TEHRAN (IBNA) -- Non-fiction book ‘Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India’ (2017) by ‎Indian politician and diplomat Shashi Tharoor on the effects of British colonial rule on ‎India has been published in Persian.‎
The book which received mixed reviews and the 2017 Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award has been translated into Persian by Behnaz Abedi. Tehran-based Qatreh Publishing has released ‘Inglorious Empire’ in 470 pages and 400 copies.
In the eighteenth century, India’s share of the world economy was as large as Europe’s. By 1947, after two centuries of British rule, it had decreased six-fold. Beyond conquest and deception, the Empire blew rebels from cannon, massacred unarmed protesters, entrenched institutionalized racism, and caused millions to die from starvation.
British imperialism justified itself as enlightened despotism for the benefit of the governed, but Shashi Tharoor takes on and demolishes this position, demonstrating how every supposed imperial “gift”―from the railways to the rule of law―was designed in Britain’s interests alone.
He goes on to show how Britain’s Industrial Revolution was founded on India’s deindustrialization and the destruction of its textile industry. In this bold and incisive reassessment of colonialism, Tharoor exposes to devastating effect the inglorious reality of Britain’s stained Indian legacy.
Times Literary Supplement comments on this book: “Inglorious Empire both reiterates long-standing, persuasive and well-founded critiques of the British Raj’s countless exploitative activities and the damage done under colonialism, and expresses [Tharoor’s] surprise and disappointment that such basic points still need to be made anew today. Chapter by chapter, the book convincingly demolishes the nostalgic, self-serving arguments voiced by imperial apologists.”
Tharoor served for twenty-nine years at the UN, culminating as Under-Secretary-General. He is a Congress MP in India, the author of fourteen previous books, and has won numerous literary awards, including a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. Tharoor has a PhD from the Fletcher School, and was named by the World Economic Forum in Davos in 1998 as a Global Leader of Tomorrow.