An Indian Parliamentarian’s take down of the British Empire has gone viral since it was posted on YouTube earlier this month. The video of Shashi Tharoor making a case for why former colonial subjects are owed reparations in a debate at the Oxford Union has so far been viewed more than 1.6 million times.
“We literally paid for our own oppression,” Tharoor said having noted that India became what he called “Britain’s largest cash cow” after its local industries were crippled to better serve the colonial regime.
“Britain’s rise for 200 years was financed by its depredations in India. In fact, Britain’s Industrial Revolution was actually premised upon the deindustrialization of India,” the former Under-Secretary General of the United Nations said.
The cynic in me wonders why the Indians let the fucking Limeys colonize & depredate them in the first place. Let alone that they didn't kill the damn Brits after they gave them guns.
He also noted that the value of Indian resources and troops who supported Britain during both World Wars added up to billions of pounds which remain unpaid.
Both sides may not do exactly the same thing, but both sides usually suck hard.
The enemy was a company, not a country, for the first century, and it took the Indians a long time to realize what was going on. When they did, in 1857, the British may have killed ten million and built an empire for Queen Victoria on their bones. Just saying. Believe it or not, I knew Shashi Tharoor around 1981 in Singapore, when he worked for the UN High Commission for Refugees and I taught in the University English department. Funny guy.
Ignorant But Still Thinks People Are Sheep Ed.: No reason not to believe you; I've traveled to foreign lands & met interesting people myself. (And missed many a history class in the process.)
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The enemy was a company, not a country, for the first century, and it took the Indians a long time to realize what was going on. When they did, in 1857, the British may have killed ten million and built an empire for Queen Victoria on their bones. Just saying. Believe it or not, I knew Shashi Tharoor around 1981 in Singapore, when he worked for the UN High Commission for Refugees and I taught in the University English department. Funny guy.
Ignorant But Still Thinks People Are Sheep Ed.:
No reason not to believe you; I've traveled to foreign lands & met interesting people myself. (And missed many a history class in the process.)
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