{"id":272269,"date":"2017-03-08T14:47:45","date_gmt":"2017-03-08T19:47:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rael.org\/?p=272269"},"modified":"2020-11-09T14:24:00","modified_gmt":"2020-11-09T19:24:00","slug":"britain-suffers-historical-amnesia-over-former-empire-indian-mp-shashi-tharoor-tells-rt-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rael.org\/he\/britain-suffers-historical-amnesia-over-former-empire-indian-mp-shashi-tharoor-tells-rt-video\/","title":{"rendered":"Britain suffers \u2018historical amnesia\u2019 over former empire, Indian MP Shashi Tharoor tells RT (Video)"},"content":{"rendered":"
RAEL\u2019S COMMENT:<\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n
He is absolutely right, and so does France for most African colonies, I don\u2019t say ex on purpose as they still are de facto colonies, as long as they pay a colonial tax and use the CFA franc, printed in France, as currency.<\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Britain suffers from \u201chistorical amnesia\u201d over the atrocities and plunder of its former empire, Indian MP and author Dr Shashi Tharoor told RT.<\/p>\n

In his new book \u2018Inglorious Empire: What the British did to India,\u2019 Tharoor argues the real story of the empire was one of theft, murder, and expropriation of wealth. He says the modernizing developments cited by\u00a0\u201cempire apologists\u201d\u00a0were built for the primary benefit of British occupiers.<\/p>\n

Speaking to RT\u2019s Going Underground, Tharoor said:\u00a0\u201cIndia was one of the most prosperous countries in the world. In 1700, it was the richest country in the world \u2013 with 27 percent of global GDP when Britain had 1.8 percent.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 200 years of British rule, plunder… it was reduced to one of the poorest countries in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tharoor, added:\u00a0\u201cWhen English people cynically say \u2018it\u2019s not our fault that you missed the bus for the industrial revolution\u2019 my answer is \u2018we missed the bus because you threw us under its wheels.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cThe British came in and destroyed the thriving textile industry, destroyed the thriving ship-building industry, destroyed the thriving steel industry… and substituted their products into what had become a captive market held down by force of arms.\u201d<\/p>\n

Britain\u2019s education system fails to tell the real story of the British empire, Tharoor said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy this historical amnesia? Why the desire to brush these things under the carpet? It\u2019s often more convenient not to remember atrocities.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Germans went through a similar period of trying to brush everything under the carpet immediately after the Second World War.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Foreign Office responded to Tharoor\u2019s comments, saying: \u201cAs two modern democracies, UK and India have a long standing friendship and work very closely together to promote our shared prosperity and global security.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur friendship is characterized by extensive political engagement and deep economic co-operation.\u201d<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.rt.com\/uk\/379884-india-empire-shashi-tharoor\/<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RAEL\u2019S COMMENT: He is absolutely right, and so does France for most African colonies, I don\u2019t say ex on purpose as they still are de facto colonies, as long as they pay a colonial tax and use the CFA franc, printed in France, as currency.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":282166,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-272269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rael.org\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rael.org\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rael.org\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rael.org\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rael.org\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rael.org\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rael.org\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rael.org\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rael.org\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rael.org\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}