Time line of Indian history upto 1950

2500 BC Dravidian civilization

1500 BC Aryans invade India and conquered the Dravidians

1400 BC The Vedas, the Hindu scripture, was written

800 BC 800-600 BC The sacred scripture, the Upanishads written

518 BC Persians conquered Pakistan

500 BC Buddhism was founded in India by Siddhartha Gautama

500 BC Jainism was founded in India by Mahavira Jains

326 BC Alexander the Great moved into India

324 BC The Mauryan Empire was established by Chandragupta Maurya
including Afghanistan and parts of central Asia


272 BC Ashoka, the grandson of Chandragupta Maurya, becomes the emperor of India

185 BC The Maurya Empire ended

50 AD The Kushans established an empire in northern India

320The Gupta Indian dynasty reunited northern India initiating the "golden Age"
of India

700s Muslim armies from Arabia invade India

1206 Qutb ub-din Aybak establishes the Delhi Sultanate

1398 Timur conquered India resulting in the decline of the Delhi Sultanate

1498 Vasco da Gama becomes the first European explorer to reach India

1500's Christianity was introduced to India by the Europeans and in the early 1500s Sikhism was founded by Nana

1526 Babur established the Mughal Empire

1600 Queen Elizabeth I granted a charter to the East India Company established trading posts in Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras

1628 Shah Jahan, the ruler of the Mughal Empire, builds the Taj Mahal

1658 The Strict Muslim, Aurangzeb, ruled India and tried to force Hindus to convert to Islam

1757 The Battle of Plassey: Robert Clive, an agent of the East India Company, leads forces which defeated the Mughal governor of Bengal


1774 Warren Hastings appointed the first governor general of India by the East India Company

1857 The Sepoy Rebellion

1858 The British government ruled India via an Indian Viceroy- called the British Raj

1876 Queen Victoria was given the title Empress of India by the British Parliament

1885 Burma became an Indian province

The Indian National Congress was formed

1905 The British government divided Bengal into separate Hindu and Muslim sections

1914 1914 - 1918 World War 1

1919 13 April: The Amritsar Massacre

1920 Mohandas Gandhi became the leader of the Indian independence movement and the Indian National Congress


1935 The Government of India Act and the creation of a new constitution

1939 3 September: The United Kingdom declared war on Germany and World War 2 began

1940 Muhammad Ali Jinnah demanded that a new country be formed from India for the Muslims, which would be called Pakistan

1945 August: World War II ended when United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

1946 The British government agreed to grant India independence

1946 16 August: Indian Muslims held nation-wide demonstrations calling for the establishment of Pakistan

1947 British and Indian leaders agreed to divide the country into India and Pakistan

15 August 1947 India became independent

1948 30 January: Gandhi was assassinated

1950 26 January: A new Indian Constitution was ratified and Jawaharlal Nehru became the Indian first prime minister