Talk:British Raj/Archive 11

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It's not only about the name of the colony in this wikipedia branch: There are currently two article trees in wikidata, d:Q129286 and d:Q112660052, which seem to focus on the same subject, the british rule in Idia 1858-1947. It seems that by chance new articles in different languages were hooked to one or another wikidata item, and that only the french wikipedia has two articles. That is weird. I would very much welcome, if the two wikdata items could be merged. ThomasPusch (talk) 19:58, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

More precisely: In the french wikipedia, appartenly d:Q129286, Raj britannique/British Raj, is about the rule of 1858-1947, d:Q2001966, Compagnie britannique des Indes orientales en Inde/Company rule in India or Company Raj about the rule of 1757-1858 (done by d:Q83164 Compagnie britannique des Indes orientales 1600-1858/East India Company 1600-1757), and d:Q112660052 Inde britannique/no english text is both 1757-1858 plus 1858-1947.

The english wikipedia order of three steps 1600-1757, then 1757-1858, then 1858-1947 to me makes more sense then the french wikipedia order of four steps 1600-1858, then 1757-1858, then 1757-1947, then 1858-1947. But the real problem is that there are much more wikipedia languages, which all count different, e.g. in german wikipedia there's Q83164 1600-1858, Q112660052 1858-1947, but no Q2001966 1757-1947 and no Q129286. And editors of other languages, also really big ones, tend to orientate to any other language they know especially well, and that multiplies the confusion.

Just in english/spanish/russian and more 10 non-european languages there's still d:Q14637172 Colonial India 1600-1947 about seven european nations wanting parts of India (which seems to be less needed for french, portuguese or german readers). But that's yet another counting, and new texts in french or any other language can easily be added.

I would say it would be best if the french editors could merge two of those four eras, which in fact were only three, and in the end have three steps 1600-1757, then 1757-1858, then 1858-1947. That is more an appeal to the french wikipedia than to the english, but I think it's good that also english speaking editors know about interwiki mismatches. ThomasPusch (talk) 05:12, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

Wikidata is a different project, suggest you see if someone listed here Wikipedia:Wikidata/Wikidatans can help. GraemeLeggett (talk) 10:03, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

Yes. And it might also help you to know that on en.wp

Princely states over which the British were suzerain, but only post 1858. (That probably explains the 2 "article trees" as you call them.) DeCausa (talk

) 11:00, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

I wonder if anybody understands what is going on here? [1] -- Kautilya3 (talk) 20:47, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

This is what happens when art historians write popular articles on economics. As for Utsa Patnaik, this is what Marxian economists do, have been since Karl himself had his epiphanies in the British Museum reading room. My retort has always been, why did the South Asians not invent the spinning jenny or the marine chronometer that might have enabled them to appear on European shores selling cheap, durable, machine-made cloth? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 10:34, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

The Europeans too had the charkha once. It took inventiveness to get to this They too had the last spinners in every village, remnants of a bygone age and now the stuff of museums. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 10:51, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

It was not so much textile technology that was the problem, but the colossally inefficient land routes taking Indian textiles to Europe across the Ottoman Empire, that kept them highly expensive there. When the Europeans turned up, via the Cape of Good Hope, they were able to buy the Indian product at the usual prices, or more, but get it to Western Europe so much more cheaply that demand exploded, even as they made huge profits. The losers were places on the previous caravan routes, from

Jaiselmer to Venice. I think that given the will and the right ships, the marine chronometer was by no means essential to work one's way round Africa - it was in the Atlantic and Pacific that ships really needed it. Johnbod (talk

) 17:21, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

Maybe that's true. But the chronometer helped in the global wars that Britain eventually won, edging out France, Portugal, and the Dutch in the Indian ocean. The Treaty of Paris sealed British supremacy in Bengal. I meant more that had there been a South Asian spinning jenny. It could have driven down the price of coarse cloth further. It could have further reduced the price of the linen-cotton weave that was turned into chintz in Europe. It could have flooded the Indian market with coarse cotton Indian cloth that the peasants wore and that Gandhi was to revive a hundred years later with a dated technology. Patnaik's argument, which is old, a revamped version of Naoroji and RC Dutt's, begs the question why Indian rulers espousing any faith did not do the same and keep the wealth in India. They too could have invested a portion of the taxes to buy Indian products for export. The British taxes in Bengal were the same as the Mughul. Similarly, no one in South Asia worried about making steamships for riverine or coastal navigation even if their ships were going to hug the Arab and African shores en route to Europe. The intellectual history of why that happened in Europe (and especially England) is complicated, I'm sure, but sometimes you have to give credit where credit is due and move on. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 20:25, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

In the wake of ERII's death, there are new demands apparently for the "return" of the Koh-i-Noor diamond, as if to say a repeal of the Treaty of Lahore, will not give Kashmir back to the British to more decisively settle its fate according to egalitarian principles. As for the monarchy and the crown jewels, it is for the people of Britain to decide if the new royals walking around among the crowds in make-believe solicitousness look credible for the 21st-century. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 11:25, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

The opening of that article seems strange: "There is a story that is commonly told in Britain that the colonisation of India ... was not of any major economic benefit to Britain itself." Really? Never heard that - in fact, just the opposite. There's nothing new in the that article ... except the spurious calculation of "the amount". The British Empire, famously, was the only European empire that ever made a "profit" and it's well-known that India was a big part of the reason for that. Nothing to be seen here. DeCausa (talk) 11:37, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

Yes, these calculations are often those of apples and oranges—the price of only one is computed. Take tea for example. The EIC lost its monopoly rights with China. In China, tea was a tree or two maintained by farmers from whom the green leaves were sourced by traders. The British found a way to turn it a crop by having the bushes pruned yearly on the slopes below Darjeeling and elsewhere and by employing thousands of workers on estates. They mechanized the process by searing and crushing the leaves to transform the delicate green to the durable black. Sure, the British made billions. But after the British left, the Indians have made billions too, both in India and abroad. The

CTC process that notably reduced the price of tea and turned India into a nation of tea drinkers in the early 1950s was a British invention. It enabled the father of India's current prime minister to have a stall on a train station. Fowler&fowler«Talk»

12:02, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

This seems to be drifting away from the article. Remember,

Wikipedia:NOTFORUM. Furius (talk

) 12:30, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

True. And we'll cease. But I think we were treating the original question as "Is this a reliable source?" Fowler&fowler«Talk» 20:29, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

This seems to be well-understood by now, even though I am surprised that it took this long for this information to come out.

• Sen, S (1992), Colonies and the Empire: India, 1870–1914, Calcutta: Orient Longmans
• Sen, Sunanda (2022), "Could Britain Continue with the Gold Standard in Absence of Colonial India?", Review of Political Economy,
  doi:10.1080/09538259.2022.2100591
• Iyer, Vibha (March–June 2020), "Commodity Export Surplus, Council Bills and Sterling Debt", Social Scientist, 48 (3/6 (562-565)): 55–66,
  JSTOR 26979097
• British Raj siphoned out $45 trillion from India: Utsa Patnaik, Mint, 21 November 2018.

Unpacking all the complicated financial transactions, the plain simple matter is that India paid roughly a third of its annual revenues to London as a sort of commission for Britain's 'governance services', or perhaps a tribute to the King.

This money was marked in Indian books as "Expenditure Abroad" and as "Home Charges" in HMG's books. The money, which was in rupees at the source, needed to be converted into bullion or hard currency for transfer to London. In order to do so, the money was issued to British traders in India, who used it to purchase export goods, and, after selling these in their markets, returned the proceeds to the Secretary of State for India, in London. There the money "disappeared" into the SoS's account in Bank of England.

This apparently happened fairly regularly from 1765 till 1938. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 20:26, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

Much more relevant for this article and pitched at a higher level (of summarization and perspective) is: Leigh Gardner and Tirthankar Roy, An Economic History of Colonialism, Bristol University Press, 2020. Say the authors in their introduction:

The conquest and rule of so large a share of the world reflected imbalances in political, technological and military capacities which grew during the period of industrialization. It remains the subject of debates whether resources gained by European powers may have aided them in the process of industrialization, or whether empires diverted resources that might have been more profitably invested at home. For the colonies themselves, the impact of colonial interventions varied widely across space and time, which makes it difficult to sustain simplified narratives of resource extraction.

See also:

• B. R. Tomlinson, The Economy of Modern India: From 1860 to the Twenty-First Century, Cambridge University Press, 2013
• Tirthankar Roy, Monsoon Economies: India's history in a changing climate, MIT Press, 2022.
• Tirthankar Roy, India in the World Economy: From antiquity to the present, Cambridge University Press, 2012
• Tirthankar Roy, The Economic History of India, 1857–2010 Oxford University Press, 2020

Fowler&fowler«Talk» 08:28, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

"Resource extraction" is a completely different phenomenon. We are talking about a straightforward financial payment, regulary done over a period of 200 years, but which was buried under a whole mountain of financial engineering so that people couldn't see it. Unless terms like "expenditure abroad" and "home charges" are mentioned, those sources are entirelly irrelevant to the current discussion. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 10:12, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

I notice that Tirthankar Roy does mention the "home charges" (as do many other sources). He says that the home charges gave rise to the "drain theory", and he regards the drain theory debatable. But there is not much other discussion of what the charges were meant for. I see the current literature focusing on that. In any case, thanks for the references. I need to read more. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 11:38, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Of course there is. Judith M. Brown in Modern India: The Origins of an Asian Democracy, OUP, mid-1990s, has at least half a dozen pages referring to it. It was a bone of contention from the get go, a major criticism made by the Congress and before 1885, by educated Indians who wanted to enter the ICS. I consider it a "capital resource drain" as opposed to the "natural resource drain" of a classic colonial economy, which India became in the 1830s. I remember using her quite a bit either in this article or the Company rule. Home Charges might be mentioned somewhere. But I still don't see why Indians need to be reimbursed. Without a high salary and generous retirement, some of the best of university graduates in the UK would not have joined the ICS or the Covenanted Service of the Company before that.

When the British began to rule India there were no roads there to speak of, no infra-structure, and the British at first did not build much either. It took the much-maligned Dalhousie to do that, i.e. the 1840s (along with canals, telegraph, trains, universities), but the rate of investment in India was always lower compared to that in England. We say that somewhere. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:03, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Well, before someone else points it out, there was at least one road to speak of, and a very fine one too. Johnbod (talk) 14:41, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Those are imaginative compensations of Indian nationalism. There were only two infra-structure specialists on the subcontinent: the IVC people and the British. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:35, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

There is also a fellow called Indrajit Ray who has done work on home charges in Bengal both during Company rule (deindustrialization) and the Raj (reindustrialization). I think he has. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:46, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Can I add the flag and the coat of arms of the British Raj? They appear in all other pages about colonies.-Karma1998 (talk) 08:34, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

I'm afraid you cannot. In 1915, for example, the British empire had 1) Great Britain UK and Ireland 2) the settler dominions (Australia, Canada, South Africa, ...) 3) the crown colonies and protectorates and 4) India. What was true for other colonies was never true for India, in part because, India, or more correctly, the British Raj, was a loose-knit empire not a simple colony. Parts of this British Indian empire had their own rulers who had moreover signed treaties with Queen Victoria of equal respect for each other; this meant they flew their own flags, had their own coins, postage stamps, weights measures, distance measures, etc. You may want to read the talk page archives Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:43, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

Those ensigns were hardly ever flown in India. The governor-general and later the viceroy had a personal flag, but that was good for his palace and his car. Everywhere else if it was a formal occasion, the Union Jack was flown (but sparingly) or mostly no flag at all. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:46, 2 September 2022 (UTC) Corrected in light of post below ("Not relevant ...") Fowler&fowler«Talk» 11:23, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

(Not relevant but your first point is wrong - Ireland was part of the UK in 1915, indeed the name "United Kingdom" only came into being with reference to the British and Irish Parliaments uniting in 1801.)

As for flags repsenting British India it's also a bit more nuanced than you might think - even where native Indian rulers remained in power in princely states there is the difference between de facto and de jure rule - the reality was the British Empire was in overall power. There was such a thing as the Raj or the Indian Empire or whatever name one wishes to apply to it even if it was an inherently complex, multi-layered and ever evolving thing. In the princely states they would have usually flown the flag of said princely state alongside a flag representing the Raj or the Union Jack - the sort of practice one might associate with suzerainty not soveriegnty (though I concede that is itself another complex debate).

In reference to your other post what you refer to as the personal flag of the Governor-general and Viceory was in fact not just a personal flag but was flown by a large variety of British officers to represent the Raj. You might be confusing the practice of its use at sea where from the mainmast it would only be used by the Governor-general. In practice it was unofficially used to represent India internationally and in the British tradition such things do tend to come about by usage rather than always needing an Act to be passed saying this or that flag/anthem/thing represents x or y.

Anoher layer of complexity is that the red ensign was used to represent Indian internationally at times (eg at the League of Nations).

So Karma1988 has some good reason to ask why there is no flag with the article. As it stands the article verges on being misleading, it is at the least strange that there is no flag shown as - however controversial it is today, however much some people will be upset about it - India did have flags to represent her and following the end of Company rule either the Viceroy's flag (ie Star of India over Union Jack) or the red ensign would merit inclusion. That they were used as flags to represent Britain's Indian Empre is simply a matter of historical record - it is just that, as was often the case with the British Empire, things were not always done in a simple, bureucratic way but gradually evolved or depended on usage and the sitaution. Without any flag shown though we are in the strange position of suggesting to the reader there was no flag which is untrue. 2A00:23C7:988:6601:A5E2:19EE:D170:1EEC (talk) 15:48, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

True. "By Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and of the British Dominions beyond the Seas, King, Defender of the Faith and Emperor of India." I do know the full regnal titles by heart (in Edward VII's instance, e.g.) Will correct them pronto. As for the rest of your post, I'm afraid it is too general and also incorrect. The princely states did not fly the Union Jack. Please read Victoria's proclamation of 1858 in section 2.1 of the article, or read the talk page archives for similar discussions. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 11:15, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Alright someone please give me a proper definition of what constitutes a preceding state because everyone here seems to be carrying their own conceptions with little consensus. Fayninja (talk) 22:21, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

As your edit claiming the Marathas to be a predecessor state was reverted (and cited to

WP:ONUS) you have to tell us what you think it is, so we have something to counter. Fowler&fowler«Talk»

01:23, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

I doubt anyone can; infoboxes tend to be lawless. The British Raj was actually preceded by a whole bunch of "predecessors", far too many to list. It makes sense to only list the unavoidable ones, if we are going to list any. What about the Sikh Empire, and states south of north India? The Marathas did not directly precede the British Raj anywhere much, being already princely states under the EIC. Johnbod (talk) 06:09, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

Exactly John. That is why I had previously removed the Mughal empire which was absorbed into company control in 1803, way before the Marathas (1818). Keeping only the Mughal empire gives readers a wrong assumption that the British fought and won over the Mughals before they took over India while ignoring the Anglo-Maratha/Sikh/Mysore/Carnatic wars. If we agree to remove the Mughal Empire, I will add Mysore and Hyderabad to the predecessors list on the Company page.

Note: The term “unavoidable” is very subjective and I only consider the Marathas, Sikhs, Hyderabad and Mysore as important predecessors as the Mughals were defeated a long time ago. Fayninja (talk) 05:41, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

By the time Company rule ended, i.e. 1858, there was nothing left on the subcontinent that was independent of the British. The short-lived regional kingdom of the Sikhs, the Marathas, or the semi-independent kingdoms of the Nawabs of Awadh or Bengal, had come and gone. There are only two predecessor states the de facto (which is the Company's) and the de jure which is the Mughals'.

The latter was the only one the British Raj acknowledged to be its predecessor, however symbolically it might have been. In deference to the Mughals, the British not only issued coins in their name until the mid-1830s, but also retained Persian as the official language.

Ceremonially, it was in Delhi, the Mughal capital, that Lytton organized the Raj's first Durbar marking Victoria's assumption of the Queen-Empress title in 1876, not in Calcutta the Raj's capital or the Western Ghats jungles (the shifting Maratha capital of a century before); and Curzon did in 1903, when Edward VII succeeded as King-Emperor; and in 1911, when George V himself attended and the capital was moved to Delhi.

What is there in the infobox is reasonable. If needed, we can change it to: 1526 Mughal Empire (de jure); 1773 Company rule in India (de facto). Plenty sources attest. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:32, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

Oh, I forgot: it was the Mughal system of administration and land revenue that these regional kingdoms and eventually the EIC adopted. So, the Mughals might have been only de jure in terms of control, but they were very much de facto in terms of the civil administration and the economy. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:56, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

Hmmm. Are you sure that "the Mughal system of administration and land revenue" wasn't taken over pretty much wholesale from the preceding Sultanates, who themselves took it over from ..... Johnbod (talk) 17:11, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

There were some similarities and quite a few differences involving administrative control of revenue gathering, monetization, integration with newer forms of economic exchange, resulting urbanization, and cultural exchange including scientific and technological, which in turn created

Persian wheel to Indian farming.) We allude to some of this in India#Early_modern_India

You can think of canal technology as a metaphor. Canals on the subcontinent were

navigation or transportation canals and today the stuff of narrowboat enthusiasts.) The Mauryas, we've been told, had canals though no physical evidence as survived; during the Sultanate, the Tughluqs built canals, then the Mughals did but worried about sedimentation, and finally the British did, the Ganges Canal being the first cut. But at each stage, the technology being used was radically different. It is impossible that the Mauryas could have built the Ganges canal with its falls every ten miles to slow down the water (and lessen sedimentation), let alone water mills adjacent to the falls. (After the Ganges debouched from its narrow Himalayan valley and opened out into its upper plain, the slope was still steep enough for the water to barrel/tumble down at high speeds causing the earthen canals to become silted. Every 10 miles there was a 10 ft drop, which could be converted into vertical falls to slow down the water. In the 1920s, the Raj even built small power stations at the falls which produced hydroelectric power. Empires sometimes have the resources, the know-how, and the motivation to spread technology in forms that lesser powers are unable to do. The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway

is another example.)

Here is Tirthankar Roy in India in the World Economy From Antiquity to the Present, CUP, 2012:

The Mughal conquest did not usher in any disruption in the pattern of spatial integration already taking shape for three hundred years. But the formation of a new state in the north strengthened urbanization and interurban contact in riparian northern India ... The core economic region of the Mughal Empire was located at the meeting point of the upper Indus and the western Gangetic plains, where fertile land, large rivers, and, especially, proximity to roads going to Central Asia, Persia, and Kabul led to the rapid growth of towns. ... Inside northern India, the mobility of capital and enterprise was encouraged. The enormous scale of revenue transactions, and with it of grain dealing, led to a proliferation of market towns that became home to merchants, bankers, money changers, and brokers. The administration’s preference for receiving revenue in the imperial currency indirectly encouraged the monetary integration of a territory that had been fragmented before the Mughals. ... The migration of experts and master artisans was variously induced by famine, trade, military campaigns, the attraction of protected urban settlements, and the spread of religion. But a more long-standing influence on migration was the direct or indirect patronage offered to skilled artisans to induce them to settle in the cities. The master artisans who were at top of the skill ladder in the cities of Mughal India were either employed by the political elite or received special privileges from the rulers.

And here are Metcalf and Metcalf, A Concise History of Modern India, CUP, 3rd ed, 2012:

The Early Modern period was also an era of newly centralized states, of which the Mughal was one. And it was a period of technological diffusion, not least in relation to gunpowder. This technology was so important that one historian, Marshall Hodgson, described the great agrarian empires of the period – Ottoman, Safavid, Mughal, Ching – as ‘gunpowder empires’, not only because of the power available to those able to deploy improved personal firearms and cannon, but because these regimes were stimulated to new levels of bureaucratic control in order to support new military technology.

Fowler&fowler«Talk» 21:10, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

Clothing, for example, is another cultural example. Stitched clothes allegedly arrived on the subcontinent for a highly selected elite (we are told) during the Kushans (the famous sculpture of Kanishka wearing a tunic/coat being an example). But they really did not arrive as a cultural choice for the population until the Sultanate, and not a significant cultural choice until the Mughals.

pyjamas, kurta ... all date to the Mughal period. To this day the profession of a tailor, or darzi, in India is popularly associated with Muslims, whether true or not. Cuisine is another aspect. I think it is the total package, what the guy quoted below says, " irrevocably reordered human relationships throughout the subcontinent in virtually every aspect of society." that is a feature of the three big empires of the last 1000 years, the Sultanate, the Mughals, and the British. There is nothing else in India like that in that period. Fowler&fowler«Talk»

21:33, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

I may be wrong but what you mean to emphasize is that a culture/technology develops and evolves over time with possible influences/inputs from a range of sources. Hence, it cannot be solely attributed to a single time period or place, but times when major developments took place can be mentioned. For instance, the development of a steam-powered train required certain foundations that went back centuries, but Richard Trevithick can be credited for its invention. Similarly, the Zamindari system may have been developed from native pre-existing structures, but the system as used by the British was majorly shaped by the Mughals. Fayninja (talk) 08:22, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

I don't know Richard Trevithick. I thought it was James Watt's A Ha moment, after listening to the kettle hiss (similar to Newton's after the Apple fell), but yes, what you are saying is true overall. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 11:32, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Thomas Newcomen invented the steam engine (for pumping water out of mines, c. 1712), James Watt significantly improved it, and Richard Trevithick (another mining engineer) put the wheels on. Which I suppose makes Fayninja's point. Johnbod (talk) 13:37, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Yes it does. I was wondering about that name, thinking, "What is a Continental interloper doing here?"

I just realized it is a Cornish name, like Trelawney (as in the squire of Stevenson's Treasure Island or Trewartha an old friend of mine). So, why is Watt the famous one, the stuff of elementary school? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:01, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Yes, lots of tin mines in Cornwall then. In fact there were other earlier attempts, even one by a French military engineer. But Watt made the engines far more efficient, so light enough to go running around, and of course had the iconic school-friendly moment with the kettle. Johnbod (talk) 16:54, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Thank you. Yes, the Cornish as they were called here, came to the Midwest starting in the 1850s. Mineral Point, Wisconsin, is an example, although that might have been lead. Plenty examples of tin, copper, probably even iron, e.g. in Bob Dylan's home town in (somewhere near Duluth, Minnesota) though he is obviously not from Cornwall. Global history is fascinating. Also the industrial revolution here. Intellectual history. A big crossroads. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:32, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

"Industrial revolution here" i.e. not necessarily the US but in our discussion. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:33, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

I'm riffing now, but Hibbing, MN, is where Dylan grew up.

I love the names, Vermillion Iron Range.

OK, done now.  :) Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:44, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

And here is a source that cogently expresses what I was attempting to say:

Kinra, Rajeev (2021). "The Mughal Empire". In Bang, Peter Fibiger; Bayly, C. A.; Scheidel, Walter (eds.). The Oxford World History of Empire: Volume Two: The History of Empires. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 751–788.

ISBN 978-0-19-753276-8. Out of this complex mix of factors, the British East India Company would eventually emerge as the preeminent imperial successor to the Mughal Empire. Through it all, though, a member of the Mughal royal family continued to sit on the throne of Delhi right up until the final demise of the empire in 1857-1858. Thus, one of the key questions facing any student of the history of early modern and modern India is why, exactly, the symbolic power of the Mughal Empire and its institutions remained so resilient, even long after its effective power and control over the subcontinent had shrunk to that of barely a minor principality. C. A. Bayly drew attention to precisely this paradox in the early chapters of his groundbreaking study Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire, arguing that for most of these successor states, "even if the occasion for their conflicts with the Mughals was often conflicts over revenues or the destination of the agrarian surplus,' nevertheless, "the rhetoric and aims of politics remained very much what they had been under the Mughals." One suspects that the reasons for this lie in the powerful cultural memory of the "great" Mughals' patronage and pluralism as a unifying force for the subcontinent. Thus, even if neither the later Mughals nor their successor states were ever able to quite live up to the standard set by their predecessors, the memory of the continuing potential for political greatness and cultural solidarity embodied by the erstwhile Mughal institutions and ideology remained a point of pride for later generations, and a benchmark worthy of emulation for the Mughals' successor states (including even the early East India Company government in Bengal).' Indeed, as the noted Mughal historian John Richards once put it: ". . . in spite of its sudden political collapse [after 1720], the legacy of the [Mughal] imperial system remained ... [and] retained its compelling appeal for Marathas, Jats, Rajputs, Sikhs, and ultimately the British. The expansion, and consolidation, of the empire had irrevocably reordered human relationships throught the subcontinent in virtually every aspect of society. (pp. 752&nsash;753) Fowler&fowler«Talk»

15:40, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

I agree to mentioning de Jure and de Facto titles next to the Predecessor states. Fayninja (talk) 18:31, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

Yes. This is history closer to art than science, at least some of the time. Thanks. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 21:35, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

The Indian Independence Act was passed in 1947. The act created two new independent dominions; India and Pakistan. Those were the names. Not ‘Union of’ something. Or ‘Dominion of’ something either. This isn’t opinion. Frenchmalawi (talk) 22:59, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

This edit request to British Raj has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

In the timeline section, could the viceroys column be moved from right to centre, and the events be moved from centre to right? The current centre column is so wide on a laptop screen that the viceroys are easy to overlook (and maybe it's worse on a smart phone), so the reader may be unsure why the given time periods were selected. I was confused at the idea of "Viceroy dies prematurely in Dharamsala" happening from 21 March 1862 – 20 November 1863 (as if it happened at some point in that interval) and only after a bit of looking around did I realise that the time period refers to the viceroy's time in office, meaning that he died at the end of the time. 120.21.59.182 (talk) 09:27, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

 Done ~ Eejit43 (talk) 20:14, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

I think this very short and unbalanced lede is just as bad as it can be. All that name calling should not in this, I repeat, vey short lede. Everything having to do with the name(s) should be transferred into the core of the article under the heading Name. (We did just that with the Holy Roman Empire article a few years back when digression about the name(s) was transferred into the core of the article.) Then, you have one of the 3 paragraphs of this very short lede focusing on the fact that "As India, (the name...again) it participated to the Summer Olympics in 1900, 1920, 1928, 1932, and 1936", if you please. Lubiesque (talk) 17:45, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

I'm ok with it actually, & I think many leads are much too long - and, yes, the 6-para one at

WP:LEAD says 4 paras are almost always enough. But this one could be expanded a bit - what do you think should be added? Johnbod (talk

) 17:52, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

I tend to agree. The fact that it participated in the Olympics is not obviously lead-worthy. I think the lead should say something about: (1) any events in the Raj between 1858 and 1947, including economic developments. (2) the system of provinces and princely states (not currently mentioned in the lead); (3) the governors and legislature of India. Furius (talk) 01:27, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

While this edit is correct in relation to the quoted text in the citation, I'm doubtful it can be right in relation to the British Raj as defined in this article i.e. direct rule territories + princely states. The quote refers to the language of "administration", which sounds like it's referring to the direct rule territories. The official language in the princely states would presumably by determined locally. I'm guessing there could be no "official language" applicable to the whole of the Raj although English would be presumably the language used in the context of princely state-British relations. DeCausa (talk) 10:58, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Like flags, "Official language" is one of these time-wasting and actually rather complex rabbit hole issues some of our readers get very worked up about (while typically taking no interest in the rest of the article). Its far too complex for an infobox, and the field should just be removed. Johnbod (talk) 15:16, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Yep. I've removed it. DeCausa (talk) 16:24, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

And I've undone it. Please tell me in what language did the Raj rule, not the princely states, which were incidental to the Raj, but the Raj of Direct rule in India or Crown rule in India (that we boldface). In what language did it promulgate its laws so that the average person in British India (i.e. the presidencies and the provinces could comprehend it). The Company obviously changed its Official language from Persian to Urdu in 1837. The Raj's is more complicated. Removing Urdu is unhelpful.

In the Punjab and the United Provinces, Urdu was the official language during the Raj years as well. About the other provinces and Presidencies, I am not sure. Will look into it. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:08, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

When Victoria became Queen Empress in 1877, her proclamation to the Indian people was read out in English and Urdu to the assembled at the Delhi Durbar in 1877. I'll have to look for the sources, but I'm sure I can find a couple. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:25, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Miles Taylor, Empress, Yale, 2018 has it. Lytton read out the proclamation in English (as Victoria did not attend in person) but immediately after an Urdu translation was read out Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:52, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

That doesn't actually make it an "official language". If you want the field to appear in the article, then what is required is not a source saying that this-or-that action was done in English or Urdu or whatever (that's

WP:OR), but a source that specifically says "the official language of the Raj was..." Furius (talk

) 02:19, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Fowler&Fowler, yes as Furius says everything you have said is

WP:BOLD edit. My reference to the talk page, as I said in my edit summary, was for a summary of the rationale for the edit) DeCausa (talk

) 08:46, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

I will chime in here, as I made the original edit which triggered this discussion. First, official language is a common part of the infobox for political entities, so I don't believe there's reason enough for it to be completely removed. Therefore, I disagree with the WP:BOLD edit. That said, if people get worked up over it and it turns into an edit war, then perhaps removal would be better.

Secondly, my understanding was that English was the sole official language of the Raj for obvious reasons, however 'official' would be defined in this context (a complex issue, as noted by @Johnbod). But when I checked the citations provided in the infobox for "Urdu, Hindi", I discovered that one of them mentioned Urdu as 'administrative', while the other did indeed say 'official'; there was no mention of Hindi. Make of this what you will. I assumed that I was just reverting another in a long line of POV-edits increasingly common in Subcontinent topics. AliSighed (talk) 15:28, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

Yes, "official language", though beloved of infobox editors, often turns out to be a very imprecise term, differing greatly by locality and context (courts of law, legislatures, government announcements and correspondence, schools and colleges, and so on ad infinitum). See the endless arguments & edit-warring at India. The trouble is that the actual article here has (as far I can see, and unlike "India") absolutely nothing on the issue - it might be good to add a properly-researched section. In fact one could easily justify quite a long article on the subject. In the meantime infobox doctrine is clear that an infobox is emphatically not the place to introduce what is clearly turning out to be a complicated and disputable matter in an over-simplistic way. Policy is clear; it should just be removed. Johnbod (talk) 16:00, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

Flat out of time this week. Will read the discussion above Saturday AM, and then respond. Thanks. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:52, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

I have read the discussion upstairs. I don't think much purpose is served by removing the entry for official languages in the infobox. I will add what I think is the most accurate formulation and will rewrite the Education and Missionary section (retitling it Language, Law, and Education) during the course of this month. If by May 1, the section has not been rewritten, please remove the official language entry in the infobox. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 21:48, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

OK, I'm done with the infobox for now. Off until Monday. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:20, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

As per requests, I've opened a discussion. All throughout this article, "British Raj" has been used multiple times to refer to the territory/state/country. Sources provided, state that British Raj referred to the "Crown rule" over the territory between 1858 and 1947 or the "period" between 1858 to 1947 itself. Not one source has been provided stating that the term (British Raj) referred to the country/state/territory itself. This is a violation of

Pinging @Fowler&fowler and @RegentsPark, the main contributors to this article. PadFoot2008 (talk) 05:38, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

You'd better give examples of where you think the term is misused. Just asserting "All throughout this article, "British Raj" has been used multiple times..." isn't very helpful. Johnbod (talk) 13:51, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

One example would be the captions of both the images in the infobox. I can list all instances throughout the article if you need. PadFoot2008 (talk) 03:51, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

And what do you think the problem is there? Are you saying you think the term is incapable of a geographic meaning? Johnbod (talk) 04:11, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

Yes. The term is incapable of a geographic meaning unless you manage to prove that it is capable. The citations provided in the article till now have shown that the term has only been used to refer to a period/era or rule, that is, unless you manage to prove otherwise using reliable sources. Anyways, why would you even change the given title/caption present within the map to something else that you prefer? PadFoot2008 (talk) 06:06, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

It's been more than a week. Have you been able to find reliable sources to support your claim that British Raj is also capable of a geographic meaning? If you haven't I'm going to make the changes myself. PadFoot2008 (talk) 04:09, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Links to previous discussions on the topic:

• June 2022
• November 2022

H/T: HistoryofIran's edit-summary. Abecedare (talk) 15:11, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

I'm certainly not attempting to research this, as it's very peripheral to my interests, but a change is unlikely to be smoothly accepted. Johnbod (talk) 02:58, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

Well, I've done my research and I haven't found a single source stating that British Raj referred to anything else other than Crown rule in India or the period of Crown rule in India. And if you're not going to the research to disprove my claim and nobody else does that too, then that would mean nobody objects. PadFoot2008 (talk) 00:51, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

• Note: There is a related discussion created by the OP at Talk:List of wars involving India. --RegentsPark (comment) 00:22, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

  That discussion is about the British Indian Empire vs Indian Empire/Empire of India. This one's about British Raj. I don't think they are similar. And please, please provide a

  reliable source to support your claim that British Raj also referred to the entity in question. Please do not make unsourced claims.PadFoot2008 (talk

  ) 00:53, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

  Similar would be an understatement since the discussions are pretty much the same. In both discussions, your position is the removal of "British" to explicitly reference the period of British rule in India. I suggest you combine the discussions for clarity and, perhaps, to show that you're acting in good faith.RegentsPark (comment) 17:44, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

  Well, then. I'm ready to combine the two discussions if that's what's needed to show that I'm acting in good faith. Again, "British Raj" refers to the Crown rule in India, or the period, itself. "British India" refers to the Crown territories in India (and also the Company ruled territories before 1858). "India" referred to the entity comprising British India + Princely states during the British Raj. "British Indian Empire" referred to British India plus any dependent territory during Company Raj and British Raj (1757–1947) and "the Indian Empire" referred to the British Indian Empire but only during the British Raj (1858–1947). PadFoot2008 (talk) 17:52, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

  PadFoot, I've said this many times, "the Raj" has an assortment of meanings among which are: (a) Crown rule in India, (b) the period of Crown rule, (c) the British in India, (d) India during Crown rule, and some more.

  Thomas R. Metcalf's book, Ideologies of the Raj refers to the Raj in (a) and perhaps (c) Yasmin Khan's The Raj at War: A People's History of India's Second World War refers a little bit to each, but mostly to (d); David Burton's The Raj at Table: A Culinary History of the British in India refers mostly to (c); Christian Wolmar's Railways and The Raj: How the Age of Steam Transformed India refers a bit to all, but mostly to (d), i.e. to how the railways transformed India during British rule.

  I think you are attempting to fit something amorphous and fluid into a straitjacket. What after all, is Charles Allen's Plain tales from the Raj: Images of British India in the 20th century about? You might think it is about (c) or (d), but it is really about yet another: India as remembered by the British. What else would the following passage be about?

  Vernede remembers from her childhood in Allahabad: “The syce was probably the servant I knew best, because I used to ride my pony every day. All I really did was either walk or trot or canter slowly up and down the road outside our house while the syce either walked or jogged along by my side. I think we carried on a non-stop conversation. I learnt nearly all my languages from him and he was one of my best friends.

  Or:

  Mohammedan festival of Mohurram, originally a festival of mourning, but to Deborah Dring and her sisters more in the nature of a carnival: “We looked forward to the Mohurram far more than Christmas or Easter. Men used to come gambolling into our garden dressed up as horses and do a most extraordinary dance in front of our house. They used to give us sweets — which was absolutely forbidden — which we used to eat. It seemed quite the most perfect festival.”

  If you are interested in that period of Indian and British history, I invite you to pick some disregarded topics and flesh them out, but stay away from these existential questions. If after a year of writing, you still feel strongly about this issue, you can post here again. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 21:02, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

  @Fowler&fowler I apologise but I'm unable to access those books completely on Google Books, can you please provide citations from those books where the source refers to the Raj as (d).

  Also, in the title "Plain tales from the Raj", Raj could also have been used as in (b), try replacing "Raj" with "Mughal era", it still sounds correct. It doesn't need to be (c) or (d).

  Also as a side note, this discussion is not about the theme or title of this article like my previous discussion (when I was a novice, two years back). It's only about removing those instances where British Raj has been used as in sense (d). Also kind of important, don't you think that if Raj was used as in sense (d), wouldn't that be listed in a dictionary? Look up Google for definition of Raj, or just look up a physical Oxford Dictionary. Only sense (a) and (b) are listed there. PadFoot2008 (talk) 03:06, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

  The OED copied their Raj definition from us. You may read about it at the top of this talk page. We are not bound by what they say. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 06:34, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

  I have the 'Compact Oxford Dictionary Thesaurus & Wordpower Guide Indian Edition' published in 2001 with the definition of Raj as "/rahj/ •n. (the Raj) hist. the period of British rule in India #ORIGIN Hindi, 'reign'". This article didn't even exist then.

   

  Also, in the online New Oxford American Dictionary, Raj is defined as "British Sovereignty in India" and origin from Hindi, reign.

   

  And, in Merriam-Webster, Raj is defined as

  1 : RULE

     : especially, often capitalized : the former British rule of the Indian subcontinent

  2 : the period of British rule in India

  PadFoot2008 (talk) 10:36, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

  Please read the mention at the top of this page about what the OED, which requires a subscription, copied from us. Those dictionaries are not the OED Fowler&fowler«Talk» 11:58, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

  I said, I have a physical copy of OED published in 2001. The other dictionaries are just additional sources. Also Merriam-Webster, if you do not know, is a prett reliable dictionary.PadFoot2008 (talk) 12:36, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

  And secondary sources, typically don't define the British Raj. They just use the expression in the four meanings and perhaps more that I have elucidated. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 06:45, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

  For the geographical meaning, i.e. (d), please see these references to the "population of the British Raj" in Google Books. In particular:

  • Christophe Jaffrelot: "Muslims, one-fifth of the population of the British Raj at the time, had lost most of their political clout, ..." (the rule can't have a population, and the reference is not to the period of rule; otherwise, why would he say "at the time?"
  • B.A. Kosmin: "Prior to partition in 1947, Muslims made up 25 percent of the population of the British Raj," (the reference is not the period)Fowler&fowler«Talk» 07:12, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

  See also "born in the British Raj", in particular

  • Georgio Srafella's "Codified as the symbolic Other of China, Zhang Rulun's 'West' surprisingly includes individuals born in the British Raj and the Russian empire."
  • Brenda Rossini's" "FAZLUR RAHMAN KHAN (1929-1982) Bangladeshi/American, born in the British Raj where he was educated"
  • Norris Houghton's "The actress , not yet sixty , was playing an aged Canadian matriarch born in the British raj." (She wasn't born in Toronto during 1858–1947)
  • F. Kittler et al: "Kipling, creator of Mowgli and Kim, was born in the British Raj and thus spoke Hindi before acquiring English." They are not talking simply about a period.

  Fowler&fowler«Talk» 07:38, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

  I went through them, and there were merely six instances of each, out of the enormous, vast corpus of the instances of usage of "British Raj" . If you'd know Hindi or Hindustani, (because I do know it as a third language) you'd surely know that British Raj translates to English as "British Rule". And you can't even provide a citation defining British Raj as (d). To tell you the truth, I wasn't even aware of the fact that British Raj was an actual English term before I read this article. Though, I was aware of British India and the princely states (through history lessons). I'm pretty sure you picked it up in Wikipedia as well. Majority of sources (prob. more than 99%), define and use British Raj as in sense (a), (b) and also, (c) [British rulers in India]. You're using such few sources to prove such a big claim. Have you even checked if the authors are reputable, and may be also check if they have been published by university presses. Also, use Google Translate to translate "British Raj" from Hindi to English. PadFoot2008 (talk) 10:47, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

  Also kind of interesting, I searched for "population of the British Raj" in Google ngrams and it yielded no results. Does it have a different way of finding the instances of a particular phrase than a normal Google search? Same thing happens when I search "born in the British Raj".PadFoot2008 (talk) 10:56, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

  Google ngrams typically never show sentence fragments with more than one, two, or three words Fowler&fowler«Talk» 11:48, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

  Google ngram's word limit per phrase is five words, so it should be all right. I did some research and it's probably because there are too few results. Other five word phrases work fine. Anyways, this isn't important. Please see my reply above this one. PadFoot2008 (talk) 12:39, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

• Note: Related discussion also at Talk:List_of_princely_states_of_British_India_(by_region)#Move RegentsPark (comment) 16:00, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

  @RegentsPark: Commented there. This is getting pretty ridiculous. Wonder if it's time for a topic-ban rather than playing this game of whack-a-mole at various venues. Abecedare (talk) 17:43, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

  @RegentsPark: I mean you know that princely states weren't a part of British India, right? This article and that article too, say that British India and Princely States were seperate. That's not even worth a discussion. Is there a need to really oppose everything I want to to discuss that's related to the Raj? PadFoot2008 (talk) 03:11, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

Fowler&fowler's examples of the use of "British Raj" to signify something geographical

The Raj is a many-spendored thing semantically. It can mean: a) British rule on the subcontinent from 1858 onward; b) British rule on the subcontinent from the late Company rule, i.e. 1800 onward; c) the period of British rule; d) the British in India (as in "the poetry of the British Raj" see below); e) infrequently,

• Here are some examples of the usage of British Raj, or the Raj. As you will appreciate, it can veer towards geographical meaning. I will write an FAQ and explain this more thoroughly at some point.
• Lying on the Postcolonial Couch: The Idea of Indifference - Page 268 Rukmini Bhaya Nair · 2002 FOUND INSIDE – PAGE 268 Rudyard Kipling , " The Boondi Queen , " reprinted in Poetry of the Raj : A Collection of British Poems on India, ed . H. K. Kaul ( New Delhi : Arnold Heinemann , 1984 ) (The meaning here is d), i.e. poems on India written by the British in India)
• A Brief History of the Middle East Christopher Catherwood · 2011 FOUND INSIDE If a suitable Maharajah style figure could be interposed between the British and the natives, that would be fine so long as the British were the real rulers, as in certain of the Princely States in the Raj
• The Courtesan and the Gigolo: The Murders in the Rue ... - Page 111 Aaron Freundschuh · 2017 FOUND INSIDE – PAGE 111 “Once in Bombay we got into contact with the princes in the Raj, thanks to our knowledge of the Indian language and for 7 or 8 months we sold them products of all sorts,” Pranzini recalled, including hectographs, a gelatin-based system ("the Raj" here is not British India, the British in India, nor preserves of exclusive British life and privilege in India)
• Rebels for the Soil: The Rise of the Global Organic Food and ... Matthew Reed · 2010 FOUND INSIDE – PAGE 41: "Famines in the Raj appeared with terrifying frequency, imperial tax demands and ecological fragility meant that the people of the subcontinent were very vulnerable and the imperial rulers were not immune to the suffering that they .."her forms that give geographical meaning to the Raj. (Famines did not all strike British India; they struck princely states as well. See Timeline of major famines in India during British rule.)
• Transformations in Schooling: Historical and Comparative ... - Page 69 K. Tolley · 2007 FOUND INSIDE – PAGE 69 This could still shape, in turn, the way the state approached education in the Raj even though the emphasis was on the transmission of ideas rather than the building of schools. The official connection between education and the state ...
• The Cult of Imperial Honor in British India - Page 64 S. Patterson · 2009 FOUND INSIDE – PAGE 64: ... voice for Indians in the Raj, but the Rowlatt Acts undercut the hard-won advances being made toward self-rule. India was unfortunately being rewarded for its loyalty during the war with an increasingly despotic government determined ...
• The Last Lion Box Set: Winston Spencer Churchill, 1874 - 1965 Paul Reid, ‎William Manchester · 2012 FOUND INSIDE: Boothby himself agreed with Clemenceau's observation that Englishmen and Indians in the Raj “do not mingle at all.” Had the picnickers of 1885 included English families, the congress might have remained a frolic.
• Routledge Handbook of the History of Colonialism in South Asia Harald Fischer-Tiné, ‎Maria Framke · 2021 FOUND INSIDE: Anthropometry was not the only form of race science in the Raj prior to the First World War. Another key site for racialised understandings to flourish – and, indeed, one with much more practical immediacy – was medicine.
• Arc of the Journeyman: Afghan Migrants in England Nichola Khan · 2021 FOUND INSIDE: The coastal village of Rottingdean near the city of Brighton was home to the colonialist Rudyard Kipling (1897–1902), the British writer born in the Raj
• Bizarre London: Discover the Capital's Secrets & Surprisesbooks.google.com › books David Long · 2014 FOUND INSIDE 1963—Kim Philby Born in the Raj to British parents, Philby became a communist while a student at Cambridge in the 1930s. Recruited as a Soviet agent at that time, he secured a position with the British Secret Intelligence Service, ... (clearly, therefore, not all born in the Raj had British parents; that's the assumption here)
• The Times, London https://www.thetimes.co.uk › article Jun 24, 2020 — Deepak Lal obituary. Leading economist who grew up in the Raj and became an unlikely defender of the British Empire.) He was not someone who was born to British parents,
• The Dambuster Who Cracked the Dam: The Story of Melvin ...books.google.com › books Arthur G. Thorning · 2008 FOUND INSIDE: Gibson was born in India in 1918, the son of a British official, and grew up in the Raj the family were used to having numerous, deferential servants and in due course Guy was sent home to England to boarding school, ...
• An Immigration History of Britain: Multicultural Racism ... - Page 288 books.google.com › books Panikos Panayi · 2014 FOUND INSIDE – PAGE 288 ... to the whole of the British population, rather than simply those who had lived in the Raj. From the 1960s new developments in the Indian restaurant menu emerged in the form of Tandoori, followed by Balti during the 1980s.
• Conversations in Postcolonial Thought - Page 86books.google.com › books K. Sian · 2016 FOUND INSIDE – PAGE 86 The idea was to try to catch that generation of Englishwomen who lived in the Raj and to explore the stereotypes that were popular in fiction and also films like Passage to India and Heat and Dust. We also wanted to engage with women ...
• Spicing up Britain: The Multicultural History of British Foodbooks.google.com › books Panikos Panayi · 2008 FOUND INSIDE Those few Indians who opened up the first establishments during the nineteenth century usually catered for native Britons, especially people who had lived in the Raj or those with a taste for the exotic. The first Indian restaurant in
• Revolutionary Feminisms: Conversations on Collective Action ...books.google.com › books Brenna Bhandar, ‎Rafeef Ziadah · 2020 FOUND INSIDE – PAGE 78 ... Times and Telegraph for British women who had lived in the Raj before 1946 and we got loads of replies . People really responded - it was as though no one had ever asked them about that period of their lives , and they really wanted ...
• An Immigration History of Britain: Multicultural Racism ... - Page 288 books.google.com › books Panikos Panayi · 2014 FOUND INSIDE – PAGE 288 Those British people who lived and worked in the Raj from the eighteenth century liked the products which Indians ate. These dishes were, however, overwhelmingly vegetarian, but Britons wished to continue eating meat, leading to the ...
• The Fishing Fleet: Husband-Hunting in the Rajbooks.google.com › books Anne de Courcy · 2012 FOUND INSIDE Families that lived and worked in the Raj for generations – rather than spending a greater or lesser amount of time there – almost unconsciously developed certain patterns of behaviour. Although they clung to the attitudes and customs ...
• On Chapel Sands: The Mystery of My Mother's Disappearance as ... Laura Cumming · 2021 FOUND INSIDE – PAGE 63 Like many ex-officers, Captain Green stayed on in India, running a trading business in the Raj. Its legacy survives in our family even today. The Indian cotton sheets he brought back as a present for Veda in 1920 became my parents' ...

Please do not write in this sub-section as I will be adding more examples

Responses to the examples above

Response from PadFoot2008:

• Additional note: According to the Colonial Encounters in the Age of High Imperialism by S.B. Cook, pg 165, British Raj can also mean "the British–run Government of India", which explains many of the sources provided above.

• WP NOR states that "To demonstrate that you are not adding original research, you must be able to cite reliable, published sources that are directly related to the topic of the article and directly support the material being presented". This rules out many of the sources. Most of them are not even related to India.
• In Rebels for the Soil, Raj could be referring to the era too: "Tamines in the British Era appeared with terrifying frequency (Notice how the source say "people of the subcontinent to refer to the Indian population rather than "people of the Raj")

• In The Last Lion Box Set and Routledge Handbook of the History of Colonialism in South Asia, Raj probably refers to the colonial government in India (or the community consisting of the mainly British ruling elite in India).

• In An Emigration of History of Britain (though not directly related), has two usages with the first definitely referring to the colonial government in India or the community made up of British colonial administrative officers in India. (Those who had "lived in the Ray" in this book were all British), Raj can also refer to the the community made up of the ruling elite primarily British in India.

• 'Conversations in Postcolonial thought is a set of 12 interviews, and the interviewees might not be experts or historians, so it's isn't a reliable source

• Revolutionary Feminism obviously refers to the period (for example, British women who had lived in the Victorian Era).

• On Chappel Sands is a "novel" not an historical expertise or anything. You can not use novels to prove historical facts.

• The Fishing Fleet appears to be a biography of some sort, so it's an interesting case. It is again not written by a historical expert, thus shouldn't be a reliable source. Anyways, here too Raj appears again to refer to the community consisting of primarily British ruling elite in India. Note that the book says that "men outnumbered women four is to one in the Raj". Do you that India ever had such an extreme gender ratio?

@PadFoot2008: I don't want to be blunt, but your edits are now veering to the disruptive. If you don't call off your anachronistic quest on the Raj-related pages, you are very likely looking at administrative action. I don't want to sound paternalistic, but I've told you many times to cut your teeth on small, disregarded, pages instead of dickering about inconsequentials in the lead sentences or infoboxes of much trafficked ones. I've seen people such as you before. Their arc on Wikipedia has not been productive for them nor for Wikipedia. And if your interest truly is the Raj, please read some basic books on it (such as the textbooks in the bibliography or in that of the India page) cover to cover. Pinging @RegentsPark, Abecedare, Vanamonde93, Johnbod, and Joshua Jonathan: Fowler&fowler«Talk» 11:05, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler I apologize if you find any of my edits disruptive, but as far as I'm aware I've completely stopped editing Raj related pages that could cause great resentment or opposition since the start of this discussion. If you're talking of previous discussions or edits before ethe beginning of this discussion, I apologize, I was a novice then and didn't have much of an experience then. I have gained some experience now and so I'm trying to get a consensus again. I've done my research and hadn't found a single source (both reliable and other sources) that refer to British Raj as "India during British rule" or in a geographical sense before this.

Also, can you please reply/give a counter argument to my arguments? PadFoot2008 (talk) 02:18, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler.

PadFoot2008 (talk) 03:04, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

This page features no mention of the 1918 influenza pandemic and its major effect on India. There is an existing page on 1918 flu pandemic in India that can be linked to. Audengranger (talk) 05:11, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

@

Yes, we are quoting an old census, and should use the terms they do. Its not like Mussulman is considered offensive, it was just the term then. I did not "mark it as vandalism" - I would have used rollback if I had. Gute nachte! Johnbod (talk) 02:46, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Where‘s the consensus? Could you link it, and the term ‘‘Mussulman‘‘ is still outdated, I‘ll be starting a new rfc. Crainsaw (talk) 09:00, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

I looked through the archives, I didn't find any mention of the term Mussulman, or the applicability of the term. Was it some consensus on the wider usage of archaic terms on certain articles? Crainsaw (talk) 11:18, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

No, of course not. It's about authenticity when older sources are used - so we also have

Brahminism in the first table, but Hindu and Muslim are the usual terms used in the article. You seem to have a talent for grasping the wrong end of the stick. It's very premature to launch an Rfc. Johnbod (talk

) 17:01, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

@Johnbod but we have to use the newest terms, right? And I'm relatively new editor, sorry if I don't yet understand everything. Crainsaw (talk) 17:14, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

No, we don't, when effectively quoting from older sources. Johnbod (talk) 17:45, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

And who decided that policy? Was there some consensus? Crainsaw (talk) 17:46, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

See

edit-warring for which you'll eventually be blocked. DeCausa (talk

) 18:18, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

3RR rule, you have maximum 3 reverts on an single page in 24 hours, when Johnbod reverted my edit, I immideatly came to the talk without reverting, it's been more then 24 hours since his last reply, after which I reverted because he didn't link a single consensus, guideline, ir policy as to why the archaic term mussulman should be kept. As far as I can tell, I didn't violate any policy or guideline Crainsaw (talk

) 18:27, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

Well, you did, by edit-warring. You need to consider my points above, which you seem to ignore. Johnbod (talk) 18:55, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

bright line known as the three-revert rule (3RR). To revert is to undo the action of another editor. The three-revert rule states that an editor must not perform more than three reverts", I reverted only 1 time. Crainsaw (talk

) 19:07, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

Even without a 3RR violation, an administrator may still act if they believe a user's behavior constitutes edit warring, and any user may report edit warring with or without 3RR being breached. The rule is not an entitlement to revert a page a specific number of times. and Any appearance of gaming the system by reverting a fourth time just outside of the 24-hour slot will usually be considered edit warring. I've given you the formal edit warring warning on your talk page just so there is no misunderstanding. Don't revert again unless this thread shows consensus agreeemnt DeCausa (talk) 19:13, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

Again, Johnbod, why did revert my edit changing the archaic term Mussulman to the newer demonym Muslim? Above, you said "we are quoting an old census", then I asked you to link me the consensus, you didn't, then I looked through the archives of the talk page and didn't find a single comment focused on whether to use the archaic "Mussulman" or the newer demonym Muslim. Then I asked you whether it was some broader consensus on RFC maybe? Then you replied with, "No, of course not. It's about authenticity when older sources are used", a complete contradiction of your original statement "we are quoting an old census", and then I asked you which Policy, Guideline, or Consensus decided that, and you didn't reply for 24 hours, after which I reinstated my original contribution changing Mussulman to Muslim, and you reverted it [4], and in the edit summary you said "rvt - see talk. it's been patiently explained to you, but you don't seem to take it in.", where's the explanation? Crainsaw (talk) 19:03, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

If the cited source says "Musulman" then replacing that with "Muslim" is

WP:SYNTH. The answer is to find a better source. DeCausa (talk

) 22:44, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

As an uninvolved editor in this dispute, I think that it makes the most sense to use the term “musulman” as it was the term used at the time, however, Imho a workable solution that addresses both editors grievances would be to include [sic], or a similar indicator that could better convey its status as anachronistic after “mosulman”. Cheers Googleguy007 (talk) 23:51, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

Even better, simply include a note (I’m not sure the exact wikimarkup of how, but it’s a small letter that looks similar to a citation) clarifying that mosulman is an anachronistic term. Googleguy007 (talk) 23:53, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

The previous table already has "Mussulman (Muslim)", which I think is enough. Johnbod (talk) 01:23, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

@Johnbod I'm still waiting for you to link an "old consensus", guideline or policy which requires the use of archaic words over newer ones. Crainsaw (talk) 07:19, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

What, specific to this use here, or more generally? I don't know what German wp is like, but (even on this page) we don't have specific policies or consensus for everything (is it possible you are confusing census and "consensus"?). You should look at the history to see how long this usage has been in place, and read and ponder the comments of other experienced editors here. Johnbod (talk) 14:14, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm simply asking why we must use the old terms, is it a norm, something in MoS, guideline, or something else? Because if we're allowed to use old terms, might as well start using thou instead of you, Demesne instead of region or domain. And yes, I was confusing census for consensus, my mistake. Crainsaw (talk) 14:26, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

@Googleguy007 I agree with your solution, maybe we should write something like "Musulman (Old Persian and Indic term for a Muslim) Crainsaw (talk) 07:04, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

The point is, it was the standard English term at the time, which is why the census used it. Johnbod (talk) 14:15, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

I think I have a good argument, as I've linked above this article is written in British English, you've argued that the term "Mussulman" was standard English at the time. But the according to the Oxford Dictionary 1933 edition, Musselman, is an obs. term, which is short for obsolete according to the dictionaries abbreviations section. You can read the dictionary for free on the Internet Archives here and you can view the abbreviations to that edition here. So that means the term Musselman has to be removed from the 2nd table under Religions about the 1921 section, since words don't become obsolete in that short a period of time, as for the first. As for the table about the 1891 census, I was able to access the Hobson-Jobson dictionary through some means, I cannot share the link to you because of reasons, but you can find the dictionary on the internet if you know where to look. That dictionary is the dictionary for Indian English, and said "Mussulman" is a term coined by the French for Indians who follow the Sunni sect of Islam (1903 ed.). And I also accessed the Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1894 ed.) through some means, which said the "Mussulman" is an Arabic Mohematan (Mohematan is also an archaic word for a person who followed Muhammed, the founder of Islam). Crainsaw (talk) 16:13, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

What a waste of effort! The original

OED, the volume with "M" published in 1908, does NOT say "Mussulman" is archaic or obselete. It gives no fewer than 17 variant spellings, and defines it (A, as a noun) simply as "A Mohammedan". The quotations cited go up to 1888. The etymology mentions numerous languages, in Europe beginning with Aragonese in the 12th century. No sectarian or geographical restriction is mentioned. Meanwhile "Muslim" has simply "See MOSLEM". Johnbod (talk

) 12:18, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

I think you mean this edition, where it says "Muselman obs.", above it is the word "Musellim" which has other variations, but it's a synonym for Muselman. And I also have another argument, since this page is written in British English, we must use the latest Standard British English terms. Crainsaw (talk) 13:15, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Wrong again! I used (my own copy) of the "Compact" edition, which reprints the original edition, plus later supplements, and is obviously the appropriate one for here. As I say there is no hint of

OED (whose history you need to understand). This just says that a different spelling from that used in the article is obselete. It does NOT say the word itself is. Johnbod (talk

) 13:20, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

WP:ARCSPELL we have to use the latest terms unless we're quoting "Older sources use many archaic variants (such as shew for show), which are not to be used outside quotations except in special circumstances " I'd also be interested in the title of your dictionary because I found the "1908 M edition" online Crainsaw (talk) 13:28, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

"outside quotations except in special circumstances" is the relevant bit here. The article uses "Muslim" in plenty of other places, but not here, as the table is in effect an extended quotation. Why is this so difficult for you to understand? My book is the Compact reprinted edition of the "Oxford English Dictionary", the full thing - see the article. Johnbod (talk) 14:24, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Since when is a table an extended quotation? Crainsaw (talk) 14:33, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

When it takes all its content from another source. Johnbod (talk) 15:36, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

I admit I was wrong. Guten Abend! Crainsaw (talk) 15:45, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Can we end this now and change the name from Mussulman to Muslim? Crainsaw (talk) 14:16, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

No, since consensus is clearly against you, can you please drop the stick. Johnbod (talk) 14:24, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

@DeCausa It's not Synth, because I did nkt reach a conclusion, I just replaced to two terms which mean the same thing, Synth is "A and B, therefore C" it's used when citing sources and making them into paragraphs but with your own interpretation which the authors did not state. Crainsaw (talk) 07:01, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

You've reached a conclusion the the words mean the same thing using a different source to the cited source. That's

WP:SYNTH. DeCausa (talk

) 16:18, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

[5]. Is it still

WP:SYNTH if the reader understands what the sources are trying to say, but is just differently written on Wikipedia, and the term Mussulman was accompanied by (Muslim), which told the reader they both mean the same thing. Crainsaw (talk

) 16:30, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

• They called it "Musalman" that's why we are doing the same. Editorkamran (talk) 07:42, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

  But this page is written in Standard British English, you can't use an American source and then also change the spelling to the American English Variant. Crainsaw (talk) 08:05, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

The original

OED (see above) lists 17 spellings, without suggesting any American/British differences. Johnbod (talk

) 12:18, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

• @
  WP:TRANSCRIPTION it isn't orignal research to translate words. Crainsaw (Talk
  ) 10:34, 18th June 2023 (UTC)

Its because we are not supposed to use alternative terms unless supported by the source.

@Johnbod: You should self-revert here because we don't know what really the British considered as "Muslims" in the census of 1891. They called them "Musalman" and we should do the same instead of using the terms that were not used in the original census table. Editorkamran (talk) 16:23, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

WP:COMMON, it's common sense that Mussulman is a Muslim, and common sense isn't original research. Crainsaw (talk

) 16:32, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

No it makes no sense. There are countries who does not recognize Ahmadiyyas as Muslims which proves that not everyone agrees over what is a "Muslim". It is necessary to stop generalizing here. Editorkamran (talk) 16:35, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

The census is self reported, meaning the British census officers came, and asked you about stuff such as your religion, and you were free to choose. That's how every census works, unless people are officially registered with a religion, do you think any country with 300 million people had the capacity to register everyone's religion? Especially a poor colony. Crainsaw (talk) 16:42, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

No. That's your own analysis and it is not relevant per

WP:OR. Editorkamran (talk

) 16:54, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Feeling ran so high over the return of religion in the Punjab that some exterior castes, asked by one party to register as Hindus, by others as Sikhs, and even as Moslems, declared themselves Ad Dharmi or "adherents of the original religion," whatever that may be.[1] You either registered your religion yourself at the local census office or with the local census taker, or the census taker asked you your caste and then classified you according to what religion you caste belonged to. (I don't know how, but they had a caste index where each caste was organized by religion) Crainsaw (talk) 17:02, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

It's totally clear - and don't forget these are the terms which the individuals being counted chose to describe themselves (from a limited list, and perhaps after discussion with the census-taker). So what "the British considered" isn't really the issue. See the OED evidence above, and the comment below. Johnbod (talk) 16:33, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

OED has nothing to do with the 1891 census. We shouldn't be using the terms that were not mentioned in the census. Editorkamran (talk) 16:35, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

I've just gone back to the source. Although the quoted page (46) is correct, it is numbered within just one report amongst many in the book. It you open the PDF on page 683 you will see the following: The diversity of India's numerous races and religions is too well known to require more than the briefest comment here. In 1921 216,734,586 people were listed as Hindus, 68,735,233 as Mussulmans, 11,571,268 as Buddhists, 4,754,079 as Christians, 3,238,803 as Sikhs, 9,774,611 as animists. The table is effectively a paraphrasing of this and follows the original language. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 15:33, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

• Does anyone have access to Gottschalk, Peter (2012), Religion, Science, and Empire: Classifying Hinduism and Islam in British India, Oxford University Press,
  WP:SCHOLARSHIP-compliant secondary source that considers both censuses, including their terminology? NebY (talk
  ) 20:31, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

• Asher, C. B.; Talbot, C. (2006), India Before Europe,
  ISBN 978-0-521-80904-7
• ISBN 978-0-415-77942-5
• ISBN 978-0-19-873113-9
• Copland, I. (2001), India 1885–1947: The Unmaking of an Empire,
  ISBN 978-0-582-38173-5
• ISBN 978-0-415-32920-0
• Ludden, D. (2014), India and South Asia: A Short History (2nd, revised ed.),
  ISBN 978-1-85168-936-1
• ISBN 978-0-521-68225-1
• Peers, D. M. (2013), India Under Colonial Rule: 1700–1885,
  ISBN 978-1-317-88286-2
  , retrieved 13 August 2019
• Robb, P. (2011), A History of India,
  ISBN 978-0-230-34549-2
• Sarkar, S. (1983), Modern India: 1885–1947, Delhi:
  ISBN 978-0-333-90425-1
• ISBN 978-1-4051-9509-6
• ISBN 978-0-19-516678-1
• Dyson, Tim (2018), A Population History of India: From the First Modern People to the Present Day,
  ISBN 978-0-19-882905-8
• Fisher, Michael H. (2018), An Environmental History of India: From Earliest Times to the Twenty-First Century, Cambridge and New York:
  S2CID 134229667

Now to the question of tables. This can be tricky as we want to make sure that the table is describing the religious group that we describe as Muslim today. Perhaps: Muslim ("Mussulman") would be best. After all we favor the MKS system meter-kilogram-second and parenthesize the FPS (foot-pound-second) when my grandfather's Layng's Arithmetic, Blackie, ca 1930s has: "If the value of matting 2 ft 3 inches wide at 1 s. 3 d. per yard which covers a floor of 16 ft wide is 3 pounds, 14 shilling and 6 pence, how long is the floor?" But there might be some other point being addressed, so I would defer to Jb for that. I'm pinging some other cognoscenti @RegentsPark, Abecedare, Vanamonde93, and Doug Weller: Fowler&fowler«Talk» 21:43, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

OED says "Now archaic and historical" and, imo, it may be hard for general readers to parse Mussulman or Musalman. I doubt if there will be a lot of variation in the definition (a percent plus or minus) so Fowler's suggestion is likely a good one. RegentsPark (comment) 01:29, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

The article uses "Muslim" 75 times, and two of the 17 variant spellings of "Mussulman", once each, both as headings for the tables for the censuses, to reflect the terms in the source. These were self-descriptions, so I imagine include Ahmadiyyas (as I think modern UK censuses do, and perhaps Indian ones). I know one issue in the 19th-century, and perhaps beyond, was Jains self-describing as Hindus. Johnbod (talk) 01:09, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

That section probably should not exist in its current form (i.e. two tables and nothing else). The sources it uses are dated. There is no reason to use them when modern books are around. Demography is covered in many of the books listed above, not to mention books on economic history, e.g.

• Tirthankar Roy's The Economic History of India, 1857 to 2019
• Tomlinson's The Economy of Modern India: From 1860 to the Twenty-First Century (The New Cambridge History of India) 2nd Edition, 2013.

There are more specialized books but I would start with the textbooks listed above first. Probably nothing beyond what is in them is needed in this page. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:15, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

I would offer to help out but RL issues this summer are so unpredictable that I don't want to break promises again. I already owe that bit on language in the infobox. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:21, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

I have, do you still need the book? Crainsaw (talk) 05:53, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

I would strongly discourage anyone from using it. It is based on Gottschalk's field work in a village and is about more complex issues in the history of religion and the intellectual history of imperialism. This WP page and the sections within need bread and butter demography first. You are much better off looking at Susan Bayly's book Caste, society, and politics in India: from the eighteenth century to the modern age, CUP, 1999. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 09:23, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

I skimmed through the 2 chapters which I thought were most likely to give us an answer, "Historical origins of a `caste society" and "Western `orientalists' and the colonial perception of caste", none of them had anything related to our questions, I'll also read the "The everyday experience of caste in colonial India" chapter today, but one interesting thing was on page 123 which said: There was also much 'essentialising' reportage in the monumental 119-volume series of Imperial Gazetteers which was produced under the direction of one of India's most influential scholar-officials, W. W. Hunter (1840-1900), I looked into it, and they're all available online, and might have some answers, so if someone wants to they can skim through them here. Crainsaw (talk) 11:54, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm happy to see the section improved, but in the nature of things, any sources on the subject are going to rely on "dated" basic material, including the censuses, which for all their issues are really the only contemporary big data. I suspect what we really need is a new article on Religion and the British Raj or something - a huge subject we can't really hope to cover properly in this article. It certainly won't be me writing it though. Johnbod (talk) 13:17, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

I'll consider starting a draft, every article has to start somewhere, right? Crainsaw (talk) 13:21, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Crainshaw. Not 119 volumes, only 26. I have them sitting here in hard copy. Most maps you see on WP are the ones I uploaded from volume 26 which is the atlas. We can't use them. Period. They are dated. Crainshaw, my suggestion is that you not edit the religion section. Please let someone do it who has a history on South Asia related topics. I can't force you, but from what you have written thus far, you don't seem like the best candidate. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:18, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Crainshaw: This is a high level article. That means the first cut has to be based on

WP:TERTIARY. It is not that Johnbod, RegentsPark or I can't write it, it is just that we are busy right now. There is no reason that a religion section has to be there this very minute. Fowler&fowler«Talk»

14:37, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

I was already writing a part of the draft article when you posted the message, I have already published the draft, but I won't submit. And I'll make sure to use secondary and tertiary, and do my best to write in summary style. And why can't we use the Gazetteers? Wasn't the original question the British definition of Muslim? And the Gazetteers might have an answer to that. P.S. My username is Crainsaw, not Crainshaw. Crainsaw (talk) 15:38, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

A religion section, i.e. about religion in the

ownership, only long experience in South Asia-related articles. Fowler&fowler«Talk»

15:49, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Also, please present the draft here first. Thanks. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:52, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Hold on a second, when did I say anything about rewriting the religion section? I was talking about the proposal by Johnbod to create a new article about Religion and the British Raj, which I was currently writing as a draft. Crainsaw (talk) 15:53, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Oh, OK. All the best. Thanks. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:55, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

• (Late response to ping) I think we are losing sight of the forest here by getting fixated on the tree, which is the use of the term "Musalman". See, for instance, Chapter 5 (esp. pp. 201-224) of Gottschalk's book for how the sausage was made, which was much, much more messy than asking people to classify themselves as Hindu/Musalman/... and adding up the numbers. But all that is irrelevant to this article IMO. It can be covered at Census in British India or in the type of article Crainsaw is proposing.

Rather the question for this article is what information we are trying to convey here? To me the main points to get across to the reader are, (1) the fact of the decennial census being conducted starting in 1871, (2) the gathering of the religious and caste data, which helped set these as the markers of Indians' identity and helped solidify the boundaries of the chosen caste and religious categories, (3) the rough population totals and religious demographics at, say, the first and last census conducted under the Raj. For the first two points, I would suggest summarizing the following para from Metcalf's book, in a sentence or two:

Britain's effort to grasp India was shaped by a search for those categories that would reveal the essential and enduring structure of its society. One such category was caste. A comprehensive but loose ordering of India's peoples based upon Hindu notions of purity and pollution, with countless local variations, caste was elaborated by the British into an intricate and rigid system of hierarchy, enforced by the courts and defined by the decennial Censuses. Another, and for the British more central,marker of identity in India was religious affiliation. From the early days of British rule, the entire population, apart from tiny scattered minorities, was fitted into two mutually exclusive, and comprehensive, categories: those of 'Hindu' and 'Muslim'. In the process, as part of the larger transformation of India during the nineteenth century, localized identities in which religion was only one of many elements, and which itself took varied forms, gave way to membership of two all-embracing and India-wide communities.

— Thomas Metcalf, Forging the Raj: Essays on British India in the Heyday of Empire, pp. 110-111

and for the third point, we can look the % of Hindu/Muslim/... population in the 1971 and 1941 censuses and write them up in a sentence.

None of this requires having two tables of the census numbers, down to the single digit (!), for the randomly chosen years of 1891 and 1921 as we have at present, or worrying about what terms the primary sources used for the religious categories. Abecedare (talk) 20:52, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

The eight religions listed for 1891 rather contradict Metcalf's summary! The Sikhs do not appear there, though they are in 1921. Were they previously hidden in the Hindu figures? Johnbod (talk) 02:16, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

I think that Metcalf's qualifier "apart from tiny scattered minorities" is meant to capture the Buddhists, Jains, Christians etc. This is consistent with the practice the British themselves followed. For example, the Memorandum on the census of British India of 1871-72 begins its summary of religious demographics on p. 16 with, "Classified according to religion, the population of British India is, in round numbers, divided into 140½ millions of Hindoos (including Sikhs), or 73½ per cent., 40¾ millions of Mahomedans, or 21½ per cent., and 9¼ millions of others, or barely 5 per cent., including under this title Buddhists and Jains, Christians, Jews, Parsees, Brahmoes, and Hill men...." In the document, Sikhs are sometimes separately enumerated and sometimes clubbed under Hindus, depending upon the context; Metcalf's statement would be consistent with either practice. Abecedare (talk) 03:27, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Of course modern practice, both in India and the Anglosphere countries, is to give a good deal more prominence to minorities, even if only "barely 5 per cent"! I'm not sure emulating Victorian habits here would be a good idea. Johnbod (talk) 13:57, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

• Again, use only the textbooks. If it's not in the textbooks, don't include it in the first cut. Once a text exists, it can be fine-tuned with monographs and journal articles. The Metcalfs have an excellent textbook. Thomas Metcalf's essays and his other books, including Ideologies of the Raj are about higher-level issues. We can't make the religion section to be primarily about British ideologies of Indian religions and methodologies of classifying and enumerating them. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:28, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

  I'm not saying there shouldn't be anything about ideologies and methodologies, only it should come from textbooks initially. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:53, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

  Good point. I agree with the goal of keeping content at a pretty high level for this main article. Any specific suggestions on what should be included regarding the religious demographics? Abecedare (talk) 20:53, 21 June 2023 (UTC)