Neither have they outlawed philanthropic attempts to donate funds to the needy, again unlike the colonial government. But unlike the colonial government, Indian government is not creating famines by actively taking away food produced by farmers and selling it abroad. For instance, yes, India still has famines. What baffles me is the response of some Indian reviewers, who have somehow found the failings of the modern Indian government worthy of being compared to the avaricious exploits of the Raj. Various publications highlighted the need to teach 'unromanticized colonial history' in British schools. Many western reviewers have hailed Tharoor's exposure of the colonial project's 'long and shameless record of rapacity' as being a much-needed reality-check in a time where more than half of Britain (according to a 2014 poll) is living under the delusion that the British Empire was a good thing and are yearning for it: a phenomenon termed 'post-colonial melancholia'. Not to mention the bad stuff India owes to the Raj-plunder of resources, systematic dismantling of Indian industries, cultural destruction and the introduction of communal divide, to mention a few. On the contrary, these measures were used as tools to compound their exploitation. Indians were denied even the smallest modicum of gain through these ostensibly progressive measures (the only arguable exception being the press, though that too wasn't as rosy as revisionists would have you believe). Everything good that modern British revisionists claim that India owes to the Raj-railways, banking, press and even democracy-is shown to be introduced exclusively to serve British interests.

The accounts of Indian and American observers are there too, whenever needed. Tharoor's masterstroke is relying primary on the written testimonies of Britain's own citizens-whether that of officers callously describing their own atrocities, or that of the few conscience-stricken Britishers horrified at incredible tyranny and racism they were witnessing.

With fangs of unassailable logic and claws of incontrovertible proof, he eviscerates the British claim that colonialism was a good thing for India. There's an African proverb that goes: 'Until lions tell their own stories, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter.' It took a while, but India finally has her lion in Dr.

Inglorious empire online