1858 The Mutiny defeated, imperial rule is directly assumed by the British government. Queen Victoria's proclamation promises Indians impartial admittance to the empire's governing bureaucracies.

1869 The opening of the Suez Canal facilitates British rule in India and commerce between the subcontinent and Britain.

1875 Two portentous events in Hindu–Muslim relations: the foundation of the major Hindu revivalist organization in northern India, the Arya Samaj; and Saiyid Ahmad Khan's establishment of his Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College.

1883 The Indian govemment's withdrawal of the Ilbert Bill is widely interpreted by the educated middle classes as a concession to Anglo-Indian racism.

1885 The first meeting of the Indian National Congress: initially an interest group of the, primarily Hindu, professional middle classes.

1892 The Indian Council Act begins the history of participation in central and provincial assemblies of wise, wealthy and well-born Indians.

1900 The Punjab Alienation of Land Act favors Muslims, in general, and disfavors urban Hindus, in particular, in an important British Indian province.

1905 The viceroy, Lord Curzon, partitions Bengal into separate Hindu- and Muslim-majority provinces, thus providing Congress with its first nationalist cause célèbre and provoking the first major trauma in Hindu–Muslim relations under the Raj.

1906 The All-India Muslim League is founded in Dhaka by landlords and haut bourgeois.

1907 The Tata Iron and Steel Company is established at Jamshedpur, in what is now Jharkhand state.