Was India a country before colonization?
Before the British occupation, India was not a poor backwater, but a culturally and economically prosperous civilization that had existed for millennia. India was home to the oldest university in the world, had originated our numerical system, had produced countless thinkers, philosophers, poets, and scientists.
Before the British occupation, India was not a poor backwater, but a culturally and economically prosperous civilization that had existed for millennia. India was home to the oldest university in the world, had originated our numerical system, had produced countless thinkers, philosophers, poets, and scientists.
The Maurya Empire (322–185 BCE) unified most of the Indian subcontinent into one state, and was the largest empire ever to exist on the Indian subcontinent. At its greatest extent, the Mauryan Empire stretched to the north up to the natural boundaries of the Himalayas and to the east into what is now Assam.
The British Raj came to an end in 1947, when India gained its independence from colonial power. However, the legacy of British colonialism continues to be felt in India to this day.
The Portuguese Empire established the first European trading centre at Quilon (Kollam) in 1502. It is believed that the colonial era in India started with the establishment of this Portuguese trading centre at Quilon.
It was argued that India was previously not one country at all, but a thoroughly divided land mass. It was the British empire, so the claim goes, that welded India into a nation. Winston Churchill even remarked that before the British came, there was no Indian nation. “India is a geographical term.
Social: Indians were looked down upon by the British and Indian culture was treated as inferior to European culture. The British were ETHNOCENTRIC. Indian workers provided the British with inexpensive (cheap) labor – worked long hours, often under terrible working conditions.
The early humans in India refer to hom*o erectus, who arrived on the Indian subcontinent from Africa. Over tens of millennia, anatomically modern people populated India in many waves of early migrations.
If it was believed at one time that Dravidians were the original inhabitants of India, that view has since been considerably modified. Now the generally accepted belief is that the pre-Dravidian aborigines, that is, the ancestors of the present tribals or Adivasis (Scheduled Tribes), were the original inhabitants.
The name 'Bharata' is used as a designation for the country in their constitution referencing the ancient mythological emperor, Bharata, whose story is told, in part, in the Indian epic Mahabharata.
