India

The Indian Federation (usually referred to as India) was a human nation that existed in South Asia on Earth in the Sol System for most of the 20th century. It shared borders with several other countries including Siam, Afghanistan, Persia and China. India also administered a small interplanetary colony on the planet Venus. India became one of humanity's most important economic, political and military powers during the second half of the 20th century.

Modern humans arrived on the Indian subcontinent from Africa no later than 55,000 years ago. Their long occupation, initially in varying forms of isolation as hunter-gatherers, made the region highly diverse, second only to Africa in human genetic diversity. Settled life emerged on the subcontinent in the western margins of the Indus river basin 9,000 years ago, evolving gradually into the Indus Valley Civilisation of the third millennium BCE.

After centuries of conflict between different religious groups on the subcontinent, the rise of the Mughal Empire, in 1526, ushered in two centuries of relative peace in India, leaving a legacy of luminous architecture. Gradually expanding rule of the British East India Company followed, turning India into a colonial economy, but also consolidating its sovereignty. British Crown rule began in 1858. The rights promised to Indians were granted slowly, but technological changes were introduced, and ideas of education, modernity and the public life took root. An influential nationalist movement began to emerge in India in the late 19th century, particularly after the establishment of the Indian National Congress in 1885.

As part of the British Empire, India contributed a large number of troops to the Allied cause in the Great War between 1914 and 1916. Despite its role in providing support to Britain, India was not targeted in orbital strikes by the German Empire or its allies. After the orbital strikes that ended the Great War caused political upheaval in Europe, nationalist groups in many European colonies began to declare independence to take advantage of the power vacuums that emerged in many European great powers. Indian nationalists were surprised by the success of the Irish Easter Rising in 1916, which led to the independence of the entire island of Ireland from Great Britain by 1918. With this in mind, in 1918 the Indian National Congress approached the British government to request that India be granted independence. However, to their disappointment, this request was denied. Almost immediately, Indian nationalists launched an armed insurgency against British colonial rule. The greatly weakened British military found itself unable to put down the Indian independence movement. With British involvement in India becoming increasingly unpopular at home, in 1927 Great Britain announced that it would withdraw from India. The last British troops ceremonially left the country via the Gateway of India in Bombay later that year.

The devastation caused by the Great War in Europe in 1916 led to a swift rejection of ethno-religious nationalism among Europeans and in many European colonies. From 1916, the Hindu Ambica Charan Mazumdar and the Muslim Muhammad Ali Jinnah emerged as the two leaders of the Indian nationalist movement. In 1916, two years before the Indian National Congress approached the British government to formally request independence, the Lucknow Pact was signed between the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League formally merging the two groups and establishing a design for a future multi-ethnic, multi-religious state that would exist across the entire Indian subcontinent.

The Hindus, who dominated the population of the Indian subcontinent, were sensitive to accusations that a united independent India would simply become a Hindu-dominated nation and wanted to ensure that minority Muslim and Buddhist groups would have representation in the country's political system. The constitution of India was written to minimise ethnic and nationalistic tensions as much as possible. Seats in the Indian parliament would be elected using a mixed-member proportional representation system, with the Hindu, Muslim and Buddhist religious groups being guaranteed reserve seats in the parliament.

A year after the departure of British military forces from the country, in 1928 India joined the League of Nations.

To the surprise of many international observers, India soon evolved into a stable and successful democracy with limited tension between the nation's various religious groups. This was in spite of the post-Great War years being fairly challenging for India. Although no orbital weapons had been used to attack Indian territory during the Great War, the post-Great War economic depression limited India's economic growth for several decades. Along with Yugoslavia and Isratin, the state was seen as one of the most successful experiments to develop a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural nation.

The Indian economy grew rapidly during the 1930s, and during the 1940s and 1950s India had the world's second-largest national economy next to the United States. However, it was relegated to fourth place in the 1960s by the growth of China and Japan. India overtook Japan again in the 1970s, and was the third-largest economy in the world during its final two decades of existence as an independent country behind the United States and China.

The progress of India's technological development from a rural agrarian economy to a growing industrial powerhouse became apparent when the country launched its first manned orbital spaceflight in 1943.

India maintained a fairly neutral foreign policy in world affairs, with the Indian government choosing to work with both the United States and the Soviet Union at various times when it perceived that it would benefit the country.

Despite over a century of British colonial oppression and the violent Indian War of Independence against Britain, relations between Great Britain and India slowly warmed after the 1930s. This was particularly due to a shared cultural heritage and language and a mutual appreciation for sports such as cricket. In 1951, after years of negotiations, India joined the British-created Commonwealth of Nations, an international economic union that included Britain and several other former British colonies. This led to the replacement of the rupee as India's national currency with the currency of the Commonwealth of Nations, the Commonwealth pound. India's decision to join the Commonwealth greatly boosted the organisation's legitimacy, and the legitimacy of supranational economic unions in general.

In 1956, India surpassed China to become the most populous country on Earth.

In 1966, India launched a fleet of spacecraft to establish a colony on Mars. In 1973 India established a second interplanetary colony, this time on Venus.

In 1968, the supranational political and economic structures of the European Union and the Commonwealth of Nations were combined to form the United Commonwealth. The resources of the European Space Agency and the separate space agencies of Commonwealth of Nations member states were combined to form the United Commonwealth Space Agency. The European Union Defense Force of the former European Union and the separate Earth and space military forces of Commonwealth member states, including the military forces possessed by India, were also reorganised into the United Commonwealth Defence Force. The Commonwealth pound was replaced as the currency used in India by the newly-established currency of the United Commonwealth, the Commonwealth credit. As its most populous member, India had a great deal of influence with the Commonwealth of Nations and the United Commonwealth. For example, India's capital city of New Delhi became the location of the headquarters of the United Commonwealth Supreme Court, the highest judicial institution in the United Commonwealth.

When the Cramori Empire launched its opening round of attacks on the Sol System using biological weapons in 1976, more than half a million Indian settlers were among nearly 130 million humans killed on Mars.

In the wake of the start of the Allied-Cramori War and the Cramori Empire's attempted invasion of the Sol System in 1976, in 1988 the citizens of the member states of the United Commonwealth voted to give the United Commonwealth Parliament and the United Commonwealth Secretariat the powers of a federal government, effectively transforming the United Commonwealth from a supranational political and economic union to a single federal republic. It was thought that granting the United Commonwealth greater economic, political and military control over the resources of its constituent states would be more effective for planetary defence against the Cramori. The Indian government was therefore effectively absorbed into the United Commonwealth Government in 1988, and India is largely regarded to have ceased to exist as a separate nation-state on that date.