Indian subcontinent
, subregion of
Asia
, consisting at least of
India
,
Pakistan
, and
Bangladesh
.
Afghanistan
,
Bhutan
,
Nepal
, and other areas may also be included in some uses of the term, which is frequently, but not always, interchangeable with the term
South Asia
.
The
region
was called simply “India” in many historical sources, which used the term to refer broadly to the regions surrounding and southeast of the
Indus River
. Many historians continue to use the term India to refer to the whole of the Indian subcontinent in discussions of history up until the era of the
British raj
(1858?1947), when “India” came to refer to a distinct political
entity
that later became a nation-state in its own right. The term “Indian subcontinent” thus provides a distinction between the geographic region once broadly called India and the modern country named India. The Indian subcontinent is among the most densely populated areas on Earth; it is home to some 1.8 billion people.
Geography
The Indian subcontinent is geologically bounded by the
Himalayas
to the north and by the
Indian Ocean
to the south. It is characterized by a north-south divide between the
Indo-Gangetic Plain
in the north, which includes the Indus,
Ganges
(Ganga), and
Brahmaputra
river systems, and the
Deccan
plateau in the south, whose major river systems include the
Mahanadi
,
Godavari
,
Krishna
, and
Kaveri
rivers.
monsoon onset in Asia
Average date of onset of the summer monsoon across different regions of Asia.
The subcontinent’s geography gives it the world’s most pronounced
monsoon climate
(
see
Indian monsoon
). The seasonal change in wind direction leads to high atmospheric instability with the onset of the summer monsoon, typically in June, when warm moist air from the Indian Ocean blows in from the southwest. By October the wind direction reverses and brings cooler air from the northeast, but both the intensity and moisture of the winter monsoon are deflected by the Himalayas. The result is a mostly dry season.
History
The subcontinent enjoys a rich history as one of the earliest and most extensive centres of civilization (
see
Indus civilization
). With the spread of new military technologies in the Central Asian
Steppe
, the language and
culture
of Indo-European tribes spread southward in the 2nd millennium
bce
and began to overtake the earlier customs of the subcontinent. Vedic literature, composed in
Sanskrit
, was one of the early products of the incoming culture. Its influence persists today in Hinduism, and the northern populations of the subcontinent continue to speak some variety of
Indo-European languages
, including
Hindi
,
Urdu
,
Bengali
,
Punjabi
, and
Marathi
.
The subcontinent first became a political unit under the rule of the
Mauryan dynasty
(321?185
bce
), whose empire, at its peak, stretched from the southern portions of modern Afghanistan to much of
Karnataka state
. During this period, the extensive cultural exchange throughout the subcontinent allowed it to be inundated with some of the common symbols and ideas that continue to characterize the subcontinent into the modern age.
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That the Mauryan
dynasty
later disintegrated reflects the difficulty of bridging such a vast and
diverse
territory, however, and the subcontinent did not again achieve any semblance of unity until the rise of the
Guptas
in the 4th century
ce
. Many of the cultural and
intellectual
achievements of classical
South Asian art
developed under Gupta patronage, but the empire’s reach remained confined to the northern parts of the subcontinent.
Until the Mauryans, South India remained largely untouched by Indo-European
cultures
and has remained a
bastion
of Dravidian peoples into the present day. Tamilakam, the
abode
of the
Tamils
, consisted of the
Pandya dynasty
(in
Madurai
), the
Chera dynasty
(on the
Malabar Coast
), and the
Chola dynasty
(in
Thanjavur
and the Kaveri valley). The
sangam literature
of the early Common Era attests to a strong academic
milieu
and a flourishing production of culture in southern India.
In the 16th century the
Mughals
, a Turkic Muslim dynasty from
Central Asia
, arrived in
Delhi
. Although the Mughals neither introduced Islam to the region nor were they the first Muslim rulers in the subcontinent, their early accommodation of local customs and elites helped the dynasty expand its rule to an extent not seen since the Mauryan period. Whereas emperors like
Akbar the Great
and
Jah?ng?r
helped the empire to prosper,
hubris
and decadence, exemplified in the repressive rule of
Aurangzeb
, led to the Mughals’ eventual decline. Although Mughal contributions left a tremendous impact on the sociocultural milieu of the subcontinent’s Muslims and Hindus alike, many trace today’s communal disputes to the grievances that arose in the late Mughal era.
The arrival of the
British East India Company
in the 18th century, followed by the imposition of the British raj in 1858, again brought most of the subcontinent under unitary control. But, while Muslims and Hindus cooperated in the decades-long movement for independence, several incidents led some within the Muslim minority to call for a separate state for Muslims. The result was the partition between India and Pakistan in 1947, in which an unprecedented population transfer of 15 million people took place in a span of just nine weeks.
Since independence, India and Pakistan have continued to grapple with their large and ethnically diverse populations. The Eastern and Western provinces of Pakistan proved unable to maintain a union, and grievances in the Eastern province led to a brutal war for Bangladesh’s independence in 1971. The Muslims remaining in India, meanwhile, have faced increasing pressure since the 1980s, particularly with the rise of political forces asserting a Hindu identity for the conceptually
secular
state. Tensions between the countries in the Indian subcontinent persisted into the 21st century and were particularly pronounced in
Kashmir
, a disputed region in the subcontinent’s north that had initially resisted joining either India or Pakistan during the partition.