Archive | History

The All-India Muslim League (AIML) was established on December 30, 1906, at the time of British colonial rule to protect the interests of Muslims. Later it became the main vehicle through which the demand for a separate homeland for the Muslims was put forth.

Since its 1886 installation in New York Harbor, where it was then the tallest structure, this 305-foot, 225-ton copper-clad statue of a stern-aced woman whose torch “Enlightens the World,” has become one of the world’s best-known symbols, as well as one of its more contentious.

Ranjit (also spelled Runjit) Singh founded a Sikh state in the Punjab (an area in northwestern India, now divided between India and Pakistan) and ruled from 1801 to 1839.

The Brahmo Samaj and Arya Samaj were two important institutions that developed in 19th-century India against existing social practices. The impact of the West resulted in a social and cultural renaissance in India. To regenerate society, it was felt that modern sciences and ideas of reason were essential.

The first Anglo-Sikh War was the result of British imperial expansion to annex the Punjab and remove the Sikh threat to British hegemony on the Indian subcontinent.

Raja Ram Mohan Roy exemplified the new English educated class of Indians who emerged in the late 18th century. He came from a distinguished Brahman family in Bengal—the headquarters of the British East India Company.

The Indian Mutiny was the most traumatic single event to mark the British experience in India, from the first appearance of the British East India Company in the early 17th century to the end of Britain’s Indian empire in 1947.

The Government of India Act of 1858 was an act of the British parliament that ended the existence and long tenure of the British East India Company in India and transferred its power and assets directly to the British Crown.

The office of the governor-general of India was established in 1773 when Warren Hastings was made the first governor-general of the presidency of Fort William, Calcutta, taking up the position in the following year.

The British East India Company was founded in 1600, during the last years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England, for trade in the East Indies, which had been opened to European trade by the Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama.

There are very few buildings in the world more famous than the Taj Mahal, a queen’s mausoleum in Agra, India. The sense of romance that the Taj Mahal invokes was developed as a result of British fascination with this structure during the late 18th century and has continued into the 21st century.

Sri Guru Nanak Dev, founder of Sikhism, was born in 1469 in Sheikhupura district of present-day Pakistan to a Hindu family of Kshatriya caste.

Shivaji was born on February 19, 1627, in the hill fort of Shivaneri. He is best remembered for his valor and relentless struggle against the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb (1618–1707).

Mughal emperor Jahangir’s death and the following succession struggle ended in the triumph of his son, Prince Khurram, who took the title Shah Jahan, which means “emperor of the world.”

Rajputs (literally, “children of kings”) are members of a Hindu aristocratic caste (kshatriya, or warrior) settled mainly in northwestern India, who may have Central Asian origins.

There were three battles fought at Panipat, located 70 miles northwest of Delhi, the strategically important city in northern India and capital of many dynasties.