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oneeasyreader 's review for:
Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India
by Shashi Tharoor
Sometimes you need lists. Sometimes to remember things. Sometimes to make a point.
This book is a list making a point. You see, there’s a scholarly(ish) trend in Britain that is fond of its own list remembering Britain’s Indian Empire. Railways! A modern legal system and civil service! Cricket! Sure, there were some bad points, such as the Jallianwala Bagh massacre (tragic but really, what about all those sub-continentals carrying out their own mass-murders?) and perhaps, under your breath, the Bengal Famine of 1943 (but who wasn’t at fault for that?). Yet, at the end of the day, if we pick our statistics carefully and talk some mystical words about commerce and democracy, wasn’t the Indian Empire a Good Thing?
So here’s Inglorious Empire with the list from Shashi Tharoor that says: “Hey, maybe we would have been better off without you.” Maybe a 16% literacy rate at the time of Independence isn’t a great legacy. Maybe India didn’t need its weaving industry destroyed to allow un-competitive British businesses could dump their finished products, shipped over on British hulls only. Maybe India would have liked a civil service where Indians could have been civil servants in it. Wouldn’t it be nice if the British could have considered murder of an Indian equal to one of their own? And actually, could they stop starving the Indian people as they did in 1783, 1791, 1837, 1860, 1865, 1868, 1873, 1876, 1896, 1899 and, of course, 1943? Or, at the very least, not suppress private relief funds as they did in 1877?
Different times may have different morals but Tharoor notes that It was bad enough that the theft was so blatant that even Englishmen of the time acknowledged it. Edmund Burke, Charles James Fox and William Howitt spoke against the treatment of India. Sure, you had a luminary such as anti-slavery crusader William Wilberforce stating “Our religion is sublime, pure, and beneficent. Theirs is mean, licentious, and cruel”, but it kind of begs the question: if someone of his high-minded morals felt comfortable making comparative judgements during his lifetime, is it not reasonable to criticise the basis of such judgements? Further, for all their moralising at the times, The British interfered with social customs only when it suited them.
There’s a broad range of restrictions placed on India, from the Navigation Acts, transfers of wealth via salaries and tax, indentured labour long after slavery “ended.” Even the oft-quoted railways were overly expensive (to guarantee a 5% return to investors), targeted at transporting goods for the British rather than Indians, then ripped up and shipped off to Mesopotamia when war demanded it. Rather than letting Indians build their own locomotives, Britain banned construction as late as 1912, while importing thousands of locomotives from other (white) countries.
This isn’t the easiest book to read. Generally, lists aren’t. I am also nervous about the chapter on the Partition and the lead up to it. While I accept the British played up divisions between groups, the treatment of Jinnah and the Muslim League is, to put it generously, unsympathetic. The ongoing issues of Hindu nationalism are accepted technically but practically hand-waved away. But overall Inglorious Empire isn’t too long, Tharoor backs up his facts with citations, and he considers the historiography of Britain’s occupation.
Maybe make a list of what he says. He makes a good point.
This book is a list making a point. You see, there’s a scholarly(ish) trend in Britain that is fond of its own list remembering Britain’s Indian Empire. Railways! A modern legal system and civil service! Cricket! Sure, there were some bad points, such as the Jallianwala Bagh massacre (tragic but really, what about all those sub-continentals carrying out their own mass-murders?) and perhaps, under your breath, the Bengal Famine of 1943 (but who wasn’t at fault for that?). Yet, at the end of the day, if we pick our statistics carefully and talk some mystical words about commerce and democracy, wasn’t the Indian Empire a Good Thing?
So here’s Inglorious Empire with the list from Shashi Tharoor that says: “Hey, maybe we would have been better off without you.” Maybe a 16% literacy rate at the time of Independence isn’t a great legacy. Maybe India didn’t need its weaving industry destroyed to allow un-competitive British businesses could dump their finished products, shipped over on British hulls only. Maybe India would have liked a civil service where Indians could have been civil servants in it. Wouldn’t it be nice if the British could have considered murder of an Indian equal to one of their own? And actually, could they stop starving the Indian people as they did in 1783, 1791, 1837, 1860, 1865, 1868, 1873, 1876, 1896, 1899 and, of course, 1943? Or, at the very least, not suppress private relief funds as they did in 1877?
Different times may have different morals but Tharoor notes that It was bad enough that the theft was so blatant that even Englishmen of the time acknowledged it. Edmund Burke, Charles James Fox and William Howitt spoke against the treatment of India. Sure, you had a luminary such as anti-slavery crusader William Wilberforce stating “Our religion is sublime, pure, and beneficent. Theirs is mean, licentious, and cruel”, but it kind of begs the question: if someone of his high-minded morals felt comfortable making comparative judgements during his lifetime, is it not reasonable to criticise the basis of such judgements? Further, for all their moralising at the times, The British interfered with social customs only when it suited them.
There’s a broad range of restrictions placed on India, from the Navigation Acts, transfers of wealth via salaries and tax, indentured labour long after slavery “ended.” Even the oft-quoted railways were overly expensive (to guarantee a 5% return to investors), targeted at transporting goods for the British rather than Indians, then ripped up and shipped off to Mesopotamia when war demanded it. Rather than letting Indians build their own locomotives, Britain banned construction as late as 1912, while importing thousands of locomotives from other (white) countries.
This isn’t the easiest book to read. Generally, lists aren’t. I am also nervous about the chapter on the Partition and the lead up to it. While I accept the British played up divisions between groups, the treatment of Jinnah and the Muslim League is, to put it generously, unsympathetic. The ongoing issues of Hindu nationalism are accepted technically but practically hand-waved away. But overall Inglorious Empire isn’t too long, Tharoor backs up his facts with citations, and he considers the historiography of Britain’s occupation.
Maybe make a list of what he says. He makes a good point.