Quotes from Shashi Tharoor

As we have seen, by the time it ended, nearly 4 million Bengalis starved to death in the 1943 famine. Nothing can excuse the odious behaviour of Winston Churchill, who deliberately ordered the diversion of food from starving Indian civilians to well-supplied British soldiers and even to top up European stockpiles in Greece and elsewhere. 'The starvation of anyway underfed Bengalis is less serious' than that of 'sturdy Greeks', he argued.

Above all, as a Hindu I belong to the only major religion in the world that does not claim to be the only true religion. I find it immensely congenial to be able to face my fellow human beings of other faiths without being burdened by the conviction that I am embarked upon a "true path" that they have missed.

Indeed there were outstanding examples of good governance in India at the time, notably the Travancore kingdom, which in 1819 became the first government in the world to decree universal, compulsory and free primary education for both boys and girls.) The British charges against the rulers they

We have no word for "Nation" in our language.

Bengalis say when offered cod, we still have other fish to fry.

One of the lessons you learn from history is that history sometimes teaches the wrong lessons.

Those who have no sons rarely attach any importance to the priorities of those who do, but they resent them deeply.)

The Indian tricolour was raised just before sunset, and as it fluttered up the flagpole a late-monsoon rainbow emerged behind it, a glittering tribute from the heavens.

Between opponents who will not physically fight, a punch line is equivalent to a punch.

India is my country, and in that sense my outrage is personal. But I seek nothing from history—only an account of itself.

The fact that Nehru had risked his life to save a single Moslem had a profound effect far beyond New Delhi. Many thousands of Moslems who had intended to flee to Pakistan now stayed in India, staking their lives on Nehru's ability to protect them and assure them justice.

The imperial system of law was created by a foreign race and imposed upon a conquered people who had never been consulted in its creation.

Hinduism as a faith might espouse tolerance, this does not necessarily mean that all Hindus behave tolerantly.

Justice, in British India, was far from blind: it was highly attentive to the skin colour of the defendant.

And yet, when to act on that belief causes deep hurt to innocents who had nothing to do with the original wrong -- if there was one -- do we not have a greater responsibility to the present than to the past?

If you believed in truth and cared enough to obtain it, Ganga affirmed, you had to be prepared actively to suffer for it. It was essential to accept punishment willingly in order to demonstrate the strength of one's convictions. That

but it does not want

the key to understanding Hinduism is that it is one faith that claims no monopoly on the Truth.

I have touched upon how well compensated British bureaucrats in India were, but what made things worse was how imbalanced their salaries were when compared with their local counterparts. In the first decades of the twentieth century, J. T. Sunderland observed that the difference in salaries and emoluments was so great that 8,000 British officers earned £13,930,554, while 130,000 Indians in government service were collectively paid a total of £3,284,163.

W]hen we kill people,' a British sea-captain says in the Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies, 'we feel compelled to pretend that it is for some higher cause. It is this pretence of virtue, I promise you, that will never be forgiven by history.' I cannot presume to write on behalf of history, but as an Indian, I find it far easier to forgive than to forget.

The intelligent, autonomous, aspiring young woman with a mind of her own, her own wishes, desires and ambitions, is an individual most Indian men cannot come to terms with.

the cricketer-prince Ranjitsinhji obliged his peasantry, in the midst of a crippling drought, to contribute to the British coffers during World War I; and as his state choked in the grip of famine, he literally burned up a month's revenues in a fireworks display for a visiting viceroy.

Indeed there were outstanding examples of good governance in India at the time, notably the Travancore kingdom, which in 1819 became the

the foremost Indian research institution under the British empire, the Indian Institute of Science, was endowed by the legendary Jamsetji Tata, not by any British philanthropist, let alone by the colonial government.