Cultural Perspectives from another Country - Pakistan Essay

Cultural Perspectives from another Country - Pakistan - Essay Example (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan) The second most populous Muslim country was formed on the 14th of August 1947. Before Pakistan gained independence, the country was under the rule of the British Empire. The British entered the Subcontinent as the British East India Company, a private trading company, when the Mughals had Jehangir as an Emperor. Slowly and gradually the huge Mughal Empire began to crumble because the emperors and nobles alike had grown so accustomed to living a life of pure pleasure with the wealth their ancestors had accumulated. Many historians blame Aurangzeb, the Emperor Shah Jehan's son for sowing the seeds of decline, as it was after he started ruling that the kingdom began to fall apart. Aurangzeb couldn't rule very well, his administration left a lot to be desired. The nobles were often power hungry and the consequence of the lack of supervision was that they became highly powerful at court and the emperors couldn't control them. The empire was huge and when rebellions broke out it took the emperor months to take decisive decision to end them. The cost of maintaining a huge army to continuously quell these rebellions and that wasn't the only cost. When an emperor died, the succession dispute resulted in a waste of huge sums of money. When riddled with such... In the beginning The East India Company only had a few bases along the coast of the Subcontinent but then they started expanding and spread out to Bombay (Mumbai), Calcutta (Kolkata) and Madras (Chennai). The EIC were good at fighting and protected India from other European countries such as France, Portugal and Denmark. After the battle of Plassey and the exploitation of Bengal the British government decided that the misgovernment of India had to be stopped. So they passed the India Act in 1784 in which the British government took direct control of Indian possessions and appointed a Governor-General. From then on the British influence could be seen everywhere. However things weren't made a 100% percent official until the 1857 War of Independence (as the Indians called it) or the 1857 Mutiny (as the British called it). The Indians, the Indian army in particular rose in revolt against the British and they were crushed. The British government took complete control of India and a member of the British cabinet, the Secretary of State for India. The Governor -General was now called Viceroy and in 1877 the British Queen Victoria became the Empress of India. Gradually the Muslims in India began to become aware of their individuality and cultural identity. They were of the opinion that they could not live together with the Hindus and under the regime of the British. They wanted an independent country of their own. Sir Syed Ahmed Khan was one of the earliest pioneers of the independence movement. His "Two-Nation-Theory" was later supported by people like Allama Muhammed Iqbal and Chaudri Rehmat Ali Kahn. Both Allama Muhammed Iqbal and Chaudri Rehmat Ali Kahn had studied in Britain and when they came back they both believed that a