At the Oxford Union, Member of Parliament Shashi Tharoor talked about the fact that Britain owes reparations for the economic and psychological decline of India during the British rule. The former Under Secretary-General at the United Nations brought out several interesting points, such as the almost eight billion cost that India would have incurred fighting World War I for Britain and that India's share of world trade dropped from over 20 percent before the British ruled the country to four percent when the British left India.
Colonisation begets violence and racism. That is without doubt. Britain was responsible for the deaths of lakhs of Indians during its rule here and it's apathy in the early 1940s led to over three million people dead in West Bengal. Britain does owe India an apology for atrocities committed and should follow the path tread by Australia with the Aborigines, Italy with Libya and Germany with Poland and Israel. But, it's time we move on from pointing fingers at others for what happened over 50 years ago and talk about the situation the country is in today because of that. Countries like Japan, Brazil and others have risen from the ashes and made their future. It's time we move on too.
