most of the subcontinent. The Mughals established“the strongest dynasty in all of
Indian history”and nominally held power until the mid-1800s.^96 Indian culture flour-
ished under Mughal rule. A civil service was established to administer the country,
religious and ethnic differences were tolerated, meritocracy was practiced, and Persian
became the language of the court. The arts were encouraged and thrived.^97 The
famous Taj Mahal, a monument to the wife of one of the Mughal rulers, was built
during this era.
The decline of Mughal rule opened the door for Western powers to establish a
foothold on the subcontinent and ultimately enabled England to turn India into a
colony. Western nations had long sought access to the spices of Southeast Asia, his-
torically monopolized by Arab traders following the Silk Road to transport goods
overland to Europe. With the development of sea power, Western Europeans were
able to circumvent the traditional land route by sailing around Africa to reach Indian
Ocean littoral lands. Portuguese ships arrived on the west coast of India in 1510, and
Dutch, French, and English vessels soon followed. Capitalizing on the political disor-
der in the failing Mughal Empire, England’s East India Company gained power
through a military takeover and established itself as the dominant trader on India’s
southeast coast.^98
The East India Company maintained a trade monopoly until 1813, focusing on
commercial enterprise with little regard for the native peoples’welfare, economic
infrastructure, or culture. According to Grihault,“At the time of the British arrival,
India had a strong mercantile capitalist economy. Britain, however, restructured the
economy to serve her own imperial interests, disrupting much of the indigenous infra-
structure and impeding the development of India’s own culture.”^99 This development
is exemplified in the machinations of British merchants who exported Indian-grown
cotton to England, where it was made into cloth and sent back to India, thus displa-
cing millions of“Indian spinners, weavers and other handicraftsmen.”^100 Ultimately,
British commercial activities proved economically and socially disastrous for the
Indian populace, and at the end of the nineteenth century, the nation was“less
urbanized than it had been at the beginning [of the century], with over ninety percent
of its much larger population dependent upon the land alone for support.”^101
The Indian National Congress was established in 1885 by young, educated Indians
with the objective of redressing the excesses of British colonial rule. As a political
organization, it was largely ineffective until Mohandas Gandhi was able to build a
functional coalition. Gandhi’s campaign of passive resistance, which influenced the
U.S. civil rights movement of the 1960s, led to India’s independence from British
rule in 1947. However, due to the long-standing discord between Hindus and Mus-
lims, India was“partitioned”into two separate, sovereign states—India and Pakistan.
The partition displaced some 10 million people, the largest migration in history, and
unleashed widespread political violence between Hindus and Muslims, resulting in
the loss of as many as 1 million lives. The enduring enmity between India and Paki-
stan and the continuing territorial conflict over the Kashmir region is a legacy of the
partition.^102
Following partition, India instituted a government-controlled, socialist-oriented
economy that produced marginal growth, budget deficits, a bloated bureaucracy, and
high levels of unemployment. Finally, in the 1990s effective economic reforms were
undertaken that began to introduce free market principles, and India’s economy
began to grow. Based on GDP measurements, India was ranked the world’s tenth-
largest economy in 2014.^103 Unfortunately, benefits derived from this economicContemporary Social Issues 183Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).