Our selection this time was unanimous: www.itihaas.com.  If you go through this site, you will get a good understanding of the history of India. (Something is wrong lately with this site, therefore I suggest you to use the following one: Kamat . Another is being built : History of India )

There are too many questions that foreigners like to interpret in strange ways. It is not possible to deal with all of them in short commentaries like mine.

I touch here only a few aspects.

Practically all intruders settled down in India (or whatever you call the ancient conglomerates of peoples on the subcontinent) and were slowly converted into the occupied “substance”. Practically the only “big wave” that ruled India for a long time, but resisted this swallowing power of India, were the British. They were too proud of themselves, the customs and habits of Indians too strange, the feeling of supremacy (a would not hesitate to use the expression racism) simply did not make possible for them to mix up in the hated substance. India finally got fed up with them and vomited them out of this rich world.

The British brought and gave India a lot of important instruments of development: united it, introduced compehensive system of laws, education, health care, built the world’s longest railway-network, roads, discovered ancient memorials of fantastic beauty, introduced modern industries and last but not least gave India their language that became one of the most important means of unificaton of its population. This is appreciated by most of Indian thinkers. Still, Britain, the least cruel colonizer among all cruel powers had to give up India and withdrew not only because the peaceful resistance organised and led by Mahatma shattered the system and put shame on this huge monster, but also because the modern industries introduced by them completely destroyed the small-scale industries of the country, undermining the life of hundreds of millions. Starvation death became a common and quickly spreading phenomenon and the British were unable to cure this horrifying illness of the colonial system. The final account of the colonial rule of the British in India was closed by tremendous minuses if you look at it from the Indian side.

India expressed its gratitude organising the farewell ceremony of the last troop of British soldiers, leaving India at the Gate of India in Bombay, which was erected for king George, the Fifth, who visited the Crown-Colony in 1911. The last soldiers, leaving India in shame had to march through the Gate built for their glorious king.

My last - and very personal - remark: I am absolutely convinced that the Partition of India, at least the way it was executed by one of the greatest nobles of the British Empire was one of the ugliest sins committed against foreign nations during the shameful history of mankind. It is true that personal ambitions of a muslim Indian played significant role in creating hostile situation among hindus and muslims, but sending a proud of himself noble, not knowing much about India, to solve the problem, to create impossible deadline and drawing border-lines between muslims and hindus using maps, hurriedly compiled for the purpose was a sin, the result of which was the death of one and a half million Indians. Stupid. Similar to the way the victorious powers cut Hungary into pieces after the first world war, or to the way czars and Stalin used to draw borders, adding neighbours to their empires.

I have to confess that of all the speeches I have heard or read in my life I consider the best the speech of Jawaharlal Nehru, delivered at midnight on the 14^th of August 1947, when independence of India was announced. We quote this speech below:

www.itihaas.com/independent/speech.html (This site seems to be dead, here is a live one: Nehru's speech )