History Documentary: India-Pakistan Partition 1947, History of India and Pakistan, Partition of India, Full Documentary

History Documentary: India-Pakistan Partition 1947, History of India and Pakistan, Partition of India, Full Documentary.

The British Indian Empire, from the 1909 edition of The Imperial Gazetteer of India. Areas directly governed by the British are shaded pink; the princely states under British suzerainty are in yellow.

 

The Partition of India was the partition of the British Indian Empire that led to the creation of the sovereign states of the Dominion of Pakistan (which later split into Pakistan and Bangladesh) and the Union of India (later Republic of India) on 15 August 1947. "Partition" here refers not only to the division of the Bengal province of British India into East Pakistan and West Bengal (India), and the similar partition of the Punjab Province into West Punjab (West Pakistan) and East Punjab (now Punjab), but also to the respective divisions of other assets, including the British Indian Army, the Indian Civil Service and other administrative services, the railways, and the central treasury.

In the riots which preceded the partition in the Punjab Province, it is believed that between 200,000 and 2,000,000 people were killed in the retributive genocide between the religions.UNHCR estimates 14 million Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims were displaced during the partition; it was the largest mass migration in human history.

The term partition of India does not cover the later secession of Bangladesh from Pakistan in 1971, nor the earlier separation of Burma (now known as Myanmar) from the administration of British India, nor the separation of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). The coastal area of Ceylon was part of the Madras Presidency of British India from 1795 until 1798, when it became a separate Crown Colony of the Empire. Burma, gradually annexed by the British during 1826–86 and governed as a part of the British Indian administration until 1937, was directly administered thereafter. Burma was granted independence on 4 January 1948 and Ceylon on 4 February 1948.

Bhutan, Nepal and the Maldives, the remaining present-day countries of South Asia, were unaffected by the partition. The first two, Bhutan and Nepal, although earlier being regarded as de facto princely states, later signed treaties with the British designating them as independent states before partition, and therefore their borders were unaffected by the partition of India. The Maldives, which had become a protectorate of the British crown in 1887 and gained its independence in 1965, was also unaffected by the partition.

Credits: Wikipedia

The Historian Channel: The Mughal Empire, History Documentary. India's Great Mughals, Documentary, History of the Mogul Empire

The Historian Channel: The Mughal Empire, History Documentary. India's Great Mughals, Documentary, History of the Mogul Empire

The Mughal Empire (Urdu: مغلیہ سلطنت‎, Mug̱ẖliyah Salṭanat) or Mogul Empire, self-designated as Gurkani (Persian: گورکانیان‎‎, Gūrkāniyān, meaning "son-in-law"), was an empire in the Indian subcontinent, established and ruled by a Muslim Persianate dynasty of Chagatai Turco-Mongol origin that extended over large parts of the Indian subcontinent and Afghanistan.

The beginning of the empire is conventionally dated to the founder Babur's victory over Ibrahim Lodi, the last ruler of the Delhi Sultanate in the First Battle of Panipat (1526). The Mughal emperors were Central Asian Turco-Mongols belonging to the Timurid dynasty, who claimed direct descent from both Genghis Khan (founder of the Mongol Empire, through his son Chagatai Khan) and Timur (Turco-Mongol conqueror who founded the Timurid Empire). During the reign of Humayun, the successor of Babur, the empire was briefly interrupted by the Sur Empire. The "classic period" of the Mughal Empire started in 1556 with the ascension of Akbar the Great to the throne. Under the rule of Akbar and his son Jahangir, the region enjoyed economic progress as well as religious harmony, and the monarchs were interested in local religious and cultural traditions. Akbar was a successful warrior. He also forged alliances with several Hindu Rajput kingdoms. Some Rajput kingdoms continued to pose a significant threat to the Mughal dominance of northwestern India, but most of them were subdued by Akbar. All Mughal emperors were Muslims; while Akbar was Muslim most of this life, he followed a new religion in the latter part of his life called Deen-i-Ilahi, as recorded in historical books like Ain-e-Akbari and Dabestan-e Mazaheb.

The Mughal Empire did not try to intervene in the local societies during most of its existence, but rather balanced and pacified them through new administrative practices and diverse and inclusive ruling elites, leading to more systematic, centralised, and uniform rule. Newly coherent social groups in northern and western India, such as the Marathas, the Rajputs, the Pashtuns, the Hindu Jats and the Sikhs, gained military and governing ambitions during Mughal rule, which, through collaboration or adversity, gave them both recognition and military experience.

The reign of Shah Jahan, the fifth emperor, between 1628–58 was the golden age of Mughal architecture. He erected several large monuments, the best known of which is the Taj Mahal at Agra, as well as the Moti Masjid, Agra, the Red Fort, the Jama Masjid, Delhi, and the Lahore Fort. The Mughal Empire reached the zenith of its territorial expanse during the reign of Aurangzeb and also started its terminal decline in his reign due to Maratha military resurgence under Shivaji Bhosale. During his lifetime, victories in the south expanded the Mughal Empire to more than 3.2 million square kilometres (1.2 million square miles), ruling over more than 150 million subjects, nearly one quarter of the world's population at the time, with a combined GDP of over $90 billion.

By the mid-18th century, the Marathas had routed Mughal armies, and won over several Mughal provinces from the Punjab to Bengal, and internal dissatisfaction arose due to the weakness of the Mughal Empire's administrative and economic systems, leading to the break-up of the empire and declaration of independence of its former provinces by the Nawab of Bengal, the Nawab of Awadh, the Nizam of Hyderabad and other small states. In 1739, the Mughals were crushingly defeated in the Battle of Karnal by the forces of Nader Shah, the founder of the Afsharid dynasty in Persia, and Delhi was sacked and looted, drastically accelerating their decline. During the following century Mughal power had become severely limited and the last emperor, Bahadur Shah II, had authority over only the city of Shahjahanabad. He issued a firman supporting the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and following the defeat was therefore tried by the British East India Company for treason, imprisoned and exiled to Rangoon. The last remnants of the empire were formally taken over by the British, and the Government of India Act 1858 let the British Crown formally assume direct control of India in the form of the new British Raj.

Credits: Wikipedia 

The Mughal Empire at its greatest extent, in 1707

India under British rule, History Documentary: British Occupation Of India - Full Documentary, The British Raj

Flag of British India

Imperial political structure comprising

(a) British India (a quasi-federation of presidencies and provinces directly governed by the

 British Crown through the Viceroy and Governor-General of India);

(b) Princely States, governed by Indian rulers, under the

 suzerainty of the British Crown exercised through the

Viceroy and Governor-General of India

India under British rule, History Documentary: British Occupation Of India - Full Documentary,

The British Raj (rāj, meaning "rule" in Hindi) was the rule of the United Kingdom in the Indian subcontinent between 1858 and 1947. The term can also refer to the period of dominion. The region under British control—commonly called India—included areas directly administered by the United Kingdom as well as the princely states ruled by individual rulers under the paramountcy of the British Crown. The region was less commonly also called British India or the Indian Empire. The Empire of India was officially created by the British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli for Queen Victoria in 1876.

 

Was Jesus a Buddhist Monk? BBC Documentary, full documentary

The most famous of the surviving Byzantine mosaics, Hagia Sophia in Constantinople – the image of Christ Pantocrator

Was Jesus a Buddhist? As the Buddhist-Christian Studies, Annual 2005 by James M. Hanson pointed out: "Certainly He was many things--Jew, prophet, healer, moralist, revolutionary, by his own admission the Messiah, and for most Christians the Son of God and redeemer of their sins. And there is convincing evidence that he was also a Buddhist..."

It is unknown whether Jesus did actually travel to India, however we can certainly see that many of spiritual teachings of Christianity are likely to have descended from Eastern cultures, possibly from India. An intriguing and ground-breaking documentary from the BBC investigates...