The Indian subcontinent

Colonialism in India entered through the British East India company purely for trade over lucrative goods like spices. But as the British dominion grew and following a revolt the government took direct ownership over the majority of the subcontinent. Through a imperialist policy of specifically dividing the myriad of religions into specific groups either through census or general education on the differences made it so that each group no longer had a fluid identity. The British had fixed a specific identity for each religion and grouped in thousands under one umbrella. From there as seen in “Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge”, we understood how the British collected this data in an effort to properly administer the region but the underlying subtext was to form these divisions within the population in order to ferment hatred between religious groups instead of focusing on British rule and their extraction of the resources of India. Yet, even when the British left the Indian subcontinent, those ethnic divisions fermented by their rule remained. Resulting in the eventual splitting of the continent down Islamic and Hindu lines, in which the majority of the populations were of those specific religious groups. The splitting itself resulted in the death and displacement of millions through violent conflict at the border. The hatred and resentment built directly as a result of British rule has lasting consequences, with two wars fought and continuing nuclear tensions to this day.

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