SHASHI   THAROOR


An Era of Darkness by Shashi Tharoor; Published by Aleph ; Pages 333; Price Rs.699/-

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Shashi Tharoor  is the author of over 15 books including   “The Great Indian Novel”;  “India: From Midnight to the Millennium”. He acquired fame as an Under Secretary-General of the United Nations. He was a Minister of State for Human Resource Development and Minister of State for External Affairs in the Indian Government .

“Electrifying “ is the word that describes Shashi Tharoor’s speech as part of Oxford Union talk last year. The book under review  is a direct sequel to that speech . “The purpose of this book is to examine the  legacy of the Raj, to critically study the claims made for its alleged benefits, and to present the evidence and the arguments against it.” It is a  thoroughly critical analysis of the economic and cultural damage wreaked upon India  under two centuries of British domination.

 The India that the British East India Company conquered was no primitive or barren land, but the glittering jewel of the medieval world. At the beginning of the Eighteenth century, India’s share of the world economy was 23 percent. By the time the British departed India, it had dropped to just over 3 percent. The reason was simple. India was governed for the benefit of Britain. Britain’s rise for 200 years was financed by its depredations  in India.

Tharoor rejects the view that the British were better than the native kings they were supplanting. He recalls the good governance in kingdoms such as Travancore, Mysore and Oudh. The Moghuls  assimilated themselves into the region and the capital extracted under their empire remained within the nation. On the contrary the British religiously  siphoned off the country’s wealth to Britain. Tharoor writes, “By the early 1800s, India had been reduced from a land of artisans, traders, warriors and merchants, functioning in thriving and complex commercial networks, into an agrarian society of peasants and moneylenders”.

 A number of thinking persons are persuaded that the  British deserve  thanks for introducing the railways, press and parliamentary system into India,  Tharoor  asserts that these were introduced solely to  facilitate  the plundering of  the country’s riches and to maintain control over the land. He also points out how India is still suffering under a system that was framed with Victorian values. Our bureaucracy, corruption and unfortunate laws can all be attributed to the archaic system set up by the British. The odious divide-and-rule policy used by the British to keep Indians quarrelling amongst  themselves, created a gulf between communities and continues till today.

Tharoor is highly impressive when he conveys the  malice and connivance of the empire. Excruciating  is his account of the many famines that happened under the British and how they saw these avoidable tragedies as a Malthusian necessity. He explains the underlying motives in each of the British policies. Tharoor scores  with sharp historical accounts and illuminating contemporary examples. He considers every possible counterpoint to his arguments and addresses them deftly in a manner that cannot be combated.

 In this narrative, the British Raj did wonders for the Indian subcontinent by “taming the savage” . It appears that history really is written by the victors. Tharoor’s book does a wonderful job of refuting this argument and successfully presents the case for India’s rich heritage, which is much more advanced than that of the coloniser.

 The book bridges the gap in knowledge and deserves to be read by both British and Indian audiences; the British can perhaps use it to acknowledge the disgrace of empire while Indians can use it as a reminder of how we shouldn’t be divided and taken advantage of again.  Tharoor declares  “History belongs in the past, but understanding it is the duty of the present”.

 Tharoor marshals literally hundreds of facts to  argue the whole gamut of issues which are normally quoted as "gifts" of two centuries of British rule over India: Good governance, English sense of fairplay, Austinian judicial system, Railways, social reform of Hindu society, Cricket, Tea and even the English language. He makes mincemeat of this flawed contention.

  He points out that the public finance in pre-colonial India was based on taxing trade where as the British themselves being traders made a drastic change and made agriculture and land revenue the focus, thereby causing immense hardship to peasantry. He traces the creation of the landless peasant and the increased dependence of large segment of the population on agriculture for livelihood due to the destruction of artisans and manufacture and also large scale man made famines under colonialism.

 Corruption rose massively  due to the practices of the East India Company and its officers.

Besides going into the financing of Indian Railways and how gold plating was done by many an English investor assured of guaranteed returns and how Railways during construction and later were used to drain the Indian economy and increase the national debt, Tharoor makes an important point that in the operational finances of Railways it was the third class passengers traveling in sub human conditions that subsidised freight and the first class !

We needed a book that tells us in no uncertain terms about our past darkness, the perpetrators responsible for it, and the modus operandi they used.

We live in an era where the villain is being lionised. Tharoor recreates the British Raj with all its horrors and also elucidates the awe-inspiring struggle of India's freedom fighters. He gives us a valuable insight on how dark forces operate and on who are harbingers of hope—it's a valuable lesson at a time when thugs are masquerading as our saviours.

 Shashi takes us to an era where our forefathers were toiling in opium fields, our economy was being ravaged, our local businesses killed, our exports made unaffordable by levying high tariffs, and education was offered only to produce a generation of clerks.

  Tharoor pierces this conceited bubble in eloquent language, telling not only what made the British empire, but how. Tharoor uses facts, arguments, humour, sarcasm and logic to demolish each pillar on which the myth of the empire rests.

 Tharoor does not exonerate Indian princes’ ineptitude, corruption and misrule. Nor does he condone inherent inequities of many Indian customs and traditions. He takes note of them, but his point is that the British empire was not the solution to the problem by any means, and in many instances, it made the problem worse. Tharoor’s thrusts are painful. He attacks each proclaimed virtue from all fronts, leaving the supporter of the empire utterly without defence. He shows—with facts and statistics—how post-independence India has made rapid strides in economic and social development, which were simply impossible during the colonial era, and without stressing on the point too loudly, reminds the reader how much more India could have achieved had it been able to modernize without colonial subjugation.

This is Tharoor’s most impressive  work—not because of its unique presentation , but the manner in which  he says it, contributing a resounding case  for sovereignty without shrillness, a studied attempt to delineate a horrendous administration and logically pleading for even-handed justice not retribution—and all this with abundant dignity, impressive scholarship and a puckish sense of humour.

P.P.Ramachandran.

15/04/2018