·         In September 2009, Tharoor and S M Krishna were accused of staying in luxurious 5-star hotels.^[41] Tharoor defended himself, saying that it was because of the delay in his official residence being ready and he only spent from his own pocket for the accommodation.^[42] Later on Pranab Mukherjee's request^[43] Tharoor and Krishna moved out of the hotels.^[44]

·         A controversy erupted when Tharoor, responding to the question as to whether he would travel in "Cattle class", replied that he would do so. This remark on Twitter (@ShashiTharoor), was alleged to equate the travelling public to cattle and taunt his party, the Indian National Congress over their austerity drive.^[45]Tharoor's explanation that "cattle class" was a well-established phrase for economy class travel, and that it attacked the airlines and not the passengers, was ignored in the outcry. It was also reported that Congress may take action against him.^[46][47] However, this was subsequently resolved when the Prime Minister pointed out to the media that the statement was "a joke".

·         Another controversy erupted on Gandhi Jayanti when he said people should be working rather than staying at home taking a holiday, thereby paying real homage to Mahatma Gandhi.^[48]

·         Tharoor was in the news again for publicly criticizing the new visa guidelines adopted by the Indian Government in the wake of the gaps exposed by the arrest of26/11 terror suspects, David Headley and Tahawwur Rana. For this he was criticized for breaking ranks with the official position of the Government. He later metExternal Affairs Minister, SM Krishna and explained his position on the issue. The rules were subsequently partly modified.^[49]

·         In January 2010, Tharoor criticized Nehru for his vision on Indian foreign policy by the Indian media. This angered his party, the Indian National Congress. In the wake of this controversy, he held a press conference describing the report as "inaccurate" and "tendentious"."^[50]

·         In February 2010 when accompanying^[51] the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on a three-day visit to Saudi Arabia, he said "We feel that Saudi Arabia has a long and close relationship with Pakistan, that makes Saudi Arabia even more a valuable interlocutor for us. When we tell them about our experience, Saudi Arabia listens as somebody who is not in any way an enemy of Pakistan, but a friend of Pakistan and, therefore, will listen with sympathy and concern to a matter of this nature". He was asked whether India expected Saudi Arabia, given their close ties with Islamabad, to help address the terror threat from Pakistan.^[52] The remark about Saudi Arabia being a "valuable interlocutor" raised a strong reaction within the Indian political circle.^[53] The Pakistani press even went on to report that he had proposed that Saudi Arabia play a mediator's role in improving India's relationship with Pakistan.^[54] In response, Tharoor denied that 'interlocutor' meant 'mediator', and tweeted an explanation, saying, "An interlocutor is someone you speak to. If I speak to you, you are my interlocutor. I mentioned the Saudis as our interlocutors, i.e. the people we are here to speak to".^[52]

Main article: India – Saudi Arabia relations, section '2010 visit to Saudi Arabia by Manmohan Singh'

·         In 2014, Tharoor expressed support for Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, a social campaign initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi(BJP). Following this, the KPCClodged a complaint against him to the Congress high command for his pro Modi stand. Following this, Tharoor was dropped as the official spokesperson for the party.^[55]

1.       Before the British came there was no monolithic political entity called India. Instead we had a unruly group of hundreds of kingdoms, chieftaincies, fiefdoms, principalities etc, ever at war with each other. For example there was Kerala, one of the smallest of present-day Indian states with at least three kingdoms which were ever at each others’ throats with little or no prolonged period of peace between them. It wasn’t much different elsewhere. The major victory that Clive won and which laid the foundations for the British rule in India was the outcome of internecine conflicts in Bengal and elsewhere between Indian princes. So it is ridiculous to speak of India as a monolithic political entity when the British came. It is also ridiculous to assume that we were prosperous when in reality we were fighting each other most of the time. How can warring nations prosper? It was the British who brought some semblance of peace to India and thereby laid the most important infrastructure for wealth production in India – sustained periods of  peace.

2.       In slamming the British, Shashi also forgets that it was the British who welded together India into what it was at the time of independence. After independence we split up into Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Bangladesh, Burma etc. So which is the India that Shashi speaks of in his speech? Shashi also speaks of reparations or at least a ‘We are sorry’ statement from Britain.’ If so should Britain apologize to Pakistan, Bangaldesh, Sri Lanka, Singapore and dozens of other places they colonized?

3.       Shashi starts with the statement that India accounted for 23% of GDP. Did this India include Pakistan, Bengladesh etc too?  How did he arrive at the conclusion that India accounted for 23% of world GDP at a time where there were no statistics at all about world economy? In fact there are many claims ranging from 23% in Tharoor’s case to 75% in some Sanghi propaganda reg India’s contributions to world GDP in the past. When I raised this issue on our discussion forums, one RB Kaul cited some google employee as the source of this claim. So I looked up this source and it turned out that what the google employee had said was that in those time India accounted for x% of the world population and so must have accounted for x% of the world GDP. This only assumes that per capita income was the same everywhere in the world which in turn means India was not richer than other nations in living standards.

4.       Shashi Tharoor goes on reiterating about the British impoverishing India for 400 or more years and gives instances of it extended over centuries until the WWII. How can any man or nation be impoverished for centuries on end when they were too poor to be impoverished any further?

5.       Tharoor goes on to point out the case of the Bengal famine as an instance of British exploitation of India and Indians. If so I do not understand how the famine was limited mostly to Bengal only. Amarthya Sen won his Nobel mainly for the work he did on the famine in Bengal. In it he presents page after page of statistics to show that it was not scarcity of food that led to the Bengal famine but the breakdown of the distribution system. Now whom should we believe in such matters – Shashi  or Amarthya?

6.       Tharoor describes how the British broke the hands and fingers of Indian weavers to avoid competition with British weavers as a result of which the cloth industry migrated to England. It was not only the Indian weaving industry that migrated to England, but weaving and cloth industry from France, Italy and from all over migrated to England since England was the first country to mechanize the textile industry as a result of which they could produce better quality cloth  at lower prices than anyone else. It may also be pointed out that the British brought the textile industry to India and it was as a result of this that Bombay is what it is now – the commercial capital of India. Then came Datta Samant and the cloth industry migrated to Gujarat and elsewhere. But thanks to the British, Bombay still remains the commercial capital of India.

7.       As pointed out above, Tharoor speaks of the British breaking the hands and fingers of master weavers in India to avoid competition. The Mahabharath speaks of Dhrone asking Ekalavya to chop off his thumb in order to avoid competition between Ekalavya and Dhrone’s own pupils. Similarly Ram chops off Shabuk’s head as Shambuk offered Pujas hanging upside down from a tree just because Shambuk was a Sudra who was not supposed to do Pujas. In fact it is reasonable to assume that the whole caste system was formulated to avoid competition.

8.       The British did exploit us in many ways for 400 years or so. In comparison the high castes in India exploited the low castes for thousands of years and trod rough shod over their rights and still go on doing that. If the British should atone for their sins in cash or words is it also not fit that the high castes make reparations in cash or in words for the atrocities committed on the low castes? Why one yardstick for foreigners and another for ourselves?

9.       Human rights and other matters of morals and ethics of the present age came to the fore only after WWII. Before that might was right. Slavery was abolished by the UN only in 1963 or so. But even after that there was slavery in many places and India was no exception. Thus we had slavery and bonded labor as late as ten years ago and for all we know it may still be practiced in many parts of India. So, as I have reiterated, it is not right sins of the past by present-day yardsticks of ethics and morals. Lets bury the past and work towards a bright future instead of mulling over  the real or imagined iniquities of the past. Remember Singapore. It went though the same process of colonization and exploitation by the British. It also gained independence long after we did. But now it have the third highest prosperity in the world after Qatar and Luxemberg whereas Britain which exploited them is in the 27th place and we with all our rhetoric and scapegoating is in the 125th position among 127 nations and with the kind of sentiments whipped up by Tharoor we still have room for a free fall.

Just like everybody, I am also curious in these matters.  I enjoy forums and chat rooms.  I do not enjoy the way emalayalee comment section operates.  The comment section should be either on a real time basis or a forum based.  I also enjoy chat room debates.  I prefer forums because comment sections can be retrieved quickly for references.  I would really love to join the forum that Xavier mentioned.

I do not agree with the author equating Shashi Tharoor with Mahatma Gandhi.  By that in mind, allow me to go through the history.

The dominant power in India was the Mughal Empire (1526-1857).  The Mughals were widely respected in India. The Mughal dynasty, since Akbar's rule, successfully integrated the Hindus into India's administration and earned respect throughout the country.  Even Aurangzeb's bigoted policies could not entirely reverse this.  For this reason alone, most of India's independent kings accepted the nominal suzerainty of the Mughal emperor.  Evidence can be seen in the rebellion of 1857, where the rebel Sepoys immediately after rebelling sought the Mughal emperor's support.   So, in essence, there was a Mughal India per se before the British arrived spanning from Kabul in Afghanistan to Southward until the banks of River Kaveri, present day Tamilnadu.

So how did the British take-over the whole Mughal Empire?  There was a multi-way struggle between the British, French, and various Indian factions. For instance, after a small British force under Robert Clive "stood off" a larger French force at Arcot, the two European powers agreed to "live and let live."  This enabled Clive to deal only with the Indians.  His main enemy among the "natives" was one Surajah Dowlah, the pro-French Nawab, but other Indians, under Mir Jafar, deserted Dowlah and went over to Clive, securing Dowlah's defeat.  In what had become a "free for all," the British emerged as a "giant among pygmies."

Unfortunately, this appealing portrait of a smooth, tolerant and accountable British system was a fiction. In reality, the British presence in India was relatively small and unable to keep watch over so many princes. The notion that the "British race" had a monopoly on freedom and democracy was unsupportable with regard to the lengthy traditions of public debate, heterogeneous government and freedom of conscience that had existed for centuries in the India of Asoka and Akbar.  If anything, the presence of the British damaged these traditions and safeguarded the princes from any new incursion of democracy.  The British army was always on hand to give succor to each imperiled tyrant and stamp out any attempts by the people to express their discontent.

The reason Tharoor mentioned "India" because he was the representative from India, and there were other representations in the forum from all over the world or former colonies.   In the speech, Shashi Tharoor said the British should apologize to the colonies.  Where in the world the word "colonies" did you not understand?

British economist, Angus Maddison argues that India's share of the world income went from 27% in 1700 (compared to Europe's share of 23%) to 3% in 1950.  Modern economic historians have blamed the colonial rule for the dismal state of India's economy, investment in Indian industries was limited since it was a colony.  You might want to read the following;

Madison, Angus (2006). The world economy, Volumes 1–2. OECD Publishing. Doi:10.1787/456125276116. ISBN 92-64-02261-9. Retrieved 1 November 2011.

 Booker, M. Keith (1997). Colonial Power, Colonial Texts: India in the Modern British Novel. University of Michigan. ISBN 9780472107803.

Even though Mughal Empire was mainly small kingdoms, they had the autonomy in everything.  So they prospered under Mughal Empire.  Well, in that time, every village was a self-sustained unit in itself. It produced the things needed to consume, and since every village was sufficient in doing so, there was no or little need for mass production.  So, no concept of anything like a factory or a production unit came into the minds of the Mughals.  In fact, the British policies of modernization devastated the age old self-sustaining system of survival of Indian villages. In 1770, there was a famine in Bengal, administered by the British, which wiped out one-third of its population.  During British rule 15 famines happened, and 1770 were the deadliest.

Amartya Sen intensely studied 1943 Bengal famine, because he lived through it.  That does not mean other 14 famines are not important under British rule.  Disaster strikes, Sen found when the poorest people can no longer afford to buy food because they lose their jobs or because food prices soar.  In the great Bengal famine, in which three million perished, India's food supplies were not unusually low. Colonial rulers, immune to democratic pressures, simply stood by.

The Industrial Revolution started mainly with textile machineries, such as the spinning jenny (1764) and water frame (1768).  European designs featuring flowers and other patterns in different colors, typically on a plain light background is loosely derived from the style of Indian designs.  It was expensive for the European to import Indian Chintz or Calicos back in the days, various Europeans nations decided to ban it.  British was producing the Indian designs that are outlawed in the other European countries even though it's not the original.  The original Chintz or Calico is handmade. When the ban was lifted, original patterns were added.  Chintz was originally glazed calico (plain-woven textile from Calicut or Kozhikode) textiles.

Again, the industrial revolution in Europe was demanding more and more raw materials and markets for the finished goods. So, the English promoted agriculture in India such as Jute in Bengal, Tea in Assam, and Sugarcane in United Provinces (U.P. and cotton in Maharashtra).  To transport these goods and to bring in and distribute their products, they indeed needed infrastructure. So, roads, railways, canals, the postal system and military had to be developed. In this way the little modernization that took place.  British never produced anything in India.  Not even a needle. They never allowed indigenous industrialists to invest.  They did the development only because it was needed for their interests. Since the manufacturing was expensive in the European nations, later in the 19th century, British brought the textile industry to India.  The first man to point this out was Dada Bhai Naoroji.  Shashi Tharoor was reiterating the opinion of Dada Bhai.

Let me add a famous quote by 1st Baron Macaulay and translated from Victorian to plain English;

“I have traveled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief.  Such wealth I have seen in the country, such high moral values, people of such caliber, that I do not think we would conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage, and therefore, I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self-esteem, their native culture and they will become what we want them, a truly dominated nation.”

The comments by Xavier William sounds like colonialism was a great thing that happened to India.  It reminds me of current Republican Party defending slavery saying that slavery was the best thing ever happened to Black people. 

I do not agree with Shashi Tharoor’s personal life choices but agree that the British should apologize to their former colonies.  I would go further saying that the British crown should give back the Kohinoor Diamonds to India.  

Shashi Tharoor deosn’t qualified to be discussed here.  A person who cannot keep a simple relationship with another human being cannot unite the nation.  It is a shame that noble man like Gandhi’s name is dragged into this discussion.

A Non-religious India will unite India and have heaven on earth and get rid of the unwanted element which makes life complex for everyone.   I am dreaming about it happening all over the world.