Current mood:

contemplative

This is a transcript of the Prime Ministers address at Oxford, from The Hindu.

Of all the relationships between a former colonial master and the colonized, India and Britain seem to have a very salubrious one. And it is interesting to note that an Indian Prime Minister can speak about the positive benifits that did accrue from the Raj. Yes, it was a discriminatory system, and yes, there was oppression of opinion. But, for the time, compared to the Spaniards, or the Belgians or the Dutch, the British ran a fairly decent ship. Is it a bad thing to acknowledge these, and move on? I think not. I think that there is a different sense of Indian-ness and national pride today, that transcends our past, and listens to a future, that can only be far brighter than what we are witnessing today - a sense that we are more than just a former colony, and a nation ready to stand shoulder to shoulder with the great powers of the day.