Abstract: This essay challenges part of the traditional narrative that accompanies India’s Independence Day celebrations, in that it disputes that India was a country ruled by the British for a while, attaining freedom on a certain date, six decades ago.
The fifteenth of August is celebrated by the modern Indian Republic as Independence Day. Independence from British rule, that is, on August 15, 1947 CE. Now, the "Independence from British rule" bit is most commonly interpreted as the breaking of direct, formal British jurisdiction. However, the peninsula which one recognizes as India was not all of it under formal British rule. So, the whole of India did not become "free" on the 15th of August, 1947 for the simple reason that the so-called Princely States were already free [1]. One of them, Hyderabad State, did not become part of the Union of India till 1948 [2]. This was no tiny principality, but represented an area larger than England. Goa, on the Indian mainland, remained Portuguese territory till the war of 1961 [3]. Parts of Kashmir, claimed by India, have been occupied by Pakistan from 1947 onwards [4]. Pakistan and Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) themselves were, pre-1947, i.e. for the most time, part of what one traditionally called India.
CONCLUSION
August 15, 1947 can scarcely be celebrated as being India’s Day of Independence, given that it was accompanied by two massive chunks, almost a million square kilometers, breaking away (one going on to fight India in multiple wars), and that some other large chunks (Portuguese Goa and Hyderabad State) did not become part of the new Indian state, and that the so-called Princely States (covering a half-million km2) were free even before this date.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princely_states
[2] http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,799076-1,00.html
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese-Indian_War
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jammu_and_Kashmir
