So what is striking is that it was the British who made people far more self-conscious of caste identities and separation and distinction amongst them. I mean I remember a very memorable argument over dinner one night with late Israeli president Shimon Peres, in which he said he hates history, he doesnt want his grandchildren to learn history because history only teaches you to hate and that to focus on the future you need to forget the past. Caste is something weve all been taught to believe has been there for thousands of years and we have always practised it. Let’s see. Gold Coast in Ghana, rubber from Malaysia.The second thing, however, was new insights.

There is this notion that the British quit India because the empire was anyway in tatters post World War Two, and so it was difficult for them to hold on to India and other colonies. But I had never fully understood the extent to which, as modern scholars have demonstrated, caste as we know it today was a British invention.Q: Do you think the people of India and its rulers could have done anything differently to tackle British rule in India? If you could go back in time, what advice would you give them? A: I have a lot of respect for the odds that the Indians had to overcome to get there. One was to actually just substantiate my own arguments.

It would have Soundproof Auto Glass Window Rubber Seal been inappropriate, for example, to propose abolition of sedition bill which was the prerogative of the home minister. The man who started off as an Anglophile and then went ahead to become someone who actually worked on the most devastating critique of what he called un-British rule, its creation of poverty in India, which people forget. But people dont know that.Q: Have you noticed a significant change in attitude?A: Yes, even after my unsuccessful 377 attempt, there were so many LGBT demonstrations in our country - some explicitly in support of my bill. But I think my next flight I’ll start on that.In my case in India, I would say that the reason to know history is because if you don't know where you are coming from, how will you appreciate where you are going? If you don’t know the condition in which the British left us in 1947, how will you take the measure of the accomplishments of this country today and the directions in which it can and cannot go? We were deprived of 200 years of possible industrialization. The transformation of London thanks to money looted from India, the vast buildings that came up in London, the institutions that were created on the basis of colonial money- not just India, also the West Indies, the money from sugar in the West Indies plantations and so on.And the second thing was to catch up on the latest scholarship in the field because after all professional historians, which Im not one, had been working in these areas and done scholarly articles. And on top of that, that belief is sort of reinforced by these misty-eyed television dramas like "Indian Summers” and even the "Jewel in the Crown”, which as books were actually much more balanced and aware of Indian points of view. There’s this image painted by the British about India always being a poor land - it wasnt.

I do sometimes catch movies on planes but very often I spend long flights reading rather, because thats also the only spare time one has to read without being interrupted. And I had even suggested in my book the right time for it would be the centenary of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, which is a completely inexcusable, indefensible, unprovoked act of brutality. And I felt I needed to make sure the facts were correct, the figures were right, the dates were accurate, and so on. When Oxford used the word reparations in their topic, # I spoke of reparations but I spoke of a symbolic one pound a year for two hundred years.Q: What can we expect from you next in the form of the book? A: Well, my publishers have been talking to me about doing something for the 70th anniversary, sort of a relatively semi light-hearted take on Indian-ness and on the Indian people. It was one the richest countries in the world when the British moved in and they reduced it to one of the poorest. The civil service was the highest paid civil service in the world … so it wasnt as if there was any particular lack of benefit for Britain, the British could see it. So the British to a large extent are unaware there is anything to apologize for.But I've never been a major proponent of reparations. But instead, we have now adopted Victorian morals wholesale. So its not going to happen either. No finance minister will take on such an obligation or even receiving it as an obligation.. How does it matter anymore? Let’s focus on the future.But inevitably I asked myself why and its because Im a human being with a number of reactions to the world, some of which I manifest in my work and some of which I have manifested in my writing.Q: Was there any new information or anecdote or data that you came across and found interesting or startling enough to include in the book?A: I found everything interesting, but was there anything that surprised or startled me? I think a couple of things. I think that was self-justification later. And you know the fact that even by the early 19th century, which was just a few decades of British rule, we had, for example, the Bengal Renaissance. Its because there was a nationalist movement that had gained in strength despite the British that they had managed to prise more and more freedom from the hands of the reluctant colonists … As late as 1940 I have quoted British people saying they expected the rule to last another thousand years

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