Has India invaded any country in the last 10,000 years?

Question

There is a common claim that India hasn't invaded any other country in the past 10,000 years.

It has been repeated in chain mails and various web-sites: Example, Example.

India never invaded any country in her last 10,000 years of history

Other variations exist, such as 5,000 or 1,000 or 100,000 years.

Are these claims true?

If 10,000 years is too much into the infancy of civilization, what about 5000 years when civilization was more established?

Answer 1

1971

I have the Impression India did a little bit of invading in 1971

^{From Wikipedia}

After building tensions during the Bangladesh Liberation war, Pakistan launched a pre-emptive attack against India, which responded with air-strikes.

This marked the official start of the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ordered the immediate mobilisation of troops and launched the full-scale invasion. This involved Indian forces in a massive coordinated air, sea, and land assault. Indian Air Force started flying sorties against Pakistan from midnight. The main Indian objective on the western front was to prevent Pakistan from entering Indian soil. There was no Indian intention of conducting any major offensive into West Pakistan.

The invasion didn't last long but troops crossed international borders and engaged in armed conflict with the government of a foreign nation, forcing its surrender.

---

1948

And as Richard Terret points out above,

[In 1948] the Indian Armed Forces invaded the State of Hyderabad and ended the rule of Nizam, annexing the state into the Indian Union.

See The Fall of Hyderabad and Operation Polo

---

Maybe this is a case of irregular verb conjugation: I liberate; You invade; He, She or It fight a border war?

Answer 2

RedGrittyBrick's excellent answer misses a spot. Goa. In 1961, India annexed Portuguese India which included the enclaves of Goa, Daman and Diu, and Dadra and Nagar Haveli. All three elements of the Indian military were utilised in the invasion and successful capture of these three enclaves.

The Portuguese PM, Salazar, ordered the Governor General of Goa, Vassalo e Silva, to fight to the last man or to hold out for eight days while he drummed up support against the invasion. Silva managed to hold out for a brief period after which he was forced to surrender as the Portuguese forces were unable to combat the aerial threat of the Indian Air Force.

The war lasted two days. India suffered 34 dead and 51 wounded. Portugal lost 31 killed, 57 wounded, and 4668 captured.

The reaction of the United States was as follows:

Referring to the perception, especially in the West, that India had previously been lecturing the world about the virtues of non-violence, US President Kennedy told the Indian ambassador to the US, “You spend the last fifteen years preaching morality to us, and then you go ahead and act the way any normal country would behave.... People are saying, the preacher has been caught coming out of the brothel.”

In an article titled "India, The Aggressor", The New York Times on 19 December 1961, stated "With his invasion of Goa Prime Minister Nehru has done irreparable damage to India's good name and to the principles of international morality."

India tried to give the invasion a different spin by calling it a police action rather than a war. So, to answer the OP's question, yes, India has invaded at least one country in the last 10,000 60 years.

Answer 3

The Maurya Dynasty (322BCE - 185BCE) extended as far East as modern day Myanmar and as far West as modern day Iran.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurya_Empire for more details.