Daily Times

In my earlier review of the book “Inglorious Empire” by Shashi Tharoor, I had enumerated the salient points on which he bases his thesis, which in brief is that India was one of the richest economies of the world when the British came, but after their arrival, they acted like pirates and plundered and looted its wealth and left it divided and much impoverished.

Mr. Tharoor’s eminence as a writer is that he has put his thesis substantiating it with various historical facts and documents which he collected with his uncanny ability and hard work lending his case sufficient credibility, for which he deserves full marks. But in doing so, he blamed the British even for the evils which were already present in Indian society. His appraisal of the merits of the then Indian society is also tinged with his strong bias for his people whose vices were even seen as their virtues. . Prior to the arrival of the British, India had no self-identity, its people did not regard themselves as citizens of one nation. Indians were ridden with the evils of the caste system, one of which is a deeply ingrained sense of differentiation. Most certainly, the British exploited this, but the tragic fact remains that the ruling elite and the upper class of India did not appear to care much about the tribulations of people lower down the social ladder. And that really is the reason why the British were able to rule for as long as they did. They utilized an existing social condition of slavery engendered by the caste system.

It is wrong to regard India as a country in the ordinary sense of the word, it would be more accurate to think of it as a continent masquerading as a country. In a continent you have to expect huge diversity in terms of people, customs and religion

Moreoverhe has not given sufficient weight to the cultural and industrial changes brought by the Britishers into the Indian society which was still living in medieval ages. These cultural changes were welcome bye-products of their colonization by the British. The author in his euphoria to debunk the British colonization has said little about the kind of executive and judicial system prevalent in India at the arrival of the British. Indian history of the 17th and 18th century show that there was no uniform system of dispensation of justice, nor there was any united structure of executive governance because of multi-ethnic and multi-linguistic society governed by the Mughal emperors at the top, but divided within in countless small Jagirs, princely states, Nawabdoms, and Rajwaras etc., within which there was no unity or cohesion. If there had been a united administrative machinery of governance in India, the English would never have set their foot so firmly on this soil. Even after 200 years of reign, when the British finally left this country, it was still divided into 17 vast provinces and 565 princely states. When the East India Company arrived in India, the country was being governed by Mughal Emperors who were Muslims whereas the vast majority of population was Hindus, Sikhs and Christians etc. The seat of government was in Delhi, from where the Mughals could not effectively control the vast continent of India. Thus each tract of land was being managed by princes, Rajas and Jagirdars without a unified structure of administration. There was no law making authority, nor a cohesive system of land settlement and management. All these systems of governance and land management along with enforcement of justice and law and order were the legacies of the British administrators who turned this medieval society into a modern state, and gave it a civilized face. No historian can ignore these bounties. It is any body’s guess what would have been the structure of society if the British had not colonized it.Admittedly whatever the British did in the sub-continent was motivated by their own ulterior interests. Their painstaking developments in the sectors of agriculture, canal irrigation(considered to be the best in the world), administration of justice and law and provision of industrial technology, laying of infrastructure of bridges and roads etc, were indirectly a boon for Indian society which they used for long after the departure of the British. The British measures made India into a modern and unified nation, a democracy and law-abiding society notwithstanding that they also benefitted their own country from the Indian resources. Thus the British colonization of India had brought in its wake tremendous developments which brought vital changes in the overall fabric of Indian society. Despite the benefits which Britain earned from its resources, the British rule by and large proved benign and considerate to the aspiration of its people. The author has overlooked all these developments in his anxiety to show that the British colonization of India was a mere curse, which by any evaluation was an overstatement. With his strong bias for his countrymen, his book cannot be regarded to present a balanced outlook.

Towards the end of the book, the author looks at the question of reparations from the UK. He agrees that reparations are neither practical nor realistic or even possible. But he says that Britain should at least atone for its devastation of India by tendering an apology. He cites the example of Chancellor Willy Brandt of Germany tendering apologies to Polish Jews and the Canadian PM Justine Trudeau for the Komagata Maru incident.

To me the aim of the author appears to eulogizes India and its culture and demonize western culture and values while ironically the author himself is the epitome of western civilization, born and bred in England, receiving his education from prestigious western universities, and spending almost all his time in the west, but doing his politics in India.

Tharoor is of the opinion that had it not been for the British, India would have been the most advanced nation in the world. It would have arrived on Mars before anyone and its scientists would have bagged the greatest number of Nobel prizes. Such notions are more whimsical than factual and are based on un-called for optimism of the author. It is wrong to regard India as a country in the ordinary sense of the word, it would be more accurate to think of it as a continent masquerading as a country. In a continent you have to expect huge diversity in terms of people, customs and religion. Now, the problem is that enlightened attitudes are not always the corollary of diversity. More often than not, the corollary is sectarian strife which had always been rife in India.

Taking an objective view of Indian society after the British left, and when the Indians were fully empowered to make their own destiny, it may be seen what had actually happened? The antecedent culture of India reared its head, and the injustice and evil of the caste system prevailed, and millions of Indians were consigned to misery under their own rulers. Was that the fault of the British Empire? I think Shashi Tharoor has no answer.

The author, quite convincingly and with evidence has shown that the creation and perpetuation of Hindu-Muslim antagonism was the most significant accomplishment of British imperial policy; the project of divide et imperahad reached its culmination in the horrors of Partition that eventually accompanied the collapse of British authority in 1947.

The writer is a former member of the Provincial Civil Service, and an author of Moments in Silence