MP for Thiruvananthapuram, former diplomat and author of 15 books, Dr Shashi Tharoor’s new book 'An Era of Darkness: The British Empire In India' is out this November. The book discusses in depth, ways in which the British nearly destroyed India during their 200 years rule, along with interesting facts and anecdotes to support the author’s arguments. It is an extension of his speech on ‘Britain Owes Reparations to Her Former Colonies’ delivered at the Oxford Union in 2015, which went viral on the internet last year.We got in touch with Dr Shashi Tharoor to discuss about his latest book. Here is the interview:Well, I’ve always been fascinated by Indian history, and had passionate views about it. So though the idea to base a book on my speech came from my publisher, David Davidar, I didn’t need much persuading. A lot of the popular histories of the British Empire in the last decade or two, by the likes of Niall Ferguson and Lawrence James, have painted colonialism in rosy colours, and this needed to be challenged. Historical material is available to everyone who’s willing to look for it, but perhaps it’s been taught inadequately, and that’s why it might be useful to people to have these arguments in one place, both to read and subsequently to refer to.About a year from July 2015 to July/August 2016. But in some ways I’ve been thinking about these issues for decades, since my student days. It’s like the Chinese master painter who did a scroll in three minutes and when someone marvelled at his speed, he said, “three minutes, madam – and 35 years.”I think everyone should already know all of this, but as David Davidar pointed out, they don’t, or my Oxford speech wouldn’t have gone viral. I’ve put together a whole range of arguments about Empire that people hadn’t heard in that way, or at least hadn’t thought about – so there’s facts, anecdotes and figures, but all organized as a passionate argument, not a mere narrative of familiar history.When I wrote that, I was making the larger point that I believe Indians should know the truth about our own past – because if you don’t know where you’ve come from, you’ll never appreciate where you’re going. But since you ask: I think we should be a little more conscious of our failings, which are a direct legacy of colonial rule, and seek to readress them, from the sedition law and Section 377 to the skewed nature of our education system.(Dr Tharoor's latest book)My book examines each of these supposed boons in turn – political unity, democracy and rule of law, the civil services, the railways, the English language, tea and even cricket – and demonstrates how every one of them was designed to serve British interests and any benefit to Indians was either incidental or came despite the British.Yes, but cricket, in Ashis Nandy’s marvellous formulation, is an Indian game accidentally discovered by the British! Still, sadly, Lagaan never happened. Today, of course, we can beat the English at their own game, more often than not.Yes; there was no organized cultivation of tea before the British. But again, they set up the tea plantations in Assam (and later elsewhere) to save themselves the costs of importing Chinese tea, not to benefit us. It was only when the Great Depression left exporters with vast stocks of tea for which demand in Britain had dropped, that they started selling tea in large quantities to Indians.Actually I move away from arguing for reparations in the book – I did so at Oxford because that was the assigned topic of their debate. A $3 trillion figure would be impossible to pay, since it exceeds the entire GDP of Britain. So anything realistically payable could only be a token, and the symbolic one pound a year for 200 years that I suggested at Oxford would probably not be feasible to administer. More important, how do you place a monetary value on all that India suffered and lost under British rule?British rule de-industrialized India; created landlessness and poverty; drained our country’s resources; exploited, exiled and oppressed millions; sowed seeds of division and inter-communal hatred that led to Partition; and was directly responsible for the deaths of three and a half crore people in unnecessary and mismanaged famines, as well as of thousands in massacres and killings. There’s really no compensation for all this that would even begin to be adequate, or credible.Atonement is, therefore, the best we can hope for. An apology by their Prime Minister to India, as Canada’s Trudeau did recently over the Komagata Maru incident, would signal true atonement. Imagine a British Prime Minister, on the centenary of Jallianwalla Bagh, apologising to the Indian people for that massacre and by extension for all colonial injustices – that would be better than any sum of reparations.No. As I point out in the book, the British have made it clear they won’t return it, for fear of setting a precedent that would empty the British Museum, and the Indian Government hardly seems keen on getting it back, judging by the position the Solicitor-General has taken in court. But I also conclude that maybe it should remain on display in the Queen Mother’s tiara, as a reminder to all the loot of India it symbolises.Macaulay’s Penal Code needs to be examined afresh by free India. It was drafted in 1837, enacted in 1861 and reflects colonial, patriarchal and repressive assumptions of that time. The sedition law, Section 377, laws relating to women’s rights in particular need to dispensed with too. Even President Mukherjee, no less, has called for a revamped penal code. This should be an urgent priority for any truly nationalist government.