Verbatim Transcript of Dr. Shashi Tharoor's Speech at the Oxford ...
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Verbatim Transcript of Dr. Shashi Tharoor's Speech at the Oxford Union Debate 2015
May 28, 2015
© Shashi Tharoor 2015
Description (https://www.oxford-union.org/term_events/reparations_debate)
This House Believes Britain Owes Reparations to her Former Colonies
We have recently seen former colonies demanding reparations for centuries of abuse: from the Mau Mau survivors in Kenya to descendants of slaves in the Caribbean. David Cameron made controversial remarks on the issue in Amritsar; William Hague said outright that there should be no post-colonial guilt; and Ken Livingstone gave a heartfelt apology for London’s role in the slave trade. Do Britain’s politicians owe more than just their words?
Speakers in Proposition:
Madam President and gentlemen, ladies of the house,
I’m standing here, with eight minutes in my hands in this venerable and rather magnificent institution. I was going to assure you that I belong to the HenryVIIIschool of public speaking –that, as Henry VIII said to his wives,“I shall not keep you long”. [laughter.] But now, finding myself the seventh speaker out of eight in what must already seem a rather long evening to you, I rather feel like Henry VIII’s last wife: I more or less know what’s expected of me but I am not sure how to do it any differently.[laughter.]
Perhaps what I should do is really try and pay attention to the arguments that were advanced by the Opposition today. We had, for example Sir Richard Ottaway suggesting, challenging the very idea that it could be argued that the economic situation of the colonies was actually worsened by the experience of British colonialism.
Well I stand to offer you the Indian example, Sir Richard. India’s share of the world economy when Britain arrived on its shores was 23 per cent, by the time the British left it was down to below 4 per cent. Why? Simply because India had been governed for the benefit of Britain.
Britain’s rise for 200 years was financed by its depredations in India. In fact, Britain’s industrial revolution was actually premised upon the de-industrialisation of India.
The handloom weavers, for example, famed across the world, whose products were exported around the world-- there were actually these weavers making fine muslin, light as woven air, it was said -- and Britain came right in, smashed their thumbs, broke their looms, imposed tariffs and duties on their cloth and products and started taking the raw materials from India and shipping back manufactured cloth, flooding the world’s markets with what became the products of the dark and satanic mills of Victorian England.
That meant that the weavers in India became beggars and India went from being a world famous exporter of finished cloth into an importer.It went from having 27 per cent of world trade to less than 2 per cent.
Meanwhile, colonialists like Robert Clive brought their “rotten boroughs” in England on the proceeds of their loot in India, while taking the Hindi word loot into their dictionaries as well as their habits.[laughter, applause]
…And the British had the gall to call him Clive of India as if he belonged to the country, when all he really did was to ensure that much of the country belonged to him.[laughter, applause]
By the end of 19thcentury, the fact is that India was already Britain’s biggest cash cow, the world’s biggest purchaser of British goods and exports, and the source of highly paid employment for British civil servants. We literally paid for our own oppression.
And as has been pointed out, the wealthy British Victorian families that made their money out of the slave economy—one fifth of the elites of the wealthy class in Britain in 19thcentury owed their money to transporting 3 million Africans across the waters. And in fact in 1833 when slavery was abolished, what happened was a compensation of 20 million pounds was paid, not as reparations to those who had lost their lives or who had suffered or been oppressed by slavery, but to those who had lost their “property”.
I was struck by the fact that your Wi-Fi password at this Union commemorates the name of Mr. Gladstone, the great liberal hero. Well, I am sorry his family was one of those who benefited from this compensation.[applause]
Back to India:between 15 to 29 million Indians died of starvation in British induced famines. The most famous example, of course, was the great Bengal famine during the Second World War when 4 million people died because Winston Churchill deliberately as a matter of written, minutedpolicy,proceeded to divert essential supplies from civilians in Bengal to sturdy Tommies and Europeans, as reserve stockpiles.
He said that “the starvation of anyway underfed Bengalis mattered much less than that of sturdy Greeks’“. This is Churchill’s actual quote. And when conscience-stricken British officials wrote to him, pointing out that people were dying because of this decision, he peevishly wrote in the margins of the file, “Why hasn’t Gandhi died yet?”
So, all notions that the British were trying to do their colonial enterprise out of enlightened despotism, to try and bring the benefits of colonialism and civilisation to the benighted --I am sorry, Churchill’s conduct in 1943 is simply one example of many that gave a lie to this myth.
As others have said on the proposition–violence and racism were the reality of the colonial experience. And no wonder that the sun never set on the British Empire because even God couldn’t trust the English in the dark.[laughter, applause]
Let me take World War I as a very concrete example, since the first speaker, Mr. Lee, suggested these things couldn’t be quantified. Well, let me quantify World War I for you. Again, I am sorry, from an Indian perspective. Others have spoken aboutother countries.
One-sixth of all the British forces that fought in the war were Indian—54 000 Indians actually lost their lives in that war, 65 000 were wounded and another 4000 remained missing or in prison.
Indian taxpayers had to cough up 100 million pounds in that time’s money. India supplied 70million rounds of ammunition, 600,000 rifles and machine guns, 42 million garments were stitched and sent out of India and 1.3 million Indian personnel served in this war. I know all this because of course the commemoration of the centenary has just taken place.
But not just that: India had to supply 173,000 animals, 370 million tonnes of supplies and in the end the total value of everything that was taken out of India --and India by the way was suffering from recession at that time and poverty and hunger -- was in today’s money 8 billion pounds. You want quantification? It’s available.
The Second World War, it was even worse: Two and a half million Indians in uniform. I won’t belabour the point, but of Britain’s total war debt of 3 billion pounds in 1945 money, 1.25 billion was owed to India and never actually paid.
Somebody mentioned Scotland. Well the fact is that colonialism actually cemented your Union with Scotland. You know the Scots had actually tried to send colonies out before 1707;they had all failed, I am sorry to say. But, then of course, came Union and India was available and there you had a disproportionate employment of Scots. I am sorry that Mr. MacKenziehas to speak after me! Scots were engaged in this colonial enterprise as soldiers, as merchants, as agents, as employees and their earnings from India is what brought prosperity to Scotland, even pulledScotland out of poverty.Now that India is no longer there, no wonder the bonds are loosening.
Now we’ve heard other arguments on this side. There’s been a mention of railways. Well let me tell you, first of all as my colleague the Jamaican High Commissioner has pointed out, railways and roads were really built to serve British interests and not those of the local people.But I might add that many countries have built railways and roads without having had to be colonised in order to do so.[laughter, applause]They were designed to carry raw materials from the hinterland into the ports to be shipped to Britain. And the fact is, that the Indian or Jamaican or other colonial public, their needs were incidental.With transportation, there was no attempt made to match supply to demand for mass transport, none what so ever.
Instead, in fact, the Indian railways were built with massive incentives offered by Britain to British investors, guaranteed out of Indian taxes paid by Indians, with the result that you actually had one mile of Indian railway costing twice what it cost to build the same mile in Canada or Australia, because there was so much money being paid in extravagant returns.Britain made all the profits, controlled the technology, supplied all the equipment and absolutely all these benefits came as private enterprise -- British private enterprise -- at public risk, Indian public risk. That was the railways as an accomplishment.
We are hearing about aid. I think it was again Sir Richard Ottawaywho mentioned British aid to India. Well let me just point out that the British aid to India is about 0.4 per cent of India’s GDP. The Government of India actually spends more on fertiliser subsidies -- which might be an appropriate metaphor for that argument.[laughter,applause]
If I may point out as well, that as my fellow speakers from the proposition have pointed out, there have been incidents of racial violence, of loot, of massacres, of bloodshed, of transportation -- and in India’s case even of one of our last Mughal emperors. Yes, maybe today’s Britains are not responsible for some of these reparations but the same speakers have pointed with pride to their foreign aid, you are not responsible for the people starving in Somalia but you give them aid. Surely the principle of reparations for the wrongs that have done cannot be denied.
It’s been pointed out, for example,the dehumanisation of Africans in the Caribbean, the massive psychological damage that has been done, the undermining of social traditions, of property rights, of the authority structures of these societies, all in the interest of British colonialism; and the fact remains that many of today’s problems in these countries including the persistence, in some cases the creation, of racial, and ethnic, and religious tensions were the direct result of the colonial experience. So there is a moral debt that needs to be paid.
Someone challenged reparations elsewhere. Well I am sorry, Germany doesn’t just give reparations to Israel, it also gave reparations to Poland. Perhaps some of the speakers here are too young to remember the dramatic picture of Chancellor Willy Brandt on his knees in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1970.There are other examples. There is Italy’s reparations to Libya, there is Japan’s to Korea even Britain has paid reparations to the New Zealand Maoris. So it’s not as if this is something unprecedented or unheard of that’s going to somehow open some sort of nasty Pandora’s box.No wonder Professor Louis reminded us that he is from Texas. There is a wonderful expression in Texas that summarises the arguments of the Opposition:‘All hat and no cattle’.[laughter, applause]
Now, if I can just quickly look through the other notes that I was scribbling while they were speaking, there was a reference to democracy and rule of law. Let me say with the greatest possible respect -- you cannot -- it’s a bit rich to oppress, enslave, kill, torture, maim people for 200 years and then celebrate the fact that they are democratic at the end of it.(applause)We were denied democracy, Sir. We had to snatch it, seize it from you.With the greatest of reluctance it was considered, in India’s case after 150 years of British rule and that too with limited franchise.
(Point of interjection)
Alright, I don’t think that needs contradiction. Not from me at any rate.
But, if I may just point to, I think, the arguments made by a couple of speakers. The first speaker, Mr. Lee, in particular, conceded all the evil atrocities of the colonialism but essentially suggested that reparations won’t really help, they won’t help the right people, they would be use of propaganda tool, they will embolden people like Mr. Mugabe. So, it’s nice how in the old days you know, I am sorry to say that the people of the Caribbean used to frighten their children into behaving and sleeping by saying Sir Francis Drake would come after them. That was the legacy of that era. Now it’sMugabe will be there. So he is the new Sir Francis Drake of our times.
The fact is very simply, Sir, that we are not talking about reparations as a tool to empower anybody, they are a tool for you to atone, for the wrongs that have been done (applause).And I am quite prepared to accept the proposition that you can’t evaluate, put a monetary sum on the kinds of horrors people have suffered. Certainly no amount of money can expiate the loss of a loved one, as somebody pointed out there. You are not going to figure out an exact amount, but the principle is what matters.
The fact is that to speak blithely of sacrifices on both sides, as an analogy was used here—a burglar comes into your house,ransacks the place, stubs his toe and you say there was sacrifice on both sides – that, I am sorry to say, is not an acceptable argument.
The truth is that we are not arguing specifically that vast sums of money need to be paid. The proposition before this house is the principle of owing reparations, not the fine points of how much is owed, to whom it should be paid. The question is, is there a debt, does Britain owe reparations?
As far as I am concerned, the ability to acknowledge a wrong that has been done, to simply say sorry, will go a far far longer way than some percentage of GDP in the form of aid.
What is required, it seems to me, is accepting the principle that reparations are owed. Personally, I will be quite happy if it was one pound a year for the next 200 years after the last 200 years of Britain in India.
Thank you very much, Madam President.
© Shashi Tharoor 2015
Link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7CW7S0zxv4
.....
Verbatim Transcript of Debate Speech
“This House Believes Britain Owes Reparations to her Former Colonies”
Speaking for the motion - Dr. Shashi Tharoor
Oxford Union, 28 May 2015
Description (https://www.oxford-union.org/term_events/reparations_debate)
This House Believes Britain Owes Reparations to her Former Colonies
We have recently seen former colonies demanding reparations for centuries of abuse: from the Mau Mau survivors in Kenya to descendants of slaves in the Caribbean. David Cameron made controversial remarks on the issue in Amritsar; William Hague said outright that there should be no post-colonial guilt; and Ken Livingstone gave a heartfelt apology for London’s role in the slave trade. Do Britain’s politicians owe more than just their words?
Speakers in Proposition:
- Hon AlounNdombetAssamba - Jamaican lawyer, politician & diplomat, Jamaica’s High Commissioner to UK since 2012
- Dr George Ayittey - Ghanaian economist & author, founder/President of Free Africa Foundation
- Dr Shashi Tharoor MP - Indian politician & writer, former Under-Sec Gen of UN
- Sir Richard Ottaway - British politician, formerly Chair of Foreign Affairs Committee
- William Roger Louis CBE FBA - American historian of British Empire, editor-in-chief of The Oxford History of The British Empire
- Prof John M MacKenzie - British historian, editor of Manchester University Press‘Studies in Imperialism’ series
Madam President and gentlemen, ladies of the house,
I’m standing here, with eight minutes in my hands in this venerable and rather magnificent institution. I was going to assure you that I belong to the HenryVIIIschool of public speaking –that, as Henry VIII said to his wives,“I shall not keep you long”. [laughter.] But now, finding myself the seventh speaker out of eight in what must already seem a rather long evening to you, I rather feel like Henry VIII’s last wife: I more or less know what’s expected of me but I am not sure how to do it any differently.[laughter.]
Perhaps what I should do is really try and pay attention to the arguments that were advanced by the Opposition today. We had, for example Sir Richard Ottaway suggesting, challenging the very idea that it could be argued that the economic situation of the colonies was actually worsened by the experience of British colonialism.
Well I stand to offer you the Indian example, Sir Richard. India’s share of the world economy when Britain arrived on its shores was 23 per cent, by the time the British left it was down to below 4 per cent. Why? Simply because India had been governed for the benefit of Britain.
Britain’s rise for 200 years was financed by its depredations in India. In fact, Britain’s industrial revolution was actually premised upon the de-industrialisation of India.
The handloom weavers, for example, famed across the world, whose products were exported around the world-- there were actually these weavers making fine muslin, light as woven air, it was said -- and Britain came right in, smashed their thumbs, broke their looms, imposed tariffs and duties on their cloth and products and started taking the raw materials from India and shipping back manufactured cloth, flooding the world’s markets with what became the products of the dark and satanic mills of Victorian England.
That meant that the weavers in India became beggars and India went from being a world famous exporter of finished cloth into an importer.It went from having 27 per cent of world trade to less than 2 per cent.
Meanwhile, colonialists like Robert Clive brought their “rotten boroughs” in England on the proceeds of their loot in India, while taking the Hindi word loot into their dictionaries as well as their habits.[laughter, applause]
…And the British had the gall to call him Clive of India as if he belonged to the country, when all he really did was to ensure that much of the country belonged to him.[laughter, applause]
By the end of 19thcentury, the fact is that India was already Britain’s biggest cash cow, the world’s biggest purchaser of British goods and exports, and the source of highly paid employment for British civil servants. We literally paid for our own oppression.
And as has been pointed out, the wealthy British Victorian families that made their money out of the slave economy—one fifth of the elites of the wealthy class in Britain in 19thcentury owed their money to transporting 3 million Africans across the waters. And in fact in 1833 when slavery was abolished, what happened was a compensation of 20 million pounds was paid, not as reparations to those who had lost their lives or who had suffered or been oppressed by slavery, but to those who had lost their “property”.
I was struck by the fact that your Wi-Fi password at this Union commemorates the name of Mr. Gladstone, the great liberal hero. Well, I am sorry his family was one of those who benefited from this compensation.[applause]
Back to India:between 15 to 29 million Indians died of starvation in British induced famines. The most famous example, of course, was the great Bengal famine during the Second World War when 4 million people died because Winston Churchill deliberately as a matter of written, minutedpolicy,proceeded to divert essential supplies from civilians in Bengal to sturdy Tommies and Europeans, as reserve stockpiles.
He said that “the starvation of anyway underfed Bengalis mattered much less than that of sturdy Greeks’“. This is Churchill’s actual quote. And when conscience-stricken British officials wrote to him, pointing out that people were dying because of this decision, he peevishly wrote in the margins of the file, “Why hasn’t Gandhi died yet?”
So, all notions that the British were trying to do their colonial enterprise out of enlightened despotism, to try and bring the benefits of colonialism and civilisation to the benighted --I am sorry, Churchill’s conduct in 1943 is simply one example of many that gave a lie to this myth.
As others have said on the proposition–violence and racism were the reality of the colonial experience. And no wonder that the sun never set on the British Empire because even God couldn’t trust the English in the dark.[laughter, applause]
Let me take World War I as a very concrete example, since the first speaker, Mr. Lee, suggested these things couldn’t be quantified. Well, let me quantify World War I for you. Again, I am sorry, from an Indian perspective. Others have spoken aboutother countries.
One-sixth of all the British forces that fought in the war were Indian—54 000 Indians actually lost their lives in that war, 65 000 were wounded and another 4000 remained missing or in prison.
Indian taxpayers had to cough up 100 million pounds in that time’s money. India supplied 70million rounds of ammunition, 600,000 rifles and machine guns, 42 million garments were stitched and sent out of India and 1.3 million Indian personnel served in this war. I know all this because of course the commemoration of the centenary has just taken place.
But not just that: India had to supply 173,000 animals, 370 million tonnes of supplies and in the end the total value of everything that was taken out of India --and India by the way was suffering from recession at that time and poverty and hunger -- was in today’s money 8 billion pounds. You want quantification? It’s available.
The Second World War, it was even worse: Two and a half million Indians in uniform. I won’t belabour the point, but of Britain’s total war debt of 3 billion pounds in 1945 money, 1.25 billion was owed to India and never actually paid.
Somebody mentioned Scotland. Well the fact is that colonialism actually cemented your Union with Scotland. You know the Scots had actually tried to send colonies out before 1707;they had all failed, I am sorry to say. But, then of course, came Union and India was available and there you had a disproportionate employment of Scots. I am sorry that Mr. MacKenziehas to speak after me! Scots were engaged in this colonial enterprise as soldiers, as merchants, as agents, as employees and their earnings from India is what brought prosperity to Scotland, even pulledScotland out of poverty.Now that India is no longer there, no wonder the bonds are loosening.
Now we’ve heard other arguments on this side. There’s been a mention of railways. Well let me tell you, first of all as my colleague the Jamaican High Commissioner has pointed out, railways and roads were really built to serve British interests and not those of the local people.But I might add that many countries have built railways and roads without having had to be colonised in order to do so.[laughter, applause]They were designed to carry raw materials from the hinterland into the ports to be shipped to Britain. And the fact is, that the Indian or Jamaican or other colonial public, their needs were incidental.With transportation, there was no attempt made to match supply to demand for mass transport, none what so ever.
Instead, in fact, the Indian railways were built with massive incentives offered by Britain to British investors, guaranteed out of Indian taxes paid by Indians, with the result that you actually had one mile of Indian railway costing twice what it cost to build the same mile in Canada or Australia, because there was so much money being paid in extravagant returns.Britain made all the profits, controlled the technology, supplied all the equipment and absolutely all these benefits came as private enterprise -- British private enterprise -- at public risk, Indian public risk. That was the railways as an accomplishment.
We are hearing about aid. I think it was again Sir Richard Ottawaywho mentioned British aid to India. Well let me just point out that the British aid to India is about 0.4 per cent of India’s GDP. The Government of India actually spends more on fertiliser subsidies -- which might be an appropriate metaphor for that argument.[laughter,applause]
If I may point out as well, that as my fellow speakers from the proposition have pointed out, there have been incidents of racial violence, of loot, of massacres, of bloodshed, of transportation -- and in India’s case even of one of our last Mughal emperors. Yes, maybe today’s Britains are not responsible for some of these reparations but the same speakers have pointed with pride to their foreign aid, you are not responsible for the people starving in Somalia but you give them aid. Surely the principle of reparations for the wrongs that have done cannot be denied.
It’s been pointed out, for example,the dehumanisation of Africans in the Caribbean, the massive psychological damage that has been done, the undermining of social traditions, of property rights, of the authority structures of these societies, all in the interest of British colonialism; and the fact remains that many of today’s problems in these countries including the persistence, in some cases the creation, of racial, and ethnic, and religious tensions were the direct result of the colonial experience. So there is a moral debt that needs to be paid.
Someone challenged reparations elsewhere. Well I am sorry, Germany doesn’t just give reparations to Israel, it also gave reparations to Poland. Perhaps some of the speakers here are too young to remember the dramatic picture of Chancellor Willy Brandt on his knees in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1970.There are other examples. There is Italy’s reparations to Libya, there is Japan’s to Korea even Britain has paid reparations to the New Zealand Maoris. So it’s not as if this is something unprecedented or unheard of that’s going to somehow open some sort of nasty Pandora’s box.No wonder Professor Louis reminded us that he is from Texas. There is a wonderful expression in Texas that summarises the arguments of the Opposition:‘All hat and no cattle’.[laughter, applause]
Now, if I can just quickly look through the other notes that I was scribbling while they were speaking, there was a reference to democracy and rule of law. Let me say with the greatest possible respect -- you cannot -- it’s a bit rich to oppress, enslave, kill, torture, maim people for 200 years and then celebrate the fact that they are democratic at the end of it.(applause)We were denied democracy, Sir. We had to snatch it, seize it from you.With the greatest of reluctance it was considered, in India’s case after 150 years of British rule and that too with limited franchise.
(Point of interjection)
Alright, I don’t think that needs contradiction. Not from me at any rate.
But, if I may just point to, I think, the arguments made by a couple of speakers. The first speaker, Mr. Lee, in particular, conceded all the evil atrocities of the colonialism but essentially suggested that reparations won’t really help, they won’t help the right people, they would be use of propaganda tool, they will embolden people like Mr. Mugabe. So, it’s nice how in the old days you know, I am sorry to say that the people of the Caribbean used to frighten their children into behaving and sleeping by saying Sir Francis Drake would come after them. That was the legacy of that era. Now it’sMugabe will be there. So he is the new Sir Francis Drake of our times.
The fact is very simply, Sir, that we are not talking about reparations as a tool to empower anybody, they are a tool for you to atone, for the wrongs that have been done (applause).And I am quite prepared to accept the proposition that you can’t evaluate, put a monetary sum on the kinds of horrors people have suffered. Certainly no amount of money can expiate the loss of a loved one, as somebody pointed out there. You are not going to figure out an exact amount, but the principle is what matters.
The fact is that to speak blithely of sacrifices on both sides, as an analogy was used here—a burglar comes into your house,ransacks the place, stubs his toe and you say there was sacrifice on both sides – that, I am sorry to say, is not an acceptable argument.
The truth is that we are not arguing specifically that vast sums of money need to be paid. The proposition before this house is the principle of owing reparations, not the fine points of how much is owed, to whom it should be paid. The question is, is there a debt, does Britain owe reparations?
As far as I am concerned, the ability to acknowledge a wrong that has been done, to simply say sorry, will go a far far longer way than some percentage of GDP in the form of aid.
What is required, it seems to me, is accepting the principle that reparations are owed. Personally, I will be quite happy if it was one pound a year for the next 200 years after the last 200 years of Britain in India.
Thank you very much, Madam President.
© Shashi Tharoor 2015
Link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7CW7S0zxv4
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