The British legacy of subordination of India has been characterized as development of underdevelopment. The liberals see it as a result of the British policies alone.

Colonialism should be seen as a distinct historical stage or a period in the modern historical development of India which intervenes between the traditional pre-British society and economy and the modem capitalist society and economy. It is not a mere adaptation or distortion of the old. It is neither a partially modernized society nor a transitional state of society. Colonialism is also just not an amalgam of positive and negative features.

It is a well structured whole, a distinct social formation or sub-formation in which the basic control of the society is in the hands of a foreign capitalist class which functioned in the colony through dependent and subservient economic, political, social and intellectual structures.