Books - Budapest Times

12 August 2019 - 08.08 AM

The United Kingdom's still-roiling Brexit controversy, with the referendum's most fervent supporters boasting of an unleashed Britain recapturing imperial-era glory, has tended to leave the messier, bloodier details of colonialism unexamined. From this distance, and with rose-tinted glasses, the British Empire — especially as it extended to India — can be viewed as an example of a selfless commitment to civilizing the world while standing atop it. And yet, as David Gilmour writes of the British mind-set during the imperial heyday, "It was as if the British, at almost every level of society, were proud to have India as their jewel but did not want to spend much time admiring the object: It was just nice to know that it was in the bank and to be able to boast about it." Even a couple of centuries ago, applying a microscope to British rule in India — let alone learning about Indians themselves — was inevitably a more complex, and fraught, undertaking than most Britons had any wish to engage in.