Thoughts on case for india

I somehow picked up the case for india book and read it in 2 days. I personally never imagined that a documentary style book would be to my liking but it touched me and made me go through it at a rapid pace. What are my thoughts? Let me quickly try to put it down:

The first thought was oh, my god, the british were so cruel. I had a brief glimpse of this in my history books but not in such a systematic, detailed fashion. I wonder why my school books which covered every thing from egyptian civilization to the french revolution leave out such an important chapter of our history? Why not cover in detail about how the english men slowly conquered our country by dividing us and by creating communal barriers amidst us? Why not tell us in detail about how they made our ancestors fight between themselves and how they suppressed us after they won over us? We read about raja ram mohan rai fighting against sati, we read about bramho samaj, arya samaj but never about the stories that compelled them to do so. We never read about how the british butchered my ancestors, about how they were not exactly the pioneers of a modern india and how they tried to block this great, ancient nation from recovery on every step. Our history talks briefly about 1857 and then jumps straight to mahatma gandhi without giving some of the great revolutionaries their due. In my mind, i would remove everything about french and russian revolutions, but fill our books about bhagat singh, raja ram mohan rai and may be have an indepth analysis of how the british arrived in late 1700's and slowly conquered the entire country.

Second thought was around the in depth character analysis of gandhi. From my childhood, we almost never seemed to delve into why gandhi would do this? Gandhi was made something of a caricature where he knew what he wanted to do and that he was above us. But in reality, he was more like you and me and probably that will give us more hope that we can someday with our dedication and patience emulate him. I liked the stance that gandhi took when he quit the non co-operation movement because the people were not ready for it and his stance on untouchability inspite of it being an unpopular subject was worth applauding. The sad part is that the party that claims to be based on his ideals seemed to have 'lost it' and is probably following the britishers based on its policy of divide and rule as well as its penchant for "psuedo secularism"....i wonder which party gandhi would have endorsed if he saw the sorry state of affairs in our country at this point?

Finally, i want to talk about the belief of gandhi in a righteous life and how that would eventually overcome the evil...we heard about it in ramayana, mahabharata and recently in the christians overthrowing the romans, but probably india achieving freedom through non violence and ahimsa is an example that is hard to ignore. Is this what we are taught from gandhi's life? To be able to live a righteous life today and not worry about what will happen tomorrow? To be able to embrace defeat through righteous means rather than accept victory through immoral deeds? Will i be able to remember these or will i forget them?