PM Modi all praises for Tharoor
Prime Minister Narendra Modi showered accolades on Congress MP Shashi Tharoor for his speech on India at the University of Oxford. The praise came at a function to set afloat a workshop for MPs under the Speaker's Research Initiative. Modi said that Tharoor's speech highlighted the feelings of patriotic Indians on the issue and showed how one can leave impact with effective arguments.
At a debate hosted by the debating society at Oxford, the issue raised was, "does Britain owe reparations to her former colonies over the damage caused?" Dr Shashi Tharoor, the Indian former Under-Secretary General of the UN concluded for the side in favour of the motion contending that the British did owe reparations to India. Tharoor's side won by 185 to 56 votes.
Tharoor in his speech focussed on how the British took maximum advantage of India. He claimed that "Britain's rise was financed by its depredation of India". Tharoor blamed the Brits for irretrievably damaging India's cloth trade and "flooding the world's markets" with cheap factory made cloth. He also described India as Britain's richest "cash cow" that paid for its own "oppression".
Congress parliamentarian Shashi Tharoor's speech at Oxford Union Society went viral on social media. On YouTube alone, it had garnered 1,590,687 views, with 26,657 likes. The speech was noteworthy for its humorous digs at British practices. He talked of the impact colonialism had on the Indian economy and how during Britain's rule India's share of the world economy dropped from 23% to 4%.
The British leadership has been rather mute and reluctant to discuss the issue of giving reparations to the colonies it ruled. David Cameron on his visit to Amritsar in 2013 said that the Amritsar massacre was a "shameful event", but fell short of a real apology. Similarly when Gordon Brown was Chancellor, he had said that Britain must stop apologising "for its colonial past".
While Tharoor's eloquence was widely praised, many said that none of his ideas were new and could be found in history books. Critics also that one should not "forget that he in all probability murdered his wife or facilitated the same."
