The Making of India: The Untold Story of British Enterprise
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Overview
The first ever history of India to explore the benefits – institutional, political and civil – of British Colonial Rule on the subcontinent.
The story of The Making of India begins in the seventeenth century, when a small seafaring island, one tenth the size of the Indian subcontinent, despatched sailing ships over 11,000 miles on a five-month trading journey in search of new opportunities. In the end they helped build a new nation. The sheer audacity and scale of such an endeavour, the courage and enterprise, have no parallel in world history.
This book is the first to assess in a single volume almost all aspects of Britain’s remarkable contribution in providing India with its lasting institutional and physical infrastructure, which continues to underpin the world’s largest democracy in the twenty-first century.
The first ever history of India to explore the benefits – institutional, political and civil – of British Colonial Rule on the subcontinent.
Validation from Anil Seal, the foremost historian of modern India
Foreword by Professor Ram Jethmalani, MP
Preface: Time to recognise the positive side of the imperial coin
1 The Argument: Balance and Perspective
2 The East India Company: Ambitions to Rule the Waves
3 Routes to India
4 Ships and Shipbuilding: The Age of Steam
5 Ports, Harbours and Lighthouses
6 Canals and Water Supplies
7 Roads: Leaving No Stone Unturned
8 Mail Services, the Telegraph and the Telephone
9 Railways: A Network is Built with Incredible Speed
10 Locomotive Workshops and the Manufacture of Rolling Stock
11 Bridge Building
12 Foundries, Iron and Steel: The Rise of Indian Self-Sufficiency
13 Extraction Industry Development
14 Electricity Generation
15 India Adopts the Tram
16 The Textile and Jute Industries
17 Sugar, Tea and Coffee Industries
18 Early Air Services
19 Establishing an Administrative Infrastructure
20 Education and Health: Engineering and Medical Colleges
21 Indian Heritage and Culture: Conservation, Restoration and Appreciation
22 Diaspora: Migration and Opportunity
Appendix A: Milestones in the Making of India
Appendix B: Biographies: British Engineers in India
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Index
Elegant, fair and extremely well written. I am delighted that the other side of the story is being told, as it deserves to be.
Remarkable for its scholarship, readability and message.
Absolutely excellent: informative, well argued and passionate. This book contains the seeds of future Anglo-Indian cooperation.
This is a courageous and meticulously researched book. It challenges the fashionably negative view of the impact of the Raj on India. Dr Lalvani makes the positive case with conviction and scholarship.
I fully concur with Dr Lalvani that Indians should be grateful for some of the permanent blessings of colonial rule, which only the unique attributes of the British could have conferred on us. A highly educated author belonging to the brave Sikh community should declare the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Dr Lalvani is a mover and a shaker. This remarkably scholarly book will turn old ways of thinking upside down.
Dr Lalvani shows his love of both countries in a generous, heart-warming contribution to our history. This book will be a bright star to which we can turn for the authoritative alternative version of how the British helped India.
Dr Lalvani has laid a new foundation for our understanding of how the wide ranging infrastructure provided by the British helped prepare India for its transformation into a 21st-century power.
Extremely well judged, factually accurate, with a wealth of fascinating material … This book adds hugely to our knowledge.
Bracingly controversial ... I defy anyone with a modicum of open-mindedness not to read The Making Of India and concede, however grudgingly, that [the author] just might have a point
An equally wonderful and thought-provoking book that drips with complexity
- Title: The Making of India: The Untold Story of British Enterprise
- Author: Kartar Lalvani
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Continuum
- Print Publication Date: 2016
- Logos Release Date: 2024
- Pages: 464
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781472924834, 9781472924827, 1472924827, 1472924835
- Resource ID: LLS:9781472924834
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2025-04-22T11:22:01Z
Dr Kartar Lalvani OBE, FRPharmS, DSc, is founder and chairman of Vitabiotics, Britain's leading vitamin company. Born in Karachi in 1931, Kartar moved to Mumbai in 1947 and to London in 1956 to study pharmacy, before undertaking his doctorate at Bonn University. An honorary Professor at University of Franche Comté, Besançon, France, Kartar is also a philanthropist, private scholar and historian.