SHASHI
THAROOR’S SPEECH AT OXFORD UNION SOCIETY 28th MAY 2015
At a recent debate on the British colonization
of India in Oxford, Congress MP and writer Shashi Tharoor brilliantly argued
why Britain owes reparations for its exploitation of the subcontinent.
The video of the debate, held on may 28
the Oxford Union, went viral on social media in the past few days.
The motion of the debate was: “This
house believes Britain owes reparations to her former colonies” and Tharoor,
along with eminent speakers from Ghana and Jamaica, spoke in favour ot if. British
and American intellectuals spoke in opposition.
Tharoor’s speech was widely appreciated
in India because of the succinctness with which he illustrate how and why
colonial rule exploited the subcontinent, and how violence and racism were the
order of those days.
Though numerous conversation take place
in the public domain on India’s freedom struggle, very little happens about
critically analyzing, with data and facts, how much colonial rule affected
undivided India.
Tharoor’s speech went a long way in
explaining in easy to understand ways how colonialists ruined and exploited India.
Here is the full text of his speech.
Madam
President and gentlemen, ladies of the house
I
standing here with eight minutes in my hands in this venerable and rather
magnificent institution, I was going to assure you that I belong to the Henry
VIII School of public speaking - that as Henry VIII said to his wives 'I shall
not keep you long'. But now finding myself the seventh speaker out of eight in
what must already seem a rather long evening to you I rather feel like Henry
VIII's the last wife. I know more or less of what expected of me but I am not
sure how to do it any differently.
Perhaps
what I should do is really try and pay attention to the arguments that have
advanced by the Opposition today. We had for example Sir Richard Ottaway
suggesting - challenging the very idea that it could be argued that the
economic situation of the colonies was actually worsened by the experience of
British colonialism.
Well
I stand to offer you the Indian example, Sir Richard. India share of the world
economy when Britain arrived on it's shores was 23 per cent, by the time the
British left it was down to below 4 per cent. Why? Simply because India had
been governed for the benefit of Britain.
Britain's
rise for 200 years was financed by it's depredations in India. In fact
Britain's industrial revolution was actually premised upon the
de-industrialisation of India.
The
handloom weaver's for example famed across the world whose products were
exported around the world, Britain came right in. There were actually these
weaver's making fine muslin as light as woven wear, it was said, and Britain
came right in, smashed their thumbs, broke their looms, imposed tariffs and
duties on their cloth and products and started, of course, taking their raw
material from India and shipping back manufactured cloth flooding the world's
markets with what became the products of the dark and satanic mills of the
Victoria in England
That
meant that the weavers in India became beggars and India went from being a world
famous exporter of finished cloth into an importer when from having 27 per cent
of the world trade to less than 2 per cent.
Meanwhile,
colonialists like Robert Clive brought their rotten boroughs in England on the
proceeds of their loot in India while taking the Hindi word loot into their
dictionary as well as their habits.
And
the British had the gall to call him Clive of India as if he belonged to the
country, when all he really did was to ensure that much of the country belonged
to him.
By
the end of 19th century, the fact is that India was already Britain's biggest
cash cow, the world's biggest purchaser of British goods and exports and the
source for highly paid employment for British civil servants. We literally paid
for our own oppression. And as has been pointed out, the worthy British
Victorian families that made their money out of the slave economy, one fifth of
the elites of the wealthy class in Britain in 19th century owed their money to
transporting 3 million Africans across the waters. And in fact in 1833 when
slavery was abolished and what happened was a compensation of 20 million pounds
was paid not as reparations to those who had lost their lives or who had
suffered or been oppressed by slavery but to those who had lost their property.
I
was struck by the fact that your Wi-Fi password at this Union commemorates the
name of Mr Gladstone - the great liberal hero. Well, I am very sorry his family
was one of those who benefited from this compensation.
www.jitenderarora.blogspot.in
Staying
with India between 15-29 million Indians died of starvation in British induced
famines. The most famous example was, of course, was the great Bengal famine
during the World War II when 4 million people died because Winston Churchill
deliberately as a matter of written policy proceeded to divert essential
supplies from civilians in Bengal to sturdy tummies and Europeans as reserve
stockpiles.
He
said that the starvation of anyway underfed Bengalis mattered much less than
that of sturdy Greeks' - Churchill's actual quote. And when conscious stricken
British officials wrote to him pointing out that people were dying because of
this decision, he peevishly wrote in the margins of file, “Why hasn’t Gandhi
died yet?"
So,
all notions that the British were trying to do their colonial enterprise out of
enlightened despotism to try and bring the benefits of colonialism and
civilisation to the benighted. Even I am sorry - Churchill's conduct in 1943 is
simply one example of many that gave light to this myth.
As
others have said on the proposition - violence and racism were the reality of
the colonial experience. And no wonder that the sun never set on the British
empire because even god couldn’t trust the English in the dark.
Let
me take the World War I as a very concrete example since the first speaker Mr.
Lee suggested these couldn't be quantified. Let me quantify World War I for
you. Again I am sorry from an Indian perspective as others have spoken abut the
countries. One-sixth of all the British forces that fought in the war were
Indian - 54 000 Indians actually lost their lives in that war, 65 000 were
wounded and another 4000 remained missing or in prison.
Indian
taxpayers had to cough up a 100 million pounds in that time’s money. India
supplied 17 million rounds of ammunition, 6,00,000 rifles and machine guns, 42
million garments were stitched and sent out of India and 1.3 million Indian
personnel served in this war. I know all this because the commemoration of the
centenary has just taken place.
But
not just that, India had to supply 173,000 animals 370 million tonnes of
supplies and in the end the total value of everything that was taken out of
India and India by the way was suffering from recession at that time and
poverty and hunger, was in today's money 8 billion pounds. You want
quantification, it’s available.
World
War II, it was was even worse - 2.5 million Indians in uniform. I won't believe
it to the point but Britain's total war debt of 3 billion pounds in 1945 money,
1.25 billion was owed to India and never actually paid.
Somebody
mentioned Scotland, well the fact is that colonialism actually cemented your
union with Scotland. The Scots had actually tried to send colonies out before
1707, they had all failed, I am sorry to say. But, then of course, came union
and India was available and there you had a disproportionate employment of
Scots, I am sorry but Mr Mckinsey had to speak after me, engaged in this
colonial enterprise as soldiers, as merchants, as agents, as employees and
their earnings from India is what brought prosperity to Scotland, even pulled
Scotland out of poverty.
Now
that India is no longer there, no wonder the bonds are loosening. Now we have
heard other arguments on this side and there has been a mention of railways.
Well let me tell you first of all as my colleague the Jamaican High
Commissioner has pointed out, the railways and roads were really built to serve
British interests and not those of the local people but I might add that many
countries have built railways and roads without having had to be colonalised in
order to do so.
They
were designed to carry raw materials from the hinterland into the ports to be
shipped to Britain. And the fact is that the Indian or Jamaican or other
colonial public - their needs were incidental. Transportation - there was no
attempt made to match supply from demand from as transports, none what so ever.
Instead
in fact the Indian railways were built with massive incentives offered by
Britain to British investors, guaranteed out of Indian taxes paid by Indians
with the result that you actually had one mile of Indian railway costing twice
what it cost to built the same mile in Canada or Australia because there was so
much money being paid in extravagant returns.
Britain
made all the profits, controlled the technology, supplied all the equipment and
absolutely all these benefits came as British private enterprise at Indian
public risk. That was the railways as an accomplishment.
We are hearing about aid,
I think it was Sir Richard Ottaway mentioned British aid to India. Well let me
just point out that the British aid to India is about 0.4 per cent of India's
GDP. The government of India actually spends more on fertiliser subsidies which
might be an appropriate metaphor for that argument.
If
I may point out as well that as my fellow speakers from the proposition have
pointed out there have been incidents of racial violence, of loot, of
massacres, of blood shed, of transportation and in India's case even one of our
last Mughal emperors. Yes, may be today's Britains are not responsible for some
of these reparations but the same speakers have pointed with pride to their
foreign aid - you are not responsible for the people starving in Somalia but
you give them aid surely the principle of reparation for what is the wrongs
that have done cannot be denied.
www.jitenderarora.blogspot.in
It's
been pointed out that for the example dehumanisation of Africans in the
Caribbean, the massive psychological damage that has been done, the undermining
of social traditions, of the property rights, of the authority structures of
the societies - all in the interest of British colonialism and the fact remains
that many of today's problems in these countries including the persistence and
in some cases the creation of racial, of ethnic, of religious tensions were the
direct result of colonialism. So there is a moral debt that needs to be paid.
Someone
challenged reparations elsewhere. Well I am sorry Germany doesn't just give
reparations to Israel, it also gives reparations to Poland perhaps some of the
speakers here are too young to remember the dramatic picture of Charles William
Brunt on his knees in the Walter Gaiter in 1970.
There
are other examples, there is Italy's reparations to Libya, there is Japan's to
Korea even Britain has paid reparations to the New Zealand Maoris. So it is not
as if this is something that is unprecedented or unheard of that somehow opens
some sort of nasty Pandora box.
No
wonder professor Louis reminded us that he is from Texas. There is a wonderful
expression in Texas that summarises the arguments of the opposition 'All hat
and no cattle'.
Now,
If I can just quickly look through the other notes that I was scribbling while
they were speaking, there was a reference to democracy and rule of law. Let me
say with the greatest possible respect, you cannot to be rich to oppress,
enslave, kill, maim, torture people for 200 years and then celebrate the fact
that they are democratic at the end of it.
We
were denied democracy so we had to snatch it, seize it from you with the
greatest of reluctance it was considered in India's case after 150 years of
British rule and that too with limited franchise.
If
I may just point out the arguments made by a couple of speakers. The first
speaker Mr. Lee in particular conceded all the evil atrocities of the colonialism
but essentially suggested that reparations won't really help, they won't help
the right people, they would be use of propaganda tools, they will embolden
people like Mr Mugabe. So, it's nice how in the old days, I am sorry to say
that either people of the Caribbean used to frighten their children into
behaving and sleeping by saying some Francis Drake would come up after them
that was the legacy, now Mugabe will be there - the new sort of Francis Drake
of our time.
The
fact is very simply said, that we are not talking about reparations as a tool
to empower anybody, they are a tool for you to atone, for the wrongs that have
been done and I am quite prepared to accept the proposition that you can't
evaluate, put a monetary sum to the kinds of horrors people have suffered.
Certainly no amount of money can expedite the loss of a loved one as somebody
pointed out there. You are not going to figure out the exact amount but the
principle is what matters.
The
fact is that to speak blithely of sacrifices on both sides as an analogy was
used here - a burglar comes into your house and sacks the place but stubs his
toe and you say that there was sacrifice on both sides that I am sorry to say
is not an acceptable argument. The truth is that we are not arguing specifically
that vast some of money needs to be paid. The proposition before this house is
the principle of owing reparations, not the fine points of how much is owed, to
whom it should be paid. The question is, is there a debt, does Britain owe
reparations?
As
far as I am concerned, the ability to acknowledge your wrong that has been
done, to simply say sorry will go a far far far longer way than some percentage
of GDP in the form of aid.
What
is required it seems to me is accepting the principle that reparations are
owed. Personally, I will be quiet happy if it was one pound a year for the next
200 years after the last 200 years of Britain in India.
Thank
you very much madam President.
