Weekend Image Post – British India

On India’s 64th Independence Day, I bring you the pictorial story of British India (1757–1947), featuring Company Rule (1757–1858) and British Raj (1858–1947). The historical narration of this period is beyond the scope of this article, rather I am publishing a series of historical and rare pictures in chronological order to give you an idea of British India and freedom struggle. Besides detailed captions of each photo, I have written an introduction and some notes to highlight the major events during 200 years of British Iindia (1757–1947). My story would have been incomplete if I wouldn’t have included the tragic assasination of our beloved ‘Father of the Nation,’ Mahatma Gandhi within five months of free India.

Most of the photos and images are from various sources via Wikipedia, so individual credit is not given. If I have chosen a photo or image from any source other than Wikipedia, due credit is given beneath the photo. Notes are mainly based on more than a dozen articles I have referred to in Wikipedia, the best source of authentic information.

Before I publish the pictures a brief introduction about the British India would be helpful.

British India

British India, may refer to:

• Company Rule in India (1757-1858), and
• British Raj (1858-1947)

But British colonial rule in India started way back in 1612 when the East India Company established its first permanent factory in Surat.

The East India Company first came to India as traders and seeked the permission of the emperor to carry on trade. It gradually took the advantage of weak political situations, fighting princes and instable rule to take over India and rule over it for over 200 years.

Company Rule in India (1757–1858)

Company Rule in India refers to the rule or dominion of the British East India Company on the Indian subcontinent. It effectively began in 1757 after the Battle of Plassey, lasted until 1858, when, following the events of the Indian Rebellion of 1857, and under the Government of India Act 1858, the British Crown assumed direct administration of India in the new British Raj.

Robert Clive led company forces against Siraj Ud Daulah, the last independent Nawab of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa to victory at the Battle of Plassey in 1757, resulting in the conquest of Bengal. Clive became the first British Governor of Bengal.

Battle of Plassey (1757)

Lord Robert Clive meeting with Mir Jafar after the Battle of Plassey.
Artist: Francis Hayman

East India Company Sepoys (Indian infantrymen) in red coats outside Tipu Sultan's former summer palace inBangalore, 1804.

Indigo dye factory in Bengal. Bengal was the world's largest producer of natural indigo in the 19th century.
 

Hindu College, Calcutta

A colored-in photograph (1851) of Hindu College, Calcutta, which had been founded in 1817 by a committee headed by Raja Ram Mohun Roy. In 1855, the Government of the Bengal Presidency renamed it Presidency College and opened it to all students.

Prohibition of Sati

Satī is a religious funeral practice among some Hindu communities in which a recently widowed Hindu woman either voluntarily or by use of force and coercion immolates herself on her husband’s funeral pyre. This practice is rare and has been outlawed in India since 1829.

Ceremony of Burning a Hindu Widow with the Body of her Late Husband, from Pictorial History of China and India, 1851.

A shrine to wives of the Maharajas of Jodhpur that have committed sati. The palmprints are typical.

Indian Railways

Photograph (1855) of the Dapoorie Viaduct, Bombay. The viaduct, shown with a train steaming across it, was completed in 1853 and linked Bombay Island with Thane on the mainland.

Indian Postal Service

Two four anna stamps issued in 1854. Stamps were issued for the first time for all of British India in 1854. The lowest denomination was ½ anna blue, followed by 1 anna red, and 4 annas blue and red. The stamps were printed from lithographic stones at the Surveyor-General’s Office in Calcutta.

Indian Rebellion of 1857

The Indian Rebellion of 1857 also known as India’s First War of Independence, began as a mutiny of sepoys of the British East India Company’s army on 10 May 1857, in the town of Meerut, and soon erupted into other mutinies and civilian rebellions largely in the upper Gangetic plain and central India. The rebellion was contained only with the fall of Gwalior on 20 June 1858.

The rebellion led to the dissolution of the East India Company in 1858, and forced the British to reorganize the army, the financial system, and the administration in India. India was thereafter directly governed by the Crown in the new British Raj.

Charles Canning, theGovernor-General of India during the rebellion.

Bahadur Shah Zafar the last Mughal Emperor, crowned Emperor of India, by the Indian troops, he was deposed by the British, and died in exile in Burma.

Lakshmibai, The Rani of Jhansi, one of the principal leaders of the rebellion who earlier had lost her kingdom as a result of theDoctrine of Lapse.

Capture of Bahadur Shah Zafar and his sons by William Hodson at Humayun's tomb on 20 September 1857.

The hanging of two participants in the Indian Rebellion of 1857. Albumen silver print by Felice Beato, 1858.

Forced disarmament of cavalry of Berhampore.

British soldiers looting Qaisar Bagh, Lucknow, after its recapture (steel engraving, late 1850s).

Secundra Bagh after the slaughter of 2,000 Rebels by the 93rd Highlanders and 4th Punjab Regiment. Albumen silver print by Felice Beato, 1858.

Bahadur Shah Zafar (last mughal emperor) exiled in Rangoon. Photograph by Robert Tytler and Charles Shepherd, May 1858.

British Raj (1858–1947)

The British Raj is the name given to the period of British colonial rule in South Asia between 1858 and 1947. After 1876, the resulting political union was officially called the Indian Empire and issued passports under that name. Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India. As India, it was a founding member of the League of Nations, the United Nations, and a member nation of the Summer Olympics in 1900, 1920, 1928, 1932, and 1936.

It lasted until 1947, when the British Indian Empire was partitioned into two sovereign dominion states: the Union of India (later the Republic of India) and the Dominion of Pakistan (later the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the eastern half of which, still later, became the People’s Republic of Bangladesh). The province of Burma in the eastern region of the Indian Empire was made a separate colony in 1937 and became independent in 1948.

The Indian Empire was established on August 2, 1858 and disestablished on August 15, 1947. The capital of the Indian Empire was Calcutta (1858–1912), and later New Delhi (1912–1947).

An 1887 souvenir portrait of Queen Victoria as Empress of India, a full 30 years after the Great Uprising.

The British Indian Empire, 1909.

Blowing from Guns in British India (1884) by Vasily Vereshchagin.

Indian National Congress

Founded in 1885 by Allan Octavian Hume, Dadabhai Naoroji, Dinshaw Wacha, Womesh Chandra Bonnerjee, Surendranath Banerjee, Monomohun Ghose, Mahadev Govind Ranade and William Wedderburn, the Indian National Congress became the leader of the Indian Independence Movement, with over 15 million members and over 70 million participants in its struggle against British rule in India.

It was not until the emergence of Indian National Congress and Mahatma Gandhi that Indians re-gathered their momentum for home rule.

First session of Indian National Congress, Bombay, 28-31, December, 1885.

Partition of Bengal

The decision on the Partition of Bengal as announced on 19 July 1905 by then Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon. The partition took effect on 16 October 1905. Due to the high level of political unrest generated by the partition, the eastern and western parts of Bengal were reunited because of Hindu pressure in 1911.

Lord Curzon and Lady Curzon arriving at the Delhi Durbar, 1903.

Gandhi in 1918, at the time of the Kheda and Champaran satyagrahas.

Gandhi Returns to India

Mohandas Gandhi first employed civil disobedience while an expatriate lawyer in South Africa, during the resident Indian community’s struggle there for civil rights. After his return to India in 1915, he organised protests by peasants, farmers, and urban labourers concerning excessive land-tax and discrimination. After assuming leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921, Gandhi led nationwide campaigns to ease poverty, expand women’s rights, build religious and ethnic amity, end untouchability, and increase economic self-reliance. Above all, he aimed to achieve Swaraj or the independence of India from foreign domination. Gandhi spent a number of years in jail in both South Africa and India.

Jallianwala Bagh Massacre

The Jallianwala Bagh massacre was named after the Jallianwala Bagh (Garden) in the northern Indian city of Amritsar where, on April 13, 1919, fiftyBritish Indian Army soldiers, under the command of Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer, opened fire on an unarmed gathering of innocent men, women and children without any warning. Official British Raj sources placed the fatalities at 379, and with 1,100 wounded. Civil Surgeon Dr Smith indicated that there were 1,526 casualties.

The Jallianwala Bagh couple of months after the April 1919 massacre which killed about 1,526 people.

Salt Satyagraha ( Dandi Salt March)

Gandhi launched a satyagraha against the tax on salt in March 1930. This was highlighted by the famous Salt March to Dandi from 12 March to 5 April, where he marched 388 kilometres (241 miles) from Ahmedabad to Dandi, Gujarat to make salt himself. Thousands of Indians joined him on this march to the sea. This campaign was one of his most successful at upsetting British hold on India; Britain responded by imprisoning over 60,000 people.

Gandhi on the Salt March.

Gandhi at Dandi, April 5, 1930.

Indian freedom fighter Bhagat Singh, at the age of 21 in jail.

Martyrdom of Bhagat Singh

Bhagat Singh (27 September 1907 – 23 March 1931) was an Indian freedom fighter, considered to be one of the most influential revolutionaries of the Indian independence movement. He is often referred to as Shaheed Bhagat Singh (the word shaheed means “martyr”). He was hanged for shooting a police officer in response to the killing of veteran freedom fighter Lala Lajpat Rai.

Quit India Movement (1942)

The Quit India Movement was a civil disobedience movement launched in India in August 1942 in response to Mohandas Gandhi’s call for immediate independence. Gandhi hoped to bring the British government to the negotiating table. Almost the entire Indian National Congress leadership, and not just at the national level, was put into confinement less than twenty-four hours after Gandhi’s speech, and the greater number of the Congress leaders were to spend the rest of World War II in jail.

Procession view at Bangalore.

Subhas Chandra Bose

Subhas Bose and Indian National Army

The Indian National Army (INA) or Azad Hind Fauj was an armed force formed by Indian nationalists in 1942 in Southeast Asia during World War II. It was active from August 1942 to September 1945.

Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose in INA Uniform 1943 August 15. Picture Courtesy: National Archives

Arzi Hukumat-e-Azad Hind, the Provisional Government of Free India, or simply Azad Hind, was an Indian government in exile established in Singapore in 1943.

Cabinet members of the Provisional Government of Azad Hind, 1943:
1st Row (L to R): Lt Col Chatterjee, Lt Col J K Bhonsle, Dr Lakshmi Swaminadhan, Subhas Chandra Bose, A. M. Sahay and S A Ayer
2nd Row (L to R): Lt Col Gulzara Singh, Lt Col Shah Nawaz Khan, Lt Col Aziz Ahmed, Lt Col M Z Kiani, Lt Col N S Bhagat, Lt Col Ehsan Qadir, Lt Col Loganathan.

Partition of India

The Partition of India was the partition of British India on the basis of religious demographics that led to the creation, on 14 August 1947 and 15 August 1947, respectively, of the sovereign states of the Dominion of Pakistan (later Islamic Republic of Pakistan and People’s Republic of Bangladesh) and the secular Union of India (later Republic of India).

An old Sikh man carrying his wife. Over 10 million people were uprooted from their homeland and travelled on foot, bullock carts and trains to their promised new home.

Freedom at Midnight

India is Partitioned. British Leave India. India becomes free from 200 years of British Rule. A major victory for Gandhian principles and non-violence in general.

Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru being sworn in as Prime Minister.

Mahatma Gandhi Assassination

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was assassinated on January 30, 1948. On 30 January 1948, at 5:17 pm, Nathuram Godse, a Hindu fanatic got close enough to Mahatma Gandhi at a prayer meeting at the Birla House and shot him three times in his chest at point-blank range.

A group photo of people accused in Gandhi’s murder case. Standing: Shankar Kistaiya, Gopal Godse, Madanlal Pahwa, Digambar Badge (Approver). Sitting: Narayan Apte, Vinayak D. Savarkar, Nathuram Godse, Vishnu Karkare.