The latest twist in the Air India disaster reads like a chapter from a Victorian novel of empire and intrigue. As the wreckage still smoulders, a chorus of British aviation experts has risen to demand an independent inquiry into the crash. Their cries, however, echo not of impartial justice but of a deeper, more troubling impulse: the reflexive assumption that Indian institutions are incapable of self-governance. One cannot help but recall the condescension of Lord Macaulay, who once declared that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. Today, the shelf has been replaced by a cockpit voice recorder, but the sentiment remains unchanged.
The facts are these: an Air India flight has crashed under circumstances that remain murky. The Indian Directorate General of Civil Aviation, no stranger to controversy, has launched its own investigation. Yet from the salons of London, voices of impeccable Britishness have declared this insufficient. They demand an independent inquiry, by which they mean one led by Western experts. This is not a demand for transparency; it is a demand for submission. It is the same logic that once justified the British Raj: that the natives, for all their pretensions to modernity, remain fundamentally incapable of managing their own affairs.
Let us examine the track record. Air India has faced a litany of safety concerns, from ageing fleets to allegations of corruption in the maintenance contracts. The Indian system of oversight, frankly, has been a disgrace. But does this justify the assumption that only white faces can deliver justice? The British aviation establishment, for all its vaunted expertise, has its own skeletons. The Boeing 737 MAX disasters, the Grenfell Tower fire, the infected blood scandal: these were not managed by Indian regulators. They were managed by British and American ones. The difference is that when the West fails, it is a tragedy. When the East fails, it is a proof of civilisational inadequacy.
The demand for an independent inquiry is, at its core, a power play. It says that India is not yet ready to join the club of mature nations. It says that the sun truly never sets on the British sense of superiority. But what of the irony? The very same voices that now decry Indian incompetence are the ones who spent decades stripping India of its industrial base, its wealth, and its confidence. The British Raj was not a school of good governance; it was an extractive empire. And now, having left, they mourn that the garden they planted is not blooming as they wished.
I do not defend the Indian authorities. It is entirely possible—indeed, likely—that the Indian investigation will be botched, politicised, or worse. But that is precisely the point. If India is to ever transcend its colonial legacy, it must be allowed to fail and learn from failure. An independent inquiry, imposed from outside, would be a ritual of humiliation, not a path to safety. It would confirm that India is forever a ward of the West, unable to stand on its own two feet.
Consider the alternatives. If the British experts are sincere, let them offer aid and resources, not demands. Let them advise, not dictate. But no, they must lead. They must be seen to lead. It is the imperial instinct, dressed in the language of concern. This is the same instinct that produced the Mandate system, the IMF conditionalities, and the endless lectures on democracy from nations that happily supply arms to despots.
There is a deeper lesson here, one that applies to all nations emerging from the shadow of empire. The path to maturity is paved with mistakes. Every successful aviation regulator—the FAA, the EASA, the CAA—has a history of catastrophic errors. The difference is that they were allowed to make them without having their sovereignty questioned. India, and indeed the entire Global South, must demand the same right: the right to be flawed, to be incompetent, to be tragic, and yet to remain sovereign.
So let the British experts scream for their independent inquiry. Let them hold their press conferences and pen their op-eds. But let them also acknowledge the unspoken premise of their demand: that some nations are born free, and others are perpetually in tutelage. The Air India crash is a tragedy for those who lost their lives. But the response to it is a tragedy for the idea of a post-colonial world.
