English Art/Literary Poetry & Literature

the text goes like:

"He thought of how the English government and its civil servants had sailed away throwing their topis overboard, leaving behind only those ridiculous Indians who couldn’t rid themselves of what they had broken their souls to learn."

(it is about the period when the british left india, recognising it as an independent state. and here, the thoughts of a frustrated indian civil servant is quoted. he has put a lot of effort to learn the british language and ways, for which he has received more contempt than respect, both on the british and the indian sides.)

i can imagine what the idiom "breaking the soul" means - trying hard, perhaps at the expense of loosing your sanity - but i find it hard to put into the context.
normally i'd read it like: the indians have tried hard to learn something, and (now) they are trying to get rid of it. but i'm not sure that this sounds right (of course it is possible that, after the independence, they are trying to forget the british ways and get reintegrated into the local indian society, but really, there's nothing in the book ("inheritance of loss") to suggest that they want to embrace the indian values they preferred to leave behind) . do i miss something, or does the expression have an altogether different meaning?