When the British began teaching us English, they put the capstone on a thousand-year process of scrambling the Indian brain. It is the imperative of the conquered to apply such power as they possess in absolute resistance, without regard for success or extinction. That was the way of the Americans, the Haitians, and many other colonised nations that successfully fought against worse odds than we ever faced. The coward's way of compromise and negotiation with the conqueror has given India, in the case of language, the obscene feebleness of modern Indian society.

In its 75 years as an independent country, India presents all of the same contrasts in its society and culture, indeed in the physical appearance of its people, that it did in the immediate aftermath of two centuries of colonial rule.