...(It) is to one British colonial policy-maker or another that we owe the Boxer Rebellion, the Mau Mau insurrection, the Boer War, and the Boston Te… - Shashi Tharoor

In India, history was pressed into the nation-building project. There was a desire to allay over some unpleasant details, the destruction of temples, some of the horrors that happened while stressing on the commonalities that also featured throughout the ages.

The British did little, very little, of such things. They basked in the Indian sun and yearned for their cold and fog-ridden homeland; they sent the money they had taken off the perspiring brow of the Indian worker to England; and whatever little they did for India, they ensured India paid for it in excess. And at the end of it all, they went home to enjoy their retirements in damp little cottages with Indian names, their alien rest cushioned by generous pensions supplied by Indian taxpayers.

Bengalis say when offered cod, we still have other fish to fry.