Late Harappan Civilization

Previously, scholars believed that the decline of the Harappan civilization led to an interruption of urban life in the Indian subcontinent. However, the Indus Valley Civilization did not disappear suddenly, and many elements of the Indus Civilization appear in later cultures. The Cemetery H culture may be the manifestation of the Late Harappan over a large area in the south, and the Ochre Colored Pottery cultures its successor. David Gordon White cites three other mainstream scholars who "have emphatically demonstrated" that Vedic religion derives partially from the Indus Valley Civilizations’.

As of 2016, archaeological data suggests that the material culture classified as Late Harappan may have persisted until at least c. 1000–900 BCE and

Muslims ruled most of the Indian subcontinent with brief intervals for more than a millennium. No other British colony could match India’s more than five thousand years old history involving the ancient Indus Valley Civilization which was contemporary of the Nile, Mesopotamian and Yellow River civilizations.

The impact of Islam on the South-Asian subcontinent was deep and far-reaching. Its influence on the social and religious life in the whole region was outstanding.” The followers of Islam”, writes R.C. Mazumdar, an eminent historian of India “settled in large numbers, but they did not merge themselves into the Hindu pattern. So, for the first time in Indian history, two distinct but important communities and cultures stood face to face, and India was permanently divided into two powerful units.”

But Hinduism and Islam stood poles apart in their attitudes to life. Islam as a religion, strongly monotheistic and insisting on the equality of human beings whereas Hinduism showed extreme flexibility towards God, and was founded on a caste system which divided society into privileged and underprivileged. Hindus and Muslims also had a different worldview altogether. They did not take the same view of

The Hindu dominated Congress politics evoked no enthusiasm among them. In that atmosphere of despair, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan (1817-1898) launched his movement known as Aligarh Movement to revive the spirit of progress within the Muslim community of India.

He was convinced that in the new era of science and learning, the Muslim outlook needed to be transformed from a medieval one to a modern one. Therefore, modern education became the pivot of his movement for regeneration of Indian Muslims. He was however averse to the idea of participation by the Muslims in any organized political activity which he feared might revive British hostility towards them.

Sir Syed realized that the British were gradually introducing democratic institutions in India, and in order to understand these, a thorough grounding in western education was essential. In pursuit of his objective, he established the Mohammad an Educational Conference under whose auspices an educational institution called Mohammad an Anglo-Oriental College was established at Aligarh to impart education on western