The Shashi Tharoor Oxford Union Storm Of 2015

Brut India

When Shashi Tharoor made the sun set on the British Empire...

Transcript

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.

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