(a) Going to Oxford didn't necessarily make a person clever. (b) Cleverness didn't necessarily make a good prime minister. (c) If a person couldn't… - Arundhati Roy

Debating Imperialism is a bit like debating the pros and cons of rape. What can we say? That we really miss it?

Kashmir has never been an integral part of India. I know the story of the Kashmiri pandits. I also know that the story that these Panun Kashmir pandits put out is false. However, this does not mean that injustice was not done.
The British drew the map of India in 1899— so that country became a colonizing power the moment it became independent, and the Indian state has militarily intervened in Manipur, in Nagaland, in Mizoram, in Kashmir, in Telangana, during the Naxalbari uprising, in Punjab, in Hyderabad, in Goa, in Junagarh…

Impelled by feelings that were primal yet paradoxically wholly impersonal. Feelings of contempt born of inchoate, unacknowledged fear — civilization's fear of nature, men's fear of women, power's fear of powerlessness. Man's subliminal urge to destroy what he could neither subdue nor deify.