We have come here to collect. “We” and “they” have switched places. “They”—foreigners—are the new “we.” They define themselves as anyone wronged—actually or in their own accounting—by the American past. And not only by the American past, as the anecdote illustrates. You might ask: how is it that the United States (Mehta himself lives in New York and teaches at NYU) is in any way to blame for British colonialism in India?
