It was perhaps Dr. Shashi Tharoor’s finest hour. The distinguished author and eloquent speaker was indeed in his element at the launch of “An Era of Darkness” at the Taj Mahal Hotel where Vice-President Hamid Ansari launched the book with his thought provoking insights.
In this latest offering from Aleph, Tharoor’s exhaustive research reveals the extent of devastation and oppression caused by the British colonial rule in India. Tracing the drain of precious natural resources to Britain, the ultimate ruin of Indian textile, steel and shipping industries and the undesirable transformation of agriculture, Tharoor stated, “Rural poverty was a direct result of British action.” De-industrialisation drove a large number of people unsustainably to rural areas and agricultural professions that in the past they did not have to practice, because there were other professions available, elaborated Tharoor.
Tharoor juxtaposes arguments of apologists for the Raj about India benefitting in several areas such as democracy, political freedom, modern university, army, judiciary, professional civil service, the rule of law, and the railways with his own take on the masked agenda of the British, which clearly sought to perpetuate colonial rule in India and destroys this claim. His recollections recounted the past elaborating on the half-hearted measures such as the Morley-Minto Reforms of 1909 (which gave us much less than expected), the disappointing Montague-Chelmsford reforms after World War I, compelling Mahatma Gandhi to launch the Non-Cooperation Movement in protest and the Government of India Act of 1935, which actually gave us a very limited democracy. Tharoor rightly states they had no intention of giving us either democracy or freedom. Though Tharoor concedes and takes into account the incontestable benefits of British rule, the English language, tea, and cricket, he reiterates that these benefits existed but were not intended to be benefits for Indians and as such were designed by the British to serve their own interests, and further subjugate India. The fact that we have subsequently latched on to them in many cases and transformed them for our own benefit as an independent nation is to our credit and not to the British.
The book launch was followed by an engaging discussion between Tharoor and well-known journalist Karan Thapar. It was brimming with lively repartees and some interesting observations. So how did the idea of the book germinate? Tharoor in the preface of the book reveals that ‘this book, somewhat unusually, began as a speech.’
“At the end of the May 2015, I was invited by the Oxford Union to speak on the proposition ‘Britain Owes Reparations to Her Former Colonies’. Since I was already scheduled to speak at the Hay Festival of Literature in Wales later that week, I thought it might be pleasant to stop in Oxford on the way and debate there again.”
In early July, however, the Union posted the debate on the web, and sent him a video copy of his own speech. “I promptly tweeted a link to it – and watched in astonishment as it went viral. One site swiftly crossed over three million views; others did not keep track, but reported record number of hits.”
Tharoor noted that similar things had been said in the past by the likes of Romesh Chander Dutt and Dadabhai Naoroji in the late 19th Century, and by Jawaharlal Nehru and a host of others in the 20th. “Yet, the fact that my speech struck such a chord with so many listeners suggested what I considered basic was unfamiliar to many, perhaps most, educated Indians.”
It was this realisation that prompted his friend and publisher, David Davidar, to insist him convert his speech into a short book.
“The book differs from the speech in some crucial respects. It was not about reparations, for one thing. My speech led up to the argument because that was the topic the Oxford Union had announced, not because I was personally wedded to the case for reparations. I was convinced about the wrongs inflicted on colonial subjects by the British empire, but I suggested at the end of my speech that India should be content with a symbolic reparation of one pound a year, payable for 200 years to atone for 200 years of imperial rule. I felt atonement was the point – a simple ‘sorry’ would do as well-rather than cash. Indeed, the attempt by one Indian commentator Minhaz Merchant, to compute what a fair sum of reparations would amount to, came up with a figure so astronomical – $3 trillion in today’s money – that no one could ever reasonably be expected to pay it.”
Corrections &Clarifications:
This article has been edited for a factual error.
