Shashi Tharoor shared his thoughts in an Oxford Union Debate

1. OXFORD UNION
DEBATE

2. Contents
• Introduction
• The dignitaries in debate
• Fabric Fraud
• The loot-eras
• “Starvation is less serious”
• “why hasn't Gandhi died yet?”
• Indian Railways
• Smart Plan
• Conclusion

3. Introduction
• “British owes Reparations” debate was hosted by Oxford
Union on 28th May featuring many notable dignitaries
along with
• Debate took place at Scotland and there were pollings
before and after the debate
• Henna Dattani, Alpha lee, Aloun Ndombet, Indian MP, Dr.
Shashi Tharoor participated in debate

4. The dignitaries in debate
• Hena Dattani who is member of secretaries committee cited
about reparations owed to Kenya and how life was hard to the
people in kenya at the time of colonialism
• On the other hand, Alpha Lee stated how paying reparations
will not help suffered countries as he had his own views
• Shashi Tharoor being 3rd speaker explained brilliantly how
India’s economic situation has been worsened by British
colonialism as all his points were acceptable to me
• India was governed for the benefit of Britain
• Two-hundred years of Britain’s glory was financed by its
depredations in India
• Industrial Revolution of Britain was constructed on the de-
industrialisation of India
• Devastation of Indian textiles & their replacement by
engineering in England, with Indian raw material & exporting
the final products back to India and the rest of the world

5. Fabric fraud
• Bengali handloom weavers crafted and shipped
cotton which were light and known as woven air
• Britain's response handicapped Bengali weavers
physically as well as economically
• They not only disrupted their looms, imposed
duties but also increased tariffs on them

6. India Suffered losses
• Britishers further flooded India with their
cheaper fabrics
• Weavers became beggars, manufacturing
collapsed
• In Dhaka, (part of Bangladesh, at present) the
muslin production fell by 90%.
• So instead of a great exporter of finished
products, India became an importer of British
ones
• India once shared 27% of world exports
which fell to 2%

7. The loot-era
• Colonialists like Robert Clive bought their "rotten
boroughs" in England with the proceeds of their loot in
India.
• Loot; meaning ‘to grab over a thing’, a word borrowed by
Britishers from India and added it to their dictionaries.
• India was Britain's biggest cash-cow by the end of the
19th century
• World's biggest customer of British exports & source of
highly paid employment for British civil servants
• All at India's own expense. We literally paid for our own
oppression

8. “Famine was every year occurrence”
• The deaths were countless as Britain brutally
demoralized India; 15 to 29 million Indians died
dreadfully unnecessary deaths from famine.
• The last largest scarcity of food to take place in India was
under British rule
• None has taken place since, free democracies don't let
their people starve to death

9. “why hasn't Gandhi died yet?”
• As we know four million Bengalis died in the Great
Bengal Famine of 1943 after Winston Churchill
deliberately ordered the diversion of food from starving
Indian civilians to well-supplied British soldiers and
European stockpiles.
• "The starvation of anyway underfed Bengalis is less
serious" than that of "sturdy Greeks", Churchill argued.
• At that time when officers of conscience pointed out in a
telegram to the PM the gage of the tragedy caused by
his decisions, Churchill's only response was to ask
crabbily "why hasn't Gandhi died yet?“

10. Indian Railways
• In the case of Indian Railways it is often pointed to as
advantage of the British rule as they were easily
snubbing the obvious fact that many countries have built
railways without having to be colonized to do so
• Railways were suppose to serve the Indian public
• However, they were intended to help the British get
around, and above all to carry Indian raw materials to the
ports to be shipped to Britain
• Adding up, Indian Railways were a big British colonial
scam

11. Smart Plan
• British shareholders made absurd amounts of money by investing in
the railways, where the government guaranteed extravagant returns
on capital, paid through Indian taxes
• Thanks to British rapacity, a mile of Indian railways cost double that
of a mile in Canada and Australia
• It was a splendid racket for the British, who made all the profits,
controlled the technology and supplied all the equipment, which
meant once again that the benefits went out of India.
• It was a scheme described at the time as "private enterprise at public
risk". Private British enterprise, public Indian risk
• Earnings from colonialism in India pulled Scotland out of poverty
and helped make it prosperous

12. Conclusion
• According to me Britain really owes reparations to India
after all those sufferings and hardships
• Apart from that they should have feeling of regret for all
the wrong doings
• In the end the debate continued we can say that it was a
successful one as the votes shifted
• Earlier the people who were in favor of Shashi Tharoor’s
opposition changed their minds and supported him
• The vote count which went 35 to 28 for the motion.
• When the debate was about to conclude, voting took
place again and the needle had moved dramatically from
26 to 42 against making it a successful debate