A sense of fair play

THE British Empire, wrote historian James Mill, was “a vast system of outdoor relief for the upper classes”. He reached this opinion later in life; his great work of history, published in 1817, had been the bible of imperialism. He simply came to believe that the “civilising mission” of empire was just a cover for continued British rule, drained of all moral content.

Mill did not live to witness the transformation of the British Raj during the second half