Colonizers that bad?

I think Budi Setiawan must have read some very strange history books at school (Your Letters, On colonialism, July 19). I wonder who wrote them? I refer to his last paragraph: "Colonialism is a bad dream of the past...,". Let me tell him a true tale to illustrate this misconception. When I was in Pakistan some years ago, one of the "bearers" (servants) in my hotel said to me one day -- maybe I had made a friendly remark to him -- with tears in his eyes, "Oh, Sahib, we wish you (i.e. the British) were back!" Does that sound like the voice of one who had lived "in great misery" under British rule?

If Mr. Setiawan has ever stepped outside Indonesia, even as far as Singapore or Malaysia (especially Penang), he may have noticed how many street names remain as they were in the colonial era. If they were reminders of "a bad dream" I have no doubt that they would long since have been changed.

My father was a colonial judge (in British North Borneo, The Gambia, The Gold Coast, Ghana, and Penang, where he died and was buried), and whenever he left one post for the next, he left with kind words and tokens of respect and affection from the local community.

One only has to look at the situation in the former British colonies in Africa to see how terribly they have deteriorated since they were given their independence.

RB SAWREY-COOKSON

Jakarta