Justice, in British India, was far from blind: it was highly attentive to the skin colour of the defendant

Justice, in British India, was far from blind: it was highly attentive to the skin colour of the defendant. Crimes committed by whites against Indians attracted minimal punishment; and Englishman who shot dead his manservant got six months' jail time and a modest fine (then about 100 rupees), while an Indian convicted of attempted rape against an Englishwoman was sentenced to twenty years rigorous imprisonment.

S. Tharoor, Inglorious Empire (2016), 90

It is said that when Nadir Shah and his forces returned home, they had stolen so much from India that all taxes were eliminated in Persia for the next three years

But less than a century and a half later, this Mughal empire was in a state of collapse after the spectacular sacking of Delhi by the Persian Nadir Shah in 1739 and the loot of all its treasures. The Mughal capital was pillaged and burned over eight long weeks; gold, silver, jewels and finery worth over 500 million rupees, were seized, along with the entire contents of the imperial treasury and the emperor's fabled Peacock throne; elephants and horses were commandeered; and 50,000 corpses littered the streets. It is said that when Nadir Shah and his forces returned home, they had stolen so much from India that all taxes were eliminated in Persia for the next three years.

S. Tharoor, Inglorious Empire, (2016) 3 

I find this starkness of this passage in Tharoor's book on 'What the British did to India' really odd. This is largely because it rather seems to undercut his arguments - the same as everyone else seems to to be clear implication here  - but also because of the bizarre opener: 150 years is ages. It's more than the gap between Henry VIII and the Glorious Revolution; the Domesday book and Magna Carta; or Napoleon and Versailles.

The princes stubbornly continued fighting on two fronts: against mythology on the one hand, and democracy on the other

A great deal of dotty folklore had accreted around these curious monarchs and their life-style. According to certain legends these people in their day wore priceless gems for breakfast and conducted their daily business of despotism from the back of elephants, in more-than-Oriental splendour. Another school of though, mainly their own, held that the Indian princes were far-sighted and benevolent rulers and their disappearance mournful. However that may have been (and it was both), one might have thought to have heard the last of the Maharajahs, but not so. Even in the tormented times that so threatened India today the princes stubbornly continued fighting on two fronts: against mythology on the one hand, and democracy on the other.

J. Cameron, An Indian summer (1974), 114

What Forster had against colonialism was its corruption of individual relation, its destruction of personality

What Forster had against colonialism (since he was a novelist and not a pamphleteer) was its corruption of individual relation, its destruction of personality. What irked Forster about the Raj was that it turned a silly Indian like Aziz into a martyr and a silly Englishman like Heaslop into a tyrant, and neither of them were fitted for roles so important.

J. Cameron, An Indian summer (1974), 110

I expect that is what irked Forster about colonialism, but it's not what I'd put top.

In Hindostan, what must be the astonishment of the natives to find that we are forbidden to rob, murder, and steal;

'Let us ask, too, if the Bible is universally diffused in Hindostan, what must be the astonishment of the natives to find that we are forbidden to rob, murder, and steal; we who, in fifty years, have extended our empire from a few acres about Madras, over the whole peninsula, and sixty millions of people, and exemplified in our public conduct every crime of which human nature is capable.' 

H. Pearson, The Smith of Smiths (1934), 76

I think of old British colonialists, bred to authority and the wide horizons, living out their pensioned lives in semi-detached houses of cramped suburbia

At the other end of life I have often met exiles from their own times. I think of old British colonialists, bred to authority and the wide horizons, living out their pensioned lives in semi-detached houses of cramped suburbia.

J. Morris, Trieste and the meaning of nowhere (2001), 74

This was touching, but not a policy found in most textbooks on sporting governance

Tendulkar's 200th test should have been in Cape Town, but politics and money put paid to that: the BCCI wanted to bloody the nose of CSA chief executive Haroon Lorgat, and there were broadcasters to sate. Besides, Tino Best and Darren Sammy were less likely than Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel to embarrass an ageing superstar. Most conveniently, perhaps, the setting allowed Tendulkar's mother to watch him play for the first time. This was touching, but not a policy found in most textbooks on sporting governance.

L. Booth, 'Notes by the Editor', id. (ed.), Wisden Cricketers' Almanack (2014), 22

And then the batting, and batting, and more beautiful batting

The rest is an Indian fairytale: Laxman the last man out in the first innings for a dashing 59, asked to keep his pads on by his captain and the coach, swapping positions with a struggling Dravid in the follow-on, the two coming together in the second innings with Laxman almost upon his century but India still behind Australia’s first-innings total.

And then the batting, and batting, and more beautiful batting, over a short evening, the whole of March 14, and then some more. Laxman curling the ball through imperceptible gaps, Dravid regaining lost form through pure unblinking will, Laxman now flick-pulling the fast bowlers as if tossing frisbees, now driving them on the rise, sinuous jabs that raced improbably across the big green outfield, Dravid now blocking, now shouldering arms, now leaning back to cut, the old sureness slowly redeveloping, Laxman inside-outing Warne miraculously from far outside leg stump, now whipping him against the turn, Dravid, fully restored, emboldened to come down the track himself and wrist Warne across his break, all of this in the huge sound and growing belief of a hundred thousand in Eden Gardens, an energy that must be experienced to be understood.

R. Bhattacharya, 'Two southern gentlemen', L. Booth, Wisden Cricketers' Almanack (2013), 131-2

Two standing ovations: the first full of expectation, the second tinged invariably with regret

Tendulkar was also 38, and his fifth tour of England was widely assumed to be his last.. Each of his eight innings was accompanied by two standing ovations: the first full of expectation, the second tinged invariably with regret.

A. Miller, 'England v India 2011', L. Booth (ed.), Wisden Cricketers' Almanack (2012), 298

The sepoy councils resemble those juntas of young officers who seize power in modern states

The sepoy councils resemble those juntas of young officers who seize power in modern states. This is what national revolt often looks like. Just because the uprising is led by soldiers rather than by progressive intellectuals lately returned from the LSE or the London Inns of count, it does not mean that it does not have the seeds of modernity in it. It certainly cannot  be written off as a cry of rage against the modern world

F. Mount, The tears of the Rajas (2015), 581

He believed in 'socialism in one country', as long as it wasn't his own

Charles was a whiggish improving sort, who yearned to expropriate the landlords in favour of the true proprietors, the peasants who actually tilled the soil. Like many other modernizers, and there were plenty of them in India in the 1980s and 1840s, he would not have dreamed of applying these radical nostrums to England. He believed  in 'socialism in one country', as long as it wasn't his own.

F. Mount, The tears of the Rajas (2015), 398

Imagining that Napier had sent a one-word message 'Peccavi' - I have sinned

At least the annexation of Sind survives faintly in our memories, if only for the joke that Punch made about it, imagining that Napier had sent a one-word message 'Peccavi' - I have sinned. Posterity, literal-minded as ever, assumed that Napier really had sent such a message.

F. Mount, The tears of the Rajas (2015), 340

This is the most disappointing thing I have discovered for a very long time.

This view was not confined to British proconsuls. Karl Marx shared it too.

In truth, the British were  in a permanent dither about how best to raise the revenue on which their Raj depended. They began with, and never really lost, a sentimental attachment to the idea of Indian village life. As Sir Charles Metcalfe famously put it: '... Hindoo, Patan, Mughal, Mahratta, Sikh, English, all are masters in turn, but the village communities remain the same.' This view was not confined to British proconsuls. Karl Marx shared it too.

F. Mount,  The tears of the Rajas (2015), 189

It is a myth that there was only one great mutiny in India under British rule

It is a myth that there was only one great mutiny in India under British rule, one single aberration from the peaceful onward flow of the British Raj ... there were 110 uprisings between 1783 and 1900.

F. Mount,  The tears of the Rajas (2015), 71

The existence of Simla was itself a comment on the astonishing complacency of the British in India

The existence of Simla was itself a comment on the astonishing complacency of the British in India at this period: for seven months of the year, the Company ruled one-fifth of mankind from a Himalayan village overlooking the borders of Tibet and connected to the outside world by a road little better than a goat path. 

W. Dalrymple, Return of a King (2013), 130

I can hardly tell him this is the age of the bronze caster

I don’t know,’ said Srikanda, shrugging his shoulders. ‘It’s all part of the world opening up. After all, as my son says, this is the age of computers. And as much as I might want otherwise, I can hardly tell him this is the age of the bronze caster.'

W. Dalrymple, Nine Lives (2009), Kindle edition, location 3776