| > CV Raman won the Nobel prize in science, Tagore won the Nobel prize in literature, Ramanujan etc, the names are numerous. So golden age of India was when the country with a seventh of the world's population won 2 nobel prizes over 5 decades ? > The British rule also was the largest and most stable unification of India till the modern times. After 1850s there were almost no pockets of military resistance against the British rule. Mughal and Gupta empires lasted over 3 centuries, Mauryan empire a little under 1.5 centuries. By comparison, east india company rule lasted a century and the British crown's rule less than that. So again completely incorrect. > The third golden age which no one wants to admit (left or right) is the British Golden age. There's your hint: if people on both sides of the aisle don't "want to admit" something, maybe it doesn't make sense. Not to mention a slap in the face of billions of Indians. > The British age declined with WW1 and WW2, and ended with Indian independence. Thank god for that decline, otherwise Indian taxpayers would have been funding Brexit and the crumbling British economy right now. > My oversimplified summary has been This is not a summary, it's a lazy opinion backed by little research. |
But if you want to read something really heretic, maybe try reading An autobiography of an unknown Indian by Niraj Choudhary. Choudhary was a British raj supporter, as in an Indian who opposed Indian independence. Does that shock you? There were actually quite a lot of them, more than you’d expect.
Then if you want to get really metal, read in his own words, by Subedar Sitaram Pande. Sitaram Pande, was a soldier for the bengal army, for the British empire from 1812 to 1860, it’s one of the rare first author accounts we get of an Indian in that era. It will give you a glimpse of how an Indian at that time thought generally (hint: it was far more dominated by caste than you’d expect), how he viewed the empire and his relation to it. At that point I would say you are ready to try to understand Indian history that is not an avengers movie plot.
I would follow it with CK Majumdars history of modern India, one of the best historians so committed to the truth that Nehru had to throw him out of the government and try to prevent him from writing his book. Don’t worry, he’s not an heretic, he was an Indian freedom fighter, but you will find that he was far more honest about his life under Britain, under Indian national Congress and the state of the country in different periods of time (he also has a 12 volume set covering India for over 2000 years that I never had a chance to complete).