India: 60 years since independence

In the 60 years since India achieved its independence, it has confounded dire predictions made for its future. Winston Churchill once famously said that if the British left, India would “fall back quite rapidly through the centuries into the barbarism and privations of the Middle Ages”, a fear that the deaths of an estimated 1m during the partition of the subcontinent in 1947 seemed at first to confirm.

But the pessimists were wrong. Now, 60 years on, India has consolidated a vibrant and competitive form of democracy; banished famine; more than halved its absolute poverty rate; dramatically improved literacy and health conditions; achieved global competitiveness in information technology, business process outsourcing, telecommunications and pharmaceuticals; acquired de facto membership of the elite club of acknowledged nuclear powers; created more billionaires than any other country in Asia; and became one of the world’s most dynamic and fastest growing economies, ranked the world’s fourth largest in purchasing power parity terms.

The following slideshow looks at some of the seminal moments in the past 60 years of its history, from partition to the Kashmir wars to outsourcing, and some of the main forces and events in the Indian political landscape.

For the full special report on India’s independence click here.