Interesting facts about British India: the Raj from 1858 to 1947

After the revolt of 1857, the rule of India was taken away from the East India Company and placed directly in the hands of the British Crown. The period from 1858 to 1947 is called British India or the "British Raj". These 89 years brought railways, the post, universities and many laws — but famines, economic exploitation and repression were also part of the same period. Here are interesting facts about this era.

How Crown rule worked

• The Queen's Proclamation: on 1 November 1858, Queen Victoria's Proclamation was read out at Allahabad, promising to respect the rights of the Indian princely states.
• The Viceroy: the Governor-General, the Crown's representative in India, now also carried the title "Viceroy". The first Viceroy was Lord Canning and the last was Lord Mountbatten.
• A Secretary of State in London: the post of "Secretary of State for India" was created in London to handle India's affairs.
• "Empress of India": on 1 January 1877, at the Delhi Durbar, Victoria was proclaimed "Kaisar-i-Hind", Empress of India.

An India in two parts

British India had provinces under direct rule — such as Bengal, Bombay, Madras and the United Provinces — and, besides these, more than 560 princely states, where kings and nawabs ruled under British paramountcy. They ranged from big states such as Hyderabad, Jammu and Kashmir, Mysore and Baroda to states no bigger than a few villages. Bringing them into India after independence was a huge task.

Did you know? Until 1911 the capital of British India was Calcutta. The move of the capital to Delhi was announced at the Delhi Durbar on 12 December 1911, and New Delhi was inaugurated in 1931.

Things that came in this period

Many buildings the British put up in this period still stand — read 12 facts about India Gate and 10 interesting facts about Delhi.

Laws that shaped the road ahead

• 1909 (Morley–Minto Reforms): Indians got a bigger share in the legislative councils, but separate electorates were created for Muslims.
• 1919 (Montagu–Chelmsford Reforms): "dyarchy" was introduced in the provinces.
• The Government of India Act 1935: the provinces got autonomy and a federal structure was planned. A large part of independent India's Constitution is built on the framework of this Act.

The economic impact: the "drain of wealth"

Dadabhai Naoroji, one of the founders of the Congress and called the "Grand Old Man of India", put forward the "drain theory" in his book "Poverty and Un-British Rule in India" (1901) — the idea that India's wealth was flowing out to Britain all the time as salaries, pensions, interest and profits. The arrival of cheap machine-made cloth badly hurt India's handloom industry. According to the economist Angus Maddison's estimates, India's share of the world economy was about a quarter around 1700 and had fallen to about 4 per cent by 1950. Read about more fighters of that era in the list of freedom fighters.

A painful truth: the famines

There were many terrible famines in the British period. Millions died in the great famine of 1876–78, and about 30 lakh (3 million) people lost their lives in the Bengal famine of 1943. Historians blame wrong government policies, as well as drought, for these deaths.

For more questions see History GK.