British India

American  

noun

1. 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

1. 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

---

Example Sentences

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 • Dec. 25, 2025

The first census of British India was conducted in 1871-72, 14 years after the shamefully bloody Sepoy Mutiny, and counted some 200 million Indian subjects.

From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 5, 2025

Mr. Mamdani, a professor of government and anthropology at Columbia University, is himself a Ugandan Asian, the term used to describe people from British India who had settled in the British protectorate of Uganda.

From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 15, 2025

But in private, it discussed the issue with much alarm, communication between the governments of Bombay and British India shows.

From BBC • Jan. 11, 2025

We had arranged to sail from Madras to Calcutta by a British India named the Pundua, which ought to have landed us there in good time for Christmas, but our voyage had many checks.

From Fifty-One Years of Victorian Life by Child-Villiers, Margaret Elizabeth Leigh