Shashi Tharoor's An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India

            Today, we are going to discuss about the Shashi Tharoor's An Era of Darkness. So let me give the link of teacher's blog. So There are some interviews video regarding the An Era of darkness by Shashi Tharoor.https://blog.dilipbarad.com/2018/09/shashi-tharoor-and-dark-era-of.html

                      Introduction 

Shashi Tharoor  born 9 March 1956) is an Indian politician, writer and former international diplomat who has been serving as Member of Parliament, Lok Sabha from Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, since 2009. He was formerly Under-Secretary General of the United Nations and contested for the post of Secretary-General in 2006.

He also serves as Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology and All India Professionals Congress. He formerly served as Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs (2014 to 2019). In 2019, Shashi Tharoor received the Sahitya Academy Award for his book An Era of Darkness in a non-fiction category in English language.

There are some videos related with this topics under below.

1. Speech at Oxford Union.

2. Looking back at the British Raj in India: The University of  Edinburgh.

3. Exclusive interview by Karan Thapar On His book  "An Era of Darkness."

4. About British Colonialism in India in His New Book ' An Era of Darkness'.

                  

                     

                      

                       

1.Write on key arguments in Shashi Tharoor's book - An Era of Darkness.

**An Era of Darkness**.......

    '' An Era of Darkness'' Shashi Tharoor mostly doing arguments to established about British colonial rites whose violence experience for Indian society.Here I notify that most off the his work represented on British exploitation of India so that he carried the day for Tharoor in an Oxford debate not too long ago. He know about the Indian people and society. Thus he explain very well about the situation. In Tharoor an era of darkness for India which suffered through wars, made man famines, racism, deportation etc. So here Tharoor's debate became popular. We very well know that British government everything was doing for increased own wealth from India but they gave us new more things. He try to explain this idea by his view. He also famous as a for debate.

2.Write critique on both the films with reference to postcolonial insights.

The Black Prince 

is a 2017 international historical drama film directed by Kavi Raz and featuring the acting debut of Satinder Sartaaj. It tells the story of Duleep Singh, the last Maharajah of the Sikh Empire and the Punjab area, and his relationship with Queen Victoria.

The story revolves around the young prince as he attempts both to regain his throne and reconcile himself with the two cultures of his Indian birth and British education. 

we can see the Postcolonialism through the main character of Duldeep Singh. In this movie we can see that the condition of Duldeep Singh that he find himself with the two different cultures of his India birth and British education.
After the death of his father Maharajah Ranjit Singh who was the previous ruler of the Sikh Empire. And after his death , Duldeep Singh placed on the throne at the very early of five age.  After the time passed Britishers who colonized Punjab and they take Duldeep with them and separated from his mother. Duldeep consider himself as  a Britisher but it is not actually that. After the few years he meet his mother and his mother told him the story about Britishers that what they did with him in the prior. Then after the death of his mother , he came to know that who is he and which country he is actually belong. He want to go at India but Britishers who deny him to go there. in a way, he found himself in dilemma.

3. Summarise Ngugi Wa Thiongo's views... 

Kenyan teacher, novelist, essayist, and playwright, whose works function as an important link between the pioneers of African writing and the younger generation of postcolonial writers. After imprisonment in 1978, Ngũgĩ abandoned using English as the primary language of his work in favor of Gikuyu, his native tongue. The transition from colonialism to postcoloniality and the crisis of modernity has been a central issues in a great deal of Ngũgĩ's writings.

Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature

Decolonising the Mind is a collection of essays about language and its constructive role in national culture, history, and identity. The book, which advocates for linguistic decolonization, is one of Ngũgĩ’s best-known and most-cited non-fiction publications, helping to cement him as a pre-eminent voice theorizing the “language debate” in post-colonial studies.

Ngũgĩ describes the book as “a summary of some of the issues in which I have been passionately involved for the last twenty years of my practice in fiction, theatre, criticism, and in teaching of literature…” Decolonising the Mind is split into four essays: 

“The Language of African Literature,” 

“The Language of African Theatre,”

 “The Language of African Fiction,” 

“The Quest for Relevance.”

Many of the ideas are familiar from Ngugi’s earlier critical books, and earlier lectures, elsewhere. But the material here has a new context and the ideas a new focus. This leading African writer presents the arguments for using African language and forms after successfully using an African language himself.
                                                The Guardian

After 25 years of independence, there is beginning to emerge a generation of writers for whom colonialism is a matter of history and not of direct personal experience. In retrospect that literature characterised by Ngugi as Afro-European – the literature written by Africans in European languages – will come to be seen as part and parcel of the uneasy period between colonialism and full independence, a period equally reflected in the continent’s political instability as it attempts to find its feet. Ngugi’s importance – and that of this book – lies in the courage with which he has confronted this most urgent of issues.
                               The New Statesman

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