However:
The European colonial powers were not all over the world to enforce "European cultural values". They were there to extract minerals, lumber, labor, and agricultural produce for as little a price they could pay.
The European colonial powers were not all over the world to enforce "European cultural values". They were there to extract minerals, lumber, labor, and agricultural produce for as little a price they could pay.
Also,
Napier enforced the British prohibition of suttee, or sati practice. This was the custom of a widow's burning herself to death on the funeral pyre of her husband. While rarer during the time Napier ruled Sindh,[20] these immolations were, Napier judged, motivated by profits for the priests; when told of an actual sati about to take place, he informed those involved that he would stop the sacrifice. The priests complained that this was a customary religious rite, and that customs of a nation should be respected. As recounted by his brother William, he famously replied:
Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Napier_(British_Army_o...
Nobody's denying the subcontinent had its faults. But holding a few instances of positive work by the British doesn't nullify the millionfold negative stuff.
I'm not going to give you sources. You can research on your own. Every bit of British history in the subcontinent shows that the "customs" were nothing but a ruse to justify the loot and a fig leaf, at best, to cover up quite a lot of injustice.