The population of south Asia (modern day Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka) was 447 million in 1950. By 1964, the population had jumped by more than a third to 602 million.

The British colonial government in its south Asian colonies had done little to help heal the growing rift between Muslims and Hindus. In 1947, Britain granted India its independence but religious divisions saw the colony divided into two parts, a Muslim Pakistan and mostly Hindu India. Pakistan itself was divided into two parts, a West

Pakistan and an East Pakistan. In the Kashmir and Punjab, the border remained unsettled, and to this day, both India and Pakistan claim the region. There was much violence and hundreds of thousands of refugees had to flee their homes. In 1948, extremists assassinated Gandhi who had always sought to unite all religious and ethnic groups in the British ruled colonies into a single nation of India.

Jawaharal Nehru was the prime minister and foreign minister of India between 1947 and 1964. Under his foreign policy, India took a neutral position in the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. India became a leader among all the neutral nations, especially among the many new independent states which had been European colonies. This group of nations came to be called the Third World (the United States and its allies was the "First" and the Soviet Union and its allies was the "Second").

In 1959 and 1962, border wars with China were fought along the Tibetan frontier. China had reconquered Tibet in a three year war starting in 1956.