BRITAIN AS REQUESTED BY INDIA PRIME MINISTER NARENDRA MODI AFTER AN APPEAL SPEECH FROM SHASHI THAROOR AT THE OXFORD UNION IS CALLING FOR REPARATION AFTER 200 YEARS OF COLONIAL RULE OF INDIA AND THUS INCLUDING AN APOLOGY

India’s prime minister has praised an opposition MP who made an impassioned appeal for Britain to pay reparations for 200 years of colonial rule.

Narendra Modi said Shashi Tharoor’s speech at the Oxford Union, which was posted online last week, “reflected the feelings of patriotic Indians” and that he said “the right things at the right place”.

Mr Tharoor, a Congress MP, writer and former UN under-secretary general, said that “Britain’s rise for 200 years was financed by its depredations in India”

“We paid for our own oppression,” he said “It’s a bit rich to impress, maim, kill, torture and repress and then celebrate democracy at the end of it.”

^{Shashi Tharoor’s makes his speech at the Oxford Union}

“India's share of the world economy when Britain arrived on its shores was 23 per cent. By the time the British left it was down to below four per cent," Tharoor said in the May 28 debate.

"Why? Simply because India had been governed for the benefit of Britain.”

Mr Tharoor added that Indians had "literally paid for our own oppression," as by the end of the 19th century they were the world's biggest purchasers of British goods as well as providing employment for highly paid civil servants.

“In fact, Britain’s industrial revolution was actually premised upon the de-industrialisation of India,” he said.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/11762311/Indias-prime-minister-endorses-call-for-Britain-to-pay-reparations-for-colonial-rule.html