British anchor vs. Shashi Tharoor

Brut India

After a UK anchor asked India to return foreign aid, a 2015 video of Shashi Tharoor went viral where he made the sun set on the British Empire.

Transcript

00:00We should not be giving money to countries with a space program.

00:03No wonder that the sun never set on the British Empire,

00:07because even God couldn't trust the English in the dark.

00:30India's share of the world economy when Britain arrived on its shores was 23%.

00:43By the time the British left, it was down to below 4%.

00:46Why?

00:47Simply because India had been governed for the benefit of Britain.

00:51Britain's rise for 200 years was financed by its depredations in India.

00:55In fact, Britain's industrial revolution was actually premised upon the de-industrialization

01:01of India.

01:02The handloom weavers, for example, famed across the world, whose products were exported around

01:06the world.

01:07Britain came right in.

01:08There were actually these weavers making fine muslin, light as woven air, it was said.

01:14And Britain came right in, smashed their thumbs, broke their looms, imposed tariffs and duties

01:19on their cloth and products, and started, of course, taking the raw materials from India

01:24and shipping back manufactured cloth, flooding the world's markets with what became the

01:29products of the dark and satanic mills of Victorian England.

01:33That meant that the weavers in India became beggars, and India went from being a world-famous

01:39exporter of finished cloth into an importer, went from having 27% of world trade to less

01:45than 2%.

01:47Meanwhile, colonialists like Robert Clive bought their rotten burrows in England on

01:52the proceeds of their loot in India, while taking the Hindi word loot into their dictionaries

01:57as well as their habits.

01:59And the British had the gall to call him Clive of India, as if he belonged to the country,

02:11when all he really did was to ensure that much of the country belonged to him.

02:17By the end of the 19th century, the fact is that India was already Britain's biggest

02:22cash cow, the world's biggest purchaser of British goods and exports, and the source

02:28of highly paid employment for British civil servants.

02:31We literally paid for our own oppression.

02:34Between 15 and 29 million Indians died of starvation in British-induced famines.

02:39The most famous example, of course, was the Great Bengal Famine during the Second World

02:43War, when four million people died because Winston Churchill, deliberately as a matter

02:48of written, minuted policy, proceeded to divert essential supplies from civilians in Bengal

02:54to sturdy Tommies and Europeans as reserve stockpiles.

02:59He said that the starvation of any way underfed Bengalis mattered much less than that of sturdy

03:05Greeks.

03:06This is Churchill's actual quote.

03:08And when conscious, stricken British officials wrote to him, pointing out that people were

03:12dying because of this decision, he peevishly wrote in the margins of the file, why hasn't

03:17Gandhi died yet?

03:19So all notions that the British were trying to do their colonial enterprise out of enlightened

03:25despotism to try and bring the benefits of colonialism and civilization to the benighted

03:30heathen.

03:31I'm sorry.

03:32Churchill's conduct in 43, simply one example of many that gave a lie to this myth.

03:37As others have said on the proposition, violence and racism were the reality of the colonial

03:43experience.

03:44And no wonder that the sun never set on the British Empire, because even God couldn't

03:49trust the English in the dark.

03:51Well, let me quantify World War I for you.

03:57One-sixth of all the British forces that fought in the war were Indian.

04:01Fifty-four thousand Indians actually lost their lives in that war.

04:06Sixty-five thousand were wounded.

04:08Another four thousand remained missing or in prison.

04:11Indian taxpayers had to cough up a hundred million pounds in that time's money.

04:17India supplied 70 million rounds of ammunition, 600,000 rifles and machine guns, 42 million

04:24garments were stitched and sent out of India, and 1.3 million Indian personnel served in

04:31this war.

04:32Not just that, India had to supply 173,000 animals, 370 million tons of supplies, and

04:40in the end, the total value of everything that was taken out of India, India and India

04:45by the way suffering from recession at that time and poverty and hunger, was in today's

04:51money eight billion pounds.

04:54You want quantification?

04:55It's available.

04:57Second World War, it was even worse, two and a half million Indians in uniform.

05:00I won't belabor the point, but of Britain's total war debt of three billion pounds in

05:061945 money, 1.25 billion was owed to India and never actually paid.

05:13Railways and roads were really built to serve British interests and not those of the local

05:17people, but I might add that many countries have built railways and roads without having

05:21had to be colonized in order to do so.

05:24They were designed to carry raw materials from the hinterland into the ports to be shipped

05:34to Britain, and the fact is that the Indian or Jamaican or other colonial public, their

05:40needs were incidental.

05:41Transportation, there was no attempt made to match supply to demand for mass transport,

05:47none whatsoever.

05:48Instead, in fact, the Indian railways were built with massive incentives offered by Britain

05:54to British investors, guaranteed out of Indian taxes paid by Indians.

06:00With the result that you actually had one mile of Indian railway costing twice what

06:05it costs to build the same mile in Canada or Australia because there was so much money

06:10being paid in extravagant returns.

06:12Britain made all the profits, controlled the technology, supplied all the equipment, and

06:16absolutely all these benefits came as private enterprise, British private enterprise, at

06:22public risk, Indian public risk.

06:25That was the railways as an accomplishment.

06:28There was reference to democracy and rule of law.

06:30Let me say with the greatest possible respect, it's a bit rich to oppress, enslave, kill,

06:37torture, maim people for 200 years and then celebrate the fact that they're democratic

06:41at the end of it.

06:42We were denied democracy, so we had to snatch it, seize it from you.

06:47With 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

07:03appropriate metaphor for that argument.

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