“A historian must make do with such ideas as he has, but he might always try to send them out in better shape.” So wrote Archibald Paton Thornton, that fine historian of the imperial idea and its enemies. This brilliant gentleman’s words came back to me while I was being reprimanded by a schoolteacher a few months back as a consequence of a short speech I had given in class. She was appalled that I had apparently praised a regime that “looted Indians of their dignity”, and “plundered India of its...