The speech by Dr. Shashi Tharoor, Member of Parliament, on whether Britain should pay reparations to India at the Oxford Union debate was well received. Both by his supporters and detractors, which, is a rarity in Indian politics. Indian political leaders typically play to the gallery that cheers them and ignore the others but Tharoor is distinctive in that he is a Liberal who proved he can become a darling of the conservatives overnight.
C for Cricket
I am not a big follower of the game, however, I do get all charged up when India plays against any country and especially if it was Pakistan. Very few events have matched Cricket's ability to bring together the country of a Billion people of various religion, language, caste and creed. This amazing sport was not native to India and even India's national sport is Hockey (until 2012?!). However, it is likely that any random Indian would recognize an Indian Cricketer better than a Hockey player of the Indian team. There are probably more coaches, stadiums, events, recognition, even sporting accessory brands for Cricket than Hockey. However, these are points for a different blog post.
The point here is this amazing game which brings together a billion Indian together was brought here by the British. In the speech Tharoor makes a point on Railway and Road Infrastructure. He very rightly says that Colonialism cannot take credit for bringing these to the country as there are countries which were not colonized able to develop these on their own. However that argument might fall flat in case of Cricket. Because we don't see Cricket famous outside the commonwealth. The most followed sport in the world currently is Football and not Cricket.
So now that we have made a point let us try to quantify like Dr. Tharoor did. Well we have the richest cricketing board in the world. We have millions who would pay an arm and a leg to watch and take selfies with the Cricketers. That with one of the fastest growing middle class in world sounds rather profitable. We even hold the International Cricket Council Chairmanship currently.
For me, however, the fact that the game can rally together a billion people alone is priceless.
C for Comprehension and Conversation.
India is a land of many tongues. A great many languages were spoken and we didn't need one more to add to the confusion. However, we all took to learning English since the Britishers spoke English. And probably because they sounded horrible speaking our languages or they were dim witted or plain lazy to learn ours. This ability to comprehend and converse in the lingua franca of the World opened our economies in ways we never comprehended.
Not many people would remember the protest against Hindi as a national language that broke out in many states, especially Tamil Nadu in late 1960s. Language can trigger dirty civil wars is a known fact which is a topic for another Blog post. People were open to the idea of seceding from India to protect their language against the invasion of Hindi. And it was finally left to English to save the day. Till today English remains an official language along with Hindi.
The Information Technology and associated services revolution wouldn't have occurred if not for this ability. Russia and Ukraine had better programmers, China had cheaper programmers while only India and a few other countries of the commonwealth had better, cheaper and English speaking programmers. Today the GDP contribution of these services industries is out there to make quantifying easy.
For me, however, the fact that this language of the Britishers played a role in keeping India together, united, is priceless.
C for Crown
Before Cricket and before English the one thing that held the people together, galvanized an entire sub continent on a massive civil disobedience movement was the Crown. Or to make it more clear - a hate for the crown and its excesses. Before the crown, India was largely non existent. It was a bunch of princely states fighting each other for power and influence. Thanks to the crown and its excesses we were united to fight them off and decided to stay united.
That again is priceless.
So my arguments have largely stated that Britain had already paid reparations. Right?
No! Like Dr. Tharoor says, reparations are not about the money, it is about principles. The British must take the opportunity to atone for their past misdeeds.
While I agree with all the points he made and do feel that Britain does need to pay reparations, I am willing to play a little Devil's advocate here for my own benefit to get a better understanding on why I agree with Dr. Tharoor. I would like to counter Tharoor's arguments through my own theory - Britain paid back the reparations in full, with Interest, not in Pounds but in Cs.
This video of Dr. Tharoor's eloquent speech on reparations can give a little context to those who haven't watched this before.
C for Cricket
I am not a big follower of the game, however, I do get all charged up when India plays against any country and especially if it was Pakistan. Very few events have matched Cricket's ability to bring together the country of a Billion people of various religion, language, caste and creed. This amazing sport was not native to India and even India's national sport is Hockey (until 2012?!). However, it is likely that any random Indian would recognize an Indian Cricketer better than a Hockey player of the Indian team. There are probably more coaches, stadiums, events, recognition, even sporting accessory brands for Cricket than Hockey. However, these are points for a different blog post.
The point here is this amazing game which brings together a billion Indian together was brought here by the British. In the speech Tharoor makes a point on Railway and Road Infrastructure. He very rightly says that Colonialism cannot take credit for bringing these to the country as there are countries which were not colonized able to develop these on their own. However that argument might fall flat in case of Cricket. Because we don't see Cricket famous outside the commonwealth. The most followed sport in the world currently is Football and not Cricket.
So now that we have made a point let us try to quantify like Dr. Tharoor did. Well we have the richest cricketing board in the world. We have millions who would pay an arm and a leg to watch and take selfies with the Cricketers. That with one of the fastest growing middle class in world sounds rather profitable. We even hold the International Cricket Council Chairmanship currently.
For me, however, the fact that the game can rally together a billion people alone is priceless.
C for Comprehension and Conversation.
India is a land of many tongues. A great many languages were spoken and we didn't need one more to add to the confusion. However, we all took to learning English since the Britishers spoke English. And probably because they sounded horrible speaking our languages or they were dim witted or plain lazy to learn ours. This ability to comprehend and converse in the lingua franca of the World opened our economies in ways we never comprehended.
Not many people would remember the protest against Hindi as a national language that broke out in many states, especially Tamil Nadu in late 1960s. Language can trigger dirty civil wars is a known fact which is a topic for another Blog post. People were open to the idea of seceding from India to protect their language against the invasion of Hindi. And it was finally left to English to save the day. Till today English remains an official language along with Hindi.
The Information Technology and associated services revolution wouldn't have occurred if not for this ability. Russia and Ukraine had better programmers, China had cheaper programmers while only India and a few other countries of the commonwealth had better, cheaper and English speaking programmers. Today the GDP contribution of these services industries is out there to make quantifying easy.
For me, however, the fact that this language of the Britishers played a role in keeping India together, united, is priceless.
C for Crown
Before Cricket and before English the one thing that held the people together, galvanized an entire sub continent on a massive civil disobedience movement was the Crown. Or to make it more clear - a hate for the crown and its excesses. Before the crown, India was largely non existent. It was a bunch of princely states fighting each other for power and influence. Thanks to the crown and its excesses we were united to fight them off and decided to stay united.
That again is priceless.
So my arguments have largely stated that Britain had already paid reparations. Right?
No! Like Dr. Tharoor says, reparations are not about the money, it is about principles. The British must take the opportunity to atone for their past misdeeds.
No comments:
Post a Comment