When Shashi Tharoor made the sun set on the British Empire...
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00:00Violence and racism were the reality of the colonial experience, and no wonder that the
00:06sun never set on the British Empire, because even God couldn't trust the English in the
00:11dark.
00:12By the end of the 19th century, the fact is that India was already Britain's biggest
00:16cash cow, the world's biggest purchaser of British goods and exports, and the source
00:22of highly paid employment for British civil servants.
00:26We literally paid for our own oppression.
00:28There was reference to democracy and rule of law, let me say with the greatest possible
00:32respect.
00:33You can, it's a bit rich, to oppress, enslave, kill, torture, maim people for 200 years,
00:40and then celebrate the fact that they're democratic at the end of it.
00:50India's share of the world economy when Britain arrived on its shores was 23%.
00:55By the time the British left, it was down to below 4%.
00:59Why?
01:00Simply because India had been governed for the benefit of Britain.
01:03Britain's rise for 200 years was financed by its depredations in India.
01:08In fact, Britain's industrial revolution was actually premised upon the de-industrialization
01:13of India.
01:14The handloom weavers, for example, famed across the world, whose products were exported around
01:19the world, Britain came right in.
01:21There were actually these weavers making fine muslin, light as woven air, it was said.
01:27And Britain came right in, smashed their thumbs, broke their looms, imposed tariffs and duties
01:31on their cloth and products, and started, of course, taking the raw materials from India
01:37and shipping back manufactured cloth, flooding the world's markets with what became the
01:41products of the dark and satanic mills of Victorian England.
01:46That meant that the weavers in India became beggars, and India went from being a world-famous
01:51exporter of finished cloth into an importer, went from having 27% of world trade to less
01:58than 2%.
01:59Meanwhile, colonialists like Robert Clive bought their rotten burrows in England on
02:04the proceeds of their loot in India, while taking the Hindi word loot into their dictionaries
02:10as well as their habits.
02:17And the British had the gall to call him Clive of India, as if he belonged to the country,
02:23when all he really did was to ensure that much of the country belonged to him.
02:30By the end of the 19th century, the fact is that India was already Britain's biggest
02:34cash cow, the world's biggest purchaser of British goods and exports, and the source
02:40of highly paid employment for British civil servants.
02:44We literally paid for our own oppression.
02:46Between 15 and 29 million Indians died of starvation in British-induced famines.
02:52The most famous example, of course, was the Great Bengal Famine during the Second World
02:56War, when 4 million people died because Winston Churchill deliberately, as a matter of written
03:01minuted policy, proceeded to divert essential supplies from civilians in Bengal to sturdy
03:07tommies and Europeans as reserve stockpiles.
03:11He said that the starvation of any way underfed Bengalis mattered much less than that of sturdy
03:18Greeks.
03:19This is Churchill's actual quote.
03:20And when conscious, stricken British officials wrote to him, pointing out that people were
03:24dying because of this decision, he peevishly wrote in the margins of the file, why hasn't
03:30Gandhi died yet?
03:32So all notions that the British were trying to do their colonial enterprise out of enlightened
03:37despotism to try and bring the benefits of colonialism and civilisation to the benighted
03:43heathen.
03:44I'm sorry, Churchill's conduct in 1943 is simply one example of many that gave a lie
03:48to this myth.
03:49As others have said on the proposition, violence and racism were the reality of the colonial
03:55experience.
03:56And no wonder that the sun never set on the British Empire, because even God couldn't
04:02trust the English in the dark.
04:04Well, let me quantify World War I for you.
04:10One sixth of all the British forces that fought in the war were Indian.
04:1454,000 Indians actually lost their lives in that war.
04:1865,000 were wounded.
04:20Another 4,000 remained missing or in prison.
04:24Indian taxpayers had to cough up 100 million pounds in that time's money.
04:30India supplied 70 million rounds of ammunition, 600,000 rifles and machine guns, 42 million
04:37garments were stitched and sent out of India, and 1.3 million Indian personnel served in
04:43this war.
04:44But not just that.
04:45India had to supply 173,000 animals, 370 million tons of supplies, and in the end, the total
04:54value of everything that was taken out of India.
04:57India, by the way, suffering from recession at that time and poverty and hunger, was in
05:03today's money 8 billion pounds.
05:06You want quantification?
05:08It's available.
05:09Second World War?
05:12It was even worse.
05:13Two and a half million Indians in uniform, I won't belabor the point, but of Britain's
05:17total war debt of 3 billion pounds in 1945 money, 1.25 billion was owed to India and
05:24never actually paid.
05:27Railways and roads were really built to serve British interests and not those of the local
05:31people, but I might add that many countries have built railways and roads without having
05:35had to be colonized in order to do so.
05:38They were designed to carry raw materials from the hinterland into the ports to be shipped
05:48to Britain.
05:49And the fact is that the Indian or Jamaican or other colonial public, their needs were
05:54incidental.
05:55Transportation, there was no attempt made to match supply to demand for mass transport,
06:01none whatsoever.
06:02Instead, in fact, the Indian railways were built with massive incentives offered by Britain
06:08to British investors, guaranteed out of Indian taxes paid by Indians.
06:14With the result that you actually had one mile of Indian railway costing twice what
06:19it costs to build the same mile in Canada or Australia because there was so much money
06:24being paid in extravagant returns.
06:26Britain made all the profits, controlled the technology, supplied all the equipment, and
06:30absolutely all these benefits came as private enterprise, British private enterprise, at
06:36public risk, Indian public risk.
06:39That was the railways as an accomplishment.
06:42We were denied democracy, so we had to snatch it, seize it from you.
06:46With the greatest reluctance, it was conceded in India's case after 150 years of British
06:51rule, and that too with limited franchise.
06:53The British aid to India is about 0.4% of India's GDP.
06:58The government of India actually spends more on fertilizer subsidies, which might be an
07:02appropriate metaphor for that argument.
07:05It's been pointed out, for example, the dehumanization of Africans in the Caribbean, the massive
07:09psychological damage that has been done, the undermining of social traditions, of property
07:15rights, of the authority structures of these societies, all in the interests of British
07:20colonialism.
07:21And the fact remains that many of today's problems in these countries, including the
07:28persistence, in some cases the creation, of racial and ethnic and religious tensions,
07:33were the direct result of the colonial experience.
07:36So there is a moral debt that needs to be paid.
07:39Someone challenged reparations elsewhere.
07:41Well, I'm sorry, Germany doesn't just give reparations to Israel.
07:45It also gave reparations to Poland.
07:47Perhaps some of the speakers here are too young to remember the dramatic picture of
07:51Chancellor Willy Brandt on his knees in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1970.
07:55And there are other examples.
07:56There is Italy's reparations to Libya.
07:59There's Japan's to Korea.
08:01Even Britain has paid reparations to the New Zealand Maoris.
08:06So it's not as if this is something unprecedented or unheard of that's going to somehow open
08:10some sort of nasty Pandora's box.
08:12The fact is very simply, sir, that we are not talking about reparations as a tool to
08:19empower anybody.
08:21They're a tool for you to atone for the wrongs that have been done.
08:25And I am quite prepared to accept the proposition that you can't evaluate, put a monetary sum
08:36on the kinds of horrors people have suffered.
08:39Obviously no amount of money can expiate the loss of a loved one, as somebody pointed
08:43out there.
08:44You're not going to be able to figure out an exact amount.
08:47But the principle is what matters.
08:50The fact is that to speak blithely of sacrifices on both sides, as an analogy was used here,
08:57a burglar comes into a house, ransacks the place, stubs his toe, and you say, well, there
09:02was a sacrifice on both sides.
09:04I'm sorry to say it's not an acceptable argument.
09:10The truth is that we are not arguing specifically that vast sums of money need to be paid.
09:17The proposition before this house is the principle of owing reparations, not the fine points
09:25of how much is owed to whom it should be paid.
09:28The question is, is there a debt?
09:30Does Britain owe reparations?
09:32As far as I'm concerned, the ability to acknowledge a wrong that has been done, to simply say
09:39sorry will go a far, far, far longer way than some percentage of GDP in the form of aid.
09:50What is required, it seems to me, is accepting the principle that reparations are owed.
09:55Personally, I'd be quite happy if it was one pound a year for the next 200 years after
10:00the last 200 years of Britain and India.
10:03Thank you very much, Madam President.