The India Act places India under the direct control of the British government, ending the rule of the East India Company

The last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah II, is deposed by the British and exiled to Rangoon, in Burma

Edward VII, the first British monarch to travel to India, holds a great coronation durbar in Delhi

The All-India Muslim League is set up at a meeting of the Muhammadan Educational Conference in Dhaka

Mahatma Gandhi, on a visit to India, publishes a pamphlet entitled Hind Swaraj ("Indian Home Rule")

The British monarch George V holds a great durbar in Delhi to celebrate his coronation as emperor of India

Rabindranath Tagore publishes a collection of his Bengali poems in Gitanjali

Construction begins on the government buildings in New Delhi, designed by Edwin Lutyens and Herbert 1Baker

from August - the German cruiser Emden carries out successful raids on British shipping in the seas around India

Mahatma Gandhi returns to India after more than twenty years in South Africa

More than 300 die when British troops fire on a peaceful demonstration in Amritsar

The first traces are found of a major but entirely forgotten civilization in the Indus valley

Mahatma Gandhi is arrested by the British in India as an agitator and is sentenced to six years in prison

The RSS party, from which the present Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) derives, is established in India by Keshava Baliram Hedgewar

Mahatma Gandhi leads a 240-mile march from Ahmedabad to the sea to defy the British salt tax, thus launching a campaign of civil disobedience

Sectarian hostilities increase in Kashmir, with the Muslim majority resenting the favours shown by the British to the Sikh and Hindu elite

Mohammed Ali Jinnah becomes president of the Muslim League in India

R.K. Narayan's novel Swami and Friends is the first set in his fictional town of Malgudi

Mohammed Ali Jinnah puts forward the concept of independent Muslim states within India

Mahatma Gandhi launches the Quit India Movement, calling on a large crowd in Bombay to 'do or die' in the struggle to expel the British

Mahatma Gandhi and nearly all the leaders of India's Congress party are arrested and will remain in prison until the end of the war

In granting independence to India, Britain partitions the subcontinent along sectarian lines into Pakistan and the republic of India

Louis Mountbatten, the last viceroy of India, becomes also the first governor-general

Jawaharlal Nehru becomes prime minister of the newly independent republic of India

Muslim leader Mohammed Ali Jinnah becomes the first governor-general of the new state of Pakistan