Sikh NRI writes on ‘positive aspects’ of colonial rule
Monday, 18/04/2016
http://paper.hindustantimes.com/epaper/viewer.aspx
LONDON: A new book by a prominent Sikh non-resident Indian (NRI) entrepreneur here about the British rule and its role in creating a unified India has attracted rave reviews for bringing out the “many positive aspects” of the colonial rule.
Kartar Lalvani, a philanthropist, private scholar and historian, in the preface of his book ‘The Making of India: The Untold Story of British Enterprise’ writes: “Given the wealth of valuable original information that I found waiting to be uncovered during my research, it is surprising that the many positive aspects of colonial rule have remained hitherto untold.”
In the book, Lalvani presents the first exploration of Britain’s colonial contribution to the nation’s building in a single volume. From the iron girders, tools and workers that made the treacherous 19,200-km voyage, to the tea, spices, silk and cotton that returned home, the book assesses those first groundbreaking endeavours and the two centuries of British imperial rule that followed.
Lalwani says he envisaged the book to detail “how this great British enterprise and its contributions in the 19th and 20th centuries helped to create a unified India, out of multi-cultural, multi-linguistic and divided regions of the vast Indian subcontinent.”
In his foreword to the book, former Union minister, Rajya Sabha member and prominent lawyer Ram Jethmalani says: “I fully concur with Dr Lalvani... A highly educated author belonging to the brave Sikh community should declare the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”
Born in Karachi in 1931, Lalwani moved to Mumbai after the partition and to London in 1956 to study pharmacy, before undertaking his doctorate with distinction at the University of Bonn. He is the founder-chairman of Vitabiotics.
