Indians excelled at mathematics , physics , medicine , mining , metallurgy and even rocketry under Tipu Sultan and Hyder Ali . True , there could only have been scientific and technological innovation if a forwardlooking Indian ruler had endowed the country with educational and scientific institutions where such research would have taken place . The British , however , failed to create such institutions the foremost Indian research institution under the British empire , the Indian Institute of Science , was endowed by the legendary Jamsetji Tata , not by any British philanthropist , let alone by the colonial government . And if competition with an industrializing Europe was a challenge , why wouldn ' t a free India have used a level playing field to its own advantage , levying its own tariffs when protection was needed , giving its own subsidies and developing its own existing global markets ? It is preposterous to suggest that India ' s inability to industrialize while the Western world did so was an Indian failure , the result of some sort of native deficiency , rather than the deliberate result of systematically planned policies by those who ruled India