Basics Population: over 1 billion Area: 3,287,590 sq km Currency: Rupee Capital city: Delhi History India has had major civilisations since 2500BC although nomadic people were knocking around for thousands of years before that. These early civilisations were very clever- they developed a system of weights and measures, a script for writing to each other, trading networks, sewage systems and a type of art. India has loads of resources and has often been invaded by groups trying to get their hands on them. The invaders included the Aryans who came up from central Asia in 1500BC and Muslims who arrived from the Middle East in 1192. From the 1500s different European groups including the Portuguese, French, Danes and Dutch controlled various bits of India. In 1600 the British set up the East India Company. This was a crafty move because the company simply took India's natural resources and turned them into money. There were some objections to this and in 1756 over 140 British people were locked in a cellar overnight. Many of them died of suffocation and the cellar became known as the 'black hole of Calcutta.' The British East India Company sneakily increased its power during the 18th and early 19th centuries until it was ruling most of India. Unsurprisingly some of the Indian people objected to this and there was a mutiny in 1857. At this point the British King decided to get in on the act. He took over from the East India Company and India became part of the British Empire. During the early 20th century the Indian people began to get more and more fed up with being ruled by people on the other side of the world. Mahatma Gandhi led a campaign of passive resistance, which kicked the British out in 1947 and India gained independence. Unfortunately these things are never as easy as they seem. Muslims didn't want to be dominated by Hindus and demanded a separate nation. The two areas of India that were mainly Muslim became a new country called Pakistan. Unfortunately these areas were on opposite sides of India! The partition process was very messy, 10 million people had to move and over 250,000 (including Gandhi) were killed. During the partition, the area of Kashmir was given a choice about whether it wanted to join India or Pakistan. The leader decided to go with India and the two countries have been fighting about this decision ever since. This isn't the only time India has had arguments with its neighbours over who owns bits of land. In 1962 it fought with China and in 1971 it fought with Pakistan. That particular war ended with East Pakistan becoming a new country called Bangladesh.