(I grew up in India in the 90s and 2000s.) As a sibling comment said, the history taught in schools focuses heavily on the freedom movement. In fact students l

(I grew up in India in the 90s and 2000s.) As a sibling comment said, the history taught in schools focuses heavily on the freedom movement. In fact students learn basically nothing about World War 1 and 2, since the freedom movement lasted from 1857 to 1947, so there's no time to talk about what was going on in the rest of the world. Every educated Indian will agree that getting independence was better than staying under British rule. However, contrary to what that comment says, I think you could safely get educated Indians to agree that the British rule was better than the fragmented mess that India was before the East India Company. British education infrastructure in general was responsible for the state of India today. Many of the leaders of the freedom movement had higher educations as a consequence of being British subjects, eg Gandhi and Nehru both studied law in England. So I would say the British rule definitely would be considered to be the source of modernity and education. Edit: The British also did a bunch of uplifting to get rid of shit like sati (widows being forced to be cremated in their husband's funeral pyre for religious reasons) and child marriage, though it wasn't completely effective and also required a bunch of effort in post-independence India.