In 1600, the British East India Company was formed under royal charter. It all began as a harmless commercial enterprise, Tharoor reminds us.

In the process, Tharoor accuses a number of historians, most prominent among them, Niall Ferguson, of being apologists for the racial discrimination, violence, economic sabotage and denial of liberty embodied by centuries of British rule in India. As empires go, he says, Britain's was uncommonly ruthless, devious and rapacious in its quest to enslave a people whose leaders failed to see how free trade, unwisely managed, can undermine a country's long-term sovereignty and prosperity. In doing so, he seeks to remind misty-eyed Raj romantics that colonialism was no joke.

By the end of the Raj, Britain's share had multiplied fivefold, while India had been reduced to penury. In 1600, Britain produced 1.8 per cent of the world's gross domestic product, compared with India's 23 per cent. In Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India, Shashi Tharoor, writer, politician and United Nations-based diplomat for 30 years, asks a similar question to the one posed by Cleese's beleaguered revolutionary.Īs they washed their hands and packed their carpet bags, the British departed an India in which 84 per cent of people could not read or write their own name in any language. 'But apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the freshwater system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?' 'Orright,' concedes the leader, Reg, played by John Cleese. Remember the scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian when a Judean rebel leader fumes as his gormless but practical comrades detail the benefits of oppression under their powerful and technologically advanced Roman oppressors? This is a reproduction of wonderful article written by Christopher Kremmer on ' The Sydney Morning Herald '

Inglorious empire review