During a debate at the Oxford Union on 28 May 2015, the Indian Member of Parliament, diplomat and writer Shashi Tharoor delivered a speech supporting the motion "Britain owes reparations to her former colonies". Tharoor was the seventh speaker in the debate, the final speaker from the proposition, and spoke for about fifteen minutes. While criticising the opposition, he argued that British colonial rule damaged the Indian economy.
Tharoor began his speech by arguing that the economic progress of Britain from the 18th-century onwards was financed by the economic exploitation and de-industrialisation of British India. He cited other negative effects of colonial rule on India, such as famines and the mandatory contribution of Indians toward the British war effort during the First and Second World Wars. Tharoor argued that supposed benefits of British colonialism, such as railways and democracy, were either constructed for the purposes of furthering economic exploitation or devised by Indians themselves. He ended his speech by suggesting that Britain pay one pound sterling per annum for the next two centuries as symbolic reparation. The side in favour of the motion won, with 185 votes to 56.
Once the debate was uploaded onto YouTube, Tharoor's speech went viral, especially in India.[a] The Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's brief comments on the debate were seen as endorsing reparations from the British by some commentators. Several responses to the speech were subsequently published; these included charges of hypocrisy and criticism of Tharoor's claims. Tharoor wrote the non-fiction work Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India (2017), expanding upon the arguments in his speech.
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