In October 2022, a few days before Rishi Sunak became the first British-Indian prime minister, the Tippu Express railway train from Bangalore to Mysore was renamed the Wodeyar Express after an erstwhile Hindu royal house of the region. The resultant howl in social media from Indian and western liberals was based on the fact that Tipu Sultan fought the British, whereas the Wodeyars were restored to the throne by them. True, but not the whole story. Tipu allied with French colonial forces and constantly sought help from the shah of Persia, the Ottoman sultan, and Afghan warlords. He was not fighting for “India” but rather his own Islamic fiefdom. The mythification of Tipu as a great and powerful Indian king was partially a product of his valorization by the British as a worthy opponent, as well as a product of post-independence Nehruvian amplification.

This episode was a small manifestation of a long-running debate over the British Raj. Post-colonial scholars attribute all of India’s problems to European exploitation between the sixteenth and early twentieth centuries. Their opponents point out that in that period there was no concept of a singular political entity known as India in the territorial form we observe today. There was a seat in Delhi under a crumbling Mughal suzerainty and a host of local secessionist powers opposed to any central authority. Modern India, with her parliamentary democracy, penal and procedural codes, Asiatic Societies, research designs, military attire, tea, cricket, boarding schools, railways, heavy industries, cartography, civil service, and common law, is a product of “imperial modernity,” to use the terminology of A.J.P. Taylor.