Inglorious Empire by Shashi Tharoor review – what the British did to India | Books | The Guardian

Inglorious Empire by Shashi Tharoor review – what the British did to India | Books | The Guardian




Inglorious Empire by Shashi Tharoor review – what the British did to India



A timely book that addresses the need to temper British imperial nostalgia with post-colonial responsibility


PD Smith

Fri 23 Feb 2018 20.01 AEDTLast modified on Sat 24 Feb 2018 11.10 AEDT




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Comments16 The Royal Insurance building, completed in 1918, in Kolkata. Photograph: Rebecca Conway/AFP/Getty Images


A2014 poll in the UK found that 59% of people thought the British empire was something to be proud of and nearly half believed countries were better off for having been colonised.

Tharoor’s passionately argued book provides a crushing rebuttal of such ideas with regard to India. The subjugation of his people was “a monstrous crime” and any positives were mere by-products of actions not intended to benefit Indians.

Pre-colonial India was not a backward society, but a wealthy, commercialising one with a highly developed banking system. Britain, he argues, systematically looted his country for some 200 years.

By the end of the 19th century India had become Britain’s biggest source of revenue. India’s share of the world economy at the start of the 18th century was 23%. When Britain left it was around 3%. This is a timely book, for in the era of Brexit, when bold claims are being made about Britain’s global aspirations, “the need to temper British imperial nostalgia with postcolonial responsibility has never been greater”.