History of the British Raj
The history of the British Raj refers to the period of British rule on the Indian subcontinent between 1858 and 1947. The system of governance was instituted in 1858 when 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 provinces of India were partitioned into two sovereign dominion states: the "Dominion of India" and the "Dominion of Pakistan", leaving the princely states to choose between them. The two new dominions later became the Republic of India and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan (the eastern half of which, still later, became the People's Republic of Bangladesh). The province of Burma in the eastern region of the Indian Empire had been made a separate colony in 1937 and became independent in 1948.
Independence Day (India)
Independence and partition inspired literary and other artistic creations. Such creations mostly describe the human cost of partition, limiting the holiday to a small part of their narrative. Salman Rushdie's novel "Midnight's Children" (1980), which won the Booker Prize and the Booker of Bookers, wove its narrative around children born at midnight of 14–15 August 1947 with magical abilities. "Freedom at Midnight" (1975) is a non-fiction work by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre that chronicled the events surrounding the first Independence Day celebrations in 1947. Few films centre on the moment of independence, instead highlighting the circumstances of partition and its aftermath. On the Internet, Google has been commemorating Independence Day of India since 2003 with a special doodle on its Indian homepage.