RAJAS and ROYALS

The British Raj (/rɑːdʒ/; from rāj, literally, “rule” in Hindustani)^[2] was the rule by the British Crown in the Indian subcontinentbetween 1858 and 1947.^[3][4][5][6] The rule is also called Crown rule in India,^[7] or direct rule in India.^[8] The region under British control was commonly called India in contemporaneous usage, and included areas directly administered by the United Kingdom, which were collectively called British India, and those ruled by indigenous rulers, but under British tutelage or paramountcy, and called the princely states. The de facto political amalgamation was also called the Indian Empire and after 1876 issued passports under that name.^[9][10] As India, it was a founding member of the League of Nations, a participating nation in the Summer Olympics in 1900, 1920, 1928, 1932, and 1936, and a founding member of the United Nations in San Francisco in 1945.^[11]

This system of governance was instituted on 28 June 1858, when, after the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the rule of the British East India Company was transferred to the Crown in the person of Queen Victoria^[12] (who, in 1876, was proclaimed Empress of India). It lasted until 1947, when Britain′s Indian Empire was partitioned into two sovereign dominion states: the Dominion of India (later the Republic of India) and the Dominion of Pakistan (later the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the eastern part of which, still later, became the People’s Republic of Bangladesh). At the inception of the Raj in 1858, Lower Burma was already a part of British India; Upper Burma was added in 1886, and the resulting union, Burma, was administered as an autonomous province until 1937, when it became a separate British colony, gaining its own independence in 1948.

Rajasthan is a northern Indian state bordering Pakistan. Its palaces and forts are reminders of the many kingdoms that historically vied for the region. In its capital, Jaipur (the “Pink City”), are the 18th-century City Palace and Hawa Mahal, a former cloister for royal women, fronted by a 5-story pink-sandstone screen. Amer Fort, atop a nearby hill, was built by a Rajput prince in the early 1600s.

The first mention of the name “Rajasthan” appears in the 1829 publication Annals and Antiquities of Rajast’han or the Central and Western Rajpoot States of India, while the earliest known record of “Rajputana” as a name for the region is in George Thomas‘s 1800 memoir Military Memories.^[8] John Keay, in his book India: A History, stated that “Rajputana” was coined by the British in 1829, John Briggs, translating Ferishta‘s history of early Islamic India, used the phrase “Rajpoot (Rajput)princes” rather than “Indian princes”.^[9]

Raja (/ˈrɑːdʒɑː/; also spelled Rajah, from Sanskrit राजन् rājan-), is a title for a Monarch or princely ruler in South and Southeast Asia. The female form Rani (sometimes spelled ranee) applies equally to the wife of a Raja (or of an equivalent style such as Rana), usually as queen consort and occasionally as regent.

The title has a long history in the Indian subcontinent and South East Asia, being attested from the Rigveda, where a rājan- is a ruler, see for example the dāśarājñá, the “battle of ten kings”.

Arabic raja’

English: Rajpoots (modern spelling: Rajputs), from a series in the Illustrated London News celebrating the Royal Visit to India in early 1876. Via Wikipedia

By VD, ED, CD, and JMP. Victorian engravings can be very difficult to identify the authors of – Illustrated London News, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6799872

Last modified: May 31, 2023