Dominion of India in the context of Baroda State

A dominion was any one of several largely self-governing countries that remained, especially in the first half of the 20th century, under the British Crown as parts of the British Empire and then the British Commonwealth of Nations. The list of dominions as at 1926 included Australia, Canada, the Irish Free State, New Zealand, Newfoundland, and South Africa; later Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), India, and Pakistan also became dominions for short periods. Progressing from colonies, their degrees of colonial self-governance increased (and, in one case, decreased) but did so unevenly over the late 19th century through the 1930s. In the years following the Second World War, the British Empire was refashioned into the more modern (and more post-colonial) Commonwealth of Nations (after which the former dominions were often referred to as the Old Commonwealth). By the time this transition was formally finalised, in 1949, the old dominions had become more autonomous and independent nation states, each in their own right, either as a Commonwealth republic or a Commonwealth realm.

In 1925, the government of the United Kingdom created the Dominions Office from the Colonial Office, although for the next five years they shared the same secretary in charge of both offices. "Dominion status" was first accorded to Australia, Canada, the Irish Free State, New Zealand, Newfoundland, and South Africa at the 1926 Imperial Conference through the Balfour Declaration of 1926, recognising Great Britain and the Dominions as "autonomous communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs, though united by a common allegiance to the Crown and freely associated as members of the British Commonwealth of Nations". Their full legislative independence was subsequently confirmed in the Statute of Westminster 1931. In the 1920s and 1930s, they began to represent themselves in international bodies, in treaty making, and in foreign capitals. Vestiges of empire and colonial rule lasted in some dominions late into the 20th century and indeed still exist today.

Jammu and Kashmir, also known as Kashmir and Jammu, was a princely state in a subsidiary alliance with the British East India Company from 1846 to 1858, and under the paramountcy (or tutelage) of the British Crown from 1858 until British withdrawal and the partition of British India in 1947. Following the subsequent First Kashmir War between India and Pakistan, it became a disputed territory, now administered by three countries: China, India, and Pakistan. The princely state was created after the First Anglo-Sikh War, when the East India Company, which had annexed the Kashmir Valley, from the Sikhs as war indemnity, then sold it to the Raja of Jammu, Gulab Singh, for 75 lakh rupees.

At the time of the partition of India and the political integration of India, Hari Singh, the ruler of the state, delayed making a decision about the future of his state. However, an uprising in the western districts by the Gilgit Scouts against Hari Singh supported by informal militias from the neighbouring Northwest Frontier Province, and the Pakistani army personnel, forced his hand. On 26 October 1947, Hari Singh acceded to India in return for the Indian military being airlifted to Kashmir to counter the invasion by tribal militias from Pakistan, which were assisted by the Pakistani government and military leadership. The western and northern districts now known as Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan passed to the control of Pakistan with the support of Gilgit Scouts, while the remaining territory stayed under Indian control, later becoming the Indian administered state of Jammu and Kashmir. India and Pakistan defined a cease-fire line dividing the administration of the territory with the intercession of the United Nations which was supposed to be temporary but still persists.

The British Raj (/rɑːdʒ/ RAHJ; from Hindustani rāj, 'reign', 'rule' or 'government') was the rule of the British Crown on the Indian subcontinent, lasting from 1858 to 1947. It is also called Crown rule in India, or direct rule in India. The region under British control was commonly called India in contemporaneous usage and included areas directly administered by the United Kingdom, which were collectively called British India, and areas ruled by indigenous rulers, but under British paramountcy, called the princely states. The region was sometimes called the Indian Empire, though not officially. As India, it was a founding member of the League of Nations and a founding member of the United Nations in San Francisco in 1945. India was a participating state in the Summer Olympics in 1900, 1920, 1928, 1932, and 1936.

This system of governance was instituted on 28 June 1858, when, after the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the rule of the East India Company was transferred to the Crown in the person of Queen Victoria (who, in 1876, was proclaimed Empress of India). It lasted until 1947 when the British Raj was partitioned into two sovereign dominion states: the Union of India (later the Republic of India) and Dominion of Pakistan (later the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and People's Republic of Bangladesh in the 1971 Proclamation of Bangladeshi Independence). At the inception of the Raj in 1858, Lower Burma was already a part of British India; Upper Burma was added in 1886, and the resulting union, Burma, was administered as an autonomous province until 1937, when it became a separate British colony, gaining its independence in 1948. It was renamed Myanmar in 1989. The Chief Commissioner's Province of Aden was also part of British India at the inception of the British Raj and became a separate colony known as Aden Colony in 1937 as well.

The Dominion of Pakistan, officially Pakistan, was an independent federal dominion in the British Commonwealth of Nations, which existed from 14 August 1947 to 23 March 1956. It was created by the passing of the Indian Independence Act 1947 by the British parliament, which also created an independent Dominion of India.

The new dominion consisted of those presidencies and provinces of British India which were allocated to it in the Partition of India. Until 1947, these regions had been ruled by the United Kingdom as a part of the British Empire.

Emperor (or Empress) of India was a title used by British monarchs from 1 May 1876 (with the Royal Titles Act 1876) to 22 June 1948 to signify their sovereignty over the British Indian Empire as its imperial head of state. The image of the Emperor or Empress appeared on Indian currency, in government buildings, railway stations, courts, on statues, etc. Oaths of allegiance were made to the Emperor or Empress and the lawful successors by the governors-general, princes, governors, commissioners in India in events such as imperial durbars.

The title was abolished on 22 June 1948, with the Indian Independence Act 1947, under which George VI made a royal proclamation that the words "Emperor of India" were to be omitted in styles of address and from customary titles. This was almost a year after he became the titular head of the newly partitioned and independent dominions of India and Pakistan in 1947. These were abolished upon the establishment of the Republic of India in 1950 and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan in 1956.

Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, but spread chiefly to the west, or beyond its right bank, Delhi shares borders with the state of Uttar Pradesh in the east and with the state of Haryana in the remaining directions. Delhi became a union territory on 1 November 1956 and the NCT in 1995. The NCT covers an area of 1,484 square kilometres (573 sq mi). According to the 2011 census, Delhi's city proper population was over 11 million, while the NCT's population was about 16.8 million.

The topography of the medieval fort Purana Qila on the banks of the river Yamuna matches the literary description of the citadel Indraprastha in the Sanskrit epic Mahabharata; however, excavations in the area have revealed no signs of an ancient built environment.From the early 13th century until the mid-19th century, Delhi was the capital of two major empires, the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire, which covered large parts of South Asia. All three UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the city, the Qutub Minar, Humayun's Tomb, and the Red Fort, belong to this period. Delhi was the early centre of Sufism and Qawwali music. The names of Nizamuddin Auliya and Amir Khusrau are prominently associated with it. The Khariboli dialect of Delhi was part of a linguistic development that gave rise to the literature of Urdu and later Modern Standard Hindi. Major Urdu poets from Delhi include Mir Taqi Mir and Mirza Ghalib. Delhi was a notable centre of the Indian Rebellion of 1857. In 1911, New Delhi, a southern region within Delhi, became the capital of the British Indian Empire. During the Partition of India in 1947, Delhi was transformed from a Mughal city to a Punjabi one, losing two-thirds of its Muslim residents, in part due to the pressure brought to bear by arriving Hindu and Sikh refugees from western Punjab.After independence in 1947, New Delhi continued as the capital of the Dominion of India, and after 1950 of the Republic of India.

The Indian Independence Act 1947 (10 & 11 Geo. 6. c. 30) is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that partitioned British India into the two new independent dominions of India and Pakistan. The act received Royal Assent on 18 July 1947 and thus modern-day India and Pakistan, comprising west (modern day Pakistan) and east (modern day Bangladesh) regions, came into being on 15 August.

The legislature representatives of the Indian National Congress, the Muslim League, and the Sikh community came to an agreement with Lord Mountbatten, then Viceroy and Governor-General of India, on what has come to be known as the 3 June Plan or Mountbatten Plan.

The partition of India in 1947 was the division of British India into two independent dominion states, the Union of India and Dominion of Pakistan. The Union of India is today the Republic of India, and the Dominion of Pakistan is the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the People's Republic of Bangladesh. The partition involved the division of two provinces, Bengal and the Punjab, based on district-wise non-Muslim (mostly Hindu and Sikh) or Muslim majorities. It also involved the division of the British Indian Army, the Royal Indian Navy, the Indian Civil Service, the railways, and the central treasury, between the two new dominions. The partition was set forth in the Indian Independence Act 1947 and resulted in the dissolution of the British Raj, or Crown rule in India. The two self-governing countries of India and Pakistan legally came into existence at midnight on 14–15 August 1947.

The partition displaced between 12 and 20 million people along religious lines, creating overwhelming refugee crises associated with the mass migration and population transfer that occurred across the newly constituted dominions; there was large-scale violence, with estimates of loss of life accompanying or preceding the partition disputed and varying between several hundred thousand and two million. The violent nature of the partition created an atmosphere of hostility and suspicion between India and Pakistan that plagues their relationship to the present.

The Indo-Pakistani war of 1947–1948, also known as the first Kashmir war, was a war fought between India and Pakistan over the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir from 1947 to 1948. It was the first of four Indo-Pakistani wars between the two newly independent nations. Pakistan precipitated the war a few weeks after its independence by launching tribal lashkar (militias) from Waziristan, in an effort to capture Kashmir and to preempt the possibility of its ruler joining India.

Hari Singh, the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir, was facing an uprising by his Muslim subjects in Poonch, and lost control in portions of the western districts. On 22 October 1947, Pakistan's Pashtun tribal militias crossed the border of the state. These local tribal militias and irregular Pakistani forces moved to take the capital city of Srinagar, but upon reaching Baramulla, they took to plunder and stalled. Maharaja Hari Singh made a plea to India for assistance, and help was offered, but it was subject to his signing of an Instrument of Accession to India.

Before it gained independence in 1947, India (also called the Indian Empire) was divided into two sets of territories, one under direct British rule (British India), and the other consisting of princely states under the suzerainty of the British Crown, with control over their internal affairs remaining to varying degrees in the hands of their hereditary rulers. The latter included 562 princely states which had different types of revenue-sharing arrangements with the British, often depending on their size, population and local conditions. In addition, there were several colonial enclaves controlled by France and Portugal. After independence, the political integration of these territories into an Indian Union was a declared objective of the Indian National Congress, and the Government of India pursued this over the next decade.

In 1920, Congress (party) under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi declared swaraj (self-rule) for Indians as its goal and asked the princes of India to establish responsible government. Jawaharlal Nehru played a major role in pushing Congress to confront the princely states and declared in 1929 that "only people who have the right to determine the future of the States must be the people of these States". In 1937, the Congress won in most parts of British India (not including the princely states) in the provincial elections, and started to intervene in the affairs of the states. In the same year, Gandhi played a major role in proposing a federation involving a union between British India and the princely states, with an Indian central government. In 1946, Jawaharlal Nehru observed that no princely state could prevail militarily against the army of independent India. In January 1947, Nehru said that independent India would not accept the divine right of kings. In May 1947, he declared that any princely state which refused to join the Constituent Assembly would be treated as an enemy state. Vallabhbhai Patel, Louis Mountbatten and V. P. Menon were more conciliatory towards the princes, and as the men charged with integrating the states, were successful in the task. Having secured their accession, they then proceeded, in a step-by-step process, to secure and extend the union government's authority over these states and transform their administrations until, by 1956, there was little difference between the territories that had been part of British India and those that had been princely states. Simultaneously, the Government of India, through a combination of military and diplomatic means, acquired de facto and de jure control over the remaining colonial enclaves, which too were integrated into India.

Sir Hari Singh Bahadur GCSI GCIE GCVO (September 1895 – 26 April 1961) was the last ruling Maharaja of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir of the Dogra dynasty.

Hari Singh was the son of Amar Singh and Bhotiali Chib. In 1923, following his uncle's death, Singh became the new Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir. After Indian Independence in 1947, Singh wanted Jammu and Kashmir to remain as an independent kingdom. He acceded to the Dominion of India to get the support of Indian troops against an invasion by tribal armed men and the Pakistan Army into his state. Singh remained the titular Maharaja of the state until 1952, when the monarchy was abolished by the Indian government. After spending his final days in Bombay, he died on 26 April 1961.

Baltistan (English: /ˌbɔːltɪˈstɑːn/, Urdu: [bəlt̪ɪst̪aːn]); also known as Baltiyul or Little Tibet, is a mountainous region in the Pakistani-administered territory of Gilgit-Baltistan and constitutes a northern portion of the larger Kashmir region that has been the subject of a dispute between India and Pakistan since 1947. It is located near the Karakoram (south of K2) and borders Gilgit to the west, China's Xinjiang to the north, Indian-administered Ladakh to the southeast, and the Indian-administered Kashmir Valley to the southwest. The average altitude of the region is over 3,350 metres (10,990 ft). Baltistan is largely administered under the Baltistan Division.

Prior to the partition of British India in 1947, Baltistan was part of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, having been conquered by Gulab Singh's armies in 1840. Baltistan and Ladakh were administered jointly under one wazarat (district) of the state. The region retained its identity in this setup as the Skardu tehsil, with Kargil and Leh being the other two tehsils of the district. After Hari Singh, the last maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir, acceded to the Dominion of India in 1947, his local governor in Gilgit was overthrown by the Gilgit Scouts, who then took the entire region for Pakistan during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1947–1948. The Gilgit Agency and Skardu tehsil, as well as a portion of Kargil tehsil, have since been under Pakistani governance while the Kashmir Valley as well as Leh tehsil and most of the Kargil tehsil remain under Indian governance. The Chorbat Valley, geographically in the Baltistan region, was de-facto partitioned when its four villages (with one Bogdang already under Indian control since 1947) were captured by India during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, and were incorporated into the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir (now in Ladakh).

Hyderabad is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Telangana. It occupies 650 km (250 sq mi) on the Deccan Plateau along the banks of the Musi River, in the northern part of Southern India. With an average altitude of 536 m (1,759 ft), much of Hyderabad is situated on hilly terrain around artificial lakes, including the Hussain Sagar lake, predating the city's founding, in the north of the city centre. According to the 2011 census of India, Hyderabad is the fourth-most populous city in India with a population of 6.9 million residents within the city limits, and has a population of 9.7 million residents in the metropolitan region, making it the sixth-most populous metropolitan area in India.

The Qutb Shahi dynasty's Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah established Hyderabad in 1591 to extend the capital beyond the fortified Golconda. In 1687, the city was annexed by the Mughals. In 1724, Asaf Jah I, the Mughal viceroy, declared his sovereignty and founded the Asaf Jahi dynasty, also known as the Nizams. Hyderabad served as the imperial capital of the Asaf Jahis from 1769 to 1948. As the capital of the princely state of Hyderabad, the city housed the British Residency and cantonment until Indian independence in 1947. Hyderabad was annexed by the Indian Union in 1948 and continued as a capital of Hyderabad State from 1948 to 1956. After the introduction of the States Reorganisation Act of 1956, Hyderabad was made the capital of the newly formed Andhra Pradesh. In 2014, Andhra Pradesh was split to form the state of Telangana, and Hyderabad became the joint capital of the two states until 2024. Since 1956, the city has housed the Rashtrapati Nilayam, the winter office of the president of India.

The Kingdom of Afghanistan and the Union of India established bilateral relations in January 1950. India was the only South Asian country to recognize the Soviet-backed Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, supporting it in the Soviet–Afghan War (1979–1989) against the Afghan mujahideen. India remained mainly neutral during the 1990s Afghan civil wars, though was opposed to the Taliban government. Following the 9/11 attacks in 2001, India aided overthrow of the Taliban and became the largest regional provider of aid to the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. A major shift in India's position on the Taliban was reported by a top Qatar official in June 2021, revealing that an Indian delegation quietly visited Doha to meet the Taliban's leadership. This is a major shift that was several weeks in the making in the first half of 2021, and likely involved Qatari mediation between India and the Taliban. Although India does not recognize the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, it maintains close informal ties with the ruling Taliban.

In April 2017 Shaida Mohammad Abdali, Afghanistan's former ambassador to India, pointed out that India "is the biggest regional donor to Afghanistan and fifth largest donor globally with over $3 billion in assistance. India has built over 200 public and private schools, sponsors over 1,000 scholarships, and hosts over 16,000 Afghan students." Relations between Afghanistan and India received a major boost in 2011 with the signing of a strategic partnership agreement, Afghanistan's first since the Soviet-Afghan War. The student visas were revoked in large numbers after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.

Sikkim (/ˈsɪkɪm/ SIK-im; Nepali: [ˈsikːim]) is a state in northeastern India. It borders Bhutan in the east, the Tibet Autonomous Region of China in the north and northeast, Koshi Province of Nepal in the west, and West Bengal in the south. Sikkim is also close to the Siliguri Corridor, which borders Bangladesh. Sikkim is the least populous and second-smallest among the Indian states. Situated in the Eastern Himalaya, Sikkim is notable for its biodiversity, including alpine and subtropical climates, as well as being a host to Kangchenjunga, the highest peak in India and third-highest on Earth. Sikkim's capital and largest city is Gangtok. Almost 35% of the state is covered by Khangchendzonga National Park – a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Kingdom of Sikkim was founded by the Namgyal dynasty in the 17th century. It was ruled by Buddhist priest-kings known as the Chogyal. It became a princely state of the British Indian Empire in 1890. Following Indian independence, Sikkim continued its protectorate status with the Union of India after 1947 and the Republic of India after 1950. It enjoyed the highest literacy rate and per capita income among Himalayan states. In 1973, anti-royalist riots took place in front of the Chogyal's palace. In 1975, after the Indian Army took over the city of Gangtok, a referendum was held that led to the dissolution of the monarchy and Sikkim's joining India as its 22nd state.

The India–Nepal border is an open international boundary running between the countries of India and Nepal. The 1,751 km (1,088.02 mi) long border includes the Himalayan territories as well as Indo-Gangetic Plain of the subcontinent. The current border was delimited after the Sugauli treaty of 1816 between Nepal and the British Raj. Following Indian independence, the prevailing border was recognised as the international border between the Kingdom of Nepal and the Dominion of India.