Queen Victoria statue, Kolkata. Wikicommons/ Michael Janich. Some rights reserved.The British Empire was in the dock but the defence attorney went missing. Economic historian and Empire apologist Niall Ferguson failed to turn up at the Jaipur Literature Festival. Yet another sign of the decline of Great Britain. Not keeping an appointment was simply not done!
So the festival crowds had to forego a verbal duel between Ferguson and Shashi Tharoor, author-politician. Tharoor was recently applauded by millions who saw him on You Tube unmasking the ugly face of the British Empire during an Oxford Union debate. He demanded token reparation for the destruction of a prosperous India and of Indian lives. Niall Ferguson, on the other hand, never tires of listing the benefits of British rule, translating a Hindi booklet British Raj ke Fayed that was distributed among the colonial Indians. Ferguson also believes that “the empire is more necessary in the twenty-first century than ever before”.
