Several years ago, while on a business trip to New Delhi, I remarked to an Indian colleague, a Hindu, on the beauty of his country's Sansad Bhavan, or Parliament House. “Yes,” he remarked, “though we Indians didn't design it. It was the British. And Taj Mahal was built by the Muslim Turkic Mughals. None of the best architecture in this country is truly Indian.”
I was a bit shocked by his frank willingness to appreciate his country's debt to former conquerors. Later, after I noticed a worn copy of P.G. Wodehouse on his office desk, he acknowledged that he and his Indian colleagues all loved British literature above any other. Perhaps, I surmised, imperialism's legacy is not as black and white as we are often told.
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