U nderstanding the present usually involves some grasp of its past. This holds true probably as much for an individual or social group as for an entire country such as India. India has a long and rich history. While knowing about its past in ancient and medieval times is very important, its colonial experience is particularly significant for comprehending modern India.
This is not just because many modern ideas and institutions reached India through colonialism. It is also because such an exposure to modern ideas was contradictory or paradoxical. For example, Indians in the colonial period read about western liberalism and freedom. Yet they lived under a western, colonial rule that denied Indians liberty and freedom.
It is contradictions of this kind that shaped many of the structural and cultural changes that Chapters and look at. As the next few chapters shall show, our social reform and nationalist movements, our laws, our political life and our Constitution, our industry and agriculture, our cities and our villages have been shaped by our paradoxical experience with colonialism. This has had lasting implications for our specific experience with modernity. The following are just some of the many instances we face in our daily life.
We have a parliamentary and a legal system, a police and educational system built very much on the British model. We drive on the left side of the road like the British. We have ‘bread-omlette’ and ‘cutlets’ as menu offered in many roadside eateries and canteens. A very popular manufacturer of biscuits, is actually named after Britain.
Many school uniforms include neck-ties. We often admire the west and as often resent it. These are just some of the many and complex ways that British colonialism lives on in contemporary India. Different dimensions of modernity