A Comparative Study about the Representations of the British Empire and the Hindu Culture in the Works of Nirad C. Choudhury and Shashi Tharoor

Essay from the year 2017 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Literature, Works, grade: B+, University of Burdwan (The University of Burdwan), course: M.A. in English Literature, language: English, abstract: If we look at the contemporary political discourses, a lot of discussions have been going on about the former empires, and whether these empires owe any kind of apology and reparations to their former colonies or not. In this regard, we find two divided sections. Whereas historians and critics like Niall Fergusson and Lawrence James have given a romanticized view of the project of colonialism and referred to the project as a kind of 'exported modernity', various postcolonial critics and historians like Jon Wilson, David Judd and Dipesh Chakroborty have criticized the project and referred to the exploitation and atrocities that the colonizers have committed during the colonial period. This paper has chosen two writers from the Indian English literary field, who will be the representatives of these two groups of critics and writers. In the Indian English literary field, there is no bigger apologist for the British Empire than Nirad C. Choudhury. His pro-colonial writings and criticism of the Hindu culture have created huge controversy both on the national and international levels. On the other hand, Shashi Tharoor's criticism of the colonial project and his defense of the Hindu culture have got him huge popularity all over the world. The purpose of this paper is to synthesize the arguments of both the writers and present a balanced view by countering some of their arguments.