Talk:British Raj/Archive 10

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Awaiting consensus on inclusion of the British Raj's flag and coat of arms

As suggested above, the provided sources to different sites and books above and the accompanying article about the flag of the British Raj on Wikipedia. https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Star_of_India_(flag)

Added in response in TP poster before me.

WP:INFOBOXFLAG is however not relevant for every single former nation.

Agree that we should wait for more posters to have some input about their opinions on whether this should be included.

If there is consensus by more users, should be changed.

@Snowded: Can we attract more opinions on this matter or shall we just leave it until people comment?

AlbusWulfricDumbledore (talk) 15:40, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

You are going to get nowhere until you provide third party sources to support the change. At the moment all we have is original research, synthesis, and Wikipedia sourcing. This is simply not good enough -----Snowded ^TALK 16:00, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Reliable sources attest to the use of the Star of India flag in colonial India. The journal article "National Symbols under Colonial Domination: The Nationalization of the Indian Flag, March-August 1923", authored by Arundhati Virmani and published in Past & Present states:

Thus, in 1863, Queen Victoria accorded a distinctive banner to her Indian viceroy. This was blue, with the Union Flag in a corner and a Star of India capped by the royal crown.

Likewise, an article in India Today titled August 14, 1947: The Union Jack flag was lowered for the last time in India, writes that on 14 August 1947, (the day before India's Independence Day): "This was the last day when the Union Jack flag inscribed with the Star of India, was lowered from the flagstaff at the Viceroy's residence". As such, it should be included in the article. I hope this helps. With regards, Anupam^Talk 16:21, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

An RfC is something you should set up if a consensus cannot first be reached on the talk page; you haven't even attempted that yet. I suggest you delete it and engage with other users. You have two weak sources that show one-time use not consistent use so I can't see any case for inclusion. -----Snowded ^TALK 17:23, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

User:Snowded and User:RegentsPark, thanks for your input. I have removed the RfC for now per your comments. The reason I started it in the first place is because this topic keeps popping up again and again; as such, I thought it would be best to seek input from the Wikipedia community. Another article, titled Independence Day Special: Evolution of the Indian flag, published in India Today states:

The idea of a single flag for whole of India was raised by the British rulers. After the revolution of 1857, the first Indian flag was designed in blue colour. The design was based on western heraldic standards with Union Flag in the upper-left quadrant and a Star of India enclosed in the royal crown in the middle of the right half. The flag was a symbol of the direct imperial rule in India.

I trust that these sources will be helpful for others to consider as they ponder this isssue. I hope this helps. With regards, Anupam^Talk 18:07, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Neither of these two sources presents the flag. Nor do they verify that "the banner" or the "single flag" were in use during the entire period of the Raj. So, basically, we have two sources, neither of which actually show this putative flag, and neither confirm that the flag was used in British India consistently between 1857 and 1947. This is why this is better discussed in a flag of India article and not presented as factual on the British Raj page. BTW, don't you think an RfC is a bit hasty? --regentspark (comment) 17:00, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

User:RegentsPark, the sources seem to be describing the Star of India flag that is in question. Both of them seem to indicate usage after the period of the Indian Rebellion of 1857. Kind regards, Anupam^Talk 18:09, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

@Anupam:Actually, no. The India Today reference says "the first Indian flag", leaving open the possibility that there were others. And since neither actually show the flag we have no way of knowing whether there were differences or changes in the design over the period. I'm not sure but I seem to recall discussions here that point to different flags being used to represent India during the British Raj in different situations. The problem with putting a flag into the infobox is that we then make it the authoritative flag for the entity and we shouldn't do that without strong evidence (multiple reliable sources from academic historians would be nice). Failing that, it is better to discuss the various flags elsewhere (for example, in the article body or in a separate article). --regentspark (comment) 19:06, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

User:RegentsPark, thank you for your reply. I was not aware that different flags were used in different situations. Since you seem to have more knowledge in this subject area, I will kindly bow out for now. I appreciate you taking the time to improve this article and I hope you have a wonderful day. With regards, Anupam^Talk 19:12, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

• Premature and poorly formulated - RfC should be deleted for the moment. -----Snowded ^TALK 17:23, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

• Dear AlbusWulfricDumbledore (talk · contribs) The main issue as I see it is that after the 1857 Rebellion the British had become more circumspect in India. No longer were the active social legislations (a la Sati Regulation Act, 1829, Thuggee and Dacoity Suppression Acts, 1836–1848, Indian Slavery Act, 1843, Caste Disabilities Removal Act, 1850, Hindu Widows' Remarriage Act, 1856, (the same year as the annexation of Awadh by Dalhousie)) pursued with zeal in a bid to make India on par with Europe socio-culturally. The only exceptions were Female Infanticide Prevention Act, 1870 and Age of Consent Act, 1891 in response to tremendous pressure in the British parliament. In particular, the princely states, the hotbeds of conservatism, most of which had not joined the rebellion, were seen as islands of stability whose rulers had to be kept mollified if also controlled. The Raj = British India + Princely States was a complex enterprise. It was not a Settler Colony such as Canada or Australia which were to see continuously increasing autonomy throughout the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th; it was also not a Crown Colony, such as Ceylon, Singapore, or Trinidad, where the British had greater control. It was complex: it was an empire in which there were regions directly administered by the British, and disparate semi-independent states, totalling many hundreds, which were controlled through treaty obligations. That is why the regnal titles of the British monarchs after 1876 were e.g. Victoria by Grace of God, Queen, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and of the British Dominions beyond the Seas, Defender of the Faith, and Empress of India. She was empress of nowhere but India, and queen of everywhere else, even Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) which is just off the coast of India. The empire had no flag. The princely states had their own, the Viceroy had his own standard, there was one used in a somewhat ad hoc fashion during the Olympic Games. This needs a speedy close. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 00:39, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

@AlbusWulfricDumbledore: @Fowler&fowler: @RegentsPark: I edited and contributed a lot to the Star of India flag article. I made it clear (based on sources and common sense) that the Star of India was a set of symbolic flags and emblems used when the British were in India. Nowhere is it written that the flag(s) were the national flag of the British Indian Empire. As a matter of fact, not having a National flag was a key issue in the Independence movement, which lead to the present-day Tricolor. At the end of the British Raj, video footage indeed shows the plain Union Jack being lowered on Independence, not the Star of India. However, video footage also shows the Viceroy's flag, blue and red ensigns being used on property such as boats, cars etc. Also, some present day companies like the Oriental Insurance Company (which was formed during the British Raj) have their emblems based on the Star of India, which is conclusive proof that the common public knew of the Star of India Emblem. However, the whole point of that article was to point that these flags were indeed used in some recordable capacity in British India. --✘ anonymousвهii 19:29, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler: Thank you for rephrasing the paragraph. The version I removed looked kinda goofy. Jikybebna (talk) 17:45, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

@Jikybebna: It did. Thank you for catching it. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:01, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

Why is there no coat of arms Kanto7 (talk) 03:55, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

@Kanto7: The consensus is not to include any flags because there is no evidence that any flag was consistently the official flag in use for India during the British Raj. The Union Jack, for example, was not a flag of the Raj. Please note that if you continue to add flags in the article, you will be doing so against consensus. Editing against consensus (see WP:CONSENSUS) is considered disruptive and can lead to blocks. --regentspark (comment) 14:46, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Ok Kanto7 (talk) 22:42, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Wasn't the only flag with any legal status the Union Jack so the Union Jack should be the official flag. Kanto7 (talk) 22:34, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Wasn't the Union Jack the only flag with any legal status.Kanto7 (talk) 11:26, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

There are no sources that state what the flag of India under the British Raj was. What we have are mostly images of flag usage during that period and the flags used vary quite a bit (images are not valid as reliable sources for consistent flag usage anyway).--RegentsPark (comment) 14:38, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica the only flag with any official status was the Union Jack Kanto7 (talk) 00:55, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Why can't there be a coat of arms Kanto7 (talk) 00:58, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Do you hae a source which says there was one?-----Snowded ^TALK 05:51, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Ok Kanto7 (talk) 09:55, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica the only flag with any official status was the Union Jack Kanto7 (talk) 22:55, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

You need to provide the actual source so that we can evaluate it. --RegentsPark (comment) 00:09, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Just skimmed that article and can't find anything to support @Kanto7 assertion -----Snowded ^TALK 06:45, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

The official state flag was the union Jack while the flag used internationally was the red ensign. Kanto7 (talk) 09:22, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Please close this matter now Kanto7 (talk) 09:38, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

Hurry up Kanto7 (talk) 03:23, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Aden

Colony of Aden was separated in 1937. Kanto7 (talk) 01:35, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Aden is in the Yemem isn't it? -----Snowded ^TALK 05:31, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Are you serious?. The Colony of Aden was administered as part of India as a district of the Bombay Presidency later Province. Do you even know anything about Indian history? Kanto7 (talk) 22:54, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

@Kanto7: Please do not exaggerate. Yes, until 1937, the Aden Settlement (not Colony of Aden, which is what it became after 1937), was governed from India, but do you know how small British Aden was (without its islands) compared to India? It was a speck. Please read about WP:DUE. It applies as much to the infobox as it does to the rest of the article. You've been pushing the fringe in the infobox for some time now. Let me be blunt with you: if you keep doing this unilaterally without achieving consensus on the talk page first, you are looking at being banned from Wikipedia. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:13, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

But it was administered from India so it should be in the Infobox Kanto7 (talk) 23:17, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

I just gave it a read. How is Aden Settlement being part of India a minority view Kanto7 (talk) 02:25, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

You were told to get consensus on the talk page before instating the change. Nearly all your edits end up getting reversed, a topic ban would easily gain community consensus. -----Snowded ^TALK 04:21, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

"British India" redirect

British India does not redirect here, but rather to Presidencies and provinces of British India. This is incorrectly stated at the top of this page. 2601:88:8101:E300:E51F:F3CD:9A45:39B (talk) 21:54, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Fixed. Thank you for pointing this out. --RegentsPark (comment) 22:48, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Economic Impact

This section needs help (I was being polite; its gibberish). The text does not say what the cited PJ Marshall article does. The rest of the text also misrepresents what Smith is saying in the other source. The cited Smith personal blog page includes a poem by Kipling and usefully, "Meanwhile, much of Britain’s investment abroad went to Latin America and North America. Manufacturing was declining in Britain relative to Germany and the United States as, according to some, British banks were focusing too much on investing abroad." Which does not appear in the section.

The much better articles are: Economic_history_of_India#British_rule or Economy_of_India_under_the_British_Raj

My changes were reverted with a "take it to the talk" and "changes the tone" comment. Germsteel (talk) 22:47, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

Since better sections for this already exist on wikipedia, see above, we should use them here. Germsteel (talk) 04:35, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

I wouldn't say it is gibberish but, admittedly, it is thin because the sources are few and the main source (Marshall), though respected, is a tad on the older side. My reason for reverting you was that the current version says "mixed" whereas your version was that the Raj was economically devastating for India and you need to get consensus for such a significant change. Perhaps you could flesh out your suggested version here and we can see how that looks? --RegentsPark (comment) 15:16, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

References

Flags problem

Hello I observed all the articles (provinces and presidencies) has the flag of . So this article should also have this flag as well. Or delete this file in order to secure this nom.

Thanks

🇮🇳DRCNSINDIA (talk) 08:34, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

So did you add the flag or not? Germsteel (talk) 07:34, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Intend to add more information to the railway section of the page

Hello, I am commenting to let everyone know I intend to add more information on the railway section of the page, chiefly in regards to British control of the railways and its buttressing of the Imperial Project.AustinJAragon (talk) 02:32, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

@AustinJAragon: I'm sorry I wasn't aware that you had added something earlier. In a cursory reading, it appears to be in part a content fork of the section Company_rule_in_India#Railways I had written years ago. The main problem though is that the article's size is already 14,000 words. Although it is not a featured article, it is longer than WP's longest FA, Barack Obama. It simply cannot admit an expansion. If you would like to revise the current section without increasing its size, that would be OK, barring the addition of POV of course. I'm on vacation until mid-February 2021, so this is the only comment I can make. Pinging @RegentsPark: Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:42, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler: Hello thanks for replying. I am a little confused as to what you mean by word limit, there is a hard word limit on sections to a page? Here is a link to my talk sandbox page of my name where I collected the text of the railway section and added my additions in bold. the sources are in parentheses but would obviously be cited correctly via the footnote function when I added them. https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/User_talk:AustinJAragon/sandbox

Wikipedia:Article_size is the editing guideline on the size of articles and how to deal with long articles. The page size for the article as it stands is "87 kB" which puts it into the area where splitting off rather than expanding sections is a good idea. Doesn't mean a small section shouldn't receive some expansion but should be wary of making a large section bigger. GraemeLeggett (talk) 08:22, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 23 November 2020

'Indian Empire' should redirect to a relevant disambiguation page instead 119.247.117.96 (talk) 12:09, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

 Not done: this is the talk page for discussing improvements to the page British Raj. Please make your request at the talk page for the article concerned. here --TheImaCow (talk) 13:17, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

What should be listed on the disambiguation page? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 18:20, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Proposal to rearrange titles and redirects in this area

A long move discussion (and post-discussion) on a proposal to move Presidencies and provinces of British India to British India (which redirects there) has now been reclosed as "no consensus". Further to this, I have started a discussion at Talk:Presidencies_and_provinces_of_British_India#After_the_new_move_close_(as_no_consensus) as there is clearly unhappiness with some of the titles and redirects in this area: British India, British Raj, British rule in India, British Indian Empire and maybe more. I've floated some thoughts and proposals as a basis for preliminary discussion; they include renaming this page. All comments welcome. Johnbod (talk) 18:17, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

Indian empire

The source does not explicitly say that the region was known as the "Indian empire" (note the use of quotes in the source). And, of course, there is no mention of passports. --RegentsPark (comment) 19:48, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

I put in a link to the Wikipedia article on British Indian Empire passorts which demonstrates that the term was used in an official capacity by the Government in India, unless you argue that the passports were not issued officially. However, I am aware that people can use Wikipedia nitpicking to prevent accuracy when it it contradicts their prejudices. I used to believe in the project but have become totally disheartened by the deliberate attempts to conceal knowledge that people don't want revealed. Dabbler (talk) 16:23, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Passports_of_British_India#/media/File:BIpassport.jpg

Well, you can say that the passports were branded as "Indian Empire" but you can't draw any further conclusions from it. That would be WP:SYNTHESIS. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 21:59, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

I'm sworn to staying away from WP until mid-February, so I can't make anything but a brief remark. First, there is no reason for two of the four stalwarts of this page, Dabbler and RegentsPark, (the other two being Philip Baird Shearer and Rjensen) to be in an argument; they are all needed and welcome. Second, we did once mention both the empire and the passport in the lead (see here). The problem in part lies in British ambivalence in usage, perhaps studied ambivalence. On the one hand, the Imperial Gazetteer of India, (whose 26 volumes I have been dipping into for three decades) does use "Indian Empire" on the title page of volume 4; on the other, that same volume 4, uses "India" when describing the acts of the British Parliament (see here). I think the studied ambivalence catered to the different political lobbies of the late 19th century, represented for example by Disraeli and Gladstone, to the tug of war between them. I'd say let us put this issue on the backburner for now. When I return, I'll propose a finessing of language that can accommodate both. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 22:49, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

I'm not overly chuffed about Indian Empire, though it would be good to see solid references that clearly state that this was an "official" name of the entity. The passport statement is very dubiously sourced and Dabbler should know better than to use wikipedia articles to support their arguments. Particularly one that is poorly sourced and appears to rely on images for authenticity (we should not generalize from images).--RegentsPark (comment) 16:45, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

On 24 December I posted the definition of "Indian Empire" given by the Interpretation Act of 1889 and Indian General Clauses Act of 1897 — it's hard to find something more official than that — as an example of the official use of that designation, but it was deleted shortly after.

While "British Raj" was and is a very a common and popular name, it certainly was not the "official" name of that entity. I would argue that Indian Empire was a more official designation than British Raj and it should be pointed out. That said, I have no problem with the title of the article as it is. British Raj, while being an unofficial designation, was and is a better-known designation than Indian Empire, and therefore it is in compliance with Wikipedia's rule regarding the title of articles --Lubiesque (talk) 19:46, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

I agree that British Raj is the unofficial but common name for the entity. The reason why we need to be wary about saying that it was "officially" known as "Indian empire" is because it is not at all clear that that was the case. Documents, for example, often just used "India". The army was known as the Indian Army (not "Indian Empire Army"). And so on. That's why I think that our current formulation, which acknowledges that it was also called the Indian Empire but doesn't claim that this was the official name of the entity, is perhaps the most accurate. If, of course, we can find a reference that unequivocally states that this (or anything else for that matter) was the official name of the entity, then that's a different matter. To be clear, it is the word "officially" that needs a source, not the term "Indian Empire". --RegentsPark (comment) 21:07, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

How about an Order of knighthood for people with connections with British India, the Order of the Indian Empire. Dabbler (talk) 14:36, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

Flags

@Kanto7: @Dibyojyoti RC: Could you please provide reliable sources that show that these flags, or any other flag, was used as a representatives flag for the British raj? Please note that Wikipedia is a reliably sourced encyclopedia and material that is not reliably sourced should not be included. The mere existence of flags is insufficient for their being used as representative flags on our articles. --RegentsPark (comment) 11:59, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

@Kanto7: Would you mind providing sources? Merely stating, in an edit summary, that official documents had them, is insufficient. If you do not understand what a reliable source is, please spend some time reading WP:RS. At this point, your editing is disruptive. --RegentsPark (comment) 13:23, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

The wikipedia articles on the Star of India say the Red Ensign was the official civil ensign from 1880 to 1947, contradicting what it says on the talk page. Fix up the issue on the Star of India article then I will stop Kanto7 (talk) 23:15, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

@Kanto7: That article is seriously lacking in sources and the official civil ensign bit is unsourced. Note that just because something is stated in some other article, it doesn't mean that you can include it elsewhere. WP:V is quite clear that the onus of providing reliable sources is entirely on you. If you cannot provide reliable sources then, by continuously re-adding these flags, you are being disruptive. --RegentsPark (comment) 23:46, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

Well then Fix the flag Kanto7 (talk) 00:21, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

@Kanto7: The Raj did not have a flag, although the princely states it indirectly governed did (see, for example, Hyderabad State, Jammu and Kashmir (state)) and the Viceroy had his own standard. As for the Star of India page, what they say, correct or not, is for you to work out with the major editors there. It has nothing to do with this page. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:38, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

The article states that each state flew their own flag alongside the Union Jack. Hence the Union Jack should be the flag on the infobox

Kanto7 (talk) 02:24, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

What article says this? I already told you: the Raj did not have a flag. What is it you do not understand? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:44, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

The Union Jack was flown alongside state flags so the Union Jack should be the flag in the infobox Kanto7 (talk) 05:15, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

@Kanto7: You really need to understand what it means to provide sources. You keep posting comments but I have yet to see you provide a single source, let alone a reliable one. Without sources, all this is a meaningless waste of time. --RegentsPark (comment) 12:45, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

I will provide reliable resources for that, so don't worry about the flags. Dibyojyoti RC (talk) 09:18, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

I think you people might be getting Company Raj confused with British Raj. The State flag of India during the Raj was the Union Jack as it was flown alongside princely state flags, like the Aden Protectorate. The Union Jack should hence be in imfobpx flag Kanto7 (talk) 23:08, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Meanwhile the Company Raj there was no definitive flag. The company flag and the Union Jack were both used but there is no official record either was used as the official flag Kanto7 (talk) 23:09, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Came to a consensus yet? Kanto7 (talk) 21:37, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Look let me justify my actions here. I admit I was extremely rash when adding the red ensign here. But all articles relating to British India seem to have the Red Ensign. Maybe the Red Ensign should be removed Kanto7 (talk) 07:25, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

@Kanto7: You really need to understand what it means to listen to other editors. You were extremely rash not just here, but also other articles as well. PyroFloe (talk) 07:41, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

first collector in india - the highest post an Indian can hold

can you add this ?

Choorayi Kanaran (1812), a thiyyar gentleman, First Deputy Collector in India, the highest government post an Indian can hold at that time

File:Choorayi kanaran.jpg

Choorayi Kanaran (1812), a thiyyar gentleman, First Deputy Collector in India, the highest government post an Indian can hold at that time

Capitalization of title

I have noticed that the capitalization of "raj" varies across sources. A web search shows that the BBC and the Guardian capitalize "British Raj", as does this page from the National Archives (https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/empire/g2/cs4/background.htm), but Britannica (https://www.britannica.com/event/British-raj) and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (e.g. https://doi-org.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/47756) use "British raj". Although the evidence does not warrant renaming this article, perhaps mentioning the alternative capitalization is a good idea, considering sources of such high standing use it. Toadspike (talk) 23:05, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 25 May 2021

Change "Use Commonwealth English" to "EngvarB" per tfd outcome Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion#To_convert, and probably best not use either Indian or British English specifically as choosing one or the other could be inflammatory. 81.2.252.231 (talk) 02:57, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

 Already done ― Qwerfjkl | 𝕋𝔸𝕃𝕂  (please use {{reply to|Qwerfjkl}} on reply) 20:44, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

Aden (discussion moved from User talk:RegentsPark)

I'm glad you reverted me, as my edit was sort of a gateway in the sense that I want to shift the article to show more of what constituted India back then besides what is commonly thought of (the subcontinent plus Myammar), I'd perhaps want to go further with Somaliland and the Trucial states. In regards to Aden it was, by definition, a part of British India, and I do believe it constitutes as a successor state as a result. For one, it was significant enough to warrant its own seperate colony (we wouldn't group Ceylon with the raj) . Its size may not be large, though it was still larger than the contemporary sovereign states of the Marshall Islands and Lichtenstein. Anyways, I'd like to hear your thoughts. Foxhound03 (talk) 21:09, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure. Aden Colony was a small corner of the Aden Protectorate that the British carved out to maintain their sea route to India. I don't have any issue with it being in the body of the article but my concern is that putting it in the infobox gives undue importance to what is really a very tiny entity. Burma is a lot clearer - large, finally became a country, etc. Aden was mostly just the city and the port. --RegentsPark (comment) 21:21, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

•• Perhaps we should get a concensus in the talk page. Until we reach one, I have some proposed changes. The first is that we have a section on the infobox which gives which country the present day former territories lie. My second is to change the lead of the article by putting "primarily on the subcontinent" rather than just "on the subcontinent". Reason being is the large cumulative area of all territories outside of it such as Burma, Aden, the Trucial states, British Somaliland etc. Foxhound03 (talk) 08:21, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

• Primarily sounds good. I think I'll copy this over to Talk:British Raj so that others can comment. --RegentsPark (comment) 01:13, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

•••• Sorry, I forgot to add a summary but I just wanted to see how the page stands with it. I think it makes sense to add it but you can revert it if you want. Foxhound03 (talk) 18:34, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

Sport

Should not there be something about the importation of British sports into India, especially perhaps cricket, which is now a large and pleasant part of Indian life? It might go into the small section on culture. Incidentally, the word "colonisation" there is incorrect. We colonised some parts of the world, but not India. (India may be said to have colonised Britain somewhat, as I think there are roughly as many Indians living in Leicester alone as there ever were British in the whole of the vast Indian Empire, and of those hardly any lived on in India.) Seadowns (talk) 23:08, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Yes on both points, although it was above all cricket, I think. Football & rugger never caught on much. Snooker was invented in India (by a British officer), but it seems they mostly remain faithful to billiards. But Badminton in India is very big (the first rules were drawn up in Poona), especially for women, also hockey. Johnbod (talk) 23:15, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

What about tennis and golf? There have been some fine Indian tennis players. Seadowns (talk) 08:48, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

India was never a settler colony such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and British South Africa were. It had been colonized by Homo sapiens long before Europe (including Great Britain) was. By the early modern era, it was a teeming land. The British realized early on that settling there would not be possible, but it would be possible to exploit the resources and institute hefty salaries for the British civil servants, teachers, army men there. Macaulay, for example, went to India for a few years for the plain reason of having a nest egg. John Lockwood Kipling returned to England when he retired. His children had been sent to England when they turned five or thereabouts. Read his son's exploits in the fictional: Stalky & Co or nonfictional in Something of myself. Even the domiciled British in India never thought about settling there. Jim Corbett, the hunter turned conservationist, coming from a family whose several generations had been born and raised in India, never had a second thought about going to Kenya when India became independent in 1947. It is one of the reasons for widespread animosity and bitterness against the British in newly post-colonial India. They decamped when the going got uncomfortable. See Stanley Wolpert's Shameful Flight: The Last Years of the British Empire in India That is not to say that British Rule had no beneficial effects: it had many. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:55, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

I think that with a few exceptions such as "tea gardens" (on previously uncultivated hill slopes), the British were for a long time, perhaps the whole period, actually prohibited from owning agricultural land in India. That's obviously a complete contrast to the West Indies, Kenya, Malaya & what became the "Dominions". I'm dubious there was much of a general demand after 1947 for many British to stay on, and as you say, the "widespread animosity and bitterness against the British in newly post-colonial India", mostly from other reasons, hardly made doing so attractive. Johnbod (talk) 16:30, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

There would have been no point of the British being engaged in agriculture as they kept half the Indian agriculture profits in the form of land revenue. After the 1830s, India began to produce cash crops and raw materials (jute, cotton) for the market in Britain; in other words, it became a colonial economy that Canada, Australia, New Zealand, or South Africa did not, without becoming a European settler colony. In the professions in which the British were employed, civil service, army, teaching, ... there was no bar to their settling in India, to their children receiving their education in India, but with few exceptions, they chose not to. India was a sojourn for most for the purpose of making money, or of pursuing their goals with ample remuneration. (The canal engineers, for example, could have stayed on in India from the 1830s onward, but no one did. Read the biography of Proby Cautley.) There were many famous people who made their names in science, history, linguistics, medicine, ... in India but down to the last man, none retired in India. None chose to contribute to India by staying on both during the Raj and immediately after. The lopsidedness of it is stark. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:31, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

I did forget to mention one other factor. India was not only a teeming land at the onset of British East India Company rule (Tim Dyson has estimated the population of India then to be 187 million), but also one of many natural diseases whose antigenic insult was great for foreigners. Many early British arrivals had sent back news of how suddenly cholera struck and caused death. Indeed, cholera figures in much literature of the Raj (off the top of my head I can think of several books in which a child had become an orphan in India because of parental deaths to cholera: see for example Frances Hodgson Burnett's Secret Garden). The heat in India (caused by the subcontinent crashing into Eurasia, uplifting the Himalayas, creating a natural barrier, which made it hotter than other regions of the same latitude), the unpredictable weather (and crop failures which had caused famines) may have contributed as well. India, in other words, was a complex region historically, politically, agriculturally, economically, socially (the caste system remained inviolate through British rule), and in matters of public health. It was nothing like the virgin lands that the New World or Australasia constituted. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 03:53, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

It most certainly did! That you still think the New World or Australasia were "virgin lands" is an interesting insight, though you don't try that line for Africa! In fact Victorian professionals very often retired to the area they grew up in (as many modern ones still do), as opposed to farmers, and from that point of view it may not have mattered much whether their working career had been spent on the Ganges or in Glasgow. Johnbod (talk) 13:51, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

The virgin was part ironic. I live in a general area where the pilgrims first sighted land, where the land was thereafter nearly depopulated of native Americans, as were turkeys, the much-ballyhooed fetish of that first encounter. But virgin was also a term of comparison. As I've already stated, the population of India before any substantial European presence was 187 million. The population of North America before European arrival was somewhere between 7 million and 18 million. Let's average that to 13 million. The area of North America minus the extreme north is 5 times that of India. That means India was over 70 times more densely populated at the time of European arrival. Australia's population before European arrival was somewhere between 300,000 and 1.25 million, its population density a veritable nothing in comparison to India's, given it is 2 1/2 times larger in area. Sub-Saharan Africa on the other hand had had many influences and varieties of colonization before European arrival, Arab for one, southeast Asian for another. Its population in 1700 was approximately 85 million. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 06:59, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

I can't speak to your conjecture about Victorian professionals in general but do know about a few who were in India. Some had been born in India, spent the first six years of their life there, went to boarding school in the UK, so it is not clear where they grew up. However, quite regardless, quite a few showed the typical pattern achieved during the high noon of British imperialism in India. John Lockwood Kipling of above mention was born in Pickering, North Yorkshire, educated in West Yorkshire, spent his professional career in India, but retired to Tisbury, Wiltshire, which is nearly 300 miles south along a major highway, done I'm told in nearly six hours today. I do know about a few of the naturalists, or businessmen-turned-amateur-naturalists because I wrote those articles long ago. Stanley Henry Prater, Walter Samuel Millard, Herbert Musgrave Phipson, all retired in England. Prater had been born and raised in India. E. H. Aitken, "Eha," the great Indian naturalist was the most surprising. Born and raised in India, he spent his entire working life there but retired to Edinburgh. (See his obituary in the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society) The Continental Europeans, the Portuguese, the French, and the occasional Swiss fit less into this pattern, in my rather limited reading about this topic. See Ethelbert Blatter for example. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 11:56, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

If you are thinking about having a sports section, it would be better if it were about the sports played in the Raj. The best known of these was Field Hockey in which India won the Olympic gold from 1928 onward. As for cricket, I'm not sure how good the Indian teams were before 1947, or for that matter how far, wide, or deep cricket had penetrated in India during the Raj. Individual players, such as Ranji, usually from Indian royalty who had studied in Britain, did win themselves renown. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:10, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

• This "sport legacy" thing is not going to fly. Except for cricket, which is mainly a British colonial game, none of the other sports can be tied back to the raj. Loads of countries with no connection to Britain play badminton, tennis, hockey, etc. The only way you can write this sport legacy thing is with a hefty dose of WP:OR. --RegentsPark (comment) 16:38, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

I doubt that. Nowadays all countries compete at everything, or at least everything in the Olympics, but this was not always so, & badminton and hockey, and perhaps billiards, were not very widely played around the world until recent decades. Johnbod (talk) 16:53, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

The Indian field hockey team which won the gold medal at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, was captained by hockey great Dhyan Chand

Anyway, I think a small sports section about the sports played in the Raj could be added to the article, but not as a part of the legacy. Among the sportsmen of the Raj were Dhyan Chand, a giant of field hockey (see Britannica), Ranjitsinhji of cricket (see Britannica, ODNB), and Norman Pritchard, who won two silver medals in track and field (in 200m and 200m hurdles) in the 1900 Paris Olympics. Other cricket players in the Raj were Mushtaq Ali, C. K. Nayudu, Vizzy, Lala Amarnath and Iftikhar Ali Khan Pataudi. I'm sure I'm forgetting a few. Other field hockey players were Jaipal Singh Munda, the first Indian Oxford blue in hockey, and later an Olympian; Lal Shah Bokhari, and K. D. Singh Babu. In passing, I might add that one of the contributions of the British was not only the introduction of many sports to the subcontinent but the recognition of Indian talent and its democratic promotion. Other sports or forms of recreation introduced or promoted by the British included: tennis (Nora Polley was the first female to represent India (the Raj) in the Olympics (1924); squash (the great Khan squash family, that eventually produced Jahangir Khan, took root during the Raj), polo (whether it arose in Manipur or Gilgit, was very much promoted during the Raj; the Indian Polo Association was founded in 1892); tent pegging was an army favorite in the Raj; snooker and its plebian cousin carrom arose in British India. I'm sure reliable sources exist. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:30, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

PS Another great sportsman of the Raj was The Great Gama (who has been mislabeled "Pakistani" on WP). It is a pity that his training and diet has failed verification, but, regardless, he was a serious wrestler. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:53, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

"Excluded area" / "backward tract" needs an article

The term "excluded area" pops up in articles like Mizoram.

"Excluded area" is a euphemism not explained anywhere. Such areas were also known officially as "backward tracts", and were excluded from the British administered territories (British Raj). We need an article on this complex topic. Arminden (talk) 12:08, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 18 August 2021 (2)

I suggest the following paragraphs be added to a new title named Westernisation under the British Raj page. My source is a book named Oxford AQA History for A Level: The British Empire c1857-1967 and the link is here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Oxford-AQA-History-Level-c1857-1967/dp/0198354630

After the short-lived attempt to restore the Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar in the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the emperor's sons were quickly executed so there would be no chance of restoring the Mughal dynasty. Following this, the British Raj took place and Westernisation was implemented throughout India.

Westernisation brought technological advancements to India, but the improvement in technology also had its drawbacks. For instance, the British built railways, however, they were only geared to the needs of control and trade, and most villages even lacked mud roads. The British also offered markets for Indian market produce, yet this encouraged specialisation in the higher-value crops at the cost of lower-value grains, which were the main food staples for most of the population. As a result of this, India became dependent on food imports and consumption per head declined.

To secure the rule of the British Raj, the British westernised India by introducing Star of India medals. Additionally, land titles were returned to the native Indians and positions in Statutory Symbol Serice were shared among the Indian nobility. 100jackso (talk) 22:28, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

 Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit semi-protected}} template. This seems a bit much to source to one secondary school level text book. Also there's no information on which pages the information can be found on to verify. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 13:42, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

"the emperor's sons were quickly executed so there would be no chance of restoring the Mughal dynasty." Actually, two of his sons, Mirza Jawan Bakht and Mirza Shah Abbas, accompanied the deposed Emperor in his exile, so obviously that statement is wrong. --Lubiesque (talk) 20:36, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

The lead is abominable

As you may remember, the purpose of the introduction of a Wikipedia article is to summarize the key points of the article. The short introduction of this very long article ignores that rule.

The first paragraph of this short introduction to this very long article is an awkward digression dedicated to the various names and the merits of this and that name under which the British Raj was known. That's a legitimate discussion, but it should be located inside the article under a heading such as 'Name'....and not in the introduction!

The second paragraph of this short introduction to this very long article also deals with one of the names ("India") and its use on the occasion of India's participation to the various Olympic Games. With a link to each and every one of these Olympics, if you please! I don't think it's necessary to point out why that paragraph does not belong to the lead.

The third and last paragraph of this short introduction to this very long article also mostly focuses on names : the name of the successor states of the British Raj. Someone enamored with the word "Dominion" obviously took part.

Someone who will only read the short introduction to this very long article will learn about the various names of the Raj, India's participation to the various Olympic Games, and the official names of the successor states, but little else.--Lubiesque (talk) 13:32, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Some of the various names need to be covered because of redirects to this article. very true with the Olympics mentions. The successor states could possibly be trimmed with piping. GraemeLeggett (talk) 14:14, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

I'll add that there seem to be a large number of citations in the lede. The lede, as a summary, should not need cites - these should all be facts covered in the body of the article.GraemeLeggett (talk) 14:20, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Dear @Lubiesque: There is a lot to what you say. But then there are the obstacles.... :

• >>>the purpose of the introduction of a Wikipedia article is to summarize the key points of the article. The short introduction of this very long article ignores that rule.

• That is true if the content of the main body is a reliable summary of the Raj. But the main body keeps changing. What is there at any given time is not reliably sourced.

• >>> The first paragraph of this short introduction to this very long article is an awkward digression dedicated to the various names and the merits of this and that name under which the British Raj was known. That's a legitimate discussion, but it should be located inside the article under a heading such as 'Name'....and not in the introduction!

• That too would be true if the "British Raj" were a commonly accepted term. It is not. A large number of history books on India use the term only in certain contexts, sometimes only satirically, for the hoity-toity set in the never-never-land of gin and tonic. They very commonly also use "Crown rule in India," or "Direct rule in India." There is also the problem of "British India" which in the parlance of many is conflated with British Raj. The reason that those need to be mentioned is that the Raj was an "empire" of direct (British India)_ and indirect rule (Princely States.

• >>>The second paragraph of this short introduction to this very long article also deals with one of the names ("India") and its use on the occasion of India's participation to the various Olympic Games. With a link to each and every one of these Olympics, if you please! I don't think it's necessary to point out why that paragraph does not belong to the lead.

• Pretty much all history books on India during the period of British rule call it "India." Nothing else. They use "British India" occasionally when they are discussing the administration or less occasionally for the British in India, its secondary meaning (see recent book Poetry of British India with latter meaning) As a consequence of the WP page "British Raj" taking off, i.e. its name becoming stable and its page views increasing, the term "British Raj" has come to be used more frequently by the scholarly sources especially in chapter or book titles (I know this phenomenon has a name but I'm blanking this minutes ...) The late Stanley Wolpert, for example, spun off an independent article "British Raj" from his modern history section of the Britannica India page.

• >>> The third and last paragraph of this short introduction to this very long article also mostly focuses on names : the name of the successor states of the British Raj. Someone enamored with the word "Dominion" obviously took part.

• You'll be pleased to know that in June 2007, the OED (the ultimate record of the language) began to carry the WP words more or less verbatim: "The British Raj was instituted in 1858, when, as a consequence of the Indian Rebellion of the previous year, the rule of the British East India Company was transferred to the Crown in the person of Queen Victoria (proclaimed Empress of India in 1876). In 1947 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 and the People's Republic of Bangladesh)" You might want to view my post in the archives congratulating the various editors on making our words such objects of flattery. As the OED is revised every 100 years, they might be around longer yet. Why someone has changed "Union of India," the official name, in the aid of which many Indian nationalists spent much effort in the waning years of the Raj, to "Dominion" is not surprising. The British royalist-POV is alive and well. See Dominion of India before I made me recent edits there.

• >>>Someone who will only read the short introduction to this very long article will learn about the various names of the Raj, India's participation to the various Olympic Games, and the official names of the successor states, but little else.

• You are correct that in some sense the lead is a giant dab page. But it is that way because pretty much nothing else about the Raj has reached the desired homeostasis on this page. The page is a favorite of the POV-warriors of every denomination. It is not that we can't summarize. See the modern India section of the FA India (and also the last paragraph of the early-modern section).

• But perhaps this is a good time to painstakingly work through the main body ... ( I say as my voice falters. ) Even one section of the main body, such as "Economy of the British Raj," or "Famines, Epidemics, and Public Health in the British Raj." (if it is still a section) would be an achievement. Thanks for your post! Best, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 20:12, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

@GraemeLeggett: I haven't checked the citations lately. I'll take a look at them soon. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 20:12, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 1 September 2020 and 18 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Efrain805, AustinJAragon.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 16:17, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Ensigns

@Fowler&fowler: So you keep stating that the Princely States have their own ensigns which that is true but the ensigns in the previous version of the page represents the entire subcontinent. Also the article you have linked gave no information on the flags. See the Star of India (flag) for more information on the civil and state ensigns of the Raj. SuperSkaterDude45 (talk) 20:56, 23 September 2021 (GMT-4)

Those are silly pages based on bogus sources. How could they have represented the entire subcontinent when the British administered only three-fifths of it. I never heard of the ensigns or the Union Jack hoisted in the Native States. Please read the talk page archives. There are months and months of discussion. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:11, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler: Can you please clarify by what you mean by "bogus sources" as the ensigns are well documented and there are several sources that I can present if you'd like. Also you said that you have "never heard of the ensigns or the Union Jack hoisted in the Native States"...despite photographic evidence proving that it is presented across the states, please verify your claims as otherwise, this conflicts with WP:OR. I have reviewed the archives prior to making my first revert today and most of the "arguments" are usually non-arguments or usually just repeats of weak arguments. SuperSkaterDude45 (talk) 22:34, 23 September 2021 (GMT-4)

Well present your sources here, and when I have time, I'll examine them. Scholarly sources are best. No websites, please. Pictures of flags flying on buildings don't count either. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:49, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

We all know what an ensign is, I hope? Johnbod (talk) 02:54, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Johnbod, Best not to set great store by Wikipedia. Ensign: "a flag that has been established by a national authority for display as the symbol of nationality by ships or airplanes and that also may be flown sometimes with a distinctive badge added to its design by a military installation, by an organization (as the customs service, a harbor board, or a marine insurance company) having nautical associations, or by an overseas colony or dominion." Fowler&fowler«Talk» 03:10, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

@SuperSkaterDude45: The WP:RS requirement applies to everything in an article. You need to find definitive sources that state that a flag was the official flag of an entity. Photographs of flags flying are not reliable by any stretch of imagination. --RegentsPark (comment) 12:32, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

@RegentsPark: [1], [2] and [3] are what I could find. Also if this applies to the British Raj, why cant this apply to the other ensigns too and don't see you complaining about the ensigns. Even then, in the previous revision had the Union Jack which was used in the Raj. Why remove it again? SuperSkaterDude45 (talk) 09:47, 24 September 2021 (GMT-4)

@SuperSkaterDude45: I don't see any of these as being reliable sources. Also, WP:OTHERSTUFF.--RegentsPark (comment) 18:28, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

@RegentsPark: Please define what your definition of "reliable sources" are as they seem to be different from consensus standards. I don't see how WP:OTHERSTUFF applies here as this isn't about a deletion of an article. Regardless, you haven't addressed my other arguments and just throwing around irrelevant or misused MOS's around. SuperSkaterDude45 (talk) 15:35, 24 September 2021 (GMT-4)

@SuperSkaterDude45:: In the case of historical content, scholarly sources are reliable sources (see WP:HISTRS) and none of your sources are remotely satisfactory. Please also note that I haven't thrown anything from the MOS around in my recent responses. WP:RS is a policy while MOS is a guideline. The OTHERSTUFF was in response to your comment about "complaining about" other ensigns and what I mean is that the expectation that one editor will fix every unsourced flags is unrealistic. More realistically, I don't have a flag fetish and have no interest in digging out unsourced ones but I will continue to point them out if I see them on pages on my watch list. If you want your choice of flags included in this or other articles, please look for reliable scholarly sources. In this case, the source must explicitly confirm that these flags were used as offical representative flags for the British Raj. In other words, the source must show that your chosen flag was the representative flag for British India, for the princely state of Jodhpur, for Hyderabad State, and for all the states that constituted the British raj. --RegentsPark (comment) 21:48, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

@RegentsPark: Ok so first of all, WP:HISTRS is relatively unreliable due to WP:ESSAY and even if I were to apply it into this convo then [4] should suffice unless there's another essay you want to pull for your outrageously high stanards. Second of all, you directly admit that you aren't necessarily an expert on this but since its on your watch list, you revert several edits by several users which conflicts with WP:BRD as this isn't the first time you have done this. SuperSkaterDude45 (talk) 22:21, 24 September 2021 (GMT-4)

You're getting BRD wrong. You need to show that your sources are reliable and get consensus for adding your flags. Pulling out random pages from tripod is such a low bar that I figure you haven't even bothered to read our reliable sources policy page. --RegentsPark (comment) 15:18, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

Oh, and what gives you the idea that I'm not an expert on historical flags (I'm not saying I am either. This is a website and neither you nor I have any idea what we do in RL). All I said is I don't have a fetish for flags. I just don't believe in thrusting flags into every infobox regardless of their authenticity.--RegentsPark (comment) 15:24, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

Regret to say, I am seeing this page for months, @RegentsPark: and @Fowler&fowler: says that the ensign and emblem are invalid. May I know if other British colonies had their own civil ensign, then for our country it is only British flag. Or that's also doesn't there. Very strange I see. First we need to contact the person who had uploaded these images and ask where he/she has got this picture on what information or source. Then we can finally stop this dispute. This is my opinion. Continuously defending it won't help in these in settling the disputes. Jyoti Roy (talk) 13:34, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

@TTP1233: If as you state you have been viewing the page for several months, then you must know that the British Raj comprised regions directly administered by the British and called British India, and regions – the princely states, administered by Indian rulers but overseen by the British in a system of paramountcy. The Indian rulers were responsible for internal affairs and flew their own flags, and the British managed foreign affairs, defense, and communication. As a result, there were many flags, some 562 to be sure (see Hyderabad State and Jammu and Kashmir (princely state) for two examples). At the outset of the Raj, Queen Victoria had signed treaties with the Indian rulers guarantying their rights and privileges in perpetuity. These were rewards, some say, for the Indian princes' shunning the Indian Rebellion of 1857 (serving as "breakwaters in the storm," in the Viceroy, Lord Canning's words) or insurance, say others, against future rebellions in India. Please read the talk page archives for past discussions. Thus far, I have not seen a serious objection (supported by scholarly sources) to keeping flags out of the infobox. The Raj, or Indian Empire, was an outlier, the only one of its kind, and the sine qua non for the British Empire. Without it, very likely, there would have been no British Empire. And once it went, the British Empire gradually went away or found egalitarian ways of redefining its ambit. Best, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:07, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

I have got my answer, @Fowler&fowler: thank you for giving explanation. Jyoti Roy (talk) 09:05, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

@RegentsPark: As a reassessment of my previous statements, please provide with your own sources that the ensigns which are already widely documented to be in use, are suddenly "invalid" because of your own opinion. Also cool it down with the pompous talk as talk pages are meant to be good-faith per guidelines.

@Fowler&fowler: First, some princely states actually used their own flags but not all of them did as some were broken up into provinces after the Sepoy Mutiny and used the civil ensign (Examples being Bihar Province and Punjab Province (British India)) Second, the princely states technically didn't count as part of "British India" as they were just heavily influenced by the British as others were broken up into provinces. Third, the civil ensign was used to represent the entire Raj with events like the Olympics, being used official government establishments and also being used in the military. I can understand where you are trying to aim for but all I will say is that there is a good reason why there are many editors inserting either the Union Jack or the Civil Ensign as both are again, widely documented in being officially used. If its truly not meant to be a "valid" flag, shouldn't you purge the ensign from the other articles I've linked as well as propose to delete it from Wikimedia Commons? SuperSkaterDude45 (talk) 15:16, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

@SuperSkaterDude45: Hey bud, what's a rollin! (trying to fit your definition of non-pompous). Unfortunately, sources generally do not exist for negatives. You need to show that your sources are reliable and get consensus for adding your flags (wait, I used exactly those words above!).--RegentsPark (comment) 16:01, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

Those were given long time ago before ensign was removed. That doesn't proves that the civil ensign are...you know. Also you have nominated for deletion. This issue has solved and again raised. Let see what will happen then!. Jyoti Roy (talk) 15:39, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

@RegentsPark: So if there aren't any actual claims on your statements, then that is blatant Original Research. I did provide several sources already but apparently it's considered "random pages from tripod" or whatever that means. If you want more sources then here: SuperSkaterDude45 (talk) 17:59, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

@SuperSkaterDude45: With due respects, um, bud, this is like shouting into a well. Anyway, I'll try again. Tripod, mapsofindia, ozoutback.com, what are you thinking? The india today article you link to, doesn't even have the flags you're edit warring on. The colors are different, and all it says is "the first Indian flag" leaving open the definite possibility that there were other flags and that we have no idea if this flag was ever actually used or, if it was, for how long. All this assuming that the source is reliable for historical facts. Apologies, but you're just wasting everyones time and given the sort of sources you bring up, you should probably look for a different hobby rather than editing wikipedia. Write your own blog, perhaps, where you can add any flag that takes your fancy. --RegentsPark (comment) 19:33, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

Agree with RP. The India Today article is entirely unreliable. Even a cub reporter trying to meet a deadline on the generally unreliable National Enquirer or Daily Mirror would not be copying the WP article on the Indian flag with such alacrity. Unfortunately, many POV-ridden Indian magazines show a lack of the most basic writing ethics, not to mention editorial oversight. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:53, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

@RegentsPark: @Fowler&fowler: At the end of all of this, none of this matters at the end of the day as the fact that neither of you have shown any basic evidence or proof that the Raj didn't use any ensigns just proves that your arguments are opinionated and invalidated. By the way, when you mention unreliable sources, I've checked WP:RSP and the worse I could find was the National Enquirer being unreliable as the Daily Mirror has no consensus. Also RegentsPark, I like how you claim I'm edit warring yet go on to gatekeep the article because of blatant original research. Please, the least either of you two can do is to give several reliable sources that clearly state that the Raj did not use neither the civil or naval ensigns and I'll change my mind. SuperSkaterDude45 (talk) 23:47, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

@SuperSkaterDude45: The onus is on you to produce the reliable scholarly sources. Sources don't assert the truth of negatives. Sources don't say the sky is not purple. That doesn't mean that it is. You have misunderstood the point about the National Enquirer and the Daily Mail. Editors have engaged you enough. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:57, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler: You're the one making all of these claims so it is reasonable to assume you have resources to back up your own claims. I have already gave several sources and given the lack of resources, this just leaves me to assume that your claims are founded on pure original research and no actual scholarly basis to back these claims up which is the bare minimum for any major edit or revert. SuperSkaterDude45 (talk) 15:07, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler: @RegentsPark: Apart from edit warring and reverting edits, have you found any sources that definitely proves the Civil Ensign was not the national flag because your claims as of now are still original research which is itself disruptive editing. SuperSkaterDude45 (talk) 16:33, 09 December 2021 (UTC)

@SuperSkaterDude45: Many people have attempted to explain to you that you cannot ask for proof of a negative. In other words, you can't ask for proof that the earth is not a polyhedron with one million faces. Rather, if you believe that it is, it is you who has to supply the proof. Please read WP:SCHOLARSHIP. Find scholarly sources that affirm that the British Raj, ie the informal empire of British-ruled and native-ruled but British overseen regions did have a flag. Thus far you have supplied precious little proof. May I also suggest that you not accuse either RegentsPark or I, both longstanding competent editors, of edit-warring? All we are doing is restoring the status quo until a new consensus for change (or lack thereof) is achieved. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:10, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler: By "many people" I think you meant only you and RegentsPark as you two are the ones primarily gatekeeping the article from inserting the flag as many other edits by many other editors inserted it and even in this specific revision, there was a general consensus to keep all three flags used which lasted for a whole two months with many different revisions in between until it was removed for the following edit you made "Please don't keep adding the bells and whistles of "British" in the infobox; the Raj didn't have a flag; please see numerous talk page discussions". I already provided sources and even more in old revision summaries and you can find additional references that the ensigns were indeed used across the lands. And no, I could care less on how much experience either of you two could have as the only thing that is on topic currently is that you two persistently want to keep information out while providing absolutely no evidence on your explanations on why said information is left out despite other scholarly sources including entire other articles on Wikipedia (Which by the way, if the Ensigns weren't used nationally, why haven't they also been removed) doesn't really suit well with any other editor as your claims should be always backed up with references so that other editors can understand. Sincerely, SuperSkaterDude45 (talk) 01:28, 09 December 2021 (UTC)

References

Hello @Fowler&fowler:@RegentsPark: Not concerned with the article but I think it would be appropriate to talk about it here as the issue is more or less the same. Recently @Havsjö: have changed the civil ensign with the viceregal flag to represent British Raj in Template:Country data British Raj. Though there was no official flag of British Raj, I personally think the civil ensign would be much better for the sake of indicating British Raj than the Viceroy's flag. The civil ensign was also used to represent India as a part of Allies during World War II in the original United Nation (1942-1943). The British Raj/British India template have been used in a lot of articles and the flag size are always too small in the country data template, as a result it might be confused with the Union Jack. Moreover a lot of British colonies and dependencies had the same layout for the Governor-General's flag but none was used to represent the whole colony or area, rather a different flag with Union Jack at fly was usually used (like the civil ensign in India). For now I had reverted the edits but we should discuss which flag to be used. Feel free to move the discussion to template's talk page. Regards Cookersweet (talk) 19:56, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Reliability of statistics

@Fowler&fowler:

In regards to your edit, what do some of the academic sources say about the reliability of such statistics say? I think that information would be important to put in the section, especially to address people who read Josiah Stamp's quote. I'm wondering if there was a literature review that would rebut or affirm what Stamp said. WhisperToMe (talk) 18:17, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

It was the best there was for the times, the circumstances, the predilections of the actors, and their imperatives. There is literature about the accuracy of data collection, the validity of the categories (such as caste), and the theories of the day (ethnology) being used, and so forth. I saw something the other day ... but can't place it right now. Good point. Will look and get back. PS Censuses, despite their imperfections, changed perceptions everywhere. I'm reminded of Wordsworth's We Are Seven (don't know if they have a page) and "counting." Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:47, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

PPS My revert had more to do with the datedness of implied criticism (1929). By that time, the old guard was gone. There were quite a few statisticians paying attention to Indian issues both in the UK and India. (P. C. Mahalanobis, for example, had already proposed the idea of the Mahalanobis distance (see here at the 18:43 mark for the letters exchanged between him and R. A. Fisher). The Indian Statistical Institute in Calcutta was in the making, at least intellectually.

(A century earlier, the Great Trigonometric Survey had begun the task of mapping the subcontinent and by the 1860s, fairly sophisticated (for the time) methods of solid trigonometry had been used to measure the heights of the major Himalayan peaks. The Pundit "spies" had been trained to infiltrate Nepal and Tibet to map the Himalayas from the other side, using their strides to measure distance. The height of Everest they computed then was off from the modern one only by a foot or two.) Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:26, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Now that you've got me thinking, this article could do with a "Science and Technology" section. I wrote parts of this page 15 years ago. But obviously many things have changed. This might be the time to modernize it as the drive-bys (of all POVs) who used to burn rubber on this page seem to be less active. I hope. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:51, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

If the data collection improved after 1929, that would be a good clarification to make, especially if the issues Stamp mentioned had been ameliorated. As the British Raj is meant to cover the whole time period, one could explain how data collection changed in the final years of the Raj. Stamp's quote could be used as an example of earlier eras. WhisperToMe (talk) 08:36, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

@WhisperToMe: Well, my suspicions about the reliability of Stamp were roused by the spelling he was using for the village watchman ("chowky dar") which is more like a 19th-century transliteration than an early 20th one. The quote appears in the 1922 edition of Stamp's Some Economic Factors in Modern Life (page 258). He is, in fact, quoting an anecdote of Harold Cox dating to Cox's two years teaching at mathematics at the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College in Aligarh in India as a young man (1885 to 1887, ages 26 to 28). The first Indian census took place in 1871 and the second in 1881, so the anecdote might well have been related to them.

I think from what I've been reading, Stamp is trying to make the point that "the individual source of statistics may easily be the weakest link." That anecdote about the watchman (who would more likely to have been a headman) has since made the rounds as a piece of general wisdom about statistics (see here) rather than anything accurate about India or the Raj; see Stamp's Law of Statistics on Harold Cox's page.

There were issues in data collection, to be sure, but they weren't that simple as to be captured by that quote. Jervoise Athelstane Baines, for example, had written about the unreliability of ages of young women recorded in the censuses of India between 1871 to 1901. With very low rates of literacy (14% even at the time the British left in 1947), and a cultural predisposition in north India for child marriages (which had been banned for young girls by the Age of Consent Act, 1891, parents, or rather fathers, (who in a patriarchal society appeared at the door when the census agent visited) were unreliable sources of information: they tended to bump up the ages of married girls (daughters-in-law in their joint family) and bump down the ages of their unmarried daughters for fear they might otherwise render them unmarriageable and in the process go to hell for not having done their parental duty (see for example: Sex, Law, and the Politics of Age: Child Marriage in India, 1891–1937. I think your implied point is a very good one and I'm looking at the sources, but Stamp is not the man to quote in this regard, in my humble view. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 11:29, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• 1909 Map of India.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 15:22, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

Balance in the history section

The history section of this article has much much more on the period from 1915-1947 (32 years) than on the period 1857-1915 (58 years). Probably more happened in the second period, but even so, the two sections should be about the same length. Probably better balance is to be achieved partially by reducing the amount of detail given in the second period and increasing the amount in the first period. This isn't my area of expertise, so I'd welcome comments from other editors. Furius (talk) 14:13, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 8 June 2022

information about this, 2A01:E34:EC17:90B0:165:18D8:ACDF:978D (talk) 20:57, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. Terasail^[✉️] 21:24, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

British Raj Was Officially known as Indian Empire

@Fowler&fowler: Passports issued by British India Clearly Used to Mention Indian Empire. So it was Official Term. Image on Reddit. Image on wikimedia. Comparision Image 1 & Image 2. Regards. Swapnil1101 (talk) 14:37, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

This has been brought up many times before. Please see the talk page archives for answers.. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:22, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

The Brritish government never officially called it "Indian Empire"--in large part because Liberals were opposed.Rjensen (talk) 15:31, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

Indeed this is a very odd part of the article. The Raj was unquestionably officially known, at least in certain quarters at certain times, as the Indian Empire and as you point out we even have the photos of the offcial documents in question. The debate about this does all seem to be in bad faith. It should be re-worded to mention that it was in some instances referred to as the Indian Empire, both officially eg in passports, and in speeches by politicians although it wasn't the most common nomenclature.

The problem is going to be finding a source. This is often a difficulty with this sort of situation - someone has put up something false ie stating that it was not officially known as the Indian Empire. This is demonstrably, incontrovertibly false. However it then puts the onus on the rest of us to find a source that actually says "this passport you are looking at is in fact real and the words Indian Empire refer in fact to the Raj" which is rather silly but that's the way the cookie crumbles on here at the moment. 2A00:23C7:988:6600:3564:F2B1:C37E:86C0 (talk) 13:59, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

@Swapnil1101 The British government never used the name "British Raj". They used "Indian Empire" in passports, official mappings, documents, newspapers, etc. PadFoot2008 (talk) 16:06, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Of course they did not use "British Raj." But they didn't use the "Indian Empire" either for the most part. They used "India." "Partition of India," in some sense, hearkens to that meaning. Had the two new nations after the Partition been called "Hindustan" and "Pakistan" (as Jinnah had wished), we would have had no problems. This page would have been "India."

As Rjensens states (though not in quite these words) the "Indian Empire" was a somewhat cynical move by Disraeli and the conservatives to butter-up Queen Victoria. The Liberals were opposed to all these grandiloquent terms (Empress of India, King-Emperor, Indian Empire, ...) Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:55, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

British Raj was a period, the country was Indian Empire

British Raj is the term used to refer to

The period of colonial rule of the Indian subcontinent by the British Empire between 1858 and 1947.

— Wikitionary

while the country, itself, was called India (officially; Interpretation Act 1889) or the Indian Empire or British Indian Empire.

So shouldn't this article be about the country rather than the period? PadFoot2008 (talk) 14:06, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

The "British Raj" is used in three senses, and perhaps more: the geographical extent ("from one end of the Raj to the other"), the period of rule ("the high noon of the Raj"), and the rule itself (as in Thomas R. Metcalf's book Ideologies of the Raj. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:53, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

I've thought for some time the title of this article, the title of Presidencies and provinces of British India and where British India redirects to is confusing and question to what the extent the current names really reflect the WP:COMMONNAME/WP:DUEWEIGHT of the WP:RS. This article says "The British Raj extended over almost all present-day India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, except for small holdings by other European nations such as Goa and Pondicherry." Indeed most of the article treats its coverage as direct rule area + princely states. But then the article opens with "it is also called Crown rule in India, or Direct rule in India". isn't that contradictory? Surely British India more typically refers to what this article covers and Presidencies and provinces of British India is generally referred to with some variant that includes the words Direct Rule or Crown Rule. I would also say that the most common use of British Raj is the form of rule in British India - the last of Fowler&Fowlr's three options (the rule itself). There is widespread confusion inconsistency in numerous other articles across WP (not necessarily Indian topics) on use of this terminology and which article should be linked. Thoughts? DeCausa (talk) 20:32, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, @DeCausa: for your post.

All these terms have their quirks of usage and exceptions. The most common historical term was "Direct rule in India" (when in fact the direct rule was only in a sub-region thereof). This is the term high school and college students in India learned in their history books in the old days. The counterpart to that is "Indirect rule in India," which came into currency later in the works of historians. It refers in part to the suzerainty or paramountcy which the British legally exercised (controlling all defence, communications, and foreign relations) and in part to the close watch the British kept on the rulers of Indian Princely states by way of a political agent or resident installed in the State's capital. (It was not unusual for the Agent to be an avuncular figure in the instances of young rulers or would-be rulers.) Given Queen Victoria's 1858 Address to the Indian people and rulers, the British (from the person of the monarch down) would have been reluctant to openly and widely use British India to mean the informal empire of direct and indirect rule. The term for that was simply, "India." They were too diplomatic in these matters.

Now more properly to "British India." The term was described with precision in the Imperial Gazetteer of India, which we quote in this article, to be Presidencies and provinces of India. After the Partition of India and with the new situation of one of the successor states being continued to be called "India," but the other "Pakistan" (as opposed to, say, Hindustan and Pakistan") the term "India" was no longer well-defined (used, for example, in a common exercise of Irredentism by Indians to lay claim to previous history and leading Pakistanis to denounce these claims.) On WP the name "Presidencies and provinces of British India" was chosen because both successor states had initially used "provinces" (instead of, say, "states") for these sub-entities, and Pakistan still might.

Sometime in the 1980s or 90s, especially in the US in newspapers such as the NY Times, "British India" began to be used to refer to the old pre-1947 India. Eventually, this usage came to be seen on WP. It led to the redirect [[British India]] ---> [[Presidencies and provinces of British India]] which seems like either a tautology or a contraction. But you will appreciate how it came to pass. The subliminal message in the redirect is, "Don't use 'British India' incorrectly; it means only 'Presidencies and provinces of those regions of pre-1947 India directly administered by the British.'"

So where are we? The Presidencies and provinces of British India could be redirected to Presidencies and provinces of India under British rule, but that would throw up the same objections: Is "India under British Rule" not British India + Princely States? We could make it more precise and redirect it to: Presidencies and provinces of regions of pre-1947 South Asia directly administered by the United Kingdom, but people will be incredulous when they don't laugh.

Finally, a word about the various Wikipedia injunctions about common names and so forth. I understand the compulsions, but quite often these general rules fall flat in particular circumstances. I once thought myself Crown rule in India (for the Raj) would be the ideal counterpoint to Company rule in India, an article on which I had spent considerable effort. But that was then. Today I wouldn't dream of changing "British Raj." It is here to stay. It is now common NPOV usage in academic sources, a down-to-earth and South Asian term for old colonial or imperialist usage. If someone attempted a page move, I would not only vote against it, but argue forcefully against it, but with sympathy; so much change has taken place in the 16 years I've been on Wikipedia. I've been meaning to make an FAQ for the top of this page for years, but maybe your post will finally get me to get off my behind. Perhaps a Wiki essay might be better, but those can be misused.

PS In writings by the British for the British, on the other hand, "British India," not only meant the Presidencies and provinces of British India but more commonly the preserves of privilege (the Civil Lines of a city) in which the British lived; the term "British India" in quite a few publications means "the British in India." (both the high status ones who spent only their careers there, such as Kipling's parents and the lower-status, domiciled, such as Jim Corbett (hunter)'s parents.) Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:41, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

Google ngrams for example shows an overwhelming use of British Raj, compared to Crown rule or Direct rule, but that probably reflects informal usage in novels and travel writings. The scholarly usage is more recent. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 00:05, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler Google ngrams also shows that "Indian Empire" was used much more frequently than "British Raj" during the Raj (1858 - 1947) [5]. PadFoot2008 (talk) 10:37, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler: thanks very much for providing such a full reply. On your last point, yes "British Raj" is undoubtedly the most well known term applicable to British rule in India, although that doesn't tell us how it is used. I think, on reflection, the issue actually crystallizes around the British India redirect rather than anything else. Before turning to that, I would make one point on this article. I still think having the alternatives "Crown rule in India, or Direct rule in India" in the opening of this article is confusing. I get that those phrases are used in contra-distinction to "Company rule" but I think a global readership would see that as meaning that it excludes the Princely states, which is obviously not consistent with this article. At minimum, there should be extra wording or possibly a footnote to explain that - or remove the alternative name altogether.

Turning to the redirect, you say "Don't use 'British India' incorrectly; it means only 'Presidencies and provinces of those regions of pre-1947 India directly administered by the British.'". But is it incorrect? When I search Google books I only see British India being used as a synonym for how we are using "British Raj" in this article. Time and time again I see editors in numerous articles linking to British India when they mean "British Raj". What's the WP:COMMONNAME evidence that says the redirect is pointing to the right article? DeCausa (talk) 11:18, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

What can I say? It's the ambiguities of usage. The OED, which took the paragraph below in small print from us (see a mention up top, in the top matter), says:

raj, n, 2. spec. In full British Raj. Direct rule in India by the British (1858–1947); this period of dominion. Often with the. Also in extended use: any system of government in which power is restricted to a particular group.

The British Raj was instituted in 1858, when, as a consequence of the Indian Rebellion of the previous year, the rule of the British East India Company was transferred to the Crown in the person of Queen Victoria (proclaimed Empress of India in 1876). In 1947 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 and the People's Republic of Bangladesh) (cf. partition n. 7c).

WP editors do make that mistake all the time.

I had to correct, The Great Gama page on the day it appeared as a Google Doodle a few weeks ago. Gama, a wrestler, born before 1947, was in the throes of the usual India-Pakistan bickering when I woke up that day. But this sort of thing is not has bad as it could have been. There are many more WP-notable South Asians born in British India than in the Princely States. In Gama's instance, all I needed was to change it to British India. But Gandhi who was born in a tiny princely state, whose chief minister his father happened to be, is never stated to have been born in British India. I mean the NY Times or WPians might make that mistake, but historians, at least the reliable ones, do not.

We had talked about a proposal of the sort: Make the page Presidencies and provinces of British India simply British India (instead of a redirect which springs a surprise), i.e. simply move the contents of P&pBI to BI

The term "British India" was used from the late 17th-century onward, starting with all the scattered British outposts on the subcontinent. It was used all the time during Company rule, especially after Wellesley's defeat of the Marathas in 1805 (for once the Ceded and Conquered Provinces were British, a claim to the subcontinent sounded fair) James Mill's History of British India, was published in 1817, long before the Raj.

But that proposal bit the dust as well, for "British India," even for the Presidencies and Provinces was never quite officially defined in that manner. (A good imperialist needs to be both precise and slippery.) Furthermore, it won't stop WPians from conflating the two terms, i.e. will only extend the period of misapplication of the term, and lead to the kinds of booboos no one wants, such as: X was born in Kashmir, British India, in 1849 (i.e. after the state became a princely state, but before the Raj), or Y was born in Upper Burma, British India, in 1838. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:37, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

@DeCausa: You may have a valid point about "Crown rule in India" and "Direct rule in India" being too front and center in our definition, and thereby causing confusion. Let me think about it some more. They could be moved farther down. Whether I can find a source that explicitly mentions this ambiguity, I can't say, but I'll look. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:32, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler: thanks. However, i'm still unsure about the categoric assertion that "British India" correctly refers only to the direct rule areas. Generally, we don't take dictionaries as a source for this sort of thing. Looking at Google books, most RS seem to me to unambiguously use British India to mean the whole empire/Raj and not just the direct rule parts. DeCausa (talk) 13:40, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

I don't think that is true. If they are truly talking about the Raj, they should mention the Princely states somewhere. But even among popular books, a search for "British India" yields 6.65 million books

Among them, those that mention "princely state" number 27.5 thousand

There is, on the other hand, a case to be made that "British Raj" in the literature most commonly means only "British India." Stanley Wolpert for example, in his "British Raj" article for Britannica roughly adopts that view point. The princely states are not mentioned.

But the princely states were always the Dark Subcontinent, most regions of low agricultural productivity, the unprofitable, many landlocked, that the British saw fit to be ignored or palmed off for others to misrule. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:17, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

This is the problem. Had India not meant the Republic of India of today. We would have called this page India. India the world over would have been understood to be a historical empire, like the Ottomans, or Hapsburgs. But we can't call that empire British India because in the days when it was called India, "British India" had a different meaning. And scholarship even today respects that usage. See for example Peter Hardy's or Ian Stone's magnum opera here.

The British build canals only in British India. Stone's beautiful book talks only about British India Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:40, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

And I just managed to locate Hardy's book. It says at the outset:

Yet Muslims constituted but a fifth of British India's population, a minority most unevenly distributed and territorially consolidated only in Sind and in the western Panjab. The highest proportion of Muslim population was in Sind, where three out of four people were Muslim; the lowest was in the area of the Central Provinces and Madras, where Muslims were about one-fortieth and one-twentieth of the total, respectively. In the Panjab Muslims were rather less than half of the population, in Bengal proper (excluding Bihar and Orissa) about a half. In the North-Western Provinces and Awadh (the latter not annexed to British India until 1856) Muslims formed rather more than a tenth of the population. In the Bombay Presidency, minus Sind, rather less than that. Within several British-formed provinces, the overall Muslim population figure covered significant local variations in density

You see it is the Presidencies and provinces he is talking about. I'm sure there are popular historians such as Lawrence James or David Gilmour who use these terms loosely, but WP has all sorts of imperatives, not just WP:COMMONNAME with its nod to popularity applied in choosing page names, but also WP:SOURCETYPES and WP:SCHOLARSHIP with their concerns about reliability, which in a transferred sense, applies even to page names.

And then there are the Viceroys of the Raj. Dufferin on Wikipedia is called Frederick Temple Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava which is neither popular nor scholarly. Was it ever really a name? I have certainly never seen it anywhere but WP. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:58, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for your response @Fowler&fowler, but I would like to emphasize that most scholars and historians, have described the Raj as only the period or the rule. The geographical extent of the country itself, however, hasn't been called the British Raj by most scholars and historians. I hope you'd agree with this. PadFoot2008 (talk) 10:13, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

Beyond agreeing with user:Mathglot, what I have to say @PadFoot2008: is this.

a) We don't actually say that in the lead; I was saying that here to point to the ambiguities.

b) Rule and the lands ruled are not uncommonly used interchangeably. We can say the British raj extended from K2 to Cape Comorin. The British weren't administering the summit of K2. Let me offer another example. The OED changed their definition in the third edition of 2007 (in part borrowing from our lead, which I have explained above.) Before that, in the 1989 second edition, they used to say, "raj, spec. the British dominion or rule in the Indian sub-continent (before 1947). In full, British raj. Also transf." (It requires a subscription, but here's the link) But "Dominion" has a double meaning; it can mean the according to the same OED 2nd edition, "1. The power or right of governing and controlling; sovereign authority; lordship, sovereignty; rule, sway; control, influence. 2. a. The lands or domains of a feudal lord. b. The territory owned by or subject to a king or ruler, or under a particular government or control. Esp. a country outside England or Great Britain under the sovereignty of or owing allegiance to the English or British crown;" (I'm guessing they might have left "dominion" out in the third edition to avoid possible confusion with the European settler Dominions (such as Canada, Australia, ...). India never did receive Dominion status, except in token fashion after its independence as Dominion of India, or in Indian preference, Union of India

(c) If you are making these arguments to get a foot in the door for a page name change to Indian Empire or Indian empire, the first question people will ask is, "Which Indian empire?" Mauryan empire, Gupta empire, Delhi Sultanate, Mughal empire, Vijayanagara Empire, Maratha Empire, Sikh Empire or the British Raj? For Disraeli was not the first to request a grade inflation—as mentioned above, and more succinctly by Rjensen earlier—only the last in the long line of optimists or cynics, depending on your POV. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:47, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

PS I take that back. He wasn't the last. The movement for an Indian Empire continues apace. There is now a World Empire. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:58, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler Thanks for your response, but I'm not getting what you're trying to say by referring to the OED example. The second edition says "the British dominion or rule in the Indian sub-continent (before 1947)" and by whatever you've said about the meaning of dominion, it clearly shows that, here, it means "The power or right of governing and controlling". So that only upholds my take on the meaning of British Raj.

And as for the question, "Which Indian Empire?", it's a simple solution—as people commonly refer to it nowadays – the "British Indian Empire". PadFoot2008 (talk) 09:51, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

But Victoria was crowned in 1876, not 1858 Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:56, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

And books had been published before 1799 that used the expression "British Indian Empire." Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:01, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

i.e. the British Indian Empire that existed before 1799 but was formalized in 1876, was born in 1858 and died in 1947? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:04, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

The earliest reference is 1741. So we can sing to the tune of Solomon Grundy:

BIE

Born in 1741 (first published)

Christened in 1858 (the Raj begins)

Married in 1876 (Victoria is crowned)

Took ill in 1885 (The Indian National Congress is founded)

Grew worse in 1921 (Gandhi begins non-cooperation movement)

Died in 1947 (India becomes independent)

Buried in 1950 (India becomes a republic)

That is the end of BIE Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:21, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler Now-a-days, the expression British Indian Empire is only used for India during the Raj. It doesn't matter when this expression was formalized or was first used by someone. PadFoot2008 (talk) 09:43, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

PadFoot, It's hardly unusual for an expression like this to refer to a territory, a time period, and a government or ruling authority (as previously mentioned by User:Fowler&fowler) and I don't think anything needs to change, here. See for example, Weimar Republic, Roman Gaul, Germania Superior, Kingdom of Italy, and so on. The article title is fine as is. Mathglot (talk) 02:16, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

@Mathglot It might not be unusual in some cases. But here it is (unusual). British Raj has always been assumed by people (historians too) to be a period and the rule too, but never as the actual country itself. The country has always been called India or to distinguish it from the Republic of India (1950 - ) or the Union of India (1947 - 1950), the expression "Brit. Indian Empire" has been used. Raj, itself, means "rule", if you're familiar with Hindi or other Indo-Aryan langauges. PadFoot2008 (talk) 12:07, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

The term "British Indian Empire" is even today used by historians, including major historians, to refer also to Company rule in India, or parts thereof. I will post a few sources. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:31, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

• P. J. Marshall in his presidential address to the Royal Historical Society in 1998 said, "Men with names like Yusuf Khan , Ganga Govind Singh or Manohar Das have a right to be put alongside Robert Clive or Warren Hastings as the creators of a British Indian empire." (here) Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:39, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
• Ira M. Lapidus in his monumental A History of Islamic Societies, Cambridge, 2002, says, "In 1772, Warren Hastings, the British governor of Bengal , took charge of the British factories of Madras and Bombay and created a unified regime for the factories in India. Hastings' success marks the beginning of a British Indian empire." (See here) Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:47, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
• Eddy Kent, Department of English, University of Alberta, says in his Corporate Character: Representing Imperial Power in British India, 1786-1901, University of Toronto Press, 2014, "it is worth noting that in the 1830s the British Indian Empire was even newer, less than seventy years old." (see here) Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:58, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

  So you see @PadFoot2008:, BIE is not unambiguous usage, (i.e. then there are also historians, quite a few as you've pointed out, who do use it for the Raj.) Apologies for my uncalled for remarks earlier, which I have removed. I have to go now. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:03, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

• Since the entity had no formal name, we use the common name British Raj. British Indian Empire is not a substitute since it is not the common name of the entity. Delving into meanings etc is, um, meaningless. --RegentsPark (comment) 13:38, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

  I agree. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:40, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

  I also agree and wish that some of the energy expended on this could have been used on improving the article, especially the extremely unbalanced "History" section. Furius (talk) 20:27, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

  That, the early history especially, I do owe you. I was looking at some sources yesterday. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 22:30, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

  I've started with some superficial changes Fowler&fowler«Talk» 00:42, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

Let's be real, the name "Indian Empire" was used in the passport of British India, official mappings, Queen's speeches, etc. I agree with you that the entity was devoid of any officially declared "official name", but wherever "India" wasn't used, the name "Indian Empire" was used by the government.

Also, I'm not "delving" into meanings as @RegentsPark says. I'm talking about the usage by historians and scholars.

As for another query raised by @Fowler&fowler —"Which Indian empire?", it's a weird question, really. Look at German Empire, for instance. Do you ever ask "which German empire?" whenever it's mentioned. By "German Empire", we always mean German Empire rather than the other empires in Germany like Holy Roman Empire, Prussia or East Frankia, as these countries didn't call themselves "German Empire" in the way German Empire did. Same can go for India under the Raj too, as it did call itself "Indian Empire", while Mughal Empire, Maratha Confederacy, and Gupta Empire didn't. PadFoot2008 (talk) 12:34, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

• Always good to be "real". Please provide reliable sources that state that the name "Indian Empire" was used on all passports issued by the Raj between 1857 and 1947. Please also provide reliable sources that clearly state that "it did call itself" Indian Empire - consistently. Also, and this is the most important of them all, please provide reliable sources that clearly state that the modern preferred term for the entity in question is "Indian empire". Once you've provided adequate sources, we can discuss this.--RegentsPark (comment) 16:03, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

  The passport issue has been raised numerous times on this page before. Please read the talk page archives. I have just given you three examples two of which belong to books written by major historians P. J. Marshall and Ira M. Lapidus and one a professor of English. They use the "British Indian Empire" to mean what began after Clive's victory at Plassey in 1757 and was formalized by Warren Hastings becoming the Governor-General of India, based in its capital, Calcutta in the Bengal Presidency. I can give you three more, also written by major historians, and three more. The British Indian Empire cannot be used only for the political entity that began in 1858.

  Please tell me what you understand by "Empire." Thanks. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:08, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

  @Fowler&fowler Sorry, for such a short answer, but I'm in hurry now. I've mentioned "Indian Empire" or "Empire of India", not British Indian Empire, in my latest post.

  Forget Prussia and East Frankia if you want. PadFoot2008 (talk) 16:16, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

  Empire"@PadFoot2008: We cannot do that as "Indian Empire" was used during Company rule in India and as "British Raj" has been the majority usage since 1980. See here

  If this were 1880 and you had asked me to change the name of the page, I would have done in a New York minute. It is too late in 2022.

  Very best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:46, 28 June 2022 (UTC)