Inglorious Empire

Tharoor made a speech at a 2015 Oxford Union debate on the topic "Does Britain owe reparations to its former colonies?", which went viral over the web. Subsequently, his publisher floated the idea to transform the speech into a book; despite being initially skeptical, he went on to write a 330 page book.[3][4]

The Hindu Business Line called the book "one breathless read".[5] The Guardian called it a "passionately argued book [which] provides a crushing rebuttal of such ideas with regard to India".[6]

Tabish Khair praised the book for presenting an "intricate mixture of fact and anecdotes" that served as an effective counter to the view of "colonial apologists" but at the same time, did praise the British, when it merited.[4]

Historian William Dalrymple criticised the book saying it "was written in 12 days, involved no personal archive research and contains some serious factual errors" however he maintained that the book was, nevertheless, "persuasive".[7]

In a review published in the Cambridge Review of International Affairs, economic historian, Tirthankar Roy, a faculty at the London School of Economics criticized the book. He noted that "Tharoor makes his case with passion and plain good writing. The facts cited in the book are beyond dispute. The story is meant to be blood-curdling and the colourful language—including liberal use of “depredation,” “loot,” “rapaciousness,” “vicious,” “brutality,” “plunder” and “extraction”—produces that effect. Like a religious text, it tells a straight and narrow story with the zeal of a holy warrior. None of these qualities makes the interpretation right, however. Few professional historians think that the British Empire ruled India with India’s best interests in mind. Yet, few would consider Tharoor’s dark narrative an accurate depiction of one of the most complex 200-year episodes in world history. The idea that India was a prosperous society, which British repression made poor, has circulated through academic and political circles since 1900, especially within the Indian National Congress, the political party to which Tharoor belongs. The best parts of the book restate this old idea."[8]

Another review of Inglorious Empire, published in the Literary Review, by historian John Keay, whose many writings on India include India: A History, applauds Tharoor for "tackling an impossibly contentious subject". However, he deplores the fact that "moral venom sometimes clouds his judgement" and notes that many of Tharoor's statistics are seriously out of date, many coming from the polemics contained in the American Will Durant's Story of Civilisation written in the 1930s, which itself drew on the even earlier work of the crusading American missionary Jabej T. Sutherland, author of India in Bondage.[9]

A more detailed criticism of Tharoor's book and his use of statistics was set out by the writer of South Asian history Charles Allen in a lecture entitled Quis custodiet ipsos custodes: who owns Indian history? read to the Royal Society for Asian Affairs in London on 25 April 2018. A revised version was published in Asian Affairs under the revised title Who Owns India's History? A Critique of Shashi Tharoor's Inglorious Empire.[10]