India is now an "important" country. Burgeoning technologically and culturally, what it received from Britain was access to the intellectual firestorm of the Enlightenment. Hindu thinkers were involved in the formation of Universalism, the idea that all religions were different aspects of the same thing and could be united.
Of course, it cost them the pain of the Pakistan-India divide, the struggle of Gandhi, and a confusing cultural identity among a people that didn't necessarily have a singular cultural identity in the first place. But what price is too much?
South Africa paid the price, and is now among the most advanced of African nations.
Of course, most indigenous peoples just got royally fucked. Aboriginal Australians and the Maori. So I suppose your point in general holds.