Modern Indian History (1757-1947) — Glossary

Abhinav Bharat was a secret revolutionary society founded by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in 1904 to overthrow British rule through armed struggle and assassination.

Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray (1861–1944) was an Indian chemist, nationalist entrepreneur, and educator who founded Bengal Chemical and Pharmaceutical Works and pioneered the Swadeshi industrial movement.

Administrative and political unification denotes the British colonial integration of India's fragmented territories under a single centralised administrative, legal, and bureaucratic structure during the nineteenth century.

The Age of Consent Act, 1891 was a colonial Indian law that raised the minimum age of consent for sexual intercourse for all girls, married or unmarried, from ten to twelve years.

The Ahmadiyya movement is a messianic Islamic reform movement founded in 1889 in Qadian, Punjab, by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, who claimed to be the promised Mahdi and Messiah.

The Akali or Gurudwara Reform Movement was a 1920–1925 Sikh campaign to wrest control of historic gurudwaras from hereditary mahants and place them under elected community management.

The Aligarh Movement was a late-19th-century socio-educational reform movement led by Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan to modernise Indian Muslims through Western education and political loyalty to British rule.

The Alipore Bomb Conspiracy Case (1908–1909) was a colonial sedition trial in which Aurobindo Ghosh, Barindra Kumar Ghosh and other revolutionaries were prosecuted for waging war against the British Crown.

Allan Octavian Hume was a retired British Indian Civil Service officer and ornithologist who founded and organised the Indian National Congress in 1885.

Amartya Sen's capability approach redefines development as the expansion of human freedoms and capabilities rather than mere growth in income or utility.

Analysis of causation and assessment is the historiographical method of identifying, ranking, and evaluating the multiple causes and consequences of an event rather than merely narrating it.

Anushilan Samiti was an early-twentieth-century Bengali revolutionary secret society that organised armed resistance to British rule through physical training, indoctrination and political assassination.

Aurobindo Ghosh (1872–1950) was an Indian nationalist, Extremist leader of the Swadeshi movement, and later a philosopher-yogi who founded the Sri Aurobindo Ashram at Pondicherry.

Awadh was a fertile north-Indian province (modern central Uttar Pradesh) whose annexation by the British in 1856 became a major precipitant of the 1857 Revolt.

Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856–1920) was an Indian nationalist, scholar, and Extremist leader who championed Swaraj as a birthright and pioneered mass mobilisation against British rule.

Bengal is the historic eastern region of the Indian subcontinent, now divided between the Indian state of West Bengal and the independent nation of Bangladesh.

The Bengal Famine of 1770 was a catastrophic famine under early East India Company rule that killed roughly one-third of Bengal's population, about ten million people.

The Cabinet Mission was a 1946 three-member British delegation sent to India to negotiate the transfer of power and frame a constitution-making mechanism.

The Cabinet Mission Plan was a 1946 British proposal for a united, federal India with a three-tier structure, grouped provinces, and a constituent assembly, advanced to transfer power without partition.

The Charter Act of 1813 renewed the East India Company's charter for twenty years while ending its trade monopoly in India, except for tea and trade with China.

The Civil Disobedience Movement was the mass nationalist campaign launched by Mahatma Gandhi in 1930 to defy colonial laws, beginning with the Dandi Salt March and demanding purna swaraj.

The Communal Award was Ramsay MacDonald's 1932 British scheme granting separate electorates to India's minorities, including the Depressed Classes.

The Cripps Mission was a March 1942 British proposal, led by Sir Stafford Cripps, offering India dominion status after World War II in exchange for wartime cooperation.

Dadabhai Naoroji (1825–1917) was an Indian intellectual, early nationalist, and the first Indian elected to the British House of Commons, who authored the economic "drain of wealth" theory.

The Dandi March was Mahatma Gandhi's 24-day, 240-mile walk from Sabarmati Ashram to Dandi in 1930 to break the salt law and launch the Civil Disobedience Movement.

Direct Action Day was the All-India Muslim League's call for mass agitation on 16 August 1946 to press its demand for Pakistan, triggering the Great Calcutta Killings.

The Drain of Wealth refers to the systematic, unrequited transfer of India's wealth and resources to Britain during colonial rule without an adequate economic return.

Dyarchy was a system of double government in the provinces of British India, introduced by the Government of India Act 1919, dividing subjects into "transferred" and "reserved" categories.

The Eka (Unity) Movement was a 1921–22 peasant uprising in the Awadh region of the United Provinces directed against high rents, oppressive landlords and forced eviction.

The Extremists were the radical wing of the Indian National Congress, active roughly 1905–1919, who demanded Swaraj through aggressive agitation, boycott and self-reliance rather than constitutional petitioning.

The Government of India Act 1858 abolished the East India Company's rule and transferred the governance of India directly to the British Crown.

The Government of India Act 1935 was the British Parliament's longest statute, establishing provincial autonomy, an all-India federation, and a partial responsible government framework in colonial India.

Hyderabad was the largest and richest princely state of British India whose Nizam sought independence in 1947 but was annexed by the Indian Union through the September 1948 military action codenamed Operation Polo.

The Indian Independence Act 1947 was a British Parliament statute that partitioned British India into the two independent dominions of India and Pakistan effective 15 August 1947.

Jammu and Kashmir is a Himalayan region acceded to India in 1947, granted special autonomy under Article 370, and reorganised into two Union Territories in 2019.

Lord Cornwallis was Governor-General of Bengal from 1786 to 1793 who introduced the Permanent Settlement and reorganised the civil service and judiciary of British India.

Lord Dalhousie was Governor-General of India from 1848 to 1856, remembered for the Doctrine of Lapse, extensive annexations, and major administrative and infrastructural modernisation.

The Lucknow Pact was the December 1916 agreement between the Indian National Congress and the All-India Muslim League establishing joint constitutional demands and Congress acceptance of separate electorates for Muslims.

The Nehru Report of 1928 was the first Indian-drafted constitutional blueprint for dominion status, prepared by an all-parties committee chaired by Motilal Nehru.

The Non-Cooperation Movement (1920-1922) was Gandhi's first nationwide mass campaign asking Indians to withdraw cooperation from British institutions to attain Swaraj.

The Partition of Bengal was the 1905 administrative division of the Bengal Presidency by Viceroy Lord Curzon into two provinces, reversed in 1911.

Pitt's India Act, 1784 established dual control over the East India Company by creating a Board of Control to supervise the Company's civil, military and revenue affairs in India.

The Quit India Movement was the mass civil disobedience campaign launched by the Indian National Congress in August 1942 demanding an immediate end to British rule.

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) was a Bengali polymath, poet and Nobel laureate whose writings furnished the national anthems of both India and Bangladesh.

The Radcliffe Line is the boundary demarcating India and Pakistan, drawn in 1947 by Sir Cyril Radcliffe under the Indian Independence Act.

The Revolt of 1857 was a widespread armed uprising against British East India Company rule that began among sepoys at Meerut and spread across northern and central India.

The Rowlatt Act of 1919 was a repressive British law empowering arrest without warrant and detention without trial of Indians suspected of revolutionary activity.

Sir Syed Ahmad Khan (1817–1898) was a Muslim reformer, educationist and founder of the Aligarh Movement who pioneered modern Western education among Indian Muslims.

The Swadeshi movement was an Indian nationalist campaign, launched in 1905 against the Partition of Bengal, advocating the boycott of British goods and use of indigenous products.

Lord William Bentinck was Governor-General of India from 1828 to 1835, remembered chiefly for the abolition of sati in 1829 and the introduction of English as the medium of higher education.