After a UK anchor asked India to return foreign aid, a 2015 video of Shashi Tharoor went viral where he made the sun set on the British Empire.
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00:00We should not be giving money to countries with a space program.
00:03No wonder that the sun never set on the British Empire,
00:07because even God couldn't trust the English in the dark.
00:30India's share of the world economy when Britain arrived on its shores was 23%.
00:43By the time the British left, it was down to below 4%.
00:46Why?
00:47Simply because India had been governed for the benefit of Britain.
00:51Britain's rise for 200 years was financed by its depredations in India.
00:55In fact, Britain's industrial revolution was actually premised upon the de-industrialization
01:01of India.
01:02The handloom weavers, for example, famed across the world, whose products were exported around
01:06the world.
01:07Britain came right in.
01:08There were actually these weavers making fine muslin, light as woven air, it was said.
01:14And Britain came right in, smashed their thumbs, broke their looms, imposed tariffs and duties
01:19on their cloth and products, and started, of course, taking the raw materials from India
01:24and shipping back manufactured cloth, flooding the world's markets with what became the
01:29products of the dark and satanic mills of Victorian England.
01:33That meant that the weavers in India became beggars, and India went from being a world-famous
01:39exporter of finished cloth into an importer, went from having 27% of world trade to less
01:45than 2%.
01:47Meanwhile, colonialists like Robert Clive bought their rotten burrows in England on
01:52the proceeds of their loot in India, while taking the Hindi word loot into their dictionaries
01:57as well as their habits.
01:59And the British had the gall to call him Clive of India, as if he belonged to the country,
02:11when all he really did was to ensure that much of the country belonged to him.
02:17By the end of the 19th century, the fact is that India was already Britain's biggest
02:22cash cow, the world's biggest purchaser of British goods and exports, and the source
02:28of highly paid employment for British civil servants.
02:31We literally paid for our own oppression.
02:34Between 15 and 29 million Indians died of starvation in British-induced famines.
02:39The most famous example, of course, was the Great Bengal Famine during the Second World
02:43War, when four million people died because Winston Churchill, deliberately as a matter
02:48of written, minuted policy, proceeded to divert essential supplies from civilians in Bengal
02:54to sturdy Tommies and Europeans as reserve stockpiles.
02:59He said that the starvation of any way underfed Bengalis mattered much less than that of sturdy
03:05Greeks.
03:06This is Churchill's actual quote.
03:08And when conscious, stricken British officials wrote to him, pointing out that people were
03:12dying because of this decision, he peevishly wrote in the margins of the file, why hasn't
03:17Gandhi died yet?
03:19So all notions that the British were trying to do their colonial enterprise out of enlightened
03:25despotism to try and bring the benefits of colonialism and civilization to the benighted
03:30heathen.
03:31I'm sorry.
03:32Churchill's conduct in 43, simply one example of many that gave a lie to this myth.
03:37As others have said on the proposition, violence and racism were the reality of the colonial
03:43experience.
03:44And no wonder that the sun never set on the British Empire, because even God couldn't
03:49trust the English in the dark.
03:51Well, let me quantify World War I for you.
03:57One-sixth of all the British forces that fought in the war were Indian.
04:01Fifty-four thousand Indians actually lost their lives in that war.
04:06Sixty-five thousand were wounded.
04:08Another four thousand remained missing or in prison.
04:11Indian taxpayers had to cough up a hundred million pounds in that time's money.
04:17India supplied 70 million rounds of ammunition, 600,000 rifles and machine guns, 42 million
04:24garments were stitched and sent out of India, and 1.3 million Indian personnel served in
04:31this war.
04:32Not just that, India had to supply 173,000 animals, 370 million tons of supplies, and
04:40in the end, the total value of everything that was taken out of India, India and India
04:45by the way suffering from recession at that time and poverty and hunger, was in today's
04:51money eight billion pounds.
04:54You want quantification?
04:55It's available.
04:57Second World War, it was even worse, two and a half million Indians in uniform.
05:00I won't belabor the point, but of Britain's total war debt of three billion pounds in
05:061945 money, 1.25 billion was owed to India and never actually paid.
05:13Railways and roads were really built to serve British interests and not those of the local
05:17people, but I might add that many countries have built railways and roads without having
05:21had to be colonized in order to do so.
05:24They were designed to carry raw materials from the hinterland into the ports to be shipped
05:34to Britain, and the fact is that the Indian or Jamaican or other colonial public, their
05:40needs were incidental.
05:41Transportation, there was no attempt made to match supply to demand for mass transport,
05:47none whatsoever.
05:48Instead, in fact, the Indian railways were built with massive incentives offered by Britain
05:54to British investors, guaranteed out of Indian taxes paid by Indians.
06:00With the result that you actually had one mile of Indian railway costing twice what
06:05it costs to build the same mile in Canada or Australia because there was so much money
06:10being paid in extravagant returns.
06:12Britain made all the profits, controlled the technology, supplied all the equipment, and
06:16absolutely all these benefits came as private enterprise, British private enterprise, at
06:22public risk, Indian public risk.
06:25That was the railways as an accomplishment.
06:28There was reference to democracy and rule of law.
06:30Let me say with the greatest possible respect, it's a bit rich to oppress, enslave, kill,
06:37torture, maim people for 200 years and then celebrate the fact that they're democratic
06:41at the end of it.
06:42We were denied democracy, so we had to snatch it, seize it from you.
06:47With the greatest reluctance, it was conceded in India's case after 150 years of British
06:51rule and that too with limited franchise.
06:53The British aid to India is about 0.4% of India's GDP.
06:58The government of India actually spends more on fertilizer subsidies, which might be an
07:03appropriate metaphor for that argument.