What the British found quite disgusting during their long uninvited stay in India was that Indians defecated in open fields, squatting. The Western world picked up and echoed this narrative and these toilet practices were painted as decisively inferior. A massive Swachh Bharat mission has now been launched on a war footing and by this year its target is to make India free of this archaic custom of open defecation—which has to go, as it is anachronistic.
