A textbook mentions one British officer who built a hospital in his district
A textbook mentions one British officer who built a hospital in his district. Sameer says this shows the British administration cared about Indians’ welfare. Ritika says one officer tells you nothing about the whole administration. Who is right?
Who do you think is right? Pick one.
The answer: Ritika is right
Why
Sameer has a real example, and it is genuinely true: the hospital was built, and that particular officer may well have cared. The jump is from one person to a whole system. A government of thousands of officials over two centuries will contain some kind people and some cruel ones; picking either and calling it 'the British' tells you about that individual, not the policy. To judge the administration you look at what it did at scale and by rule: revenue demands, spending on Indian health and schooling against spending on the army and the railways, the laws passed and whom they served. Test: set the one hospital beside the total spent on public health across British India, per person, per year. Ritika is right: a single example is a story, not a pattern, and the pattern needs the numbers.
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