After Sapiens, I picked up the book 'Era of Darkness' by Shashi Tharoor as my next read. From a historic viewpoint, I was thrown into a complete nationalist standpoint (albeit with extremely well researched content). It was a different end of spectrum for me, from Yuval Noah Harari explaining imperialism, capitalism and what probably made England venture out to far off countries and build empires in Sapiens; to the Era of Darkness; which gave me a stark reality of what the conditions in India during the empire looked like.
According to Shashi Tharoor, the idea for this book came when his speech from a London debate went viral and he received a lot of accolades and compliments for standing up for his country and putting across points related to remuneration for empirical rule. When he got so many compliments and people lauded him for saying what was common knowledge according to him, he realized that the horrors of English regime were not that widely understood and known to everyone. Which is when he came up with the idea of writing this book.
The book is very well researched but if you are looking for a chronological story type reading experience, that is not how it is presented. Instead, he has taken individual occupations (like textile, steel, printing press), different conditions (like famine, labor movement during world war 2), growth and spread of English items like tea and cricket, social and religious structures in pre-British era; and described the impact to all these because of the British rule. He goes on to meticulously point out how it was a deliberate attempt of British to ruin Indian economy so that the British economy could flourish and how India, to the British, was a gold reserve for developing their own country.
It is very saddening to read the detailed background and aftermath of historical events like Jallianwala Baug massacre, the Kohinoor diamond trading hands, the Partition and the events surrounding it, and many such incidents which we have heard about but probably do not know in too much detail.
For the Raj apologists, as he calls them, he has provided well explored details on how the supposedly good things that we should be grateful to the British for, were also something completed and used for British convenience and not for the ease of Indian people. One major example of this is the Railways, for which the British rule is given much credit. He knocks off this assumption giving detailed info on how railways were used for British to connect only certain parts of India such that they could ferry off most material easily to the British shores. Tharoor makes compelling arguments for each and every point that is usually credited as a positive outcome of the British rule. At the end of the chapter, you are bound to agree with him.
The most impactful chapter for me was where he described the final years of the freedom struggle and the conditions that led to the Hindu-Muslim, India-Pakistan divide. He has sincerely pointed out the drawbacks or mistakes that the Indian National Congress and Jawaharlal Nehru did which could have avoided the whole bloodbath later. From a social perspective, he has explained in detail how British were responsible for tearing the social structure and dividing the country into religions and castes, more permanent than they had ever been in pre-British era. It is a sad truth that something that was deliberately initiated more than 200 years back, is still strongly rooted in our society and getting more and more fragmented day by day.
One interesting point in the book which I hadn`t noticed or thought about previously is the difference between French or Portuguese imperialism and British imperialism. He mentions that other regimes wanted to inculcate the local population and make them more or less like themselves. French and Portuguese influence can still be seen in various parts of India like Pondicherry and Goa. The local population was encouraged to talk, eat, live like the rulers. Many rulers married into the local populace too. However, British rulers always maintained a stark divide between them and the local population. According to them, they were the better race and Indians needed to be ruled for their own benefit. Excerpt from the book ``The British had no intention of becoming one with the land. The French rules foreign territories and made them French, assimilating them in a narrative of Frenchness; the Portuguese settled in their colonies and intermarried with the locals; but the British always stayed apart and aloof, a foreign presence, with foreign interests and foreign loyalties``
The book depicts a sad reality and shows the horrific cruelties of the British rule. If you are in a dreamy and happy mood, this is something you should definitely not pick up. But read it to know the history, read it to be proud of your country and finally, read it for the partition chapter which is sure to bring goosebumps. Also, if the name Shashi Tharoor is making you think twice about picking up the book, lest you need to sit with a dictionary on the side, don`t worry. Though he casually uses words like eclectic, consign, apocryphal; you would be able to understand the gist of the sentence without feeling too daunted with the words used. All in all, a very interesting but disheartening read!
According to Shashi Tharoor, the idea for this book came when his speech from a London debate went viral and he received a lot of accolades and compliments for standing up for his country and putting across points related to remuneration for empirical rule. When he got so many compliments and people lauded him for saying what was common knowledge according to him, he realized that the horrors of English regime were not that widely understood and known to everyone. Which is when he came up with the idea of writing this book.
The book is very well researched but if you are looking for a chronological story type reading experience, that is not how it is presented. Instead, he has taken individual occupations (like textile, steel, printing press), different conditions (like famine, labor movement during world war 2), growth and spread of English items like tea and cricket, social and religious structures in pre-British era; and described the impact to all these because of the British rule. He goes on to meticulously point out how it was a deliberate attempt of British to ruin Indian economy so that the British economy could flourish and how India, to the British, was a gold reserve for developing their own country.
It is very saddening to read the detailed background and aftermath of historical events like Jallianwala Baug massacre, the Kohinoor diamond trading hands, the Partition and the events surrounding it, and many such incidents which we have heard about but probably do not know in too much detail.
For the Raj apologists, as he calls them, he has provided well explored details on how the supposedly good things that we should be grateful to the British for, were also something completed and used for British convenience and not for the ease of Indian people. One major example of this is the Railways, for which the British rule is given much credit. He knocks off this assumption giving detailed info on how railways were used for British to connect only certain parts of India such that they could ferry off most material easily to the British shores. Tharoor makes compelling arguments for each and every point that is usually credited as a positive outcome of the British rule. At the end of the chapter, you are bound to agree with him.
The most impactful chapter for me was where he described the final years of the freedom struggle and the conditions that led to the Hindu-Muslim, India-Pakistan divide. He has sincerely pointed out the drawbacks or mistakes that the Indian National Congress and Jawaharlal Nehru did which could have avoided the whole bloodbath later. From a social perspective, he has explained in detail how British were responsible for tearing the social structure and dividing the country into religions and castes, more permanent than they had ever been in pre-British era. It is a sad truth that something that was deliberately initiated more than 200 years back, is still strongly rooted in our society and getting more and more fragmented day by day.
One interesting point in the book which I hadn`t noticed or thought about previously is the difference between French or Portuguese imperialism and British imperialism. He mentions that other regimes wanted to inculcate the local population and make them more or less like themselves. French and Portuguese influence can still be seen in various parts of India like Pondicherry and Goa. The local population was encouraged to talk, eat, live like the rulers. Many rulers married into the local populace too. However, British rulers always maintained a stark divide between them and the local population. According to them, they were the better race and Indians needed to be ruled for their own benefit. Excerpt from the book ``The British had no intention of becoming one with the land. The French rules foreign territories and made them French, assimilating them in a narrative of Frenchness; the Portuguese settled in their colonies and intermarried with the locals; but the British always stayed apart and aloof, a foreign presence, with foreign interests and foreign loyalties``
The book depicts a sad reality and shows the horrific cruelties of the British rule. If you are in a dreamy and happy mood, this is something you should definitely not pick up. But read it to know the history, read it to be proud of your country and finally, read it for the partition chapter which is sure to bring goosebumps. Also, if the name Shashi Tharoor is making you think twice about picking up the book, lest you need to sit with a dictionary on the side, don`t worry. Though he casually uses words like eclectic, consign, apocryphal; you would be able to understand the gist of the sentence without feeling too daunted with the words used. All in all, a very interesting but disheartening read!
