invitation of Nawab Salimullah, founded the All-India Muslim League on 30 December. Accounts place the session at the Nawab's Shahbagh grounds or at Ahsan Manzil; the pin marks the city.

The Indian Councils Act of 1909, the Morley–Minto reforms, enlarged the legislative councils, let some members be elected, and reserved seats for Muslims elected by Muslim voters alone. In the same year Satyendra Sinha became the first Indian member of the Viceroy's executive council.

Whether officials arranged the Simla deputation is argued; Mohamed Ali later called it a command performance. Many Indian historians treat separate electorates as the first step on the road to 1947, while others argue that communal identities were already being drawn into politics and the reforms recognised more than they created.

## Sources

- Banglapedia, Muslim League — https://en.banglapedia.org/index.php/Muslim_League
- Indian Councils Act 1909 (9 Edw. 7 c. 4) — https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Edw7/9/4/contents
- Regulations for giving effect to the Indian Councils Act, 1909 (1910) — https://archive.org/details/india.history.resource.117753

## Image

All India Muslim league conference 1906 attendees in Dhaka. Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AAll_India_Muslim_league_conference_1906_attendees_in_Dhaka.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Khudiram Bose and Tilak's trial
**खुदीराम बोस और तिलक का मुक़दमा**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/muzaffarpur-1908/
- Chapter: [Crown and the freedom struggle](https://indianepics.online/chapter/raj.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1908 CE
- Where: Muzaffarpur, Bihar (26.1225, 85.3906)
- Tags: political, colonial

## Summary

A bomb meant for a magistrate kills two Englishwomen at Muzaffarpur; Khudiram Bose is hanged, and Tilak is sent to Mandalay for his articles on it.

मुज़फ़्फ़रपुर में एक मजिस्ट्रेट के लिए फेंके गए बम से दो अंग्रेज़ महिलाओं की मौत हुई; खुदीराम बोस को फाँसी हुई और तिलक को इस पर लिखे लेखों के लिए मांडले भेजा गया।

## Account

On the evening of 30 April 1908 Khudiram Bose, aged 18, and Prafulla Chaki threw a bomb at a carriage leaving the European club at Muzaffarpur, believing it carried Douglas Kingsford, a former Calcutta magistrate known for harsh sentences on Swadeshi workers. It carried Mrs Kennedy and her daughter, who were killed. Chaki shot himself when cornered at Mokama; Khudiram was hanged at Muzaffarpur on 11 August. The police raids that followed found the bomb workshop in a garden at Maniktala in Calcutta and led to the Alipore bomb trial, in which Aurobindo Ghose was acquitted and his brother Barindra's death sentence was commuted to transportation for life.

In Poona, Tilak's Kesari wrote that the bomb was the fruit of repression. He was arrested on 24 June, defended himself at his trial for sedition in the Bombay High Court, and on 22 July was sentenced to six years' transportation, which he served in Mandalay jail in Burma until 1914, writing his commentary on the Gita there. Bombay's mill workers struck for six days in protest, a strike Lenin hailed from Europe.

Khudiram became a Bengali folk hero within months, celebrated in songs such as "Ekbar biday de Ma". To the government the episode proved that Swadeshi had produced a revolutionary underground, and much of the Rowlatt report of 1918 is a history of it.

## Sources

- Full and Authentic Report of the Tilak Trial (1908) — https://archive.org/details/fullauthenticre01tilagoog
- Sedition Committee 1918, Report (Rowlatt report), chapters on Bengal and Bombay — https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.285698

## Image

Khudiram Bose. Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AKhudiram_Bose.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Savarkar and the Cellular Jail
**सावरकर और सेल्युलर जेल**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/cellular-jail-1911/
- Chapter: [Crown and the freedom struggle](https://indianepics.online/chapter/raj.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1911 CE – 1921 CE
- Where: Cellular Jail, Port Blair (11.675, 92.748)
- Tags: political, colonial

## Summary

V. D. Savarkar reaches Port Blair's Cellular Jail in 1911 with two life sentences; he and his brother are moved to mainland jails in 1921.

1911 में वि. दा. सावरकर दो आजीवन सज़ाओं के साथ पोर्ट ब्लेयर की सेल्युलर जेल पहुँचे; 1921 में उन्हें और उनके भाई को मुख्य भूमि की जेलों में भेजा गया।

## Account

The Cellular Jail, finished in 1906, had nearly 700 solitary cells in seven wings radiating from a central tower, built so that no prisoner could see or speak to another. Convicts of the Alipore bomb case were sent there from 1909. Savarkar had led the circle at India House in London; one of its members, Madan Lal Dhingra, shot Curzon Wyllie at the Imperial Institute on 1 July 1909 and was hanged at Pentonville on 17 August. Arrested in London in March 1910, Savarkar slipped out of a porthole at Marseilles on the voyage home and was recaptured on the quay. Special tribunals in Bombay gave him two sentences of transportation for life, one of them for abetting the murder of the Nasik collector, A. M. T. Jackson, with a pistol he had sent from London. He reached Port Blair in July 1911.

Prisoners worked the oil mills and coir yards, and hunger strikes over conditions ran into the 1930s. Savarkar and his brother Ganesh were moved to mainland jails in May 1921; Vinayak was released in 1924 on condition that he stay in Ratnagiri district, and in 1937 he became president of the Hindu Mahasabha. Hindutva, his essay defining Hindu nationhood, was written in jail at Ratnagiri.

His clemency petitions of 1911, 1913 and later are the most argued part of his life. Admirers read them as tactics open to any political prisoner, critics as a surrender that ended his opposition to British rule.

## Sources

- Savarkar, My Transportation for Life (Marathi original 1927; English translation)
- Sedition Committee 1918, Report (Rowlatt report) — https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.285698

## Image

Cellular jail or kaalaapani. Jomesh at Malayalam Wikipedia, CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ACellular_jail_or_kaalaapani.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# The Delhi Durbar and a new capital
**दिल्ली दरबार और नई राजधानी**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/delhi-durbar-1911/
- Chapter: [Crown and the freedom struggle](https://indianepics.online/chapter/raj.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1911 CE – 1931 CE
- Where: Coronation Park, Delhi (28.7231, 77.1969)
- Tags: political, colonial

## Summary

At the 1911 Durbar George V announces that the capital will move from Calcutta to Delhi and Bengal will be reunited; New Delhi opens in 1931.

1911 के दरबार में जॉर्ज पंचम ने राजधानी को कलकत्ता से दिल्ली ले जाने और बंगाल को फिर एक करने की घोषणा की; नई दिल्ली 1931 में उद्घाटित हुई।

## Account

George V and Queen Mary, the only King-Emperor and Queen-Empress ever to visit India, held the durbar on 12 December 1911 on the plain north of Delhi where Lytton's Imperial Assemblage of 1877 and Curzon's durbar of 1903 had also been staged. Princes came forward in turn to pay homage, and the Gaekwad of Baroda's short bow was taken as a slight. At the end the King announced two decisions kept secret until then: the capital would move from Calcutta to Delhi, and the partition of Bengal would be undone. Bihar and Orissa became a separate province and Assam a chief commissionership again.

Delhi was chosen for its Mughal associations and its distance from Calcutta's politics. The King laid foundation stones on the durbar ground on 15 December; they were later moved to Raisina hill, where Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker built the new city. A bomb thrown at the Viceroy, Hardinge, during his state entry into Delhi on 23 December 1912 wounded him and killed an attendant. Lord Irwin inaugurated New Delhi on 13 February 1931.

The durbar ground is now Coronation Park. The marble statue of George V that stood under the canopy at India Gate until 1968 was moved here, with other viceroys' statues.

## Sources

- The Historical Record of the Imperial Visit to India, 1911 (1914) — https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.35773

## Image

Delhi durbar 1911 2. Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ADelhi_durbar_1911_2.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# The Komagata Maru and the Ghadar rising
**कोमागाटा मारू और ग़दर**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/komagata-maru-1914/
- Chapter: [Crown and the freedom struggle](https://indianepics.online/chapter/raj.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1914 CE – 1915 CE
- Where: Budge Budge, Bengal (22.4737, 88.1739)
- Tags: political, colonial

## Summary

Turned away from Vancouver, the Komagata Maru's passengers are fired on at Budge Budge in 1914; a planned Ghadar mutiny in the Punjab fails in 1915.

वैंकूवर से लौटाए गए कोमागाटा मारू के यात्रियों पर 1914 में बज बज में गोली चली; 1915 में पंजाब में ग़दर का नियोजित सैनिक विद्रोह विफल हुआ।

## Account

Canada barred immigrants who had not come by a continuous journey from their country of birth, a rule no ship from India could meet. Gurdit Singh chartered the Japanese steamer Komagata Maru to test it, and 376 passengers, most of them Sikhs from the Punjab, reached Vancouver on 23 May 1914. All but about twenty were refused entry, and after two months in the harbour the ship was forced to sail back. At Budge Budge on the Hooghly on 29 September police tried to put the passengers on a train to the Punjab. In the riot that followed troops opened fire, and about twenty people were killed, most of them passengers; the government's own report counted eighteen Sikhs dead. Canada's prime minister apologised in Parliament in 2016.

The Ghadar Party, founded in 1913 by Punjabi emigrants on the Pacific coast of North America, sent thousands of men home after the war began to raise the Indian regiments. The rising was fixed for 21 February 1915 and betrayed by an informer. In the Lahore conspiracy trials that followed, Kartar Singh Sarabha, aged 19, was among those hanged on 16 November 1915.

## Sources

- Parks Canada, Komagata Maru Incident, national historic event — https://parks.canada.ca/culture/designation/evenement-event/komagata-maru
- Sedition Committee 1918, Report (Rowlatt report), chapter on the Punjab — https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.285698

## Image

View of the S.S. Komagata Maru from the Sea Lion tugboat during the Komagata Maru incident, 1914. See description, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AView_of_the_S.S._Komagata_Maru_from_the_Sea_Lion_tugboat_during_the_Komagata_Maru_incident%2C_1914.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Home Rule and the Lucknow Pact
**होम रूल और लखनऊ समझौता**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/lucknow-pact-1916/
- Chapter: [Crown and the freedom struggle](https://indianepics.online/chapter/raj.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1916 CE – 1917 CE
- Where: Lucknow (26.85, 80.95)
- Tags: political

## Summary

Tilak and Annie Besant launch Home Rule leagues in 1916; at Lucknow that December the Congress and the Muslim League agree a joint scheme.

1916 में तिलक और एनी बेसेंट ने होम रूल लीगें शुरू कीं; उसी दिसंबर लखनऊ में कांग्रेस और मुस्लिम लीग ने एक साझा योजना पर सहमति जताई।

## Account

Tilak, back from Mandalay, founded his Home Rule League at Belgaum in April 1916, and Annie Besant founded the All-India Home Rule League at Madras that September. Their branches, pamphlets and reading rooms carried nationalist politics beyond the councils to small towns. Besant's internment in June 1917 drew protest across India, and on 20 August 1917 the Secretary of State, Edwin Montagu, announced that British policy was the "progressive realisation of responsible government" in India.

At Lucknow in December 1916 the Congress, its moderates and extremists reunited after the split at Surat in 1907, and the Muslim League, with Jinnah prominent in both, adopted a common scheme of reforms. It asked for elected majorities in the councils and accepted separate electorates for Muslims, with more seats than their share of the population where they were a minority and fewer in Bengal and the Punjab, where they were a majority.

The pact is remembered as the high point of Congress–League cooperation, and also as the moment the Congress accepted separate electorates.

## Sources

- Sastri, The Congress-League Scheme: An Exposition (1917) — https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.71644
- Natesan (ed.), The Indian Demands: A Symposium on the Memorandum of the Nineteen and Speeches at the Congress and Moslem League (1917) — https://archive.org/details/indiandemandssym00gana

## Image

Bal Gangadhar Tilak. Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABal_Gangadhar_Tilak.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Champaran and Kheda
**चंपारण और खेड़ा**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/champaran-1917/
- Chapter: [Crown and the freedom struggle](https://indianepics.online/chapter/raj.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1917 CE – 1918 CE
- Where: Motihari, Champaran (26.65, 84.917)
- Tags: political, colonial

## Summary

Gandhi defies an order to leave Champaran in April 1917 and takes up the indigo tenants' case; in 1918 he leads Kheda's farmers against revenue.

अप्रैल 1917 में गांधी ने चंपारण छोड़ने के आदेश की अवहेलना की और नील किसानों का मामला उठाया; 1918 में उन्होंने खेड़ा के किसानों का लगान-विरोध संभाला।

## Account

Under the tinkathia system, tenants on the European-run estates of Champaran had to grow indigo on three kathas of every twenty, and when synthetic dye ruined the indigo trade the planters made them pay to be released from it. Rajkumar Shukla, a tenant, followed Gandhi from the Lucknow Congress until he agreed to come. Gandhi reached Motihari on 15 April 1917, was served an order to leave the district, and told the magistrate he would disobey it and accept the penalty. The case was withdrawn.

With Rajendra Prasad and other Bihar lawyers he took down statements from thousands of tenants. The government appointed an inquiry with Gandhi as a member, and the Champaran Agrarian Act of 1918 abolished tinkathia. In Kheda in Gujarat the crops failed in 1917, and from March to June 1918 Gandhi and Vallabhbhai Patel led a refusal to pay land revenue until the government quietly suspended collection from the poorer farmers.

These were Gandhi's first satyagrahas in India, two years after his return from South Africa, and they brought Prasad and Patel into his circle.

## Sources

- Prasad, Satyagraha in Champaran (1928) — https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.202317
- Gandhi, An Autobiography, or The Story of My Experiments with Truth (1948 ed.), part V — https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.201918

## Image

Dr Rajendra Pd. DR.Anugrah Narayan Sinha. Anugrah Abhinandan Granth (1946), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ADr_Rajendra_Pd._DR.Anugrah_Narayan_Sinha.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# The Rowlatt Act and Jallianwala Bagh
**रॉलेट एक्ट और जलियाँवाला बाग़**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/jallianwala-1919/
- Chapter: [Crown and the freedom struggle](https://indianepics.online/chapter/raj.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1919 CE
- Where: Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar (31.6205, 74.8806)
- Tags: political, colonial

## Summary

On 13 April 1919 troops under General Dyer fire on a crowd in Jallianwala Bagh; the official toll is 379 dead, Indian estimates about 1,000.

13 अप्रैल 1919 को जनरल डायर के सैनिकों ने जलियाँवाला बाग़ में भीड़ पर गोली चलाई; सरकारी आँकड़ा 379 मौतें है, भारतीय अनुमान लगभग 1,000।

## Account

The Rowlatt Act of March 1919, passed on the Sedition Committee's advice against the votes of every non-official Indian member of the Imperial Legislative Council, kept wartime powers of arrest and trial without jury. Gandhi called a satyagraha, and a hartal on 6 April closed shops in towns across India. In Amritsar the deportation of two local leaders, Saifuddin Kitchlew and Satyapal, on 10 April set off riots in which five Europeans were killed.

On 13 April, Baisakhi, thousands gathered in the walled garden of Jallianwala Bagh, many of them visitors who had not heard of the ban on meetings. Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer marched 50 riflemen through the narrow entrance lane, deployed them on either side of it and, without warning, fired about 1,650 rounds for some ten minutes. Martial law followed in the Punjab, with public floggings and an order that Indians crawl along the lane where a woman missionary, Marcella Sherwood, had been attacked. Tagore returned his knighthood.

The Hunter Committee counted 379 dead; the Congress inquiry put the figure at about 1,000, and other estimates run higher. Dyer was censured and retired, and a fund raised for him in Britain passed £26,000. Udham Singh, who said he had been in Amritsar that day, shot Michael O'Dwyer, the Punjab's lieutenant-governor in 1919, in London on 13 March 1940 and was hanged that July.

## Sources

- Disorders Inquiry Committee 1919–1920, Report (Hunter Committee) — https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.143541
- Sedition Committee 1918, Report (Rowlatt report) — https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.285698

## Image

Jallianwala bagh ,amritsar. Suchikha, CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AJallianwala_bagh_%2Camritsar.JPG

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Non-cooperation, Khilafat and Chauri Chaura
**असहयोग, ख़िलाफ़त और चौरी चौरा**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/non-cooperation-1920/
- Chapter: [Crown and the freedom struggle](https://indianepics.online/chapter/raj.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1920 CE – 1922 CE
- Where: Chauri Chaura, Gorakhpur (26.651, 83.581)
- Tags: political, religion

## Summary

Congress and the Khilafat committees launch non-cooperation in 1920; after a crowd burns Chauri Chaura police station in 1922, Gandhi calls it off.

1920 में कांग्रेस और ख़िलाफ़त समितियों ने असहयोग आंदोलन शुरू किया; 1922 में चौरी चौरा थाने को भीड़ द्वारा जलाए जाने के बाद गांधी ने उसे वापस ले लिया।

## Account

The Khilafat movement, led by Mohamed and Shaukat Ali, protested the Allies' treatment of the defeated Ottoman sultan, whom many Indian Muslims revered as caliph. Gandhi joined it to the Punjab wrongs and to swaraj, and the Congress adopted non-cooperation at Calcutta in September 1920 and Nagpur that December: boycott of the councils, courts, government schools and foreign cloth, which was burned in public bonfires. Tens of thousands went to jail, and the Congress became a mass party with branches down to the villages.

At Chauri Chaura on 4 February 1922 police fired on a procession of volunteers, and three of the crowd were killed. The crowd set the police station alight, and 22 policemen died. Gandhi suspended the movement on 12 February. He was arrested on 10 March and sentenced to six years. A sessions court sentenced 172 of the accused to death; on appeal the Allahabad High Court confirmed 19 of the sentences.

Many in the Congress, among them Motilal Nehru and Subhas Bose, thought the suspension a blunder that threw away the movement at its height. Shahid Amin's study shows how the official and nationalist memory of Chauri Chaura each left out the villagers' own account of the day.

## Sources

- Gandhi, 'The Crime of Chauri Chaura', Young India, 16 February 1922, in Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 22 — https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.162031
- Amin, Event, Metaphor, Memory: Chauri Chaura, 1922–1992 (1995)
- Tara Chand, History of the Freedom Movement in India, vol. 4 (1972)

## Image

Chauri Chaura Land Mark. Nitishkumarojha, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AChauri_Chaura_Land_Mark.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Alluri Sitarama Raju and the Rampa rising
**अल्लूरी सीताराम राजू और रंपा विद्रोह**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/rampa-1922/
- Chapter: [Crown and the freedom struggle](https://indianepics.online/chapter/raj.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1922 CE – 1924 CE
- Where: Krishnadevipeta, Visakhapatnam Agency (17.6727, 82.3789)
- Tags: political, colonial

## Summary

Alluri Sitarama Raju leads the hill peoples of the Godavari agency against forest laws, raiding police stations in 1922; he is killed in May 1924.

अल्लूरी सीताराम राजू ने वन क़ानूनों के विरुद्ध गोदावरी एजेंसी के पहाड़ी लोगों का नेतृत्व किया और 1922 में थानों पर छापे मारे; मई 1924 में वे मारे गए।

## Account

The Madras Forest Act of 1882 closed much of the Eastern Ghats forest to podu, shifting cultivation, and to grazing, and contractors building roads through the hills pressed Koya and Konda Dora villagers into unpaid labour. Alluri Sitarama Raju, a young sannyasi from the plains who had settled in the hills, took up their grievances. On 22 August 1922 his men raided the police station at Chintapalli for guns, and on the next two days those at Krishnadevipeta and Rajavommangi.

For almost two years they fought a guerrilla war across the hills of the Visakhapatnam and Godavari agencies and ambushed police parties, and the Madras government brought in the Malabar Special Police and the Assam Rifles. Raju was captured in the forest on 7 May 1924 and shot dead at Koyyuru the same day. The official account said he was killed trying to escape; Telugu accounts call it an execution. His tomb is at Krishnadevipeta, where the pin is.

The rising was outside the Congress, which was then committed to non-violence, and it ran on local grievances. In Andhra, Raju has been a folk hero since, and in July 2022 the central government opened a year of celebrations for his 125th birth anniversary and the rising's centenary.

## Sources

- PIB, Alluri Seetha Rama Raju: A Folk Hero of Rampa Rebellion (2016) — https://www.pib.gov.in/newsite/printrelease.aspx?relid=148563
- PIB, PM launches year-long 125th birth anniversary celebration of Alluri Sitarama Raju (4 July 2022) — https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1839058

## Image

Alluri Sita Rama Raju statue. The original uploader was Chavakiran at Telugu Wikipedia., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AAlluri_Sita_Rama_Raju_statue.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# The Vaikom satyagraha
**वैकोम सत्याग्रह**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/vaikom-1924/
- Chapter: [Crown and the freedom struggle](https://indianepics.online/chapter/raj.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1924 CE – 1925 CE
- Where: Vaikom Mahadeva temple, Travancore (9.7499, 76.396)
- Tags: religion, political

## Summary

From March 1924 volunteers court arrest on the roads around Vaikom temple, barred to Ezhavas and Dalits; three of the four roads open in 1925.

मार्च 1924 से स्वयंसेवकों ने वैकोम मंदिर के आसपास की उन सड़कों पर गिरफ़्तारियाँ दीं जो एझवा और दलितों के लिए बंद थीं; 1925 में चार में से तीन सड़कें खुलीं।

## Account

In the princely state of Travancore, Ezhavas, Pulayas and other castes held to be polluting could not walk the public roads around the Vaikom Mahadeva temple. T. K. Madhavan, K. P. Kesava Menon and George Joseph of the Kerala Congress organised a satyagraha with Gandhi's approval. On 30 March 1924 three volunteers, a Pulaya, an Ezhava and a Nair, walked together toward the barrier and were arrested. Others followed day after day, standing at the barriers through the floods that summer.

E. V. Ramasamy, later Periyar, came from Erode in the Madras Presidency that April and was jailed twice, and Mannathu Padmanabhan led a march of caste Hindus to Thiruvananthapuram that November with a petition to open the roads. Gandhi visited in March 1925 and negotiated with the regent, Sethu Lakshmi Bayi, and orthodox Brahmin leaders. On 23 November 1925 the north, south and west roads were opened to all, while the eastern road stayed closed, and the satyagraha was called off a week later.

Tamil and Kerala accounts differ over who deserves the credit, Periyar or the Kerala Congress and Gandhi. The Travancore Temple Entry Proclamation of 12 November 1936 finally opened the state's temples themselves to all Hindus.

## Sources

- The Hindu, 'Remembering Vaikom Satyagraha: A movement that spearheaded social reforms in two States' (30 March 2023) — https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/remembering-vaikom-satyagraha-a-movement-that-spearheaded-social-reforms-in-tn-kerala/article66679378.ece
- Travancore Legislative Council, question hour on the Vaikom satyagraha, 12 June 1924 (Kerala Legislative Assembly archive) — https://archive.org/details/keralalegislativeassembly.proceedings.876183

## Image

Vaikom Temple. Georgekutty, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AVaikom_Temple.JPG

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# The Kakori train action
**काकोरी ट्रेन एक्शन**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/kakori-1925/
- Chapter: [Crown and the freedom struggle](https://indianepics.online/chapter/raj.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1925 CE – 1927 CE
- Where: Kakori, near Lucknow (26.884, 80.8)
- Tags: political, colonial

## Summary

On 9 August 1925 Hindustan Republican Association members stop a train at Kakori and seize government cash; four of them are hanged in December 1927.

9 अगस्त 1925 को हिंदुस्तान रिपब्लिकन एसोसिएशन के सदस्यों ने काकोरी में रेलगाड़ी रोककर सरकारी ख़ज़ाना लूटा; दिसंबर 1927 में उनमें से चार को फाँसी हुई।

## Account

The Hindustan Republican Association, founded in 1924 by Sachindra Nath Sanyal, Ram Prasad Bismil and others to fight for a federal republic of India, needed money for arms. On 9 August 1925 Rajendra Lahiri pulled the alarm chain on the No. 8 Down passenger train to Lucknow near Kakori, and about ten men broke open the guard's safe of railway takings. A passenger was killed by a stray shot.

Arrests followed that autumn. After a long trial at Lucknow, Bismil was hanged at Gorakhpur, Ashfaqulla Khan at Faizabad and Roshan Singh at Allahabad on 19 December 1927, and Lahiri at Gonda two days earlier. Others were transported for life. Chandrashekhar Azad escaped the police and rebuilt the group with Bhagat Singh as the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association in 1928.

Bismil, a Hindu poet of the Arya Samaj, and Ashfaqulla, a Muslim, were close friends, and the pair became a lasting emblem of Hindu–Muslim comradeship. In 2021 the Uttar Pradesh government renamed the event, long called the Kakori kand, the Kakori Train Action.

## Sources

- Tara Chand, History of the Freedom Movement in India, vol. 4 (1972)
- ANI, 'UP government renames Kakori kand to Kakori train action' (9 August 2021) — https://www.aninews.in/news/national/general-news/up-government-renames-kakori-kand-to-kakori-train-action20210809123839/


---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# The Mahad satyagraha
**महाड सत्याग्रह**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/mahad-1927/
- Chapter: [Crown and the freedom struggle](https://indianepics.online/chapter/raj.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1927 CE
- Where: Chavdar Tale, Mahad (18.083, 73.417)
- Tags: political, religion

## Summary

On 20 March 1927 Ambedkar leads Dalits to drink from Mahad's Chavdar tank, open to all by law; that December the Manusmriti is burned there.

20 मार्च 1927 को आंबेडकर ने दलितों के साथ महाड के चवदार तालाब से पानी पिया, जो क़ानूनन सबके लिए खुला था; उसी दिसंबर वहाँ मनुस्मृति जलाई गई।

## Account

A resolution moved by S. K. Bole in the Bombay Legislative Council in 1923 opened public tanks, wells and schools to the depressed classes, and Mahad's municipality declared its Chavdar tank open to all the next year. Caste Hindus still kept Dalits away from it. At a conference in Mahad on 19 and 20 March 1927, B. R. Ambedkar led several thousand delegates to the tank, and they drank from it.

A rumour that they meant to enter a temple brought a caste Hindu crowd down on the delegates, and afterwards Brahmins purified the tank with cow dung, urine, milk and curd. Ambedkar called a second conference for 25 December. With a court injunction in force he held back from a march to the tank, and instead the conference burned a copy of the Manusmriti, the law book that ranked the castes. Ambedkarites mark 25 December as Manusmriti Dahan Din.

The civil suit dragged on for ten years until the Bombay High Court ruled in March 1937 that caste Hindus had not proved a customary right to keep untouchables from the tank. Mahad was Ambedkar's first mass campaign, and it set his politics apart from the Congress's: rights by law, not change of heart.

## Sources

- Keer, Dr. Ambedkar: Life and Mission (1954) — https://archive.org/details/dli.csl.6522
- Narhari Damodar Vaidya vs Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, Bombay High Court, 17 March 1937 — https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1745662/

## Image

Mahad-Krantibhoomi. Mayurhulsar, CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AMahad-Krantibhoomi.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# The Bardoli satyagraha
**बारडोली सत्याग्रह**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/bardoli-1928/
- Chapter: [Crown and the freedom struggle](https://indianepics.online/chapter/raj.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1928 CE
- Where: Bardoli, Surat district (21.12, 73.12)
- Tags: political, colonial

## Summary

Bardoli's farmers refuse a 22 per cent rise in land revenue in 1928; an inquiry cuts it to about 6 per cent, and Vallabhbhai Patel becomes Sardar.

1928 में बारडोली के किसानों ने लगान में 22 प्रतिशत वृद्धि देने से इनकार किया; जाँच ने इसे घटाकर लगभग 6 प्रतिशत किया और वल्लभभाई पटेल 'सरदार' कहलाए।

## Account

The Bombay government's revision settlement raised Bardoli taluka's land revenue by about 22 per cent, and the cultivators held that the increase rested on faulty figures. In February 1928 Vallabhbhai Patel agreed to lead a refusal to pay, on condition that the villages hold out to the end. He divided the taluka into camps run by volunteers, issued a daily news-sheet, and drew women into the campaign in large numbers. The government seized buffaloes and household goods, sold land to outsiders for nominal sums, and brought in Pathan enforcers; villagers locked their houses and kept their cattle indoors, and buyers of seized land were boycotted.

Gujarat's members of the Bombay Legislative Council resigned their seats in protest, and K. M. Munshi resigned his after touring the villages. In August the governor conceded an inquiry, the release of prisoners and the return of seized land. The inquiry, by R. S. Broomfield and R. M. Maxwell, reported in May 1929 and cut the increase to about 6 per cent, roughly a quarter of what the government had fixed.

The campaign gave Patel the title Sardar, chief, and tradition credits the women of Bardoli with first using it. Bardoli became the model for Gandhian peasant satyagraha, disciplined, local and sharply limited in its demand.

## Sources

- Desai, The Story of Bardoli (1929) — https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.207935
- The Indian Annual Register 1929, vol. 1, 'The Bardoli Agitation' — https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.45785

## Image

Sardar patel (cropped). Government of India work, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASardar_patel_(cropped).jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Simon go back, and Bhagat Singh
**'साइमन वापस जाओ' और भगत सिंह**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/bhagat-singh-1931/
- Chapter: [Crown and the freedom struggle](https://indianepics.online/chapter/raj.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1928 CE – 1931 CE
- Where: Shadman Chowk, Lahore (31.54, 74.329)
- Tags: political, colonial

## Summary

Lajpat Rai dies after a police beating at Lahore's Simon protest in 1928; Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev are hanged in Lahore jail in March 1931.

1928 में लाहौर में साइमन-विरोधी प्रदर्शन पर पुलिस की लाठियों के बाद लाजपत राय की मृत्यु हुई; मार्च 1931 में भगत सिंह, राजगुरु और सुखदेव को लाहौर जेल में फाँसी दी गई।

## Account

The Indian Statutory Commission under John Simon, appointed in November 1927 to review the reforms with not one Indian member, was met by black flags and "Simon go back" from its landing at Bombay on 3 February 1928. At Lahore on 30 October police under superintendent James Scott charged the protesters with lathis, and Lala Lajpat Rai, beaten at the front of the crowd, died on 17 November. On 17 December Bhagat Singh and Rajguru of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association, meaning to kill Scott, shot assistant superintendent John Saunders instead, and Chandrashekhar Azad shot head constable Chanan Singh as he gave chase.

On 8 April 1929 Bhagat Singh and B. K. Dutt threw two bombs, made not to kill, onto empty benches of the Central Legislative Assembly in Delhi and waited to be arrested, shouting "Inquilab zindabad". In jail the prisoners hunger-struck for political status, and Jatin Das died on the 63rd day. A special tribunal set up by ordinance tried the Saunders case with no appeal to the High Court, and on 7 October 1930 sentenced Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev to death. Azad died in a gunfight with police in Alfred Park, Allahabad, on 27 February 1931.

The three were hanged in Lahore Central Jail on the evening of 23 March 1931, ahead of the announced morning of the 24th. Their bodies were taken out secretly and burned near Hussainiwala on the Sutlej, and accounts differ over how the remains were treated. Whether Gandhi pressed Irwin hard enough for a reprieve during the talks that produced their pact of 5 March is argued to this day. The jail was demolished, and the site of the gallows is now Shadman Chowk.

## Sources

- Report of the Indian Statutory Commission, vol. 1 (1930) — https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.81808
- Noorani, The Trial of Bhagat Singh: Politics of Justice (1996)

## Image

Bhagat Singh prison photo. Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABhagat_Singh_prison_photo.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# The Salt March
**दांडी यात्रा**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/dandi-1930/
- Chapter: [Crown and the freedom struggle](https://indianepics.online/chapter/raj.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1930 CE – 1931 CE
- Where: Dandi, Navsari (20.8865, 72.8009)
- Tags: political, colonial

## Summary

Gandhi and 78 marchers walk about 390 km from Sabarmati to Dandi and break the salt law on 6 April 1930, opening civil disobedience.

गांधी और 78 सत्याग्रही साबरमती से लगभग 390 किमी चलकर दांडी पहुँचे और 6 अप्रैल 1930 को नमक क़ानून तोड़कर सविनय अवज्ञा आंदोलन शुरू किया।

## Account

The Congress at Lahore had declared complete independence its goal on 31 December 1929. Gandhi chose the salt tax as the law to break, because it fell on everyone and salt lay free on the shore. He left Sabarmati Ashram on 12 March 1930 with 78 men, walked through the villages of Gujarat for 24 days, and reached Dandi on 5 April. On the morning of the 6th he picked up a lump of salt from the mudflats.

Across India people made salt, picketed liquor shops and burned foreign cloth, and tens of thousands were jailed, many of them women. In Peshawar on 23 April troops fired on a crowd in the Qissa Khwani bazaar, and two platoons of the Garhwal Rifles refused to be used against the protesters. Gandhi was arrested at Karadi near Dandi on the night of 4 May. On 21 May satyagrahis led by Sarojini Naidu walked in ranks at the Dharasana salt works and were clubbed down by police, and the American reporter Webb Miller's account went around the world.

The Gandhi–Irwin pact of 5 March 1931 ended the campaign and took Gandhi to the second Round Table Conference in London. The National Salt Satyagraha Memorial at Dandi opened in 2019.

## Sources

- Webb Miller, I Found No Peace (1936), on Dharasana
- Tara Chand, History of the Freedom Movement in India, vol. 4 (1972)

## Image

Marche sel. Yann (talk), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AMarche_sel.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# The Chittagong armoury raid
**चटगाँव शस्त्रागार छापा**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/surya-sen-chittagong-1930/
- Chapter: [Crown and the freedom struggle](https://indianepics.online/chapter/raj.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1930 CE – 1934 CE
- Where: Chittagong (22.335, 91.8325)
- Tags: political, colonial

## Summary

Surya Sen's Indian Republican Army seizes Chittagong's armouries on 18 April 1930; Sen is caught in 1933 and hanged in January 1934.

18 अप्रैल 1930 को सूर्य सेन की इंडियन रिपब्लिकन आर्मी ने चटगाँव के शस्त्रागारों पर क़ब्ज़ा किया; 1933 में सेन पकड़े गए और जनवरी 1934 में उन्हें फाँसी दी गई।

## Account

On the night of 18 April 1930 about 65 young men led by Surya Sen, a schoolteacher known as Masterda, seized the police armoury and the auxiliary force armoury at Chittagong, cut the telegraph and railway lines, and proclaimed a provisional revolutionary government. They took the rifles but could not find the ammunition. On 22 April troops caught them on Jalalabad hill outside the town, and about a dozen of the raiders were killed in the fight.

The survivors carried on a guerrilla campaign from the villages for three years. On 24 September 1932 Pritilata Waddedar led an attack on the Pahartali European Club and took poison rather than be caught; Kalpana Dutta was arrested and later wrote the account cited here. Surya Sen was betrayed and captured in February 1933, and was hanged in Chittagong jail with Tarakeswar Dastidar on 12 January 1934.

Chittagong went to East Pakistan in 1947 and has been in Bangladesh since 1971. The raid was among the most ambitious armed actions of the Bengal revolutionaries, and its women fighters, Pritilata and Kalpana among them, became as famous as its leader.

## Sources

- Kalpana Dutt, Chittagong Armoury Raiders: Reminiscences (1945) — https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.59007

## Image

Master-da Surya Sen Uploaded by Rahtat. Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AMaster-da_Surya_Sen_Uploaded_by_Rahtat.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# The Round Tables and the Poona Pact
**गोलमेज़ सम्मेलन और पूना समझौता**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/poona-pact-1932/
- Chapter: [Crown and the freedom struggle](https://indianepics.online/chapter/raj.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1932 CE
- Where: Yerwada Central Jail, Pune (18.5646, 73.8897)
- Tags: political, religion

## Summary

Gandhi fasts in Yerwada jail against separate electorates for the depressed classes; on 24 September 1932 Ambedkar accepts reserved seats instead.

गांधी ने दलित वर्गों के लिए पृथक निर्वाचन के विरुद्ध यरवदा जेल में अनशन किया; 24 सितंबर 1932 को आंबेडकर ने उसके बदले आरक्षित सीटें स्वीकार कीं।

## Account

Three Round Table Conferences met in London between November 1930 and December 1932 to settle India's next constitution. At the second, in the autumn of 1931, Gandhi came as the Congress's only delegate and claimed to speak for all Indians, including the untouchables. B. R. Ambedkar, there as their delegate, demanded separate electorates for them, and the two men clashed in the minorities committee. The conference failed to agree, and Ramsay MacDonald's Communal Award of 16 August 1932 gave the depressed classes separate electorates, along with a second vote in the general constituencies.

Gandhi, in Yerwada jail since January, began a fast unto death on 20 September. After four days of negotiation Ambedkar and the Hindu leaders signed the Poona Pact: in place of the Award's 78 separate seats, 148 seats in the provincial legislatures were reserved for the depressed classes, filled by joint electorates after a primary among depressed-class voters. Gandhi broke his fast on the 26th. The reserved seats passed into the Act of 1935 and, in another form, into the Constitution.

Ambedkar later called the fast "the worst form of coercion against a helpless people", made to take away the electorate the Award had given them. Gandhi's admirers see it as the moment he kept the untouchables inside a single Hindu electorate and began his campaign against untouchability.

## Sources

- Ambedkar, What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables (1946 ed.) — https://archive.org/details/whatcongressgand00bram
- Keer, Dr. Ambedkar: Life and Mission (1954) — https://archive.org/details/dli.csl.6522

## Image

M.R. Jayakar, Tej Bahadur Sapru and Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar at Yerwada jail, in Poona, on 24 September 1932, the day the Poona Pact was signed. Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AM.R._Jayakar%2C_Tej_Bahadur_Sapru_and_Dr._Babasaheb_Ambedkar_at_Yerwada_jail%2C_in_Poona%2C_on_24_September_1932%2C_the_day_the_Poona_Pact_was_signed.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# The Government of India Act 1935
**भारत शासन अधिनियम 1935**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/goi-act-1935/
- Chapter: [Crown and the freedom struggle](https://indianepics.online/chapter/raj.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1935 CE – 1940 CE
- Where: Council House (Samvidhan Sadan), New Delhi (28.6172, 77.2081)
- Tags: political, colonial

## Summary

The 1935 Act gives the provinces elected governments in 1937; its all-India federation never forms, but much of the Act passes into the Constitution.

1935 के अधिनियम ने 1937 में प्रांतों को निर्वाचित सरकारें दीं; इसका अखिल भारतीय संघ कभी नहीं बना, पर अधिनियम का बड़ा भाग संविधान में उतरा।

## Account

The Act, given royal assent on 2 August 1935 after the Simon report and the Round Tables, ran to 321 sections and 10 schedules. It ended dyarchy in the provinces and gave them ministries responsible to elected assemblies, with governors keeping emergency powers; widened the vote to between 30 and 35 million people; created a Federal Court; made Sind and Orissa provinces; and separated Burma and Aden from India. The all-India federation it designed needed the princes to join, and they never did. Nehru called it a machine with strong brakes and no engine.

In the elections of early 1937 the Congress won outright majorities in five provinces and went on to form ministries in eight of the eleven. The Muslim League won only a minority of the Muslim seats, and the experience of Congress rule pushed it toward a separate demand. When the Viceroy, Linlithgow, declared India at war on 3 September 1939 without consulting Indian leaders, the Congress ministries resigned, and the League marked their going as a Day of Deliverance. In March 1940, at Lahore, the League resolved that the Muslim-majority regions of the north-west and east should form independent states.

The pin marks Council House, the round building opened in 1927 for the central legislature, where the Constituent Assembly later met. The Constitution of 1950 took much of its administrative framework, including the lists of federal and provincial subjects and the emergency powers, from this Act.

## Sources

- Government of India Act 1935 — https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo5and1Edw8/26/2/contents
- The Government of India Act 1935 (Indian edition, 1935) — https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.284304

## Image

SansadBhavan. Bill Strong from Melbourne, Australia, CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASansadBhavan.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Quit India
**भारत छोड़ो**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/quit-india-1942/
- Chapter: [Crown and the freedom struggle](https://indianepics.online/chapter/raj.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1942 CE – 1944 CE
- Where: August Kranti Maidan (Gowalia Tank), Bombay (18.9624, 72.8102)
- Tags: political, colonial

## Summary

On 8 August 1942 the Congress passes the Quit India resolution at Gowalia Tank; by the next morning its leaders are jailed and the country rises.

8 अगस्त 1942 को कांग्रेस ने गोवालिया टैंक में भारत छोड़ो प्रस्ताव पारित किया; अगली सुबह तक उसके नेता जेल में थे और देश में विद्रोह भड़क उठा।

## Account

The Cripps mission failed in April 1942 with the Japanese army on India's eastern border. On 8 August the All-India Congress Committee, meeting on the maidan at Gowalia Tank, near the college where the Congress had first met in 1885, demanded that Britain leave India at once, and Gandhi told the meeting "Do or die". Before dawn on the 9th Gandhi and the Working Committee were arrested. That morning Aruna Asaf Ali hoisted the Congress flag on the maidan, which was later renamed August Kranti Maidan, the ground of the August revolution.

With its leaders in jail the movement had no plan, and it took local forms: crowds tore up railway lines, cut telegraph wires and burned police stations, above all in Bihar and eastern United Provinces. Rebels ran parallel governments in Ballia for a few days, at Tamluk in Midnapore until 1944, and in Satara for longer; Usha Mehta ran a secret Congress radio from Bombay. The Muslim League, the Communists and the Hindu Mahasabha stayed out. Gandhi fasted for 21 days in detention in February 1943 and was released in May 1944.

Official figures counted about a thousand people killed by police and army fire in the last months of 1942, and tens of thousands arrested, more than 100,000 by some counts; Congress estimates of the dead ran from 4,000 to 10,000. The government's own pamphlet blamed the Congress for the violence, and historians disagree over how far the rising hastened the end of British rule.

## Sources

- Government of India, Congress Responsibility for the Disturbances, 1942–43 (1943) — https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.35918
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, Quit India Movement — https://www.britannica.com/event/Quit-India-Movement
- Tara Chand, History of the Freedom Movement in India, vol. 4 (1972)

## Image

People teargassed at Gowalia Tank Maidan. Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3APeople_teargassed_at_Gowalia_Tank_Maidan.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# The Bengal famine
**बंगाल का अकाल**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/bengal-famine-1943/
- Chapter: [Crown and the freedom struggle](https://indianepics.online/chapter/raj.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1943 CE – 1944 CE
- Where: Calcutta (22.5726, 88.3639)
- Tags: colonial, war

## Summary

Wartime Bengal starves in 1943; the 1945 inquiry counts about 1.5 million dead, later estimates run to 3 million, and the causes are still argued.

1943 में युद्धकालीन बंगाल भूख से तड़प उठा; 1945 की जाँच ने लगभग 15 लाख मौतें गिनीं, बाद के अनुमान 30 लाख तक हैं, और कारणों पर बहस आज भी जारी है।

## Account

Japan's conquest of Burma in 1942 cut off Bengal's rice imports. Fearing invasion, the government carried out a denial policy, removing boats and surplus rice from the coastal districts, and on 16 October 1942 a cyclone destroyed much of the winter crop in Midnapore. War spending drove prices up, other provinces blocked grain from leaving, and the government gave priority to feeding Calcutta's war industries. By the summer of 1943 the destitute were dying in Calcutta's streets, and in August the Statesman printed photographs of them while officials still avoided the word famine.

The new Viceroy, Wavell, visited Calcutta at the end of October, and in November he brought in the army to move food and run relief. Most of the deaths, in 1943 and 1944, were from cholera, malaria and smallpox among the starving, and most were in the countryside; the pin marks Calcutta, where the famine was seen and recorded.

The Famine Inquiry Commission estimated about 1.5 million deaths above normal in 1943 and the first half of 1944; later estimates run from about 2.1 to 3 million. Amartya Sen argued that there was enough rice and that wartime prices took it out of reach of labourers and fishermen, and others have since argued that the harvest shortfall was larger than he allowed. How much blame falls on the War Cabinet's limits on grain imports, on the provincial government, and on traders is argued still.

## Sources

- Famine Inquiry Commission, Report on Bengal (1945) — https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.26318
- Sen, Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (1981)

## Image

Bengal famine 1943. Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABengal_famine_1943.png

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Subhas Bose and the Indian National Army
**सुभाष बोस और आज़ाद हिंद फ़ौज**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/ina-1943/
- Chapter: [Crown and the freedom struggle](https://indianepics.online/chapter/raj.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1943 CE – 1945 CE
- Where: INA Memorial, Moirang, Manipur (24.5, 93.77)
- Tags: war, political

## Summary

Bose leads the INA alongside Japan; its flag flies at Moirang in April 1944 before defeat at Imphal, and his death in 1945 has been disputed ever since.

बोस ने जापान के साथ आज़ाद हिंद फ़ौज का नेतृत्व किया; अप्रैल 1944 में मोइरांग में उसका झंडा फहरा, फिर इंफ़ाल में हार हुई, और 1945 में उनकी मृत्यु तब से विवादित रही है।

## Account

Subhas Chandra Bose, twice Congress president, escaped house arrest in Calcutta in January 1941, reached Germany by way of Kabul and Moscow, and in 1943 came by submarine to Southeast Asia. In Singapore he took command of the Indian National Army, raised from Indian prisoners of war after the fall of Malaya, and on 21 October 1943 proclaimed the Provisional Government of Free India. On 30 December 1943 he raised the tricolour at Port Blair; Japan handed the Andaman and Nicobar Islands to his government in name and kept control of them.

In the Japanese offensive on Imphal and Kohima from March to July 1944, INA units fought alongside the Japanese. On 14 April Colonel Shaukat Malik raised the INA flag at Moirang, the first on the Indian mainland, where the INA memorial now stands. The offensive failed, and on the retreat through the monsoon many INA soldiers died of hunger and disease.

Bose was reported killed when his plane crashed at Taihoku in Taiwan on 18 August 1945, and ashes said to be his are kept at the Renkoji temple in Tokyo. The Shah Nawaz Committee of 1956 and the Khosla Commission, which reported in 1974, accepted the crash; the Mukherjee Commission reported in 2005 that there had been no crash, and the government rejected its finding. The West Bengal and central governments released their secret files on Bose in 2015 and 2016 without settling the question.

## Sources

- Netaji Inquiry Committee, Report (Shah Nawaz Committee, 1956) — https://archive.org/details/dli.csl.276
- Moti Ram (comp.), Two Historic Trials in Red Fort (1946) — https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.20495

## Image

Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Reviewing the Troops of Azad Hind Fauj - 1940's. Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ANetaji_Subhas_Chandra_Bose_Reviewing_the_Troops_of_Azad_Hind_Fauj_-_1940's.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Simla and the Cabinet Mission
**शिमला सम्मेलन और कैबिनेट मिशन**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/cabinet-mission-1946/
- Chapter: [Crown and the freedom struggle](https://indianepics.online/chapter/raj.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1945 CE – 1946 CE
- Where: Viceregal Lodge, Shimla (31.1037, 77.1418)
- Tags: political

## Summary

Talks at Simla in 1945 and the Cabinet Mission plan of May 1946 try to keep India united in a loose federation; both founder on Congress–League mistrust.

1945 की शिमला वार्ता और मई 1946 की कैबिनेट मिशन योजना ने भारत को एक ढीले संघ में एकजुट रखने की कोशिश की; दोनों कांग्रेस और लीग के अविश्वास पर टूट गईं।

## Account

The Viceroy, Wavell, released the Congress leaders in June 1945 and called them and the League to a conference at the Viceregal Lodge in Simla from 25 June to 14 July, to form an executive council of Indians. It broke down when Jinnah insisted that the League alone name every Muslim member. In the elections of that winter the Congress swept the general seats and the League won all 30 Muslim seats in the central assembly and most Muslim seats in the provinces.

Three British cabinet ministers, Pethick-Lawrence, Cripps and A. V. Alexander, arrived in March 1946, held a second round of talks at Simla in May, and on 16 May published their own plan: a union government for defence, foreign affairs and communications, and the provinces grouped into a Hindu-majority group and two Muslim-majority groups in the north-west and the east, each free to write its own constitution. The League accepted on 6 June. On 10 July Nehru, now Congress president, told a press conference that the Congress would be free to change the plan in the Constituent Assembly, and on 29 July the League withdrew its acceptance and called for direct action.

An interim government under Nehru took office on 2 September 1946, the League joined it in October, and the Constituent Assembly first met on 9 December without the League. Azad called Nehru's remark "one of those unfortunate events which changed the course of history"; others argue that the League's insistence on compulsory groups doomed the plan anyway.

## Sources

- Papers Relating to the Cabinet Mission to India, 1946 — https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.35896
- Azad, India Wins Freedom (1960 ed.) — https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.54205

## Image

Jawaharlal Nehru during the Simla conference, July 1945. Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AJawaharlal_Nehru_during_the_Simla_conference%2C_July_1945.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# The INA trials and the naval mutiny
**आज़ाद हिंद फ़ौज के मुक़दमे और नौसेना विद्रोह**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/rin-mutiny-1946/
- Chapter: [Crown and the freedom struggle](https://indianepics.online/chapter/raj.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1945 CE – 1946 CE
- Where: HMIS Talwar, Colaba, Bombay (18.905, 72.812)
- Tags: political, war

## Summary

The Red Fort trials of three INA officers stir protest in 1945; in February 1946 ratings of the Royal Indian Navy mutiny at Bombay and Karachi.

1945 में आज़ाद हिंद फ़ौज के तीन अधिकारियों पर लाल क़िले के मुक़दमों से विरोध भड़का; फ़रवरी 1946 में बंबई और कराची में रॉयल इंडियन नेवी के नाविकों ने विद्रोह किया।

## Account

In November 1945 the army court-martialled three INA officers at the Red Fort for waging war against the King: Shah Nawaz Khan, Prem Sahgal and Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon, a Muslim, a Hindu and a Sikh. The Congress defended them, with Bhulabhai Desai leading and Nehru wearing his barrister's gown for the first time in decades, and students rioted in Calcutta that month. On 31 December the court sentenced all three to be cashiered and transported for life; on 2 January 1946 the commander-in-chief, Auchinleck, confirmed the sentences but remitted the transportation.

On 18 February 1946 ratings at HMIS Talwar, the signals school at Colaba, refused duty over bad food and an officer's racial insults. Within a day the strike had spread through the ships and shore establishments of Bombay, and it reached Karachi on the 19th. Counts of those who joined run from about 10,000 to 20,000 ratings, on up to 78 ships and 20 shore establishments, and ships flew the flags of the Congress, the League and the Communist Party tied together. The strike committee's demands included the release of the INA prisoners and other political prisoners, equal pay with British sailors and the withdrawal of Indian troops from Indonesia. Bombay's workers struck in support, and in the street fighting that followed 228 civilians were killed and more than a thousand injured.

Patel for the Congress and Jinnah for the League urged the ratings to give in, and they surrendered on 23 February. The British cabinet had announced the Cabinet Mission on the 19th, the mutiny's second day; how far the mutinies, and doubt about Indian troops' loyalty, hurried Britain's exit is argued over.

## Sources

- Moti Ram (comp.), Two Historic Trials in Red Fort (1946) — https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.20495
- Meyer, 'The Royal Indian Navy Mutiny of 1946: Nationalist Competition and Civil-Military Relations in Postwar India', Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 45:1 (2017) — https://doi.org/10.1080/03086534.2016.1262645
- Vitali, 'Meanings of Failed Action: A Reassessment of the 1946 Royal Indian Navy Uprising', South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 41:4 (2018) — https://doi.org/10.1080/00856401.2018.1523106
- Hansard, House of Commons, Royal Indian Navy (Mutiny), 22 February 1946 — https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1946/feb/22/royal-indian-navy-mutiny

## Image

HMIS Hindustan SLV Green. Allan C. Green 1878 - 1954, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AHMIS_Hindustan_SLV_Green.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Direct Action Day
**प्रत्यक्ष कार्रवाई दिवस**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/direct-action-1946/
- Chapter: [Crown and the freedom struggle](https://indianepics.online/chapter/raj.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1946 CE
- Where: Ochterlony Monument (Shaheed Minar), Calcutta (22.5629, 88.3492)
- Tags: political, religion

## Summary

The League's Direct Action Day on 16 August 1946 becomes days of killing in Calcutta; more than 4,000 die, and violence spreads to Noakhali and Bihar.

16 अगस्त 1946 को लीग का प्रत्यक्ष कार्रवाई दिवस कलकत्ता में कई दिनों के क़त्लेआम में बदल गया; 4,000 से अधिक लोग मरे और हिंसा नोआखाली और बिहार तक फैली।

## Account

After withdrawing from the Cabinet Mission plan, the Muslim League called on Muslims to observe 16 August 1946 as Direct Action Day for Pakistan. In Bengal, the League ministry of H. S. Suhrawardy declared the day a public holiday. Clashes began that morning as League processions moved through the city, and in the afternoon a great League rally gathered at the Ochterlony Monument on the Maidan, where Suhrawardy spoke. Killing, looting and arson spread through north and central Calcutta, and from the 17th Hindu and Sikh gangs struck back as hard. The army was not deployed until the second day.

More than 4,000 people died and 100,000 were left homeless within 72 hours, by the usual count, and some estimates run to 10,000. In October Hindus were killed and forcibly converted in Noakhali and Tippera in eastern Bengal, and Gandhi walked from village to village there through the winter. Within weeks Muslims were massacred in their thousands in Bihar, and in November at Garhmukteshwar in the United Provinces.

Who bears the blame for Calcutta is argued: the League and Suhrawardy for the call and the holiday, or the Hindu Mahasabha and Congress volunteers who were also armed and ready. The killings of that autumn persuaded many leaders on both sides that partition could not be avoided. The monument was renamed Shaheed Minar, martyrs' column, in 1969.

## Sources

- Das, Communal Riots in Bengal, 1905–1947 (1991)
- Azad, India Wins Freedom (1960 ed.) — https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.54205

## Image

Calcutta 1946 riot. Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ACalcutta_1946_riot.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Mountbatten's 3 June plan
**माउंटबेटन की 3 जून योजना**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/dominion-plan-1947/
- Chapter: [Crown and the freedom struggle](https://indianepics.online/chapter/raj.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1947 CE
- Where: Viceroy's House (Rashtrapati Bhavan), New Delhi (28.6144, 77.1997)
- Tags: political, colonial

## Summary

On 3 June 1947 Mountbatten announces that British India will be partitioned; the handover is brought forward to August and Parliament passes the act in July.

3 जून 1947 को माउंटबेटन ने ब्रिटिश भारत के विभाजन की घोषणा की; सत्ता-हस्तांतरण अगस्त तक आगे लाया गया और संसद ने जुलाई में अधिनियम पारित किया।

## Account

On 20 February 1947 Attlee told Parliament that Britain would leave India by June 1948, and sent Lord Mountbatten as the last Viceroy; he was sworn in on 24 March. A first plan, which would have handed power to the provinces separately, was dropped in May after Nehru saw it at Simla and rejected it. V. P. Menon drafted the scheme that replaced it: two dominions, with the Punjab and Bengal divided if their legislators so voted. Mountbatten put it to Nehru, Jinnah, Patel, Baldev Singh and the other leaders at Viceroy's House on 2 June, and on 3 June he, Nehru, Jinnah and Baldev Singh announced it on All India Radio.

At a press conference on 4 June Mountbatten named 15 August as the date of transfer. The Bengal and Punjab assemblies voted for partition on 20 and 23 June; Sylhet voted to join East Bengal and the North-West Frontier Province to join Pakistan in referendums in July; and boundary commissions under Cyril Radcliffe began work. The Indian Independence Act received royal assent on 18 July 1947. British paramountcy over the princely states lapsed, leaving their rulers to accede to one dominion or the other.

The ten weeks between the plan and independence are the most criticised part of the transfer: critics hold that Mountbatten's haste left no time to prepare for the migrations and killings, and his defenders that delay would only have spread the violence.

## Sources

- Menon, The Transfer of Power in India (1957) — https://archive.org/details/dli.csl.6473
- Indian Independence Act 1947 — https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1947/30/contents

## Image

Partition of India Collage. Captain AmericanBurger1775, CC0 (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3APartition_of_India_Collage.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# The Republic and its states
**गणराज्य और उसके राज्य**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/chapter/republic/
- Track: evidence
- Span: 1947 CE to 2026 CE
- Boundary shown: india-republic (approximate unless marked traced)

At midnight on 15 August 1947 two dominions replaced the Raj, and within days the Radcliffe awards had cut the Punjab and Bengal in two. The Constitution of 1950 made India a republic; the States Reorganisation Act of 1956 redrew its internal lines along language, and the redrawing has not stopped since.

This chapter follows the modern boundary and the making of the states: 1956, 1960, 1966, Himachal Pradesh in 1971 and the north-eastern states in 1972, the three new states of 2000, Telangana in 2014, and the division of Jammu and Kashmir in 2019.

## Events (23)

- 1947 CE — [Independence](https://indianepics.online/event/independence-1947.md): The Indian Independence Act takes effect at midnight on 15 August; Nehru tells the Constituent Assembly India keeps its tryst with destiny.
- 1947 CE – 1948 CE — [Partition and the Radcliffe Line](https://indianepics.online/event/partition-1947.md): The Radcliffe award, published two days after independence, splits Punjab and Bengal; about 14.5 million people cross the new lines.
- 1950 CE — [The Constitution comes into force](https://indianepics.online/event/constitution-1950.md): On 26 January India becomes a sovereign democratic republic; its constitution, drafted under B. R. Ambedkar, is the world's longest.
- 1951 CE – 1952 CE — [The first general election](https://indianepics.online/event/first-election-1951.md): The first votes are cast in snowbound Chini on 25 October 1951; by February 1952 an electorate of 173 million has chosen the first Lok Sabha.
- 1956 CE — [States Reorganisation Act](https://indianepics.online/event/states-reorganisation-1956.md): After Potti Sriramulu's fatal fast and the Fazl Ali commission, India is redrawn into 14 states and 6 union territories, largely by language.
- 1960 CE — [Bombay State becomes Maharashtra and Gujarat](https://indianepics.online/event/bombay-split-1960.md): The Samyukta Maharashtra and Mahagujarat movements split bilingual Bombay State into Maharashtra and Gujarat on 1 May.
- 1962 CE — [The war with China](https://indianepics.online/event/sino-indian-war-1962.md): China attacks in Ladakh and the North-East Frontier on 20 October; after a month of Indian defeats it declares a ceasefire and keeps Aksai Chin.
- 1966 CE – 1972 CE — [The Green Revolution begins](https://indianepics.online/event/green-revolution-1966.md): Mexican dwarf wheat, tube wells and fertiliser lift Punjab's wheat harvest from 1.9 to 5.6 million tonnes between 1965 and 1972.
- 1971 CE — [The 1971 war and Bangladesh](https://indianepics.online/event/bangladesh-1971.md): After nine months of civil war and ten million refugees, Indian troops and the Mukti Bahini reach Dhaka; Pakistan's eastern command surrenders on 16 December.
- 1974 CE – 1998 CE — [Nuclear tests at Pokhran](https://indianepics.online/event/pokhran-tests.md): India sets off a "peaceful nuclear explosion" on 18 May 1974, then five devices on 11 and 13 May 1998, and declares itself a nuclear weapon state.
- 1975 CE – 1977 CE — [The Emergency](https://indianepics.online/event/emergency-1975.md): Two weeks after a court voids her election, Indira Gandhi has a national emergency proclaimed on 25 June 1975; civil liberties are suspended for 21 months.
- 1984 CE — [The Bhopal gas disaster](https://indianepics.online/event/bhopal-1984.md): On the night of 2-3 December 1984 methyl isocyanate leaks from Union Carbide's pesticide plant; thousands die in the crowded settlements around it.
- 1991 CE — [Economic liberalisation](https://indianepics.online/event/liberalisation-1991.md): Facing a balance-of-payments crisis, the Rao government devalues the rupee, scraps most industrial licensing and opens trade.
- 1992 CE – 2024 CE — [Ayodhya, 1992 to 2024](https://indianepics.online/event/ayodhya-1992.md): Kar sevaks demolish the Babri Masjid on 6 December 1992; after a 2019 Supreme Court verdict, a Ram temple on the site is consecrated on 22 January 2024.
- 1999 CE — [The Kargil war](https://indianepics.online/event/kargil-1999.md): Pakistani troops occupy heights on India's side of the Line of Control above Kargil; by 26 July 1999 the Indian Army has retaken them.
- 2010 CE – 2018 CE — [Aadhaar and the digital state](https://indianepics.online/event/aadhaar-2010.md): Ranjana Sonawane of Tembhli receives the first Aadhaar number on 29 September 2010; by April 2016 a billion of the biometric IDs have been issued.
- 2014 CE — [Telangana becomes the 29th state](https://indianepics.online/event/telangana-2014.md): After a movement going back to 1969, Andhra Pradesh is split on 2 June; Hyderabad serves as joint capital for up to ten years.
- 2019 CE — [Jammu and Kashmir reorganised; Ladakh a union territory](https://indianepics.online/event/ladakh-2019.md): Article 370 is made inoperative in August; on 31 October Jammu and Kashmir becomes two union territories, one of them Ladakh.
- 2020 CE — [Clash in the Galwan valley](https://indianepics.online/event/galwan-2020.md): Indian and Chinese troops fight with clubs and stones on the night of 15 June 2020; twenty Indian soldiers die, the first border deaths in 45 years.
- 2023 CE — [Chandrayaan-3 lands near the lunar south pole](https://indianepics.online/event/chandrayaan-3.md): Launched from Sriharikota on 14 July, Vikram lands near 69°S on 23 August, at the time the closest soft landing to the Moon's south pole.
- 2024 CE — [The 2024 general election](https://indianepics.online/event/election-2024.md): Some 640 million people vote in seven phases; the BJP wins 240 seats, short of a majority, and Narendra Modi begins a third term at the head of the NDA.
- 2025 CE — [Pahalgam and Operation Sindoor](https://indianepics.online/event/operation-sindoor-2025.md): Gunmen kill 26 people near Pahalgam on 22 April 2025; India strikes nine sites in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir on 7 May; firing stops on 10 May.
- 2026 CE – 2027 CE — [Census 2027 begins](https://indianepics.online/event/census-2027.md): India's first census since 2011 opens with houselisting on 1 April 2026; it is the first digital count, and its second phase will also record caste.


# Independence
**स्वतंत्रता**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/independence-1947/
- Chapter: [The Republic and its states](https://indianepics.online/chapter/republic.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1947 CE
- Where: Red Fort, Delhi (28.656, 77.241)
- Tags: political, colonial

## Summary

The Indian Independence Act takes effect at midnight on 15 August; Nehru tells the Constituent Assembly India keeps its tryst with destiny.

15 अगस्त की मध्यरात्रि को भारतीय स्वतंत्रता अधिनियम लागू हुआ; नेहरू ने संविधान सभा में 'नियति से साक्षात्कार' का भाषण दिया।

## Account

Nehru spoke in the Constituent Assembly as midnight struck. The new government was sworn in that morning, and on 16 August he raised the flag over the Red Fort's Lahori Gate, a ceremony every prime minister has repeated since.

The map changed with it: two dominions; most of some 565 princely states already acceded to one or the other, but Junagadh, Hyderabad and Kashmir still in contention; and a line through the Punjab and Bengal that had not yet been published.

## Sources

- Indian Independence Act 1947 — https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1947/30/contents
- Nehru, 'The Honour of the Flag', Red Fort, 16 August 1947 — https://nehruarchive.in/documents/the-honour-of-the-flag-16-august-1947-7y7w35

## Image

Revisit our Tryst with Destiny. Shannon.Mathew, CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ARevisit_our_Tryst_with_Destiny.JPG

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Partition and the Radcliffe Line
**विभाजन और रैडक्लिफ़ रेखा**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/partition-1947/
- Chapter: [The Republic and its states](https://indianepics.online/chapter/republic.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1947 CE – 1948 CE
- Where: Attari-Wagah crossing, Punjab (31.605, 74.573)
- Tags: political, war

## Summary

The Radcliffe award, published two days after independence, splits Punjab and Bengal; about 14.5 million people cross the new lines.

स्वतंत्रता के दो दिन बाद प्रकाशित रैडक्लिफ़ निर्णय ने पंजाब और बंगाल को बाँटा; लगभग 1.45 करोड़ लोगों ने नई सीमाएँ पार कीं।

## Account

Cyril Radcliffe's awards were ready before 15 August but published only on the 17th. Working from the censuses, Bharadwaj, Khwaja and Mian estimate 14.5 million arrivals against 17.9 million departures, leaving some 3.4 million unaccounted for; estimates of the dead run from about 200,000 to two million.

One of the largest forced migrations in history, and the reason this site's modern boundary layer needs a 1947 slice and a 1971 slice, not one.

## Sources

- Khan, The Great Partition (2007)
- Report of the Punjab Boundary Commission, 1947 (Radcliffe's award, published 17 August 1947)
- Bharadwaj, Khwaja and Mian, 'The Big March: Migratory Flows after the Partition of India', Economic and Political Weekly 43(35), 2008 — https://appext.hks.harvard.edu/publications/getFile.aspx?Id=308

## Image

International border at Wagah - evening flag lowering ceremony. Kamran Ali, CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AInternational_border_at_Wagah_-_evening_flag_lowering_ceremony.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# The Constitution comes into force
**संविधान लागू**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/constitution-1950/
- Chapter: [The Republic and its states](https://indianepics.online/chapter/republic.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1950 CE
- Where: Parliament House, New Delhi (28.617, 77.208)
- Tags: political

## Summary

On 26 January India becomes a sovereign democratic republic; its constitution, drafted under B. R. Ambedkar, is the world's longest.

26 जनवरी को भारत संप्रभु लोकतांत्रिक गणराज्य बना; बी. आर. आंबेडकर की अध्यक्षता में तैयार उसका संविधान विश्व का सबसे लंबा है।

## Account

The Constituent Assembly adopted the text on 26 November 1949, and it came into force two months later, on the anniversary of the Purna Swaraj day of 1930. Article 1: India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States.

The First Schedule sorted those states into four parts, A to D: former British provinces, former princely states and their unions, smaller centrally run states, and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. That list is what the next pins rewrite.

## Sources

- Constitution of India — https://legislative.gov.in/constitution-of-india/
- Austin, The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation (1966)

## Image

SansadBhavan. Bill Strong from Melbourne, Australia, CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASansadBhavan.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# The first general election
**पहला आम चुनाव**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/first-election-1951/
- Chapter: [The Republic and its states](https://indianepics.online/chapter/republic.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1951 CE – 1952 CE
- Where: Kalpa (Chini), Kinnaur, Himachal Pradesh (31.537, 78.254)
- Tags: political

## Summary

The first votes are cast in snowbound Chini on 25 October 1951; by February 1952 an electorate of 173 million has chosen the first Lok Sabha.

25 अक्टूबर 1951 को बर्फ़ से घिरे चीनी में पहले वोट पड़े; फ़रवरी 1952 तक 17.3 करोड़ मतदाताओं वाले देश ने पहली लोकसभा चुन ली।

## Account

Chini, the old name of the Kalpa area in Kinnaur, and Pangi in the Himalaya voted first because snow would close them by winter; the schoolteacher Shyam Saran Negi of Kalpa is remembered as the first voter. Most of the country polled in January and February 1952. Since most voters could not read, every party had a symbol and every candidate a separate ballot box.

The Congress won 364 of the 489 elected seats with 45 per cent of the vote. The 401 constituencies were the first electoral map of the Republic, run by Sukumar Sen's new Election Commission; Jammu and Kashmir did not vote.

## Sources

- Election Commission of India, Report on the First General Elections in India 1951-52, vol. II (Statistical) — https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.449149
- The Hindu, Revisiting India's first general election, 1951-52 (2026) — https://www.thehindu.com/infographics/2026-10-24/india-first-general-election-1951-52/index.html
- Guha, India after Gandhi (2007)

## Image

Indian election 1952 ballot boxes. Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AIndian_election_1952_ballot_boxes.jpeg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# States Reorganisation Act
**राज्य पुनर्गठन अधिनियम**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/states-reorganisation-1956/
- Chapter: [The Republic and its states](https://indianepics.online/chapter/republic.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1956 CE
- Where: Kurnool, Andhra Pradesh (15.83, 78.04)
- Tags: state-formation, language, political

## Summary

After Potti Sriramulu's fatal fast and the Fazl Ali commission, India is redrawn into 14 states and 6 union territories, largely by language.

पोट्टि श्रीरामुलु के प्राणांतक अनशन और फ़ज़ल अली आयोग के बाद भारत को मुख्यतः भाषा के आधार पर 14 राज्यों और 6 केंद्र शासित प्रदेशों में बाँटा गया।

## Account

Potti Sriramulu died on 15 December 1952, fifty-eight days into a fast for a Telugu state, and Andhra State was carved from Madras on 1 October 1953 with Kurnool as its capital. The commission of Fazl Ali, H. N. Kunzru and K. M. Panikkar reported in 1955, and the Act took effect on 1 November 1956.

Andhra absorbed the Telugu districts of Hyderabad State and moved its capital to Hyderabad. The commission had declined to make language the only test, and Bombay and Punjab were left bilingual; both would be split next.

## Sources

- States Reorganisation Act, 1956 (Act 37 of 1956) (In force 1 November 1956)
- Report of the States Reorganisation Commission (1955)

## Image

Charminar Hyderabad 1. DidierTais, CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ACharminar_Hyderabad_1.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Bombay State becomes Maharashtra and Gujarat
**बंबई राज्य से महाराष्ट्र और गुजरात**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/bombay-split-1960/
- Chapter: [The Republic and its states](https://indianepics.online/chapter/republic.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1960 CE
- Where: Mumbai, Maharashtra (18.922, 72.834)
- Tags: state-formation, language

## Summary

The Samyukta Maharashtra and Mahagujarat movements split bilingual Bombay State into Maharashtra and Gujarat on 1 May.

संयुक्त महाराष्ट्र और महागुजरात आंदोलनों के बाद 1 मई को द्विभाषी बंबई राज्य महाराष्ट्र और गुजरात में बँटा।

## Account

Bombay city, claimed by both, went to Maharashtra after an agitation in which more than a hundred people were killed in police firing; Gujarat took Ahmedabad as its first capital. Punjab and Haryana followed the same logic in 1966.

## Sources

- Bombay Reorganisation Act, 1960 (Act 11 of 1960) (Enacted 25 April 1960, in force 1 May 1960)

## Image

Gateway Of India. Joe Ravi, CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AGateway_Of_India.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# The war with China
**चीन के साथ युद्ध**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/sino-indian-war-1962/
- Chapter: [The Republic and its states](https://indianepics.online/chapter/republic.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1962 CE
- Where: Tawang, Arunachal Pradesh (27.586, 91.866)
- Tags: war, political

## Summary

China attacks in Ladakh and the North-East Frontier on 20 October; after a month of Indian defeats it declares a ceasefire and keeps Aksai Chin.

20 अक्टूबर को चीन ने लद्दाख और पूर्वोत्तर सीमांत पर हमला किया; एक महीने की भारतीय पराजयों के बाद उसने युद्धविराम घोषित किया और अक्साई चिन अपने पास रखा।

## Account

The dispute was over two stretches of frontier: Aksai Chin in Ladakh, where China had built a road linking Xinjiang and Tibet in the 1950s, and the McMahon Line of 1914 in the east, which China rejected. Tawang fell within days of the attack. In November the Chinese broke through at Se La and Bomdila and overran Rezang La in Ladakh. China announced a unilateral ceasefire from 21 November and withdrew in the east, but stayed in Aksai Chin.

The war left the Line of Actual Control as the working northern border; in Ladakh it runs well inside the boundary India claims. India's own inquiry, the Henderson Brooks-Bhagat report, had not been officially released by 2026, and the balance of blame between Nehru's forward policy and Chinese intentions has been argued ever since.

## Sources

- Maxwell, India's China War (1970) (Argues India's forward policy provoked the war; a contested reading)
- Raghavan, War and Peace in Modern India (2010)

## Image

Tawang Monastery (Tibetan Buddhist). Vikramjit Kakati, CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ATawang_Monastery_(Tibetan_Buddhist).jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# The Green Revolution begins
**हरित क्रांति का आरंभ**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/green-revolution-1966/
- Chapter: [The Republic and its states](https://indianepics.online/chapter/republic.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1966 CE – 1972 CE
- Where: Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana (30.9, 75.8)
- Tags: science, trade

## Summary

Mexican dwarf wheat, tube wells and fertiliser lift Punjab's wheat harvest from 1.9 to 5.6 million tonnes between 1965 and 1972.

मैक्सिको के बौने गेहूँ, नलकूपों और उर्वरक से 1965 से 1972 के बीच पंजाब की गेहूँ पैदावार 19 लाख से बढ़कर 56 लाख टन हो गई।

## Account

Semi-dwarf wheats bred by Norman Borlaug in Mexico were imported in 1965 and 1966 and adapted at the Punjab Agricultural University in Ludhiana and the Indian Agricultural Research Institute in Delhi. With tube-well water and fertiliser, Punjab's wheat harvest nearly tripled in seven years, and India's dependence on American food aid had ended by the early 1970s.

The costs came later: falling water tables, heavy chemical use and a narrowing of crops. The same years saw the Punjab Reorganisation Act of 1966, which carved Haryana out of the old state and gave its hill districts to Himachal Pradesh.

## Sources

- Singh and Kohli, 'The Green Revolution in Punjab, India: The Economics of Technological Change', Journal of Punjab Studies 12(2), 2005 — https://punjab.global.ucsb.edu/sites/default/files/sitefiles/journals/volume12/no2/12.2_Singh_Kohli.pdf
- Swaminathan, M. S., Wheat Revolution: A Dialogue (1993)

## Image

Wheat field in Phagwara Punjab India. Sixtybolts, CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AWheat_field_in_Phagwara_Punjab_India.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# The 1971 war and Bangladesh
**1971 का युद्ध और बांग्लादेश**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/bangladesh-1971/
- Chapter: [The Republic and its states](https://indianepics.online/chapter/republic.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1971 CE
- Where: Suhrawardy Udyan (Ramna Race Course), Dhaka (23.733, 90.398)
- Tags: war, state-formation

## Summary

After nine months of civil war and ten million refugees, Indian troops and the Mukti Bahini reach Dhaka; Pakistan's eastern command surrenders on 16 December.

नौ महीने के गृहयुद्ध और लगभग एक करोड़ शरणार्थियों के बाद भारतीय सेना और मुक्ति वाहिनी ढाका पहुँचीं; 16 दिसंबर को पाकिस्तान की पूर्वी कमान ने आत्मसमर्पण किया।

## Account

The Pakistani army's crackdown in East Pakistan from 25 March 1971 drove some ten million refugees into India. Open war began on 3 December. On the 16th Lieutenant General A. A. K. Niazi signed the Instrument of Surrender before Lieutenant General Jagjit Singh Aurora at the Ramna Race Course, and about 93,000 Pakistani soldiers and civilians became prisoners of war.

The 1947 line around East Bengal became the border of a new state, and the Simla Agreement of July 1972 turned the ceasefire line in Kashmir into the Line of Control. The number killed in East Pakistan in 1971 has never been settled: estimates run from the 26,000 of Pakistan's Hamoodur Rahman Commission to the three million that Bangladesh gives officially.

## Sources

- Simla Agreement, 2 July 1972 (Ministry of External Affairs) — https://www.mea.gov.in/bilateral-documents.htm?dtl/5541/Simla+Agreement
- Raghavan, 1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh (2013)

## Image

Pakistani Instrument of Surrender 1971. Ministry of Liberation War Affairs, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3APakistani_Instrument_of_Surrender_1971.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Nuclear tests at Pokhran
**पोखरण में परमाणु परीक्षण**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/pokhran-tests/
- Chapter: [The Republic and its states](https://indianepics.online/chapter/republic.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1974 CE – 1998 CE
- Where: Pokhran Test Range, Rajasthan (27.08, 71.73)
- Tags: science, political

## Summary

India sets off a "peaceful nuclear explosion" on 18 May 1974, then five devices on 11 and 13 May 1998, and declares itself a nuclear weapon state.

भारत ने 18 मई 1974 को 'शांतिपूर्ण परमाणु विस्फोट' किया, फिर 11 और 13 मई 1998 को पाँच परीक्षण कर स्वयं को परमाणु शस्त्र संपन्न देश घोषित किया।

## Account

Both series were fired underground in the Thar desert, north-west of Pokhran town. The 1974 shot, code-named Smiling Buddha, was called peaceful. The 1998 series, Shakti, was followed by a voluntary moratorium on further tests, and a doctrine of no first use was adopted in 2003. Pakistan tested in Baluchistan on 28 and 30 May 1998, in the Chagai hills and then the Kharan desert.

The yield claimed for the 1998 thermonuclear device has been disputed by some Indian and foreign scientists. The tests brought sanctions and, a decade later, the 2008 civil nuclear agreement with the United States.

## Sources

- Evolution of India's Nuclear Policy, paper laid in Parliament on 27 May 1998 (Conference on Disarmament document CD/1524) — https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/258962
- Perkovich, India's Nuclear Bomb (1999)


---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# The Emergency
**आपातकाल**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/emergency-1975/
- Chapter: [The Republic and its states](https://indianepics.online/chapter/republic.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1975 CE – 1977 CE
- Where: Rashtrapati Bhavan, New Delhi (28.6143, 77.1994)
- Tags: political

## Summary

Two weeks after a court voids her election, Indira Gandhi has a national emergency proclaimed on 25 June 1975; civil liberties are suspended for 21 months.

अदालत द्वारा उनका चुनाव रद्द होने के दो सप्ताह बाद इंदिरा गांधी की सलाह पर 25 जून 1975 को आपातकाल घोषित हुआ; 21 महीने तक नागरिक स्वतंत्रताएँ निलंबित रहीं।

## Account

On 12 June 1975 the Allahabad High Court set aside Indira Gandhi's 1971 election on a petition by Raj Narain. On the night of 25 June President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed signed a proclamation of emergency on grounds of internal disturbance. Opposition leaders were jailed, the press was censored, and the 42nd Amendment rewrote much of the Constitution. Elections in March 1977 brought the Janata Party to power, and the emergency was lifted on 21 March.

For the map, the 42nd Amendment froze each state's share of Lok Sabha seats at the 1971 census figures, a freeze later extended to the first census after 2026. The Shah Commission documented arrests and forced sterilisations; how many of the sterilisations were coerced has never been settled.

## Sources

- Shah Commission of Inquiry, Third and Final Report (1978) — https://archive.org/details/ShahCommissionOfInquiry3rdFinalReport
- Austin, Working a Democratic Constitution (1999)

## Image

Indira Gandhi (portrait, 1997). Edward Knapczyk, CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AIndira_Gandhi_(portrait%2C_1997).jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# The Bhopal gas disaster
**भोपाल गैस त्रासदी**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/bhopal-1984/
- Chapter: [The Republic and its states](https://indianepics.online/chapter/republic.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1984 CE
- Where: Union Carbide plant, Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh (23.281, 77.411)
- Tags: science, political

## Summary

On the night of 2-3 December 1984 methyl isocyanate leaks from Union Carbide's pesticide plant; thousands die in the crowded settlements around it.

2-3 दिसंबर 1984 की रात यूनियन कार्बाइड के कीटनाशक संयंत्र से मिथाइल आइसोसाइनेट गैस रिसी; आसपास की घनी बस्तियों में हज़ारों लोग मारे गए।

## Account

About 40 tonnes of methyl isocyanate escaped from a storage tank and drifted over the settlements around the plant and into the old city. The Madhya Pradesh government puts the deaths from the gas at 3,787; independent estimates run far higher, and hundreds of thousands of people were injured.

In 1989 the Supreme Court approved a settlement of 470 million dollars between the Government of India and Union Carbide, criticised then and since as too small. In January 2025 the 337 tonnes of waste stored at the plant were moved to an incinerator at Pithampur, but the contaminated soil and groundwater around the site, which campaigners say hold far more poison, were not part of that removal.

## Sources

- Bhopal Gas Tragedy Relief and Rehabilitation Department, Government of Madhya Pradesh — https://bgtrrdmp.mp.gov.in/
- Broughton, The Bhopal disaster and its aftermath: a review, Environmental Health 4 (2005) — https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1142333/
- Reuters, Toxic waste from India's 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy site moved for disposal after 40 years (2 January 2025) — https://www.reuters.com/world/india/toxic-waste-indias-1984-bhopal-gas-tragedy-site-moved-disposal-after-40-years-2025-01-02/

## Image

Bhopal-Union Carbide 2. Original uploader was Simone.lippi at it.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABhopal-Union_Carbide_2.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Economic liberalisation
**आर्थिक उदारीकरण**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/liberalisation-1991/
- Chapter: [The Republic and its states](https://indianepics.online/chapter/republic.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1991 CE
- Where: North Block, New Delhi (28.614, 77.212)
- Tags: trade, political

## Summary

Facing a balance-of-payments crisis, the Rao government devalues the rupee, scraps most industrial licensing and opens trade.

भुगतान संतुलन संकट के बीच राव सरकार ने रुपये का अवमूल्यन किया, अधिकांश औद्योगिक लाइसेंस व्यवस्था समाप्त की और व्यापार खोला।

## Account

The rupee was devalued in two steps, on 1 and 3 July 1991. On 24 July a new industrial policy ended licensing for all but a short list of industries, and that evening Manmohan Singh closed his budget speech with Victor Hugo: no power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come.

Growth was faster in the three decades that followed. How much of the change began in 1991, rather than with the reforms of the 1980s, economists still argue.

## Sources

- Union Budget speech, 24 July 1991 — https://www.indiabudget.gov.in/doc/bspeech/bs199192.pdf
- Statement on Industrial Policy, 24 July 1991 (Ministry of Industry)

## Image

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in WEF ,2009. World Economic Forum, CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3APrime_Minister_Manmohan_Singh_in_WEF_%2C2009.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Ayodhya, 1992 to 2024
**अयोध्या, 1992 से 2024**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/ayodhya-1992/
- Chapter: [The Republic and its states](https://indianepics.online/chapter/republic.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1992 CE – 2024 CE
- Where: Ram Janmabhoomi and Babri Masjid site, Ayodhya (26.7956, 82.1943)
- Tags: religion, political

## Summary

Kar sevaks demolish the Babri Masjid on 6 December 1992; after a 2019 Supreme Court verdict, a Ram temple on the site is consecrated on 22 January 2024.

6 दिसंबर 1992 को कारसेवकों ने बाबरी मस्जिद ढहा दी; 2019 के सर्वोच्च न्यायालय के फ़ैसले के बाद उसी स्थल पर बने राम मंदिर में 22 जनवरी 2024 को प्राण प्रतिष्ठा हुई।

## Account

The mosque, dated by its inscriptions to 1528-29 under Babur, stood on a site many Hindus hold to be Rama's birthplace. A crowd at a rally organised by the Vishva Hindu Parishad and attended by BJP leaders brought it down, and the riots that followed, in Bombay and elsewhere, killed some two thousand people across India. In 2020 a special CBI court in Lucknow acquitted all 32 accused, among them L. K. Advani, holding that the demolition had not been planned.

On 9 November 2019 a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court unanimously awarded the 2.77-acre site to a trust for a temple, called the demolition an egregious violation of the rule of law, and ordered five acres elsewhere in Ayodhya for a mosque. The court noted the Archaeological Survey's finding of an earlier non-Islamic structure beneath the mosque but held that title could not be decided on archaeology. Prime Minister Narendra Modi led the consecration of the new temple in January 2024. The tradition track's Ayodhya pin is the Ramayana's city; this one is the modern dispute.

## Sources

- Supreme Court of India, M Siddiq (D) Thr Lrs v. Mahant Suresh Das & Ors, judgment of 9 November 2019 — https://api.sci.gov.in/supremecourt/2010/36350/36350_2010_1_1502_18205_Judgement_09-Nov-2019.pdf
- PIB, Pran Pratishtha ceremony at Shri Ram Janmbhoomi Mandir, 21 January 2024 — https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1998420
- Al Jazeera, India's BJP leaders acquitted in Babri mosque demolition case (30 September 2020) — https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/9/30/indian-court-acquits-all-accused-in-babri-mosque-demolition-case

## Image

Ram Mandir, Ayodhya. Narendra Modi, CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ARam_Mandir%2C_Ayodhya.png

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# The Kargil war
**कारगिल युद्ध**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/kargil-1999/
- Chapter: [The Republic and its states](https://indianepics.online/chapter/republic.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1999 CE
- Where: Kargil, Ladakh (34.557, 76.126)
- Tags: war

## Summary

Pakistani troops occupy heights on India's side of the Line of Control above Kargil; by 26 July 1999 the Indian Army has retaken them.

पाकिस्तानी सैनिकों ने कारगिल के ऊपर नियंत्रण रेखा के भारतीय ओर की चोटियों पर कब्ज़ा किया; 26 जुलाई 1999 तक भारतीय सेना ने उन्हें वापस ले लिया।

## Account

The intrusions, discovered in May 1999, overlooked the Srinagar-Leh highway in the Mushkoh, Drass, Kaksar and Batalik sectors. Operation Vijay retook Tololing in June and Tiger Hill in early July, and the air force struck the heights without crossing the Line of Control. India's official count of soldiers killed is 527; the government's 2025 backgrounder gives 545.

The war was fought to restore the line agreed at Simla in 1972, and it did: the map did not change. Pakistan first described the intruders as Kashmiri fighters, and its army chief publicly acknowledged the army's part only in September 2024. Whether Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif or the army under General Pervez Musharraf drove the operation has been disputed between them since.

## Sources

- PIB, Kargil Vijay Diwas 2025 (backgrounder) — https://www.pib.gov.in/PressNoteDetails.aspx?ModuleId=3&NoteId=154940&reg=48&lang=2
- Kargil Review Committee, From Surprise to Reckoning (2000)
- The Hindu, Pakistan Army Chief acknowledges role of Pakistani Army in Kargil war (7 September 2024) — https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/pakistan-army-chief-acknowledges-role-of-pakistani-army-in-kargil-war/article68617262.ece

## Image

WarMemorial Drass Ladakh India. शंतनू, CC BY-SA 2.5 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AWarMemorial_Drass_Ladakh_India.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Aadhaar and the digital state
**आधार और डिजिटल राज्य**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/aadhaar-2010/
- Chapter: [The Republic and its states](https://indianepics.online/chapter/republic.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 2010 CE – 2018 CE
- Where: Tembhli, Nandurbar, Maharashtra (21.567, 74.5)
- Tags: science, political

## Summary

Ranjana Sonawane of Tembhli receives the first Aadhaar number on 29 September 2010; by April 2016 a billion of the biometric IDs have been issued.

29 सितंबर 2010 को टेंभली की रंजना सोनावणे को पहला आधार नंबर मिला; अप्रैल 2016 तक एक अरब बायोमेट्रिक पहचान संख्याएँ जारी हो चुकी थीं।

## Account

The Unique Identification Authority of India issues twelve-digit numbers linked to fingerprints and iris scans. It began in a village in the tribal district of Nandurbar, with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi present. The Aadhaar Act of 2016 gave the scheme a statutory basis, and in the same year the Unified Payments Interface, run by the National Payments Corporation of India, began instant bank transfers by phone.

Privacy challenges went to the Supreme Court in the Puttaswamy cases. In 2017 nine judges held privacy to be a fundamental right; in 2018 the court upheld Aadhaar for welfare and tax but struck down its compulsory use by private companies. Whether failed authentication has cut people off from rations and benefits has been argued over ever since.

## Sources

- The Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016 — https://uidai.gov.in/images/Aadhaar_Act_2016_as_amended.pdf
- Justice K. S. Puttaswamy (Retd) v. Union of India, Supreme Court, 2017 and 2018
- PIB, UIDAI generates a billion (100 crore) Aadhaars, 4 April 2016 — https://www.pib.gov.in/newsite/printrelease.aspx?relid=138555

## Image

Aadhaar Seva Kendra, Bhopal. Suyash.dwivedi, CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AAadhaar_Seva_Kendra%2C_Bhopal.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Telangana becomes the 29th state
**तेलंगाना उनतीसवाँ राज्य बना**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/telangana-2014/
- Chapter: [The Republic and its states](https://indianepics.online/chapter/republic.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 2014 CE
- Where: Hyderabad, Telangana (17.385, 78.487)
- Tags: state-formation, political

## Summary

After a movement going back to 1969, Andhra Pradesh is split on 2 June; Hyderabad serves as joint capital for up to ten years.

1969 से चले आ रहे आंदोलन के बाद 2 जून को आंध्र प्रदेश का विभाजन; हैदराबाद अधिकतम दस वर्षों तक दोनों राज्यों की संयुक्त राजधानी।

## Account

The first new state since Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand in 2000. The Andhra Pradesh assembly voted to reject the bill in January 2014; under Article 3 a state legislature's views are sought but do not bind Parliament, which passed the bill the next month.

Hyderabad's term as the shared capital ended on 2 June 2024. The 2019 reorganisation of Jammu and Kashmir left 28 states.

## Sources

- Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2014 (Act 6 of 2014) (Enacted 1 March 2014; appointed day 2 June 2014)

## Image

Charminar Hyderabad 1. DidierTais, CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ACharminar_Hyderabad_1.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Jammu and Kashmir reorganised; Ladakh a union territory
**जम्मू-कश्मीर पुनर्गठन; लद्दाख केंद्र शासित प्रदेश**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/ladakh-2019/
- Chapter: [The Republic and its states](https://indianepics.online/chapter/republic.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 2019 CE
- Where: Leh, Ladakh (34.152, 77.577)
- Tags: state-formation, political

## Summary

Article 370 is made inoperative in August; on 31 October Jammu and Kashmir becomes two union territories, one of them Ladakh.

अगस्त में अनुच्छेद 370 निष्प्रभावी किया गया; 31 अक्टूबर को जम्मू-कश्मीर राज्य दो केंद्र शासित प्रदेशों में बँटा, जिनमें एक लद्दाख है।

## Account

Presidential orders of 5 and 6 August 2019 applied the whole Constitution to the state and made Article 370 inoperative; the Reorganisation Act, signed on 9 August, took effect on 31 October. Ladakh became a union territory without a legislature. The Supreme Court upheld the changes in December 2023.

This is why the modern-boundary layer needs a 2019 slice. A smaller change followed in January 2020, when Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu merged into one union territory.

## Sources

- Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019 (Act 34 of 2019) — https://www.indiacode.nic.in/handle/123456789/12030
- Supreme Court of India, In Re: Article 370 of the Constitution (11 December 2023)

## Image

Ladakh - Pangong Tso 1. Gktambe at English Wikipedia, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ALadakh_-_Pangong_Tso_1.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Clash in the Galwan valley
**गलवान घाटी में झड़प**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/galwan-2020/
- Chapter: [The Republic and its states](https://indianepics.online/chapter/republic.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 2020 CE
- Where: Galwan valley, near Patrolling Point 14, Ladakh (34.767, 78.217)
- Tags: war, political

## Summary

Indian and Chinese troops fight with clubs and stones on the night of 15 June 2020; twenty Indian soldiers die, the first border deaths in 45 years.

15 जून 2020 की रात भारतीय और चीनी सैनिकों के बीच लाठियों और पत्थरों से झड़प; बीस भारतीय सैनिक मारे गए, 45 वर्षों में सीमा पर पहली मौतें।

## Account

The clash came during a standoff that began in May 2020 at several points along the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh. India's Ministry of External Affairs said the Chinese side had tried to change the status quo unilaterally; China blamed Indian troops. China acknowledged four of its soldiers dead in February 2021; some foreign estimates are higher. No firearms were used, under agreements of 1996 and 2005 on conduct along the line.

Disengagement at Galwan, Pangong Tso and Gogra-Hot Springs between 2020 and 2022 left buffer zones where neither side was to patrol; an agreement in October 2024 restored patrolling at Depsang and Demchok. The episode shows why the northern boundary on this map is a claim: in Ladakh the line on the ground and the line on the map differ.

## Sources

- Ministry of External Affairs, Official Spokesperson's response on the situation in the western sector of the India-China border, 16 June 2020 — https://www.mea.gov.in/response-to-queries.htm?dtl/32761/official+spokespersons+response+to+media+queries+on+the+situation+in+the+western+sector+of+the+indiachina+border
- Ministry of External Affairs, Rajya Sabha Question 1199 on the 21 October 2024 patrolling agreement — https://www.mea.gov.in/rajya-sabha?dtl/38689/QUESTION+NO+1199+RECENTLY+SIGNED+BORDER+AGREEMENTS+WITH+CHINA


---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Chandrayaan-3 lands near the lunar south pole
**चंद्रयान-3 चंद्रमा के दक्षिणी ध्रुव के पास उतरा**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/chandrayaan-3/
- Chapter: [The Republic and its states](https://indianepics.online/chapter/republic.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 2023 CE
- Where: Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh (13.72, 80.23)
- Tags: science

## Summary

Launched from Sriharikota on 14 July, Vikram lands near 69°S on 23 August, at the time the closest soft landing to the Moon's south pole.

14 जुलाई को श्रीहरिकोटा से प्रक्षेपित विक्रम 23 अगस्त को लगभग 69° दक्षिण पर उतरा; उस समय तक चंद्रमा के दक्षिणी ध्रुव के सबसे निकट सुरक्षित अवतरण।

## Account

An LVM3 rocket carried the spacecraft from the second launch pad at Sriharikota. Vikram set down at about 69.4°S, 32.3°E, a site ISRO named Shiv Shakti point, and the Pragyan rover rolled out the next day; India became the fourth country to soft-land on the Moon, after the Soviet Union, the United States and China.

Sixty years earlier, in November 1963, India's first sounding rocket had gone up from Thumba. The pin is the launch site; the landing site is off this map.

## Sources

- ISRO Chandrayaan-3 mission page — https://www.isro.gov.in/Chandrayaan3.html


---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# The 2024 general election
**2024 का आम चुनाव**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/election-2024/
- Chapter: [The Republic and its states](https://indianepics.online/chapter/republic.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 2024 CE
- Where: Parliament House, New Delhi (28.6175, 77.2085)
- Tags: political

## Summary

Some 640 million people vote in seven phases; the BJP wins 240 seats, short of a majority, and Narendra Modi begins a third term at the head of the NDA.

सात चरणों में लगभग 64 करोड़ लोगों ने मतदान किया; भाजपा को 240 सीटें मिलीं, बहुमत से कम, और नरेंद्र मोदी ने एनडीए के नेता के रूप में तीसरा कार्यकाल शुरू किया।

## Account

Polling ran from 19 April to 1 June 2024, and votes were counted on 4 June. Turnout at polling stations was 65.79 per cent. The BJP won 240 of the 543 seats and the Congress 99; with its allies the National Democratic Alliance held 293, and Modi was sworn in on 9 June. The 18th Lok Sabha first met on 24 June.

The constituency map was still the one drawn in 2008 on the 2001 census, with each state's number of seats frozen at 1971 levels. The BJP's largest losses were in Uttar Pradesh, where the Samajwadi Party won 37 seats. Opposition parties questioned the voting machines and the release of turnout data; in April 2024 the Supreme Court declined to order a full count of the paper trail.

## Sources

- Election Commission of India, Voter turnout, General Elections 2024 — https://elections24.eci.gov.in/docs/BnS4hhbvK9.pdf
- Election Commission of India, General Election to Lok Sabha 2024: Statistical Reports — https://www.eci.gov.in/general-election-to-loksabha-2024-statistical-reports
- PRS Legislative Research, Profile of the 18th Lok Sabha — https://prsindia.org/parliamenttrack/vital-stats/profile-of-the-18th-lok-sabha

## Image

SansadBhavan. Bill Strong from Melbourne, Australia, CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASansadBhavan.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Pahalgam and Operation Sindoor
**पहलगाम और ऑपरेशन सिंदूर**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/operation-sindoor-2025/
- Chapter: [The Republic and its states](https://indianepics.online/chapter/republic.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 2025 CE
- Where: Baisaran meadow, Pahalgam, Jammu and Kashmir (34.003, 75.334)
- Tags: war, political

## Summary

Gunmen kill 26 people near Pahalgam on 22 April 2025; India strikes nine sites in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir on 7 May; firing stops on 10 May.

22 अप्रैल 2025 को पहलगाम के पास बंदूकधारियों ने 26 लोगों की हत्या की; 7 मई को भारत ने पाकिस्तान और पाकिस्तान-प्रशासित कश्मीर में नौ ठिकानों पर हमला किया; 10 मई को गोलीबारी रुकी।

## Account

The dead at Baisaran were 25 Indians, among them a local pony-ride operator, and one Nepali citizen. India blamed Pakistan-based militants of the Lashkar-e-Taiba; Pakistan denied any part in the attack and called for a neutral investigation. On 23 April India held the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960 in abeyance. In the early hours of 7 May it struck what it described as nine terrorist camps, in Bahawalpur, Muridke, Muzaffarabad, Kotli, Bhimber and Sialkot. Pakistan answered with drones and missiles, India hit Pakistani air bases, and on 10 May the two directors general of military operations agreed to stop all firing and military action on land, in the air and at sea.

The Line of Control did not move. What the strikes destroyed and how many aircraft each side lost are disputed: Pakistan said it shot down six Indian jets, India's Chief of Defence Staff acknowledged unspecified losses, and India's air chief later said five Pakistani fighters and one larger aircraft were downed. US President Donald Trump said Washington mediated the halt and Pakistan thanked it; India says the two militaries agreed it directly. The treaty's suspension concerns rivers on this map: the Indus, Jhelum and Chenab, allotted largely to Pakistan in 1960, all cross Indian-administered territory before they reach Pakistan.

## Sources

- Ministry of External Affairs, Statement by Foreign Secretary on the decisions of the Cabinet Committee on Security, 23 April 2025 — https://www.mea.gov.in/speeches-statements?dtl/39442
- Al Jazeera, Pakistan calls for 'neutral' investigation into Kashmir attack (26 April 2025) — https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/4/26/pakistan-calls-for-neutral-investigation-into-kashmir-attack
- Ministry of External Affairs, Special Briefing on Operation Sindoor, 7 May 2025 — https://www.mea.gov.in/media-briefings.htm?dtl/39474/Transcript_of_Special_Briefing_on_OPERATION_SINDOOR_May_07_2025
- Ministry of External Affairs, Statement by Foreign Secretary, 10 May 2025 — https://www.mea.gov.in/press-releases?dtl/39488/Statement_by_Foreign_Secretary_May_10_2025
- India Today, Chief of Defence Staff on aircraft losses in Operation Sindoor (31 May 2025) — https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/chief-of-defence-staff-general-ani-chauhan-india-lost-fighter-jets-operation-sindoor-pakistan-2733656-2025-05-31
- Indian Express, IAF chief says India took down five Pakistani fighters and one large aircraft (2025) — https://indianexpress.com/article/india/operation-sindoor-iaf-pakistan-5-fighter-jets-1-large-aircraft-air-marshal-10179475/
- Reuters, Modi tells Trump India will not accept third-party mediation (18 June 2025) — https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/india-will-not-accept-third-party-mediation-relations-with-pakistan-modi-tells-2025-06-18/

## Image

Pahalgam Valley. KennyOMG, CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3APahalgam_Valley.jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics

# Census 2027 begins
**जनगणना 2027 का आरंभ**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/census-2027/
- Chapter: [The Republic and its states](https://indianepics.online/chapter/republic.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 2026 CE – 2027 CE
- Where: Office of the Registrar General, Mansingh Road, New Delhi (28.605, 77.222)
- Tags: political, state-formation

## Summary

India's first census since 2011 opens with houselisting on 1 April 2026; it is the first digital count, and its second phase will also record caste.

2011 के बाद भारत की पहली जनगणना 1 अप्रैल 2026 को मकान-सूचीकरण से शुरू हुई; यह पहली डिजिटल गणना है और इसके दूसरे चरण में जाति भी दर्ज होगी।

## Account

Phase one, the houselisting and housing census, runs between April and September 2026, each state taking a 30-day window. The population count follows in February 2027, with a reference date of 1 March 2027, or 1 October 2026 in Ladakh and the snowbound parts of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand; castes are to be enumerated in that phase. Enumerators record data on a mobile app, and households can first enter their own details online in 16 languages. The census due in 2021 was postponed during the pandemic.

The count matters for the map. With Article 82 unchanged, the allocation of Lok Sabha seats among the states stays frozen until figures from the first census taken after 2026 are published, and this census is expected to be that one. On 17 April 2026 the Lok Sabha voted down a constitutional amendment that would have raised its maximum size to 850 and redrawn constituencies on the 2011 figures. PRS Legislative Research estimated that at the present size those figures would cut Tamil Nadu from 39 seats to 32 and raise Uttar Pradesh from 80 to 89.

## Sources

- PIB, Census 2027: World's largest census exercise begins with Houselisting and Housing Census, 1 April 2026 — https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2248021
- PIB, Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India addresses press conference on Census-2027, 30 March 2026 — https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2246847
- PIB, Population Census-2027 to be conducted in two phases along with enumeration of castes, 4 June 2025 — https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2133845
- PRS Legislative Research, The Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill, 2026 — https://prsindia.org/billtrack/the-constitution-131st-amendment-bill-2026
- Constitution of India, Article 82 — https://www.constitutionofindia.net/articles/article-82-readjustment-after-each-census/

## Image

Census, TamilNadu-219 (year-2011). தகவலுழவன், CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ACensus%2C_TamilNadu-219_(year-2011).jpg

---
Content licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source repository: https://github.com/SkidGod4444/indianepics