EUROSCOPE. Pay up for colonial excesses – but how?

The issue of colonial reparations — and what, if any, payments Britain and other former colonial powers owe to the nations they once ruled over — has long been a contentious issue but has returned to the spotlight in the past few weeks following Shashi Tharoor’s impassioned argument in favour of reparations at the Oxford Union last month. “It’s a tool for you to atone for the wrongs that have been done,” he told his audience in the intense debate that grabbed headlines both in India and the UK.

While his speech won endorsement from Prime Minister Modi himself, Keith Vaz, a prominent Indian-origin MP in Westminster is calling for the return of the 105-karat Kohinoor diamond, which has been in British hands since 1850, and whose return British Prime David Cameron ruled out a couple of years ago.

An argument against reparations doesn’t necessarily have to be based on one’s assessment of British rule. Some, for example, point to the difficulty of quantifying what should be owed, particularly given the many and profound ways in which empire had an impact.

While indicators such as the share of the country’s GDP in the world economy can be useful guides to the damage wrought, structural changes were arguably the most debilitating, lasting and unquantifiable — the deindustrialisation, and the subordination of the economy to British interests.

Historians have also pointed to the huge role the British played in cementing Islam and Hinduism into distinct, monolithic communities — and, of course, ingraining the caste system nationwide — both of whose devastating impacts, financial and otherwise, remain to this day. For example in Castes of the Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India , Nicholas Dirks argues that caste was very much a modern phenomenon and a product of colonial rule.

There are, of course, some events so awful in the history of colonial rule that determined surviving victims have been able to wrestle some compensation. In 2013, Britain agreed to a “full and final settlement” of £20 million for 5,000 victims of torture and abuse at the hands of the British during the 1950s Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya.

But while it was hailed as a rare acknowledgement of culpability, this was very limited and scope and there remain many victims who continue to press their case for compensation unsuccessfully.

Setting aside financial reparations, could iconic items such as the Kohinoor play a powerful role too? A comparison is often drawn with the Elgin Marbles of Greece, the marble sculptures that remain at the British Museum, though that comparison may be tricky — the Kohinoor has had a turbulent history, being transported in and out of India over the centuries even before the British — the collection of Amaravati slabs housed in the British Museum could be a better example.

Arguments against returning these generally fall into two categories: first that countries such as India have a mixed track record when it comes to dealing with preserving artefacts, particularly compared to those such as the British Museum, where they are equipped in special, climate controlled environments, but its an argument that only goes so far, particularly given the huge improvements being made in the protection of historical artefacts.

Another common argument is that museums such as the British Museum are somehow “global museums” for humanity that transcend national boundaries. It’s certainly an argument often wheeled out when it comes to defending continue keeping the Elgin marbles in British hands.

However, as a historian who recently attended a conference at the Vatican on this very topic pointed out to me, this argument failed to convince other fellow Commonwealth historians attending. They pointed out that if the housing of historical artefacts did indeed transcend boundaries, why was it that the so-called “global museums” remained purely within the West? ‘We asked, “Why can’t we have a world museum too and why can’t you give our museums European artefacts of equivalent value? But that does not happen. They never send us their best pieces.”’

Even more galling is that when the plundered items are displayed, there is rarely any recognition of the violent route that brought them from the former colony.

But here in lies the main problem with focusing on reparations or the return of individual iconic items — the gesture in itself is likely to be tokenistic and achieve little. Tharoor was right to say that atoning for the past is what matters most at this stage, but it’s questionable whether reparations would achieve that without a far more deep rooted change in the mindset of Britain, and other former colonial powers.

There’s been a tendency in recent years for Britain to move away from “colonial guilt” (as if that guilt were ever a strong force). There was even a museum dedicated to the British empire set up in the early 2000s (fortunately it was closed down after six years, and a new home never found), while historians such as Niall Ferguson attempt to convince that there was “more than a little substance to their claim that they were on a civilising mission.”

Even in the debate over Britain’s international aid arrangements there is little acknowledgement that past wrongs had anything to do with the disbursement of funds. Rather, aid is often seen as an example of British magnificence. “That’s gratitude,” screamed a headline in the Daily Mail after India awarded the multi-billion rupee fighter-plane contract to France rather than Britain in 2012.

The paper pointed to the fact that Britain had allocated aid of £1 billion to India that year. Recently declassified papers from the days of Margaret Thatcher, which showed the government overtly linking aid and the now infamous Westland helicopter contract, highlight just how ingrained that attitude has been in government circles too.

So, perhaps a more important thing to push for than reparations is a deeper acknowledgement of the past, in a way that matters today. There’s a pressing example: the plight of thousands of Indian nurses in the UK.

The substantial presence of Indians and Indian origin Brits in the NHS has been a clear and, perhaps, inevitable outcome of the two nations’ shared colonial history (and Britain’s post-second world war drive to recruit them into the NHS), yet at the moment toughening immigration policy in the UK has been making their lives more and more of a nightmare.

Changes announced by the British government earlier this year – restricting their ability to apply for permanent residency – will mean that thousands face having to leave a country they have trained in, and built roots in for several years. The British government may not have responsibility for the wrongs wrought centuries ago. But it is responsible for the post-colonial Britain it is shaping and all those that suffer as a result.

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