The Discovery of India

by Jawaharlal Nehru

There is a curious habit of the British of appraising their economic and social achievement in present-day India by criteria derived from social achievement here or elsewhere in the distant past. They compare, with evident satisfaction to themselves, what they have done in India during their regime with changes made some hundreds of years ago. The fact that the industrial revolution, and more especially the vast technological improvements of the past fifty years or so, have entirely changed the pace and tempo of life somehow escapes them when they think of India. They forget also that India was not a barren, sterile, and barbarous country when they came here, but a highly evolved and cultured nation which had temporarily become static and backward in technical achievements.