Thiong'o, Tharoor and Films on Colonial History

Shashi Tharoor  is an Indian politician, writer and a former career international diplomat  who is currently serving as Member of Parliament, Lok Sabha from Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, since 2009. 

Book: An Era of Darkness 

The full title of the book is An Era of Darkness: The British Empire In India. If we talk about how idea of the book and book itself come to existence  it has own story. Actually Tharoor went to Oxford Union in 2015 and take part in debate. The topic on which he gave speech is "Does Britain owe reparations to it's on former colonies?" The speech went viral. Subsequently his publisher. Flores the idea to transform speech into book. So, in this way the book An Era of Darkness comes. 

The book is results of speech which has given in Oxford Union. So let me first identify some of the key points from speech. 

·                     The very first thing he talks about the economic condition of colonies was actually versant by exist of British Colonialism. He takes the example of India and say that India shares world economic of 23 present when Britain arrived. But by the time they left it was below 4 present.

·                      The next he talk about that during the they stay in India between 15 to 29 million Indian died because of starvation.  The great example of it is great Bangal famen during 2nd world war. Because the food is given to European as stoke by Winston Churchill. 

·                     He further say that violence and racism was reality of colonial British empire.

·                     Then he make satire on quote “The sun never set on British Empire. " He say that even god cannot trust English in dark.

Key points from book: 

·                     The point we see in speech are included in book but still there are some other points are also include.

·                     The first point in book and in speech is common. He talk about the economic condision of India. But in book we found example from Indian textile market. 

·                     According to hum India inherit the rural poverty because of British empowerment. 

·                     According to hum three inderstree in India was doing good ; textile, still, and ship building all this three systematically, debratly, targeted and destroyed by British. 

·                     In this book he also talks about the rules which are regressive. Some of which are still continue today. He say that there are Darrin lows which are misused by state government for tribal offence. 

·                      Further he talk about the low on Homosexuality in section 377. According to him India was very liberal about self expression of sexuality. He say that this is Victorian morality which is imposed over India.