Thiong'o, Tharoor and Films on Colonial History

Shashi Tharoor:

• Author: Shashi Tharoor
• Language: English
• Genre: History
• Publication date: March 2007
• Publisher: Aleph (India), C. Hurst & Co. (UK)

          Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India is a book by Shashi Tharoor, an Indian politician and diplomat. The book depicts the atrocities and wrongdoings that were committed in the Indian sub-continent during the British Raj. It was published in India under the title: 'An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India'.

          Tharoor made a speech over a 2015 Oxford Union debate on the topic "Does Britain owe reparations to its former colonies?" which went viral over the web. Subsequently, his publisher floted the idea to transform the speech into a book. Whilst he was initially skeptical, he later went to write a 330 page book.

          what did I learn about my country's dark history as a subject of the British Raj? These are just some of the facts that absolutely shocked me... 

• Britain destroyed India's famed textile, shipbuilding and steel industries, reducing India's GDP to 3% by the time they departed India (a sharp contrast to the early 1800s when India's share of the world economy was a whopping 23%). 
• Courtesy the heavy taxation levied upon Indians during the Raj, India was Britain's biggest source of revenue at the end of the 19th century.
• Over 74,000 Indian soldiers died fighting Britain's cause in World War 1; London's Imperial War Museum pays tribute to animals that went to war, but sacrifices by millions of Indians remain untold stories. 
• The British were not interested in educating Indians and left India with a sordid 16% literacy rate. They taught English to a handful of Indians only for the sake of interpretation. 
• The railways built by Britain in India was not for the benefit of Indians but to further their colonial cause and profit from trade. 
• One Briton discovered tea leaves in Assam, and thus spurred India's tea cultivation spree by the British, for the British. British greed for commercial gains resulted in vast forest lands to be razed down, to grow tea, coffee and timber. 
• When General Dyer, the man behind the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre, ordered his soldiers to fire every bullet unannounced in the hearts of 15,000 people gathered unarmed to celebrate Baisakhi, the British rewarded him a handsome financial sum and presented him a bejeweled sword! 
• Colonialists like Thomas Pitt looted India; he took off to Britain after resigning from the post of Governor of Madras after acquiring a 400 carat gem. The 'Pitt Diamond' represented the widespread extraction of wealth by the British from India. 
• The British 'Divide and Rule' policy resulted in the Hindu-Muslim strife that eventually culminated into the Partition of India in 1947, creating a new Pakistan that Indians of Muslim faith could call home.
• British barrister Cyril Radcliffe was tasked to partition India and Pakistan within 40 days; the lines he drew across the map dissected families, homes, fields and villages.  
• Nearly 4 million Bengalis died in the Bengal famine of 1943 a.k.a. 'India's Forgotten Holocaust'. Despite this, Winston Churchill diverted food from starving Indians to well taken care of British soldiers in Greece, and blamed Indians for 'breeding like rabbits', going as far as to question 'Why hasn't Gandhi died yet?'