If we take Tharoor at his word, he seems to be replying not so much to the empire of Disraeli and Curzon but to Empire by Niall Ferguson, another polemic, this time in favour of free markets. But this is a hollow victory, for it would be hard to find anyone who would now contend anything else. His main point-that Britain colonised and dominated India primarily for her own benefit-must willingly be granted. It is a romp of resentment, full of easy, knock-about debating points that revisit 19th century controversies with a 20th century attitude. The speaker, of course, was Shashi Tharoor, promoting Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India (published in India last year as An Era of Darkness), his anti-imperial polemic, recently published in the UK amid extensive media coverage. Here was Norman Tebbit’s cricket test on steroids, and some of my fellow audience members were failing it large style. See? They don’t integrate, they hate us, they’ll never be properly British. Edited highlights of this, I thought, would be manna from heaven for the anti-immigration lobby. I hoped that no one, in our post-Brexit Britain, was recording the spectacle on a phone. Less amusing was the fact that the noisiest members of the audience appeared to be of Asian descent.
Amusingly ironic too, sitting as we were in a great imperial institution. Not a lot at stake then, and not exactly topical. For the year was 2017, the venue was a lecture theatre in the British Library, and the iniquitous regime was the British Raj.
Nor could the audience be looking forward to imminent liberation. It was as if a downtrodden people were finally rising up against their oppressors.īut I felt no sense of triumph. Line after line from the platform was greeted with cheers, as the speaker rained blows on the government, skilfully exposing its rottenness and its injustices. Eventually, the star took the microphone, and as he warmed to his theme, the audience became increasingly noisy. I had queued for over an hour, and reckoned myself lucky to get in.
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