[Y.B.K] The British Raj ब्रिटिश राज - Hindi Documentary.mp4

British India, officially the British Indian Empire, and internationally and contemporaneously, India, is the term used synonymously for the region, the rule, and the period, from 1858 to 1947, of the British Empire on the Indian subcontinent. The region included areas directly administered by the United Kingdom[1] (contemporaneously, "British India") as well as the princely states ruled by individual rulers under the paramountcy of the British Crown. Prior to 1858, Britain's interests and possessions in India had been administered by the British East India Company, which was officially a commercial enterprise chartered by the Government. It operated in India as an agent of the Moghul Empire. After the First War of Indian Independence (known as the mutiny) the British government assumed direct responsibility for ruling its Indian territories. A policy of expansion followed that brought the whole of India within the Empire. The princely states, of which all entered into treaty arrangements with the British Crown, were allowed a degree of local autonomy in exchange for accepting protection and complete representation in international affairs by the United Kingdom.
Contents
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1 Definition and Geographical Expanse
2 History
2.1 Company rule in India
2.2 Building the Raj: British expansion across India
2.3 First War of Indian Independence
2.3.1 Causes of the rebellion
2.4 Aftermath of the 1857 Rebellion and the formal initiation of the Raj
2.5 Effects on economy
2.6 Beginnings of self-government
2.7 After World War I
2.8 World War II and the end of the Raj
3 Literature
4 Assessment
5 Provinces
6 Notes
7 References
7.1 Literature
8 External links
9 Credits

Known as the "Jewel in the Crown" of the British Empire, India was over the years a source of wealth for Britain, although the Raj's profitability declined in the years before independence was finally granted. On the other hand, railway, transport and communication systems were built that helped to knit the previously independent regions of India into a whole, which actually aided the Indian independence struggle under the leadership of the Indian National Congress. This movement was led by the very class of Indians that the British education system had produced, who read in English literature about the concepts of fair-play, justice and about the mother of Parliaments in Westminster but observed that the British seemed to leave these values and the practice of democracy at home when they arrived in India. The Raj's policy has been described as one of "divide and rule." This partly refers to the way in which much territory was acquired, by playing one Indian ruler against another, and to the way in which the British stressed what they saw as intractable differences between different religious communities, arguing that it was only their presence in India that prevented a blood bath.
Definition and Geographical Expanse

The British Indian Empire included the regions of present-day India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, and, in addition, at various times, Aden (from 1858 to 1937), Lower Burma (from 1858 to 1937), Upper Burma (from 1886 to 1937) (Burma was detached from British India in 1937), British Somaliland (briefly from 1884 to 1898), and Singapore (briefly from 1858 to 1867). British India had some ties with British possessions in the Middle East; the Indian rupee served as the currency in many parts of that region. What is now Iraq was, immediately after World War I, administered by the India Office of the British government. The Indian Empire, which issued its own passports, was commonly referred to as India both in the region and internationally. As India, it was a founding member of the League of Nations, and a member nation of the Summer Olympics in 1900, 1920, 1928, 1932, and 1936. Among other countries in the region, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), which was ceded to the United Kingdom in 1802 under the Treaty of Amiens, was a British Crown Colony, but not part of British India. The kingdoms of Nepal and Bhutan although having been in conflict with Britain, had both subsequently signed treaties with Britain, and were recognized as independent states and not part of the British Raj[2][3] The Kingdom of Sikkim was established as a princely state after the Anglo-Sikkimese Treaty of 1861, however, the issue of sovereignty was left undefined.[4] The Maldive Islands were a British protectorate from 1867 to 1965, but not part of British India.

The system of governance lasted from 1858, when the rule of the British East India Company was transferred to the Crown in the person of Queen Victoria (and who, in 1877, was proclaimed Empress of India), until 1947, when the British Indian Empire was partitioned into two sovereign states, the Dominion of India (later the Republic of India) and the Dominion of Pakistan (later the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the People's Republic of Bangladesh). Burma was separated from the administration of the British Indian Empire in 1937 and directly administered thereafter; it received independence from the UK in 1948 as the Union of Burma.
History
Company rule in India

On December 31, 1600 Queen Elizabeth I of England granted a royal charter to the British East India Company to carry out trade with the East. Ships first arrived in India in 1608, docking at Surat in modern-day Gujarat. Four years later, British traders battled the Portuguese at the Battle of Swally, gaining the favor of the Mughal emperor Jahangir in the process. In 1615, King James I sent Sir Thomas Roe as his ambassador to Jahangir's court, and a commercial treaty was concluded in which the Mughals allowed the Company to build trading posts in India in return for goods from Europe. The Company traded in such commodities as cotton, silk, saltpetre, indigo, and tea.

By the mid-1600s, the Company had established trading posts or "factories" in major Indian cities, such as Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras in addition to their first factory at Surat (built in 1612). In 1670 King Charles II granted the company the right to acquire territory, raise an army, mint its own money, and exercise legal jurisdiction in areas under its control.

By the last decade of the seventeenth century, the Company was arguably its own "nation" on the Indian subcontinent, possessing considerable military might and ruling the three presidencies.

The British first established a territorial foothold in the Indian subcontinent when Company-funded soldiers commanded by Robert Clive defeated the Nawab of Bengal - Siraj Ud Daulah at the Battle of Plassey in 1757. Bengal became a British protectorate directly under the rule of the East India Company. Bengal's wealth then flowed to the Company, which attempted to enforce a monopoly on Bengali trade (though smuggling was rife). Bengali farmers and craftsmen were obliged to render their labor for minimal remuneration while their collective tax burden increased greatly. Some believe that as a consequence, the famine of 1769-1773 cost the lives of ten million Bengalis[5]. A similar catastrophe occurred almost a century later, after Britain had extended its rule across the Indian subcontinent, when 40 million Indians perished from famine. The Company, despite the increase in trade and the revenues coming in from other sources, found itself burdened with massive military expenditures, and its destruction seemed imminent.
Building the Raj: British expansion across India
Map of British India, 1855

Lord North's India Bill, The Regulating Act of 1773, by the British Parliament granted Whitehall, the British government administration, supervisory (regulatory) control over the work of the East India Company but did not take power for itself. This was the first step along the road to government control of India. It also established the post of Governor-General of India, the first occupant of which was Warren Hastings. Further acts, such as the Charter Act of 1813 and the Charter Act of 1833, further defined the relationship of the Company and the British government.

Hastings remained in India until 1784 and was succeeded by Cornwallis, who initiated the Permanent Settlement, whereby an agreement in perpetuity was reached with zamindars or landlords for the collection of revenue. For the next 50 years, the British were engaged in attempts to eliminate Indian rivals.

At the turn of the nineteenth century, Governor-General Lord Wellesley (brother of the Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington) began expanding the Company's domain on a large scale, defeating Tippu Sultan (also spelled Tippoo Sultan), annexing Mysore in southern India, and removing all French influence from the subcontinent. In the mid-nineteenth century, Governor-General Lord Dalhousie launched perhaps the Company's most ambitious expansion, defeating the Sikhs in the Anglo-Sikh Wars (and annexing the Punjab with the exception of the Phulkian States) and subduing Burma in the Second Burmese War. He also justified the takeover of small princely states such as Satara, Sambalpur, Jhansi, and Nagpur by way of the doctrine of lapse, which permitted the Company to annex any princely state whose ruler had died without a male heir. The annexation of Oudh in 1856 proved to be the Company's final territorial acquisition, as the following year saw the boiling over of Indian grievances toward the so-called "Company Raj."
First War of Indian Independence

On May 10, 1857 soldiers of the British Indian Army (known as "sepoys," from Urdu/Persian sipaahi = "soldier"), drawn from the Indian Hindu and Muslim population, rose against British in Meerut, a cantonment 65 kilometres northeast of Delhi. At the time, the strength of the Company's Army in India was 238,000, of whom 38,000 were Europeans. Indian soldiers marched to Delhi to offer their services to the Mughal emperor, and soon much of north and central India was plunged into a year-long insurrection against the British East India Company. Many Indian regiments and Indian kingdoms joined the uprising, while other Indian units and Indian kingdoms backed the British commanders and the HEIC.
Causes of the rebellion

The rebellion or the war for independence had diverse political, economic, military, religious and social causes.

The policy of annexation pursued by Governor-General Lord Dalhousie, based mainly on his "Doctrine of Lapse," which held that princely states would be merged into company-ruled territory in case a ruler died without direct heir. This denied the Indian rulers the right to adopt an heir in such an event; adoption had been pervasive practice in the Hindu states hitherto, sanctioned both by religion and by secular tradition. The states annexed under this doctrine included such major kingdoms as Satara, Thanjavur, Sambhal, Jhansi, Jetpur, Udaipur, and Baghat. Additionally, the company had annexed, without pretext, the rich kingdoms of Sind in 1843 and Oudh in 1856, the latter a wealthy princely state that generated huge revenue and represented a vestige of Mughal authority. This greed for land, especially in a group of small-town and middle-class British merchants, whose parvenu background was increasingly evident and galling to Indians of rank, had alienated a large section of the landed and ruling aristocracy, who were quick to take up the cause of evicting the merchants once the revolt was kindled.

The justice system was considered inherently unfair to the Indians. The official Blue Books — entitled East India (Torture) 1855–1857 — that were laid before the House of Commons during the sessions of 1856 and 1857 revealed that Company officers were allowed an extended series of appeals if convicted or accused of brutality or crimes against Indians.

The economic policies of the East India Company were also resented by the Indians. Most of the gold, jewels, silver and silk had been shipped off to Britain as tax and sometimes sold in open auctions, ridding India of its once abundant wealth in precious stones. The land was reorganized under the comparatively harsh Zamindari system to facilitate the collection of taxes. In certain areas farmers were forced to switch from subsistence farming to commercial crops such as indigo, jute, coffee and tea. This resulted in hardship to the farmers and increases in food prices. Local industry, specifically the famous weavers of Bengal and elsewhere, also suffered under British rule. Import tariffs were kept low, according to traditional British free-market sentiments, and thus the Indian market was flooded with cheap clothing from Britain. Indigenous industry simply could not compete, and where once India had produced much of England's luxury cloth, the country was now reduced to growing cotton which was shipped to Britain to be manufactured into clothing, which was subsequently shipped back to India to be purchased by Indians. This extraordinary quantity of wealth, much of it collected as 'taxes', was absolutely critical in expanding public and private infrastructure in Britain and in financing British expansionism elsewhere in Asia and Africa.

The spark that lit the fire was the result of a British blunder in using new cartridges for the Pattern 1853 Enfield rifle that were greased with animal fat, rumored to now be a combination of pig-fat and cow-fat. This was offensive to the religious beliefs of both Muslim and Hindu sepoys, who refused to use the cartridges and, under provocation, finally mutinied against their British officers.

The rebellion soon engulfed much of North India, including Oudh and various areas that had lately passed from the control of Maratha princes to the company. The unprepared British were terrified, without replacements for the casualties. However, after getting reinforcements, the British army was able to suppress the uprising and restore British control over these areas.

It was a monumental event in history, for both Indians and British alike. The Rebels had achieved (at that time) the impossible in uniting and overthrowing (if only temporarily) an apparently unbeatable army and a now semi-despotic ruling power. Heroic defenses of British bases such as the Siege of Lucknow, Siege of Cawnpore and the retaking of rebel held cities as in the Siege of Delhi also passed into history.

Isolated uprisings also occurred at military posts in the centre of the subcontinent. The last major sepoy rebels surrendered on June 21, 1858, at Gwalior (Madhya Pradesh), one of the principal centres of the revolt. A final battle was fought at Sirwa Pass on May 21, 1859, and the defeated rebels fled into Nepal.
Aftermath of the 1857 Rebellion and the formal initiation of the Raj

The rebellion was a major turning point in the history of modern India. In May 1858, the British exiled Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar II (r. 1837–1857) to Rangoon, Burma (now Yangon, Myanmar), after executing most of his family, thus formally liquidating the Mughal Empire. Bahadur Shah Zafar, known as the Poet King, contributed some of Urdu's most beautiful poetry[6], with the underlying theme of the freedom struggle[7]. The Emperor was not allowed to return and died in solitary confinement in 1862. The Emperor's three sons, also involved in the 1857 Rebellion, were arrested and shot in Delhi by Major William Stephen Raikes Hodson of the British Indian Army.

Cultural and religious centres were closed down, properties and estates of those participating in the uprising were confiscated. At the same time, the British abolished the British East India Company and replaced it with direct rule under the British Crown. In proclaiming the new direct-rule policy to "the Princes, Chiefs, and Peoples of India," Queen Victoria (upon whom the British Parliament conferred the title "Empress of India" in 1877) promised equal treatment under British law, which never materialized.

Many existing economic and revenue policies remained virtually unchanged in the post-1857 period, but several administrative modifications were introduced, beginning with the creation in London of a cabinet post, the Secretary of State for India. The governor-general (called viceroy when acting as representative to the nominally sovereign "princely states" or "native states"), headquartered in Calcutta, ran the administration in