Shashi Tharoor's Ideology

Shashiji's remarks have gone viral on YouTube. Shows what impression one can leave with effective arguments by saying the right things at the right place. It reflects the expressiveness of an Indian citizen." This was the comment bade by our then Prime Minister, Mr. Narendra Singh Modi, after Shashi Tharoor's speech regarding 'British Rule in India' on 28th May, 2015. His mystified puns about Henry VIII and 'no wonder that the sun never set on the British empire because even god couldn't trust the English in the dark' were what helped capture the undivided attention of the audience and thus began the historic speech on the educational heart of England.

In his passionate yet formal speech, he perfectly executed his beliefs on how the British de- industrialized every nook and cranny of India in an idealistic professionalism and with etiquette. Soon after the start of British rule, the exportation of our silks, handcrafted looms and spices took over on enough, the exploitation of the most invaluable possessions from under our noses. This well planned out thievery by the East India Company blocked India's improvement in industrialism and resulted in a steep decrease in India's share of the world economy from twenty-three percent to below four percent, as had been pointed out by Shashi Tharoor.

 

In the speech, he also spoke about how the Bengal famine had been a consequence of the British rule. The Bengal famine which took place during the World War II in the year nineteen forty-three was deadly with approximately four million people who had died due to malnutrition and starvation. During this catastrophe, Winston Churchill provided no help and neither did the British government. Instead the poor residents of Bengal were compared and criticized and were ruthlessly left with no supplies or no heed towards their medical condition. Churchill's statements were rude and ignorant when he compared Bengals with the sturdy Greeks when Indian men contributed and fought for Britain during World War I and World War II. It shows how blatantly racist Britishers had been towards India while they drained every resource, even the smallest grain of rice, to feed their own and stole our own industrial tactics to manufacture guns and rifles and garments for their own profit.

 

Quoting directly from Mr. Tharoor's peroration, 'Is there a debt? Does Britain owe reparations?" This very question stirred the feeling of nationalism in the very hearts of the young audience of India and thus, sparked a new form of revolution that condemned majority of the colonised countries of Asia and Africa to deeply analyse and question their state of economic exploitation and how vastly their lands have really been wringed to the last drop of their economic wealth and ruined during the greedy expansion of the British rule. The only critic I wish to offer is that a simple sorry cannot work. It cannot undo all the horrors this country once witnessed and all the dried-up blood that still clings on the walls of every infamous building on this naive land of ours.