> In 2017, Tharoor put the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in the same category as some of "the worst genocidal dictators" of the 20th century, saying that Churchill is "one of the more evil rulers of the 20th century only fit to stand in the company of the likes of Hitler, Mao and Stalin. Churchill has as much blood on his hands as Hitler does. Particularly the decisions that he personally signed off during the Bengal Famine when 4.3 million people died because of the decisions he took or endorsed.
The author has toned down his message in this piece whilst still banging the same drum. And I'm not sure why. The guy was flawed, sure. He was both a renowned wit and a racist, who had to make some unbelievably hard decisions during wartime. One of those decisions unfortunately exacerbated a famine already well into the making[1], a thing Tharoor seems to ignore each time he brings it up. Instead he imagines that Churchill himself pushed a button saying "no shipping grain there because I'm racist" rather than than as a result of the nearly 1 million tonnes of ships lost in the Indian Ocean in a single year, stretching already stretched supplies to breaking point as the Allies continued fighting a war on 6 fronts across 3 continents.
I guess it's easy, you can repeatedly bring this up and tap into some anti-english sentiment within your countrymen. But why? The man can be both a hero and a villain in different parts of his life. You can appreciate the man of the hour whilst understanding that his views and actions in other parts of his life where outdated and by modern standards pretty disgusting.
You can also appreciate that without him WW2 may have gone very, very differently for both Europe and India. And maybe there is something to be thankful for in that. Personally I would think the Nazis would have done a lot worse things, and held even worse views.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943#February...