NEW DELHI

INDIAN OFFICIALS INVOLVED in negotiating a Free Trade Agreement with Brexit Britain have insisted -as a deal draws ever so slowly closer – that the old colonial masters have nothing to be apprehensive about as the Indians intend always to apply the same courtesies to Britain as Britain applied to India over three centuries.

“We hear how magnificent the British Raj was for India,” said Pandit Chandra Gandhi, an academic based in Mumbai. “All the fine things it brought us; how we were civilized, educated and democratized; how any excesses were far outweighed by the benefits of imperial rule and benevolent guidance. Our people are anxious to pay the British back for their beneficence in their own magnificent coin. The debt will be honored.”