Dalrymple’s

In 1835, when Lord Macaulay talked about creating a class of persons “Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect”, he wouldn’t have expected the idea to take off so effortlessly. Over a century later— and within four years of India’s Independence—nirad Chandra Chaudhuri, a celebrated but equally reviled author, dedicated his book, Autobiography of an Unknown Indian, “to the memory of the British Empire in India”, saying that “all that was good and living within us was made, shaped and quickened by the same British rule”.

Seventy years later, there aren’t many takers for the idea of the “benign Raj”. Even the apologists of British colonial rule now tread cautiously while mentioning its role in politically and administratively uniting the country—first through canons and later railways. They are also circumspect about reminding the strides the Raj took in the introduction of democracy and education. Even its initiatives in the spread of tea and cricket fail to hide its true colonial colours. It was a case of plain and simple loot. As historian William Dalrymple puts it in his new book, The Anarchy, “One of the very first Indian words to enter the English language was the Hindustani slang for plunder: loot.” But has the real face of the Raj been unmasked totally?

The Macaulayan hold may have slackened on the surface, but the fact is the idea of India is still being defined and interpreted through colonial yardsticks. The material loss to the Raj may have been analysed in detail, but the loss of the mind is yet to be probed properly. A classic case is the narrative of Mahatma Gandhi being the “Father of the Nation”. There’s no denying the contribution of the Mahatma in the making of modern India, but isn’t it plain ludicrous to give him any such epithet especially when the civilisational roots of the land of Rama, Krishna and Buddha go back by millennia and had a series of ace