British India

American

noun

a part of India, comprising 17 provinces, that prior to 1947 was subject to British law: now divided among India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.

British India British

noun

the 17 provinces of India formerly governed by the British under the British sovereign: ceased to exist in 1947 when the independent states of India and Pakistan were created

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Radcliffe had been given six weeks to trace that gash through the map of British India.

From The Wall Street Journal

Mr. Dalrymple’s second Indian partition, which started in 1937 and was completed by April 1947, was the administrative separation from British India of Aden and an assortment of other Persian Gulf states—today’s Yemen, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait.

From The Wall Street Journal

Born in Calcutta in British India in 1935, Sir Mark spent much of his life in the country.

From BBC

Millions of Hindus and Muslims were forced from their homes at the partition of British India, and well into the Cold War mass expulsions and ethnic cleansing marred the records of countries like Burma, Egypt and the former British colonies in East Africa.

From The Wall Street Journal

In the first part of the 1800s, Ram Singh, Ravinder’s great-great-grandfather, farmed wheat and rice outside of Lahore, now in Pakistan but then part of British India.

From The Wall Street Journal

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023