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delegations to the West to protest the abolition of slavery. 17 And it is important to realize that the slaves were not in a position to secure freedom for themselves. The descendants of African slaves owe their freedom to the exertions of white strangers, not to the people of Africa who betrayed them and sold them.
    Surely all of this is relevant to the reparations debate. A trenchant observation on the matter was offered years ago by Muhammad Ali, shortly after his defeat of George Foreman for the
heavyweight title. Upon returning to the United States, Ali was asked by a reporter, “Champ, what did you think of Africa?” Ali replied, “Thank God my granddaddy got on that boat!” There is a mischievous pungency to this remark that is entirely in keeping with Ali’s character. But there is also a profound meaning behind Ali’s words that I would like to explain by starting with a context more familiar to me, the context of colonialism.
    While I was a young boy growing up in India, I noticed that my grandfather, who had lived under British colonialism, was instinctively and habitually antiwhite. He wasn’t just against the English, he was generally against the white man. For him, the white man was basically a scoundrel, and if he ever came across a white man, he had a way of showing that the seemingly innocuous fellow was actually up to no good. When I first proposed the idea of going to America, he dissuaded me. “You should stay away from that place,” he said. “It’s full of white people.” I realized that he had an animus that I did not share. This puzzled me: why did he and I feel so differently?
    Only years later, after a great deal of experience and a fair amount of study, did the answer finally hit me. The reason for our difference of perception was that colonialism had been pretty bad for him, but pretty good for me. Another way to put it was that colonialism had injured those who lived under it, but paradoxically it proved beneficial to their descendants. Much as it chagrins me to admit it—and much as it will outrage many Third World intellectuals for me to say it—my life would have been much worse had the British never ruled India.
    How is this possible? Virtually everything that I am, what I do, and my deepest beliefs, all are the product of a worldview that
was brought to India by colonialism. I am a writer, and I write in English. My ability to do this, and to reach a world market, is indebted to the British. If not for them, I might still be a writer (actually this is extremely doubtful, but for reasons given later), but I would write in a local language (Konkani or Marathi) and reach a very limited audience. My understanding of technology, which allows me, like so many Indians, to function successfully in the modern world, was entirely the product of a Western education that came to India as a result of the British. So also my beliefs in freedom of expression, in self-government, in equality of rights under the law, and in the universal principle of human dignity—they are all the product of Western civilization.
    I am not suggesting that it was the intention of the colonialists to give all these wonderful gifts to the Indians. Admittedly some apologists for colonialism, such as Macaulay and Kipling, wrote as if the British endured a “white man’s burden” to share civilization with the lesser peoples. More candidly, Lord Lugard spoke of colonialism’s “dual mandate”: to help the local people and to benefit the ruling power. In practice, of course, the colonialists routinely subordinated the first objective to the second. Colonialism was not based on philanthropy; it was a form of conquest and rule. The English came to India to govern, and they were not primarily interested in the development of the natives, whom they viewed as picturesque savages. It is impossible to measure, or overlook, the enormous pain and humiliation