The best parts of the book restate this old idea.

The idea that India was a prosperous society, which British repression made poor, has circulated through academic and political circles since 1900, especially within the Indian National Congress, the political party to which Tharoor belongs. Yet, few would consider Tharoor’s dark narrative an accurate depiction of one of the most complex 200-year episodes in world history. Few professional historians think that the British Empire ruled India with India’s best interests in mind. None of these qualities makes the interpretation right, however.

Like a religious text, it tells a straight and narrow story with the zeal of a holy warrior. The story is meant to be blood-curdling and the colourful language-including liberal use of “depredation,” “loot,” “rapaciousness,” “vicious,” “brutality,” “plunder” and “extraction”-produces that effect. The facts cited in the book are beyond dispute. Tharoor makes his case with passion and plain good writing. In this way, British imperial rule left India devastated. A history of famines reveals how indifferent the state was to the welfare of ordinary Indians (Chapter 5). Though the British did introduce some instruments of modernization such as railways and the rule of law, these “supposed ‘gifts’ were in fact designed in Britain’s interests alone.”īritish divide-and-rule policies strained the parliamentary democracy the British introduced during their reign (Chapters 3 and 4).

This drain of resources left India poorer. Likewise, the British-Indian state paid a sum of money every year to Britain for services like interest on public debt or salaries of expatriate military officers. The Free Trade policy of the Empire ruined India’s artisans and enabled Britain to build a world-leading textile industry (Chapter 1). It continued via unequal trade and general extraction in the 19th century. The looting began with the “plunder” of Indian wealth by East India Company officers like Robert Clive. Britain’s “looting” of India led to this disaster, Tharoor writes. So states Shashi Tharoor on the cover of this book. By 1947, after two centuries of British rule, it had decreased six fold. In the eighteenth century, India’s share of the world economy was as large as Europe’s. Shashi Tharoor, Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India.

Inglorious empire pages