British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is visiting India on 8 and 9 October. His visit to India takes place at a time when the global order is in a flux and India’s foreign policy is in a churn triggered by President Trump’s unilateralism. The tempo and turbulence in geopolitics is going to resonate in the interactions between the two sides during the visit. The occasion impels one to reflect and ruminate on the many splendored spectacle of Indo-UK relations and to redefine the relationship in the emerging geo-political context. Starmer is visiting Delhi and Mumbai, two cities which share a rich legacy of India’s relationship with United Kingdom.

Mumbai’s ‘Marine Drive’ is likened to the ‘Queen’s Necklace’. At one point of time Great Britain claimed the sun would never set on the British Empire; ironically the sun of the empire set in India, Britain’s pre-eminent colonial possession, in 1947. A few years after India’s Independence, former British Prime Minister Anthony Eden said, in 1954, “The Indian venture is not a pale imitation of our practice at home, but a magnified and multiplied reproduction on a scale we have never dreamt of. If it succeeds its influence on Asia is incalculable for good. Whatever the outcome, we must honour those who attempted it.” India has not only consolidated its democratic edifice, but has also emerged as the fourth largest economy in the world and is poised to become the third largest. In the long and chequered history of the Indo-British relationship, there are many landmarks and footnotes, replete with rancour and nostalgia.

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The relics and remnants of British rule in India are........

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