Shashi Tharoor was a celebrity in his own right at the Bangalore Literature Festival on Friday. People gathered in hundreds and stood in the blazing sun to hear him speak in the first session of the day titled ‘Inglorious Empire: The Reality of The British Raj’.



Tharoor was greeted with enthusiastic applause from the audience. The moderator for the session was economist Sanjeev Sanyal, who was on a par with the parliamentarian, making the discussion interesting and enjoyable. The topic for their conversation was Tharoor’s most recent book ‘An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India’.



Tharoor talked about how Britain owed India reparations for all the damage done during the period of their rule over the country. He said, “Any credible sum of compensation will not be payable because it would run into trillions. What I ask for is a symbolic gesture of apology.”



He gave the example of how Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau apologised for the Komagata Maru incident in 1914, when hundreds of immigrants escaping harsh conditions in British India were denied entry to Vancouver. “Similarly, I want the British to apologise for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. They have adopted convenient historic amnesia in their school education where they don’t talk about such horrific instances from the British Raj.”



Tharoor criticised school education in India for not teaching classical works by Indian greats such as Kalidasa. “Children in our country will know about Shakespeare but not about Mahabharata. Our minds are also colonised,” he said.



He talked about how even he learned about the works of Aryabhata only as an adult. Stressing the importance of highlighting such personalities in education, Tharoor said, “Ancient Indian science is underappreciated. But when you have a prime minister who says that because Ganesha has an elephant’s head, it means we had mastered plastic surgery, it discredits our real achievements.” Tharoor’s many fans kept him busy signing copies of his books for almost two hours, after his talk.