Political history of India

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel as Minister for Home and States Affairs had the responsibility of welding the British Indian provinces and the princely states into a united India.	General El Edroos (at right) offers his surrender of the Hyderabad State Forces to Major General (later General and Army Chief) Joyanto Nath Chaudhuri at Secunderabad.
Queen Kanchan Prabha Devi of the Kingdom of Tripura signed the instrument of accession to India. She played a pivotal role in rehabilitating refugees and victims of the violence associated with the Partition of India in the state of Tripura.	Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah (right), chosen to head the emergency interim government in Kashmir after Maharaja Hari Singh signed Kashmir's Instrument of Accession to India.

The history of the Republic of India begins on 26 January 1950. The country became an independent nation within the British Commonwealth on 15 August 1947. Concurrently the Muslim-majority northwest and east of British India was separated into the Dominion of Pakistan, by the partition of India. The partition led to a population transfer of more than 10 million people between India and Pakistan and the death of about one million people. Indian National Congress leader Jawaharlal Nehru became the first Prime Minister of India, but the leader most associated with the independence struggle, Mahatma Gandhi, accepted no office. The new constitution of 1950 made India a secular and a democratic country.

The nation faced religious violence, casteism, naxalism, terrorism and regional separatist insurgencies, especially in Jammu and Kashmir and northeastern India. India has unresolved territorial disputes with China, which in 1962 escalated into the Sino-Indian War, and with Pakistan, which resulted in wars in 1947, 1965, 1971 and 1999. India was neutral in the Cold War, but purchased its military weapons from the Soviet Union, while its arch-foe Pakistan was closely tied to the United States and the People's Republic of China.