1.
The search for new routes to the Far East was as much due to political pressures in Europe as it was to any Islamic interference.

The British didn't 'resort to colonialism to build their way to modernity.' At that time, Britain defined modernity in a way to which no other country has come close since. Colonialism wasn't nice or good, but implying that the Brits alone relied on it to keep up with the rest of the world is nonsense.

Europe patently was pretty far ahead. Not necessarily in one particular area (although I would argue that, at the time, Europe was the world's hub of invention and innovation), but taken as a sum Europe was very far ahead of the rest of the contemporary world. Evidence for this can be seen in the influence Europe had over Africa, America, India and China at the time compared to the influence India and China had over it.

2.
When the Brits found India, it was fragmented into several different princedoms and cities. To say that it was in any sense united is misleading - before the Brits got there and for a time while the Brits were there, wars between neighboring sultanates and empires were commonplace. When they left, they left a united India. Those are just cold hard facts that cannot be argued with - India may have been politically united in 300BC, but it sure as hell wasn't in 1700. At the bitter end, if the Brits had really, really wanted to leave India divided, it would not have been a difficult thing to accomplish. The will and attention simply was not there after Britain had bankrupted itself fighting the two largest wars the world had ever seen, right on its own doorstep.

Indians shouldn't feel any sense of loss when they visit America - those that do so are deluded, unless they believe that India (who had no united navy or army at that time) should have discovered it first (despite no history of exploration and settlement in the way of the Portuguese, Spanish, French, Dutch and Italians). If Indians should feel a sense of loss about any country, it should be Australia. It was on India's doorstep!

As for what-might-have-been-because-we-could-have-been-united: to say that Indians feel loss upon visiting America is similar to saying that Russians or Chinese should also.

If you want an objective viewpoint of history, you should refrain from choosing positions from an autobiography of one of the key players!

(Why is it that India's positives are due to certain men - Nehru and Ghandi are mentioned liberally throughout the arguments on this thread - but the downsides to British rule in India is due to 'the British', rather than Clive, Hastings or Mountbatten? Is that evidence of bias?)

I certainly haven't said that India owes its success to the British. I do think that some of modern India's plus points have their roots in the structures and technologies brought by the British - and conversely, a lot haven't. Both yourself and the OP seem very sensitive about that. The original point in the conversation to which I replied was that the British empire was an overwhelming force for evil.

Simply, it wasn't; as a matter of pure fact, it may have been the most benevolent imperial structure ever to have existed. It did bad things, but not all the things it did were bad and it can certainly be argued that, in balance and in net, it was a force for good.