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India is home to one of the world's oldest continuous civilizations, dating back to the Indus Valley Civilization (c. 3300-1300 BC), one of the earliest urban societies on Earth, and the birthplace of four major world religions -- Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism -- each still practiced by millions today.
The Maurya Empire under Ashoka spread Buddhism across Asia; the Mughal Empire's 16th-19th century rulers left behind some of India's most iconic architecture, including the Taj Mahal, built by Shah Jahan in the 1630s-40s. British colonial rule, formalized after 1858, dominated India for nearly a century before independence on August 15, 1947 -- a moment inseparable from the traumatic Partition of India and Pakistan, which displaced an estimated 15 million people.
Ashoka embraced Buddhism after a brutal conquest and spread it across Asia; Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal as a mausoleum for his wife; and Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolent resistance (satyagraha) led the independence movement that ended British rule.
Successive empires and religions layered onto rather than replaced what came before -- Buddhist, Hindu, Islamic, and colonial-era architecture and belief systems still coexist visibly across the country today. Gandhi's independence movement added a distinctly Indian political philosophy to that layering, one that influenced civil rights movements well beyond India's own borders.
Since independence, India has developed into the world's largest democracy and one of its fastest-growing major economies, continuing to navigate the immense diversity of languages, religions, and regional identities that its long history left behind. Its cultural output -- Bollywood cinema chief among it -- has made it an increasingly central presence on the world stage.