Shashi Tharoor Responds to US Anchor's 'British Gave India Civilisation' Comment

The Congress MP took to Twitter to respond to Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson's comment.

Image of Dr Shashi Tharoor and the Parliament of India used for representational purposes. 

(Photo: Altered by Aroop Mishra / The Quint)

Following the death of Queen Elizabeth II, an American television host on Fox News, Tucker Carlson, commented that the British rule "gave India civilisation." This drew the wrath of Congress member of Parliament Shashi Tharoor, who took to Twitter on Tuesday, 13 September, to express his furore.

Speaking on Tucker Carlson Tonight show last week, Carlson said, "After 75 years of Independence has (India) produced a single building as beautiful as the Bombay train station the British colonialists built? No, sadly it has not...We will never see (again an empire) so benign as the British."

The building that Carlson was referring to is the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) in Mumbai, previously known as the Victoria Terminus.

In response to a viral clip of Carlson's TV show, Tharoor tweeted: "I think Twitter ought to have an option for something to press when you can't respond without losing your cool."

Tharoor, who is a vocal critic of the British colonisation of India, has written several books on it and has stated that the British owe India a reparation.

Tharoor expressed on Twitter that he would have to find contentment in just showing "red with anger" emoticons over the American news anchor's comments about the British Raj being one of the best things that happened to India.

Later, in an interview with NDTV, Tharoor said, "The British Raj was not a democracy by any stretch."

In one of the other talk shows, Tharoor was asked about how India would have fared if the British had not colonised it.

"The British came to one of the richest countries in the world, accounting for 27 percent of global GDP in the 1700s, 23 percent in 1800s and over 200 years of exploitation later reduced it to a poster child for third world countries with just over three percent of global GDP, and 90 percent of the population left below the poverty line when the British left in 1947, and the literacy rate was below 17 percent."

Shashi Tharoor, Member of the Parliament for Thiruvananthapuram, India

(With inputs from Money Control, NDTV, and FOX News)