ThAct: Shashi Tharoor and Dark Era of Ingorious Empire
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Today I'm going to write the task about ThAct : Shashi Tharoor and Dark Era of Ingorious Empire given by our Professor Dr. Dilip Barad sir.
Shashi Tharoor
Shashi Tharoor (IPA: [ʃɐʃi t̪ɐɾuːr]; born 9 March 1956) is an Indian politician, writer and former international diplomat who has been serving as Member of Parliament, Lok Sabha from Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, since 2009. He was formerly Under-Secretary General of the United Nations and contested for the post of Secretary-General in 2006.
He also serves as Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology and All India Professionals Congress. He formerly served as Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs (2014 to 2019). In 2019, Shashi Tharoor received the Sahitya Academy Award for his book An Era of Darkness in a non-fiction category in English language.
● His speeches videos are :-
1. Speech at Oxford Union.
2. Looking back at the British Raj in India: The University of Edinburgh.
3. Exclusive interview by Karan Thapar On His book "An Era of Darkness."
4. About British Colonialism in India in His New Book ' An Era of Darkness'.
1. Write on key arguments in Shashi Tharoor's book - " An Era of Darkness".
Shashi Tharoor’s An Era of Darkness, is one breathless read. In it, he aggregates all the arguments required to establish that British colonial rule was an awful experience for Indians and he does so with a consummate debater’s skill. His book is, in fact, an expanded take on British exploitation of India that famously carried the day for Tharoor in an Oxford debate not too long ago.
According to Tharoor, there was nothing redeeming in British rule of our country. What India had to endure under them was outrageous humiliation on a humongous scale and sustained violence of a kind it had never experienced before. In short, British rule was, according to Tharoor, an era of darkness for India, throughout which it suffered several man made famines, wars, racism, maladministration, deportation of its people to distant lands and economic exploitation on an unprecedented scale. An indignant Tharoor even demands a token restitution and public apology from the British for all the harm they had caused India. This is something, as his debate established, wildly popular in India.
The makers of India
Kartar Lalwani’s very well researched book, The Making of India — The Untold Story of British Enterprise, is a compelling account of the great infrastructure the British created in India — the railways being one of the most important ones.
In writing this book, it is obvious that instead of being even-handed, Tharoor has chosen to present the arguments against British rule in India with strength and force, and he is right in doing so. Until An Era of Darkness came along, there was no single work that clearly and unambiguously catalogued all the harm done to India under British rule.
Tharoor admirably fills the gap by holding a mirror to the British, and the West, that they have a case to answer. And answer they must, as old imperialisms, with renewed vigour and with the same specious ‘civilising’ arguments, have never really ceased devastating the world, from faraway places like now well-forgotten Grenada and present-day West Asia and the Middle East.
Looted with impunity
Everything the British did in India, Tharoor asserts, was for their own benefit and never for that of the Indians. They also had, Tharoor tells us, perfected a policy of divide and rule, breaking treaties at will and making war and looting with impunity. Tharoor is right, of course. There are few Indians who would not have heard of the treachery that enabled Clive to triumph at Plassey or of the incredible amounts of ill-begotten wealth the East India Company officials hauled back with them to England.
There was scant appreciation, Tharoor tells us, of India’s contributions in men, material and money, to the wars that the British fought within India and overseas, especially the two World Wars.That British rule in India was bad in parts has never been denied by anyone, least of all by the British. Their archives are full of accounts of British depredations, covering the entire period of their rule in India. Several of their historians have brought out the suffering the British inflicted on India and Indians throughout their rule of our country. What Tharoor, however, seeks to establish through his book, is that British rule was unremittingly rotten and indefensible by the standards of its time and ours. He makes his points with bare-knuckle indignation and irresistible passion.
2. Write critique on both the films with reference to Postcolonial insights.
The Black Prince :
The Black Prince' is the tale of subjugation of the last Sikh king of Punjab, Maharaja Duleep Singh, the son of Maharaja Ranjit Singh directed by Kavi Raaz. The dilemma in the entire film is over identity. The identity crises, the belongingness, the religious conflicts play a very vital role in shaping the future coarse of the black prince who has been giving the throne at the age of five upon the death of the father and has been abducted by the British government at the age of fifteen.
"What you seek is all gone now, my black Prince"
This is a chronicle surrounded over the identity and the fate of the last king of Punjab who loosens the throne and was never allowed to return. It is surrounded around the kingdom exploring relations with Queen Victoria. It is about the story lost in history and the colonial rule have never narrated it, the postcolonial way of looking to the subjects is the narration of the film. It unveils the whole new chapter of Indian History - from the prince's lost kingdom to his journey of being converted to Christianity. Hence, the narrative highlights the things and oppressions which the British have done to the subjects.
Victoria & Abdul is a 2017 British biographical comedy-drama film directed by Stephen Frears and written by Lee Hall. The film is based on the book of the same name by Shrabani Basu, about the real-life relationship between Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and her Indian Muslim servant Abdul Karim. It stars Judi Dench, Ali Fazal, Michael Gambon, Eddie Izzard, Tim Pigott-Smith (in his final film role), and Adeel Akhtar. The film had its world premiere at the 74th Venice Film Festival, and was theatrically released on 15 September 2017 in the United Kingdom. It has grossed over $65 million worldwide.
Abdul Karim, a young prison clerk from British India, is instructed to travel to Britain for Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee in 1887 to present her with a mohur, a gold coin that has been minted as a token of appreciation from British-ruled India. Abdul is from a Muslim, Urdu-speaking family in India.
The queen, lonely and tired of her fawning courtiers, develops an interest in and then a friendship with Abdul. She spends time with him alone and gives him a bejeweled locket with her photograph. She promotes him to be her Munshi and asks him to teach her Urdu and the Quran. When Victoria discovers he is married, she has him bring his wife to England. His wife and his mother-in-law both wear black burqas, much to the consternation of the household— and the fascination of Victoria.
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