Dominion of India in the context of "Secretary of State for India"

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.