When London responded to the 1857 mutiny of Muslim and Hindu soldiers in the East India Company’s army by declaring direct British rule, it did not conceive of this act as establishing British governance over a foreign nation. Rather, it saw itself as a neutral overseer and civilizing uplifter of multifarious peoples and states. As late as 1888, a leading British administrator could declare, There is not, and never was an India, or even any country of India possessing, according to any European ideas, any sort of unity, physical, political, social or religious . . . You might with as much
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