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PM May should ‘beg forgiveness’ for UK's colonial sins: Indian MP

Friday, 04 November 2016 8:48 AM [ Last Update: Friday, 04 November 2016 9:31 AM ]

Indian MP Shashi Tharoor

A prominent Indian politician says UK Prime Minister Theresa May should kneel down before the Indian nation and apologize for Britain’s past atrocities during its colonial rule.

“People who are not responsible today for the wrongs done by their forebearers in the past era apologize nonetheless to people who are not the ones to whom wrong was done. But it is in a sense an entire society apologizing to entire people,” Shashi Tharoor, MP from Thiruvananthapuram, told Indian media.

Tharoor, who currently serves as chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs, advised the British prime minister to “bend her knees and beg forgiveness” for all the sins committed during the British Raj.

The British Raj refers to the period of British rule on the Indian subcontinent between 1858 and 1947.

“That I think will wash away in many ways the sense that there are wrongs that have not been acknowledged,” said the former minister of state for external affairs.

Tharoor, who has a doctorate in law and diplomacy, has written a book named “An Era of Darkness: The British Empire In India.”

In his book, he sheds light on how Britons almost annihilated India during the height of the British empire. He also highlights the infamous Jallianwala Bagh massacre, where hundreds of non-violent protesters were killed by British soldiers in 1919.

The Indian MP further slammed ex-UK premier David Cameron’s “mealy-mouthed” apology for the massacre, saying it should not be recognized as a formal acknowledgment of the event.

Last year, Tharoor made a speech at the Oxford Union, saying Britain owes reparations to India and other former colonies for decades of imperial rule.

The video went viral on social media and was later met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s approval. Modi said Tharoor spoke “the right things at the right place.”

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