A Comm for Historymemes

The only real improvement in the process of conquest is that the Brits were no longer interested in slavery by the time they took a keen interest in India in the 19th century.

That's a gentle way to put it.

The British ended the global slave trade, and enforced it via the Royal Navy.f

but I struggle to think of anything ‘basic’ that the Brits actually introduced to India en masse.

Steam locomotives?

Fine, feel free to take back some of the argument, however, the brute force of British colonialism had, imho, an excellent destabilizing influence on millennia of the caste system's stranglehold on Indian culture.

I think India was so infinitely hidebound to its traditions, much like China and Russia were, and the enforced change had much of the same revolutionary effects that the communist revolutions had on the latter.

Sometimes change is needed, and imperialism brought beneficial changes I doubt we would have seen otherwise, as the cultural inertia was, and remains to this day, quite powerful.