Indian Opinion

The Indian Opinion was a newspaper established by Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi. The publication was an important tool for the political movement led by Gandhi and the Natal Indian Congress to fight racial discrimination and win civil rights for the Indian immigrant community in South Africa.

Through the 19th century Indians were brought to South Africa as indentured labour by the authorities of the British Empire, which governed both South Africa and India. Alongside various multi-ethnic communities, the Indian community suffered from significant political, economic and social discrimination, administered by the system of apartheid. In the aftermath of the Boer War, the government of General Jan Smuts introduced significant restrictions on the civil rights of the Indian immigrant community, giving the police power to warrantless search, seizures and arrests. All Indians were required to carry identification and registration cards at all times. Working as a lawyer in the Natal province, Gandhi organised the publication in 1904 with the aim of educating European communities in South Africa about Indian needs and issues.

With the support of the Natal Indian Congress, his clients and other notable Indians, Gandhi assembled a small staff and printing press. Madanjit Viyavaharik, the owner of the International Printing Press and The first issue was prepared through June 4 and June 5, and released on June 6, 1903. The newspaper was published in Gujarati, Hindi, Tamil and English. Mansukhlal Nazar, the secretary of the Natal Congress served as its editor and a key organiser. In 1904, Gandhi relocated the publishing office to his settlement in Phoenix, located close to Durban. At Phoenix, the press workers were governed by a new work ethic - they would all have a share in the land, in the profits if there were any, they would grow crops to sustain themselves and they would work jointly to produce Indian Opinion. The newspaper's editors included Hebert Kitchin, Henry Polak, Albert West, Manilal Gandhi, who was the paper's longest serving editor (for 36 years), andSushila Gandhi, wife of Manilal who took over after his death.  All but one of its editors spent some time in jail. 

 The Indian Opinion began by adopting a very moderate tone, reiterating its faith in British law and seeking not to provoke the hostility of British officials. However, the Indian Opinion especially highlighted the poor conditions under which indentured labourers worked. Editorials tackled the discrimination and harsh conditions prevalent in the agricultural estates where indentured Indians were employed. Cases of harsh treatment by employers were publicised and the astoundingly high rate of suicide amongst Indians was pointed out. A campaign to end the system was launched and editor Henry Polak, a friend of Gandhi's, went to India to mobilise support. From 1906 onwards it became a vehicle for challenging state laws and urging defiance of these when these were clearly unjust. This tradition began during the satyagraha campaign between 1906 and 1913 which began because of attempts to impose passes on Indians in the Transvaal. The paper played a fundamental role on defeating the registration drive of officials. Its pages paid tribute to local resisters and Brian Gabriel, one of Natal's earliest Indian photographers, provided visual coverage. 

The Indian Opinion was a means of bringing news about Indians in the colonies before the public in India. The pages of Indian Opinion provide a valuable historical record of the disabilities that Indians suffered under. It also provides an invaluable record of the political life of the Indian community. Gandhi's experience with the publication and the political struggle in South Africa proved a major experience for him that helped him in his work for the Indian independence movement. He commented "Satyagraha would have been impossible without Indian Opinion." In India, he would publish Young India, Navjivan and Gujarat Samachar. The Indian Opinion continued to publish for many decades and played a significant role in the wider civil rights struggle of South Africa. But it also suffered from not being a commercial enterprise, but rather a publication committed to serving social causes.

Totaram Sanadhya

Totaram Sanadhya (1876–1947) was deceitfully recruited as an indentured labourer from India and brought to Fiji in 1893. He spent five years working as a bonded labourer but was never afraid to fight for his rights. After completing his indenture he established himself as a small farmer and a Hindu priest but spent most of his time trying to assist the less fortunate still under the bondage of indenture. He sought the help of Indian freedom fighters and missionaries and encouraged the migration to Fiji of Indian teachers and lawyers who, he believed, could improve the plight of Indians in Fiji. After living in Fiji for twenty-one years, he returned to India, in 1914, and wrote about his experience in the book, “My Twenty-One Years in the Fiji Islands” (Hindi). This book was used as the main source of information in the campaign to end the Indian indenture system.

Sanadhya was born in Hirangau in the district of Firozabad, Uttar Pradesh, India in 1876 in a Sanadhya Brahmin family. In 1887, his father died and soon his father’s assets were taken over by unscrupulous money lenders. His elder brother left home to earn money to support his brothers and mother. The family lived in poverty and Sanadhya saw himself as a burden to his mother so in 1893 he left home to look for work.

One day he was recruited from the local market with the promise an easy job with good pay. He was told to lie to the magistrate who registered him as an indentured labourer. Although a Brahmin, Sanadhya was registered as a Thakur to increase his chances of being recruited. He was taken to a depot in Calcutta, where he changed his mind about going to Fiji but was locked up until he accepted his fate. Sanadhya, together with 500 others, arrived in Fiji on 28 May 1893 abroad the Jumna. At the quarantine station on Nukulau Island, he again protested about his treatment but was thrown into a boat and taken to the Colonial Sugar Refining Company’s Nausori Plantation.

Life on the plantation was tough for Sanadhya, who found that due to the hard work that he was doing, the weekly ration he was supplied with was exhausted in only four days. For the other three days he had to go hungry or ask free Indians for food. In his writings, he has not been ashamed to admit that he resorted to faking ill-health to avoid a full task and use his power of persuasion to get extra rations. Although he suffered abuse from overseers like the other labourers, he was not afraid to fight back and on at least one occasion assaulted an overseer.

 

After five years of indenture, when Sanadhya became a free man, he did not have any money but owed fifteen shillings. He then borrowed some money, leased some land and became a canefarmer. Eager to improve his skills, Sanadhya learned the Fijian language, acquired carpentry and metalwork skills and took up photography. His intention was to take actual photographs of atrocities being suffered by Indians and have them published in a newspaper, but his camera was stolen while on a trip to Suva (the capital of Fiji), under suspicious circumstances, and his suspicion was confirmed when he was barred from meeting with indentured labourers in most estates.

Sanadhya knew that farming alone would not provide him with enough income, so he decided to become a pundit (priest). He could read and write in Hindi but needed religious books to educate himself. There were very few such books available in Fiji at that time and he arranged, with a European merchant, to import these books. As commission, he received a set of religious books from the merchant. He educated himself and started working as a pundit and very soon had a following in the Rewa area. Sanadhya was responsible for the first Ram Lila organised in Navua in 1902. When he had earned enough as a free person, he handed over the running of his farm to labourers and he toured the estates, trying to help the Indian labourers. He would sit outside the boundary of the estates singing religious songs and when people from the plantation came out to listen to him he would stop singing and discuss their problems.

 In 1910, a petition asking for political representation and education, written by Sanadhya in Hindi, and signed by 200 Suva and Rewa Indians, was submitted to the Governor. In 1911, following a severe hurricane that had brought much hardship to the Fiji Indians in the Central Division of Fiji, the British Indian Association of Fiji was formed. The Association discussed grievances such as the lack of educated leadership amongst the Indians and the dependence on European lawyers and authorised Sanadhya to write a letter to Gandhi to send an Indian barrister to Fiji. Gandhi was moved by this appeal and published this request in the Indian Opinion, from where it came to the attention of Manilal Doctor in Mauritius. Manilal exchanged letters with Totaram Sanadhya, who organised for collection of money for Manilal’s fare and law books and made arrangements for his stay in Fiji. In 1912 he sent a telegram to support Gokhale’s resolution in the Legislative Council of India for an end to the Indenture system.
He left for India on 27 March 1914. His departure from Fiji was a major event, even gaining the attention of the European Press. On his return to India, he toured different parts of India and also made a speech at the Madras session of the Indian National Congress. He published his experiences in Fiji in the book, My twenty-One Years in the Fiji Islands (in Hindi) in 1914. The book was banned in Fiji  but received wide publicity in India and was published in several Indian languages and even a drama was based on it. Several stories in the book, especially Kunti’s experiences,  aroused a lot of passion and the call for an end to indenture. Sanadhya joined Mahatma Gandhi at the Sabarmati Ashram in 1922, with other followers of Gandhi.^[5] After a long illness, he died in 1947.

Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement

The Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement is a self-governance movement in Sri Lanka, which provides comprehensive development and conflict resolution programs to villages. It is also the largest indigenous organization working in reconstruction from the tsunami caused by the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. Founded in 1958 by Dr A. T. Ariyaratne when he took, “forty high school students and twelve teachers from Nalanda College Colombo on “an educational experiment” to an outcaste village Kathaluwa and helped the villagers fix it up. It is based on Buddhist andGandhian principles, including sarvodaya from which it got the name and swaraj (self-governance). The word "shramadana" means "a gift of labor". 

As of 2006, Sarvodaya staff people and programs are active in some 15,000 (of 38,000) villages in Sri Lanka. The organization estimates that 11 million citizens are individual beneficiaries of one of their programs. The group distributes funds from a financial reserve bank of 1.6 billion rupees.

The Sarvodaya program begins with an invitation from a village for discussion of what is needed and how it can be done. It proceeds in stages through creating a village council, building a school and clinic, setting up family programs, creating economic opportunity so that the village economy becomes self-sustaining, starting a village bank, and offering help to other villages. In addition, Sarvodaya sponsors public meditations in which tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims and Christians meditate together on each other's welfare, using the Buddhist Brahmavihara (sublime attitude) meditations, which are acceptable within all faiths.

Fusion – Sarvodaya ICT4D Movement is the ICT for development (ICT4D) program. As a response to the emerging digital divide issues of rural Sri Lanka, Sarvodaya started setting up telecentres experimentally in 1997. This has led to the pioneering telecentre program in the country. Village Information Centres (popularly known as VICs) are rural libraries, set up by village youth leaders as 'Zero Cost' village initiatives, which prepare disadvantaged, less educated rural communities for the information age. Out of the 172 VICs initiated since early 2000, there are about 21 VICs graduated to their own forms of telecentres by mid 2008.

Sarvodaya

Sarvodaya   is a term meaning 'universal uplift' or 'progress of all'. The term was first coined by Mahatma Gandhi as the title of his 1908 translation of John Ruskin's tract on political economy, Unto This Last, and Gandhi came to use the term for the ideal of his own political philosophy.  Later Gandhians, like the Indian nonviolence activist Vinoba Bhave, embraced the term as a name for the social movement in post-independence India which strove to ensure that self-determination and equality reached all strata of Indian society.

Gandhi received a copy of Ruskin's Unto This Last from a British friend, Mr. Henry Polak, while working as a lawyer in South Africa in 1904. In his Autobiography, Gandhi remembers the twenty-four hour train ride to Durban (from when he first read the book), being so in the grip of Ruskin's ideas that he could not sleep at all: "I determined to change my life in accordance with the ideals of the book." As Gandhi construed it, Ruskin's outlook on political-economic life extended from three central tenets:

“

That the good of the individual is contained in the good of all. That a lawyer's work has the same value as the barber's in as much as all have the same right of earning their livelihood from their work. That a life of labour, i.e., the life of the tiller of the soil and the handicraftsman is the life worth living. The first of these I knew. The second I had dimly realized. The third had never occurred to me. Unto This Last made it clear as daylight for me that the second and third were contained in the first. I arose with the dawn, ready to reduce these principles to practice.

”

Four years later, in 1908, Gandhi rendered a paraphrased translation of Ruskin's book into his native tongue of Gujarati. He entitled the book Sarvodaya, a compound (samāsa) he invented from two Sanskrit roots: sarva (all) and udaya (uplift) -- "the uplift of all" (or as Gandhi glossed it in his autobiography, "the welfare of all").

Although inspired by Ruskin, the term would for Gandhi come to stand for a political ideal of his own stamp. (Indeed Gandhi was keen to distance himself from Ruskin's more conservative ideas.)  The ideal which Gandhi strove to put into practice in his ashrams was, he hoped, one that he could persuade the whole of India to embrace, becoming a light to the other nations of the world. The Gandhian social ideal encompassed the dignity of labor, an equitable distribution of wealth, communal self-sufficiency and individual freedom. 

 Gandhi's ideals have lasted well beyond the achievement of one of his chief projects, Indian independence (swaraj). His followers in India (notably, Vinoba Bhave) continued working to promote the kind of society that he envisioned, and their efforts have come to be known as the Sarvodaya Movement. Anima Bose has referred to the movement's philosophy as "a fuller and richer concept of people's democracy than any we have yet known." Sarvodaya workers associated with Vinoba, J. P. Narayan, Dada Dharmadhikari, Dhirendra Mazumdaar, Shankarrao Deo, K. G. Mashruwala undertook various projects aimed at encouraging popular self-organisation during the 1950s and 1960s, including Bhoodan and Gramdan movements. Many groups descended from these networks continue to function locally in India today.

Swadeshi movement

The Swadeshi movement, part of the Indian independence movement and the developing Indian nationalism, was an economic strategy aimed at removing the British Empire from power and improving economic conditions in India by following the principles of swadeshi   which had some success. Strategies of the Swadeshi movement involved boycotting British products and the revival of domestic products and production processes.

The Swadeshi Movement started with the partition of Bengal by the Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon, 1905 and continued up to 1908. It was the most successful of the pre-Gandhian movements. Its chief architects were Aurobindo Ghosh, Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal and Lala Lajpat Rai. Swadeshi, as a strategy, was a key focus of Mahatma Gandhi, who described it as the soul of Swaraj (self rule). Gandhi, at the time of the actual movement, remained loyal to the British Crown.

During 1900, Bengal had become the nerve centre for Indian nationalism. To weaken it, Lord Curzon (1899–1905) the Viceroy of India, proposed partition of Bengal. The official reason was stated as administrative convenience due to the size of Bengal. But partition itself was based on a religious and political agenda. Bengal was to be divided into two regions i.e. East Bengal and Assamout of the rest of Bengal. Thus to reduce the nationalist movement in Bengal and thereby in the entire country, Bengal partition was to take place on 16 October 1905.

H. H. Riseley, home secretary to the government of India, stated on 6 December 1904: "Bengal united is a power; Bengal divided will pull in several different ways. That is what congress leaders feel; their apprehensions are perfectly correct and they form one of the great merits of the scheme... in this scheme... one of our main objects is to split up and thereby weaken a solid body of opponents to our rule".

So the British tried to curb Bengali influence on nationalist movement and also introduced a new form of division based on religion to create challenges for the Indian National Congress, which was slowly becoming the main opponent to British rule.

But the Indian nationalists saw the design behind partition and condemned it unanimously, starting the anti-partition and the Swadeshi movements. The Swadeshi movement was also known as vandemataram movement in deltaic Andhra Pradesh.

 

The proposal of partition of Bengal became publicly known in 1903, followed by immediate and spontaneous protests all over Bengal. 500 meetings were held in East Bengal alone. 50,000 copies of a pamphlet with a detailed critique of partition were distributed. This phase is marked by moderate techniques of protest such as petitions, public meetings, press campaign, etc. to turn public opinion in India as well as in Britain against partition. This movement also involved the boycott of the British products. The western clothes were thrown in bonfires and it was an act of honour to wear the local Indian clothes.The British products were also boycotted in the markets and the sales of the British fell dramatically. The movement was strongly influenced by the writings of Sri Aurobindo Ghosh.

 

Some people and organisations such as Rajiv Dixit, Swami Ramdev and the Swadeshi Jagaran Manch, a wing of the Sangh Parivar, are spreading the concept of Swadeshi in modern India.

 

The word Swadeshi derives from Sanskrit and is a sandhi or conjunction of two Sanskrit words. Swa means "self" or "own" and desh means country, so Swadesh would be "own country", andSwadeshi, the adjectival form, would mean "of one's own country". The opposite of Swadeshi in Sanskrit is videshi or "not of one's country".

Indian nationalism

Indian nationalism refers to the many underlying forces that molded the Indian independence movement, and strongly continue to influence thepolitics of India, as well as being the heart of many contrasting ideologies that have caused ethnic and religious conflict in Indian society. Indian nationalism often imbibes the consciousness of Indians that prior to 1947, India embodied the broader Indian subcontinent and influenced a part ofAsia, known as Greater India.
National consciousness in India

India has been unified under many emperors and governments in history. Ancient texts mention India under emperor Bharata and Akhand Bharat, these regions roughly form the entities of modern day greater India. Mauryan Empire was the first to unite all of India, South Asia, and much ofPersia. In addition, much of India has also been unified under a central government by empires, such as the Gupta Empire, Rashtrakuta Empire,Pala Empire, Mughal Empire, Indian Empire etc.

Conception of Pan-South Asianism

India's concept of nationhood is based not merely on territorial extent of its sovereignty. Nationalistic sentiments and expression encompass that India's ancient history,^[1] as the birthplace of the Indus Valley Civilization and Vedic Civilization, as well as four major world religions - Hinduism,Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. Indian nationalists see India stretching along these lines across the Indian Subcontinent.

Ages of war and invasion

India today celebrates many kings and queens for combating foreign invasion and domination,  such as Shivaji of the Maratha Empire, RaniLaxmibai of Jhansi, Kittur Chennamma, Maharana Pratap of Rajputana, Prithviraj Chauhan, who combated the Mahmud of Ghazni and Tipu Sultanwho fought the British. The kings of Ancient India, such as Chandragupta Maurya and Emperor Ashoka the Great of the Magadha Empire, are also remembered for their military genius, incredible conquests and remarkable religious tolerance.

Muslim kings are also a part of Indian pride.  Akbar the Great was a powerful Mughal emperor who sought to resolve religious differences, and was known to have a good relationship with the Roman Catholic Church as well as with his subjects - Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs and Jains. He forged familial and political bonds with Hindu Rajput kings. Although previous Sultans had been more or less tolerant, Akbar took religious intermingling to new level of exploration. He developed for the first time in Islamic India an environment of complete religious freedom. Akbar undid most forms of religious discrimination, and invited the participation of wise Hindu ministers and kings, and even religious scholars to debate in his court.

Swaraj

In the Indian rebellion of 1857, Indian soldiers and regional kings fought the forces allied with the British Empire in different parts of India. This event laid the foundation not only for a nationwide expression, but also future nationalism and conflict on religious and ethnic terms. 

The Indian desire for complete freedom, or Swaraj, was born with Bal Gangadhar Tilak, whose followers were the first to express the desire for complete independence, an idea that did not catch on until after World War I. When the Amritsar Massacre of hundreds of unarmed and innocent civilians by British forces took place in the same year, the Indian public was outraged and most of India's political leaders turned against the British.

The Gandhian era

Mohandas Gandhi pioneered the art of Satyagraha, typified with a strict adherence to ahimsa (non-violence), and civil disobedience. This permitted common individuals to engage the British in revolution, without employing violence or other distasteful means. Gandhi's equally strict adherence todemocracy, religious and ethnic equality and brotherhood, as well as activist rejection of caste-based discrimination and untouchability united people across these demographic lines for the first time in India's history. The masses could participate in India's freedom struggle for the first time, and the membership of the Congress grew over tens of millions by the 1930s. In addition, Gandhi's victories in the Champaran and Kheda Satyagraha in 1918-19, gave confidence to a rising younger generation of Indians that the British hegemony could be defeated. National leaders like Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel,Jawaharlal Nehru, Maulana Azad, Chakravarti Rajagopalachari, Mohandas Gandhi, Rajendra Prasad and Badshah Khan brought together generations of Indians across regions and demographics, and provided a strong leadership base giving the country political direction.

More than just "Indian"

Indian nationalism is as much a diverse blend of nationalistic sentiments as its people are ethnically and religiously diverse. Thus the most influential undercurrents are more than just Indian in nature. The most controversial and emotionally-charged fiber in the fabric of Indian nationalism is religion. Religion forms a major, and in many cases, the central element of Indian life. Ethnic communities are diverse in terms of linguistics, social traditions and history across India.

Hindu Rashtra

An important influence upon Hindu consciousness arises from the time of Islamic empires in India, during which many Hindu temples were destroyed and Hindus forcibly converted to Islam, and millions of Hindus killed by Muslim invaders. Entering the 20th century, Hindus formed over 75% of the population and thus unsurprisingly the backbone and platform of the nationalist movement. Modern Hindu thinking desired to unite Hindu society across the boundaries of caste, lingustic groups and ethnicity. In 1925, K.B. Hedgewar founded the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh in Nagpur, Maharashtra, which grew into the largest civil organization in the country, and more potent, mainstream base of Hindu nationalism.

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar coined the term Hindutva for his ideology that described India as a Hindu Rashtra, a Hindu nation. This ideology has become the cornerstone of the political and religious agendas of modern Hindu nationalist bodies like the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. Hindutva political demands include revoking Article 370 of the Constitution that grants a special semi-autonomous status to the Muslim-majority state ofKashmir, adopting a uniform civil code, thus ending a special legal framework for Muslims. These particular demands are based upon ending laws that Hindu nationalists consider as offering special treatment to Muslims.

The Qaum

In 1906-1907, the All India Muslim League was founded, created due to the suspicion of Muslim intellectuals and religious leaders with the Indian National Congress, which was perceived as dominated by Hindu membership and opinions. However, Mahatma Gandhi's leadership attracted a wide array of Muslims to the freedom struggle and the Congress Party. The Aligarh Muslim University and the Jamia Millia Islamia stand apart - the former helped form the Muslim league, while the JMI was founded to promote Muslim education and consciousness upon nationalistic and Gandhian values and thought.

 

While prominent Muslims like Allama Iqbal and Muhammad Ali Jinnah embraced the notion that Hindus and Muslims were distinct nations, other major leaders like Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari,Maulana Azad, Badshah Khan, Hakim Ajmal Khan strongly backed the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian freedom struggle, opposing any notion of Muslim separatism. The latter school of nationalism did not enjoy much support in the provinces of Punjab, Sindh, Baluchistan and Bengal, where the Muslim League enjoyed extensive political power, and where Pakistan was ultimately formed. Zakir Hussain, Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed and A.P.J. Abdul Kalam were Muslims, and holders of the Presidency of the Republic of India. Actors Shah Rukh Khan, Naseeruddin Shah, Aamir Khan, music legends Zakir Hussain, Amjad Ali Khan and cricketers Syed Kirmani, Irfan Pathan, Zaheer Khan, Mushtaq Ali and Mohammad Azharuddin are icons to the Indian public.

Nationalism and politics

The political identity of the Indian National Congress, India's largest political party and one which controlled government for over 45 years, is reliant on the connection to Mohandas K. Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, and the Nehru-Gandhi family which has controlled the Congress since independence. The Congress Party's fortunes up till the 1970s were single-handedly propelled by its legacy as the flagship of India's Independence Movement, and the core platform of the party today evokes that past strongly, considering itself to be the guardian of India's freedom, democracy and unity. Muslims have remained loyal voters of the Congress Party, seen as defender of Nehruvian secularism.  In contrast, the Bharatiya Janata Party employs a more aggressively nationalistic expression. The BJP seeks to defend the culture and heritage of India and the majority of its people, the Hindu population. It ties nationalism with the aggressive defence of India's borders and interests against archrivals China and Pakistan, with the defence of the majority's right to be a majority.

Religious nationalist parties include the Shiromani Akali Dal, which is closely identified with the creation of a Sikh-majority state in Punjab and includes many Sikh religious leaders in its organization. In Maharashtra, the Shiv Sena uses the legacy of the independent Maratha kingdom under heroes likeShivaji to stir up support, and has adopted Hindutva as well. In Assam, the Asom Gana Parishad is a more state-focused party, arising after the frustration of the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) as a benevolent expression of Assamese nationalism. In Tamil Nadu came the first of such parties, the Dravidar Kazhagam (DK). Today the DK stands for a collection of parties,  with the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) and the Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK). Caste-based politics invite the participation of the Bahujan Samaj Party and the party of Laloo Prasad Yadav, who build upon the support of poor low-caste and dalitHindus in the northern, and most populated states of India like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Almost every Indian state has a regional party devoted solely to the culture of the native people of that state.

Nationalism and military conflicts

Military history, both past and present, serves as a source of nationalist sentiment in India. The first reference to armies is found in the Vedas and the epics Ramayana and Mahabaratha. There were many powerful dynasties in India such as the Maha Janapadas, Shishunaga Empire, Gangaridai Empire, Nanda Empire, Maurya Empire,Sunga Empire, Kharavela Empire, Kuninda Kingdom, Chola Empire, Chera Empire, Pandyan Empire, Satavahana Empire, Western Satrap Empire,Kushan Empire, Vakataka Empire, Kalabhras Kingdom, Gupta Empire, Pallava Empire, Kadamba Empire, Western Ganga Kingdom, Vishnukundina Empire, Chalukya Empire, Harsha Empire, Shahi Kingdom, Eastern Chalukya Kingdom, Pratihara Empire, Pala Empire, Rashtrakuta Empire, Paramara Kingdom, Yadava Empire, Solanki Kingdom, Western Chalukya Empire, Hoysala Empire, Sena Empire, Eastern Ganga Empire, Kakatiya Kingdom,Kalachuri Empire, Delhi Sultanate, Deccan Sultanates, Ahom Kingdom, Vijayanagar Empire, Mysore Kingdom, Mughal Empire, Maratha Empire, Sikh Empire etc.

The modern Army of India was raised under the British Raj in the 19th century. Today the Republic of India maintains the world's third largest armed forceswith over a million troops strong. The official defense budget stands at 164,415.19 crore (US$29.92 billion)  but the actual spending on the armed forces is estimated to be much higher. The army is undergoing rapid expansion and modernization with plans to have an active military space program, missile defense shield,  and nuclear triad capability.