Book review of 'The Making of India'
Hindustan Times Making of India: From 1947 to 2015, the complexities of our country Is the idea that India should be a hub of manufacture beset with problems of infrastructure? Updated: Jun 06, 2015 14:29 IST In 1857, the lavishly wealthy 330-year-old subcontinental Mughal empire was conquered by British imperialists who created their own empire. The British followed the maxim that conquered land belonged to the conqueror. So over the next decades, ships laden with booty crossed the seas to transfer untold riches to Britain. The name of the conquered land was Anglicised from Persian to English as India. The latter was ruthlessly colonised. By the time the British rule ended in 1947, 'natives' were bequeathed a hapless 'tryst with destiny' (the emotional words of independent India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru) with an impoverished, desiccated, partitioned India whose pyrrhic victory lay in downgrading the British monarch's title fro