In fact, almost all of the book is a riveting read as far as deconstructing what happened and its consequences go. Tharoor’s arguments against these are precise and well elucidated. There are people who think that the British rule of India perhaps had good things – like an education system and the railways, which were never possible with the native rule. But this was destroyed the Company’s own stalwart administrator Lord William Bentinck wrote that ‘the bones of the cotton weavers were bleaching the plains of India’. India had enjoyed a 25 per cent share of the global trade in textiles in the early eighteenth century. There are so many references to various other books that have contributed to the topic at hand. But, An Era of Darkness is, in a way, a book of books. It wouldn’t have been possible without a lot of sacrifice from our ancestors. I sat at home, comfortable and safe, and read this book. While it is just a book, that doesn’t make the horrors of colonisation any less. If you want an idea of the research and hard work that went into this book, look it up before you pick up An Era of Darkness. At the end of the book, there are Notes & References, and Bibliography.

Interesting, isn’t it? An Era of Darkness is interspersed with data – numbers, books and authors. Indeed, the attempt by one Indian commentator, Minhaz Merchant, to compute what a fair sum of reparations would amount to, came up with a figure so astronomical-$3 trillion in today’s money-that no one could ever reasonably be expected to pay it. I felt that atonement was the point-a simple ‘sorry’ would do as well-rather than cash. I was convinced about the wrongs inflicted on colonial subjects by the British empire, but I suggested at the end of my speech that India should be content with a symbolic reparation of one pound a year, payable for 200 years to atone for 200 years of imperial rule. While the speech strikes a note with everyone who has seen it, An Era of Darkness is not for everyone. But this book differs from the speech and Shashi Tharoor illustrates this in his writing. In An Era of Darkness’s preface, Shashi Tharoor tells us how his Oxford Union speech on the proposition ‘Britain Owes Reparations to Her Former Colonies’ had him embark on the venture of making a book out of it.

And do not mistake the book as just being a lesson in history – it is so much more.

But still, two weeks is quite a long time to read a book that is 360 pages long. I fell ill for about two weeks and did not read it during that time. It has been over a month since I started reading An Era of Darkness.

An Era of Darkness by Shashi Tharoor