Indian Rebellion of 1857 in the context of "Captain Nemo"

Felice Beato (c. 1832 – 29 January 1909), also known as Felix Beato, was an Italian–British photographer. He was one of the first people to take photographs in East Asia and one of the first war photographers as well as a pioneer of travel photography. He is noted for his genre works, portraits, and views and panoramas of the architecture and landscapes of Asia and the Mediterranean region. Beato's travels gave him opportunities to create images of countries, people, and events unfamiliar and remote to most people in Europe and North America. His works provide images of such events as the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and the Second Opium War, and represent the first substantial body of photojournalism. He influenced other photographers; and his impact in Japan, where he taught and worked with numerous other photographers and artists, was particularly deep and lasting.

The Mughal Empire was an early modern empire in South Asia. At its peak, the empire stretched from the outer fringes of the Indus River Basin in the west, northern Afghanistan in the northwest, and Kashmir in the north, to the highlands of present-day Assam and Bangladesh in the east, and the uplands of the Deccan Plateau in South India.

The Mughal Empire is conventionally said to have been founded in 1526 by Babur, a ruler from what is today Uzbekistan, who employed aid from the neighboring Safavid and Ottoman Empires to defeat the sultan of Delhi, Ibrahim Lodi, in the First Battle of Panipat and to sweep down the plains of North India. The Mughal imperial structure, however, is sometimes dated to 1600, to the rule of Babur's grandson, Akbar. This imperial structure lasted until 1720, shortly after the death of the last major emperor, Aurangzeb, during whose reign the empire also achieved its maximum geographical extent. Reduced subsequently to the region in and around Old Delhi by 1760, the empire was formally dissolved by the British Raj after the Indian Rebellion of 1857.

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 presidency armies were the armies of the three presidencies of the East India Company's rule in India, later the forces of the British Crown in India, composed primarily of Indian sepoys. The presidency armies were named after the presidencies: the Bengal Army, the Madras Army and the Bombay Army. Initially, only Europeans served as commissioned or non-commissioned officers. In time, Indian Army units were garrisoned from Peshawar in the north, to Sind in the west, and to Rangoon in the east. The army was engaged in the wars to extend British control in India (the Mysore, Maratha and Sikh wars) and beyond (the Burma, Afghan, First and Second Opium Wars, and the Expedition to Abyssinia).

The presidency armies, like the presidencies themselves, belonged to the Company until the Indian Rebellion of 1857, when the Crown took over the Company and its three armies. In 1895, the three presidency armies were merged into a united Indian Army.

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 provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance in Indian subcontinent. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one form or another, they existed between 1612 and 1947, conventionally divided into three historical periods:

• Between 1612 and 1757, the East India Company set up "factories" (trading posts) in several locations, mostly in coastal India, with the consent of the Mughal emperors, Maratha Empire or local rulers. Its rivals were the merchant trading companies of Portugal, Denmark, the Netherlands, and France. By the mid-18th century three Presidency towns: Madras, Bombay and Calcutta, had grown in size.
• During the period of Company rule in India, 1757–1858, the Company gradually acquired sovereignty over large parts of India, now called "Presidencies". However, it also increasingly came under British government oversight, in effect sharing sovereignty with the Crown. At the same time, it gradually lost its mercantile privileges.
• Following the Indian Rebellion of 1857 the company's remaining powers were transferred to the Crown. Under the British Raj (1858–1947), administrative boundaries were extended to include a few other British-administered regions, such as Upper Burma. Increasingly, however, the unwieldy presidencies were broken up into "Provinces".

"British India" did not include the many princely states which continued to be ruled by Indian princes, though by the 19th century under British suzerainty—their defence, foreign relations, and communications relinquished to British authority and their internal rule closely monitored. At the time of Indian Independence, in 1947, there were officially 565 princely states, a few being very large although most were very small. They comprised a quarter of the population of the British Raj and two fifths of its land area, with the provinces comprising the remainders.

The Deobandi movement or Deobandism is a revivalist movement within Sunni Islam that adheres to the Hanafi school of jurisprudence. It was formed in the late 19th century around the Darul Uloom Madrassa in Deoband, India, from which the name derives, by Muhammad Qasim Nanautavi, Rashid Ahmad Gangohi, Ashraf Ali Thanwi and Khalil Ahmad Saharanpuri after the Indian Rebellion of 1857–58. They opposed the influence of non-Muslim cultures on the Muslims living in South Asia. The movement pioneered education in religious sciences through the Dars-i-Nizami associated with the Lucknow-based ulama of Firangi Mahal with the goal of preserving traditional Islamic teachings from the influx of modernist and secular ideas during British colonial rule. The Deobandi movement's Indian clerical wing, Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, was founded in 1919 and played a major role in the Indian independence movement through its participation in the pan-Islamist Khilafat movement and propagation of the doctrine of composite nationalism.

In terms of jurisprudence, the Deobandis uphold the doctrine of taqlid (conformity to a school of thought) and adhere to the Hanafi school. Founders of the Deobandi school Nanautavi and Gangohi drew inspiration from the religious and political doctrines of the South Asian Islamic scholar, Salafi-oriented Sufi and theologian Ismail Dehlawi (26 April 1779 – 6 May 1831). In its early years, Deobandi scholars engaged in theological debates with Christian and Hindu scholars; with the objective of defending Islamic faith, and to form a popular struggle to overthrow British colonialism. Deobandi theologians of Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, in particular, discussed multiculturalism and opposition to the partition of India, with a strategic vision to safeguard the religious freedom of Muslims in India.

The Mughal Empire was an early modern empire that ruled most of the Indian subcontinent. At its peak, the empire stretched from the outer fringes of the Indus River Basin in the west, northern Afghanistan in the northwest, and Kashmir in the north, to the highlands of present-day Assam and Bangladesh in the east, and the uplands of the Deccan Plateau in South India.

The Mughal Empire is conventionally said to have been founded in 1526 by Babur, a ruler from what is now Uzbekistan, who with the help of the neighbouring Safavid and Ottoman Empires defeated the sultan of Delhi, Ibrahim Lodi, in the First Battle of Panipat and swept down the plains of North India. The Mughal imperial structure, however, is sometimes dated to 1600, to the rule of Babur's grandson, Akbar. This imperial structure lasted until 1720, shortly after the death of the last major emperor, Aurangzeb, during whose reign the empire also achieved its maximum geographical extent. Reduced subsequently to the region in and around Old Delhi by 1760, the empire was formally dissolved by the British Raj after the Indian Rebellion of 1857.