James Mill’s radical and reformist approach to foreign customs is now regarded as conservative and reactionary, indeed positively “far right” while the multiculturalism of the traditional colonial conservatives has now become progressive dogma.

“One could either keep the moral high ground or keep an ear to the ground — but not both.” a lesson here for the modern progressives perhaps.

The point today is that if you are rich and you give to the poor, you are bad because you are rich. By definition, you can’t be good and your motives must be suspect, if not evil.
If you are poor you can’t give to the poor because you have nothing to give. But you are good by definition. The poorer you are, the better you become.
But where does that leave the people who make money by writing about the evil rich? By definition, the writers and university lecturers are getting richer, thereby straying into evil ways.

A fascinating and (as far as i can ascertain) balanced insight into the politico/cultural themes which ran through the British colonial system.
It’s especially welcome, given the almost mindless extremes of opinion which dominate discussions on empire nowadays, and which effectually remove the possibility of historical context or understanding.
In that regard, interesting that the author lectures at Oxford. My guess is that if this piece were written by someone with white ethnicity, it’d be rejected out of hand. Perhaps the legacy of Empire might include the possibility of those whose connections to the UK arose from their native cultures, maintaining the tradition of enlightened objectivity seemingly rejected by the “educated” classes with primarily English and Scottish origins.

It’s my understanding that Mill’s critique of the position of women in his History of British India that persuaded that doyen of the Bengal Renaissance, Rammohan Roy, to press the British for reforms – principally the abolition of sati (or suttee). Roy and his fellows in the Brahmo Samaj saw the British as allies for reforming Indian society. Sadly, Roy died at a very early age, when visiting Britain. Had he lived… who knows?

“Railing against the caste system was a way of railing against the class system”
This is something a lot of people in the West don’t get nowadays.
It’s always about a class system, whether the pukka British version, the so called caste system or slavery (both at the African origins and the US destinations).
Caste was basically another name for profession and status. Everything else follows – the economic and social degradation of the lower class, lack of social and marital mobility etc.

If anything, the caste system being rigid made it easier to attack – making it illegal to discriminate based in caste, provide job and education quotas (which don’t work as well as intended as is the case, but still), keeping track of how much representation lower castes have in government, etc.

Because the English class system is so subtle (while not much less rigid), makes it difficult to pin down and eliminate.

As a historian I tend to find fault with your sweeping one- sidedness in asserting that Mill’s worldview had a predominant sway on British colonial mind-sets. It didnot. Even Lord Macaulay whose was one the biggest official minds influenced by this philosophy was finally a pragmatist. Introducing Western education was a pragmatic and not a dogmatic choice.
Unfortunately Mill who you celebrate is exactly the reason why colonialism gets its bad name. A racist and a white supremacist.
There is nothing redeeeming in the man.
Instead I would look to those countless dedicated ICS men and Indian social reformers of the 19th century especially Raja Rammohan Roy, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, Dayanand Saraswati et al for achieving the synthesis between social change and institutional reform albeit of a gradualist kind to achieve for India what Mill’s bigoted perverse prejudices would never.
Do choose your heroes more wisely than what you just did.