The Land That Would Not Bend

The Forgotten Gods — A Four-Part History · Part 2 of 4 · by Lovepreet Singh

Let me start with something that will surprise most people. While the Egyptians were still figuring out how to build pyramids, and the people of Europe were still living in scattered villages with wooden huts, there was already a massive civilisation in India

In this part

• Before History Was Written: The Indus Valley
• The Vedic Age and the Birth of an Idea That Refused to Die
• The Golden Ages: Mauryas, Guptas, and a Civilisation at Its Peak
• What India Gave the World
• The First Wave: Islam Arrives in India
• The Sultanate, the Mughals, and the Long Conquest

10 Before History Was Written: The Indus Valley Let me start with something that will surprise most people. While the Egyptians were still figuring out how to build pyramids, and the people of Europe were still living in scattered villages with wooden huts, there was already a massive civilisation in India with planned cities, indoor plumbing, and standardised weights and measures. This was the Indus Valley Civilisation. It is one of the great forgotten chapters of world history, and most people, even most Indians, do not know much about it. Let me fix that. In plain words What is the “Indus Valley Civilisation”? It is one of the world’s oldest large civilisations, which flourished around 2600 BCE in the region of the Indus river (mostly in modern Pakistan). It is also called the Harappan Civilisation. (A “civilisation” means a large, organised society with its own cities, trade, writing…

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