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The best thing that ever happened to India was being made a part of the British Empire. It's taken a century or so, but now India is truly beginning to reap the rewards of having learned how to respect order and the rule of law in an English-speaking democracy.

No sir...That is exteremely wrong statement...In the 1700 when the british were not around,India produced 20% of the world's GDP ...By the time british left in 1947 India was barely producing 1% of the world's GDP....If India would have somehow managed to stay independent of the british, India would be rivaling today's Japan in terms of development... British leeches did nothing but suck blood out of India.....They systematically destroyed industry and skills..
I am surprised to hear such comments from Americans who themselves threw away the British rule...

I didn't say that it wasn't necessary for India to ultimately throw off British rule; it was, just as it was necessary for the American colonies to do so. But what India got from the British was respect for the rule of law, a weakening of the caste system in favor of meritocracy, etc. Here's a passage from Wikipedia:

The British colonial rule brought along an institutional environment that guaranteed property rights, ensured free trade, had fixed exchange rates, uniform currency system, open capital markets, created a well developed system of railways and telegraphs, a bureaucracy free from political interferences and a modern legal system.

These are very important achievements, indeed, I would submit.

While it's true that towards the end of British rule, India was suffering from economic stagnation and other problems, the GDP comparisons you make don't take into account the enormous expansion of world GDP during the time you mention as a result of industrialization and the expansion of markets mediated by the British Empire and other political entities. So if India's percentage of world GDP shrank during the two-and-a-half centures from 1700 to 1950, that goes hand-in-hand with the just-mentioned global expansion.

By leaving India with the legacy mentioned in the quoted passage above, the British prepared her to work out her own internal problems in an orderly and systematic way, paving the way for the blossoming of India that we're beginning to witness today.

If you're Indian, please forgive me for seeming to disagree with you about the history of your own country. Let me emphasize that I'm presenting my take on things as I see them from a distance and I'm certainly open to being corrected about matters that I might have gotten wrong.

Best regards to you...