WHY DON'T WE SUE BRITAIN?

I WAS WORKING ON my next column for BW – on one of my favourite themes like ‘Sustainability’, ‘Inclusivity’, ‘India Shining’ etc.

- KRISHAN KALRA

I changed my mind when I saw a friend’s WhatsApp forward of the small clip from Indian Express of around 20 April, reproducing a Reuter report about the Haitian civil society having raised a demand of “billions of dollars” from France for covering some debt the people of this enslaved nation were forced to pay to the rulers. I was immediately reminded of Shashi Tharoor’s famous 2015 speech at the iconic Oxford Society Union ‘Britain Does Owe Reparations’. Even though the honourable MP from Thiruvananthapuram and former assistant secretary general of the United Nations, ended his speech by just demanding an apology and a token sum of GBP 1 per annum for 200 years, I think in all seriousness that we should try to compute the actual cost of their misdemeanours – indeed crimes – against our country and the Indian people; add interest at a reasonable rate and take the matter to the International Court of Justice at The Hague and to the United Nations.