" In the conceptual scheme which the British created to understand and to act in India, they constantly followed the same logic; they reduced vastly complex codes and their associated meanings to a few metonyms.’ Laws had to be translated into terms the British could understand and apply. A complicated, often chaotic and always fluid society like India was ‘redefined by the British to be a place of rules and orders; once the British had defined to their own satisfaction what they construed as Indian rules and customs, then the Indians had to conform to these constructions. "

― Shashi Tharoor , An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India