History of the British Raj into being, with Muhammad Ali Jinnah sworn in as its first Governor General in Karachi. The following day, 15 August 1947, India, now a smaller "Union of India", became an independent country with official ceremonies taking place in New Delhi, and with Jawaharlal Nehru assuming the office of the prime minister, and the viceroy, Louis Mountbatten, staying on as its first Governor General. History of the British Raj The history of the British Raj refers to the period of British rule on the Indian subcontinent between 1858 and 1947. The system of governance was instituted in 1858 when the rule
Political warfare in British colonial India aspect, the Company codified Muslim and Hindu law to take the flexibility out of the law’s traditional practice, to strengthen the Company’s indirect rule and entrench the local elites. Initially, the British in the East India Company favoured the Hindus over the Muslims as government agents because the Hindus were generally less hostile to their presence; the Company systematically removed Muslims from positions of power over its tenure in India. However, by 1893 Hindu power in the Indian National Congress was growing at rate disquieting to the British, so they reversed their traditional policies and began encouraging Muslims to enter