1957 Debate Video Shows Indian Students Slamming British Rule. Shashi Tharoor Reacts

Congress MP Shashi Tharoor

An old video of an Indian and a Pakistani student teaming up to lecture a representative of the United Kingdom at a high school debate in 1957 on the British empire and how it looted India for 200 is going viral on the internet. The topic of the debate was “prejudice.” It was shared by industrialist Anand Mahindra on Twitter today.  Sharing the video, Mr Mahindra questioned what had happened to the tenacious student who had interrupted UK’s Sara Chatt when she asserted that India was friends with the UK. He even enquired about Mr Gopinath’s fate from Congress MP Shashi Tharoor. Responding to the same, he stated that the speaker is “retired & living in undeserved anonymity.”

Mr Tharoor said, “Yes Anand.” He continued in another tweet, “I *was* born by then! And I know the brilliant bespectacled Indian student, who went on to be a star official at the @ILO. He is now retired & living in undeserved anonymity.”

Yes Anand. https://t.co/Q7sGhIfNs4

— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) January 27, 2023

“This was going around furiously on social media yesterday. Wonderful to see someone so vigorously champion the cause of India back in ’57! @ShashiTharoor I’m sure you have seen this and perhaps know what became of Mr. Gopinath…” he wrote while sharing the video. 

Defining the topic of the debate, Mr Gopinath said in the video, “Prejudice is willful ignorance. It is dictated only by emotion. And the fear and suspicion it creates causes more harm than I can think of.” Additionally, he stated that “savage Anglo Saxons were still wandering around clad in skins 3,000 years before the signing of the Magna Carta, which Englishmen considered to be the beginning of history, in the Indus River Valley.”

He added that it is solely the responsibility of the Indian people and not the British that India is still cordial with Britain and maintains good relations. “Your policy of saying that all these countries wished for it, it was you who were putting the wish in their mouths. There was not much they could do,” he said. Mr Gopinath also spoke about Sarawak rainforest and British empire’s exploitation that took place. 

Ms Chatt then questioned the duo on “material wealth.” Responding to the same, Mr Gopinath added that the British empire would not have lasted a single day if not for the same material wealth, all of which came from India. In exchange, Britain provided us with a “vaguely nebulous way democratic way of life,” he said. He also gave the example of the Panchayat system and revealed that India had democracy “3500 years before the birth of Jesus Christ.”

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