In his first chapter, ‘The looting of India’, Tharoor sets out the ‘drain theory’ of British economic exploitation of India-by which ‘India was governed for the benefit of Britain’ and ‘Britain’s rise for 200 years , financed by its depredations in India’ (p. Moreover, the supposed British legacy to India (railways, education, the English language, democracy and so on) has been greatly exaggerated, was not intended for the benefit of Indians and, without colonisation, would have been introduced on a timeline more favourable to the needs of the Indian people. And its subjugation resulted in the expropriation of Indian wealth to Britain, draining the society of the resources that would normally have propelled its natural growth and economic development’ (p. 222). The British state in India was a totally amoral, rapacious imperialist machine bent on the subjugation of Indians for the purpose of profit, not merely a neutrally efficient system indifferent to human rights. In various forms it currently has almost seven and a half million hits on YouTube alone. As the British economy could not afford a quantifiable representation of the wealth extracted from India, reparation would necessarily have to be a nominal gesture (Tharoor suggested £1 a year), as an acknowledgement of Britain’s debt to the Indian economy. The theme of Inglorious Empire (originally published as An Era of Darkness), which Tharoor was encouraged to write in response to the online interest that his speech had created, is the broader one that in almost all respects British rule in India was profoundly damaging to the sub-continent’s population and economy: Tharoor ‘promptly tweeted a link to it and watched in astonishment as it went viral’, swiftly accumulating millions of hits on hundreds of sites.

Inglorious Empire arose from a speech given by Dr Shashi Tharoor in May 2015 at the Oxford Union in support of the motion ‘Britain Owes Reparations to Her Former Colonies’, focusing on British exploitation of India. The Union then posted the speech on the web.

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