Debate video from 1957 shows Indian students denouncing British rule. Shashi Tharoor responds

An old video of an Indian and a Pakistani student working together to teach a representative of the United Kingdom during a 1957 high school debate about the British Empire and how it plundered India for 200 is going viral on the internet. The subject of the debate was ‘prejudice’. It was shared today by industrialist Anand Mahindra on Twitter. Mahindra shared the video, wondering what had happened to the tenacious student who interrupted Britain’s Sara Chatt when she claimed India was friendly with the UK. He even inquired about Mr. Gopinath’s fate from Congressman Shashi Tharoor. He responded to this, stating that the speaker is “retired and lives in undeserved anonymity”.

Mr. Tharoor said, “Yes Anand.” He continued in another tweet, “I *was* born then! And I know the brilliant bespectacled Indian student, who went on to become a star official at the @ILO. He is now retired and lives in undeserved anonymity.”

Yes Ananda. https://t.co/Q7sGhIfNs4

— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) January 27, 2023

“This went viral on social media yesterday. Great to see someone so vigorously defending the cause of India in ’57! @ShashiTharoor I’m sure you’ve seen this and maybe know what became of Mr. Gopinath… he wrote as he shared the video.

Defining the topic of the debate, Gopinath said in the video, “Prejudice is willful ignorance. It is dictated only by emotion. And the fear and suspicion it generates does more damage than I can imagine.” In addition, he stated that “fierce Anglo-Saxons 3,000 years before the signing of the Magna Carta, whom Englishmen regarded as the beginning of history, still roamed the Indus River Valley in skins.”

He added that it is solely the responsibility of the Indian people and not the British that India continues to be cordial to Britain and to maintain good relations. “Your policy of saying all these countries wanted it was you putting the wish in their mouths. There wasn’t much they could do,” he said. Mr. Gopinath also spoke about the Sarawak rainforest and the exploitation of the British Empire that took place.

Ms Chatt then questioned the duo about ‘material wealth’. Gopinath replied that the British Empire would not have lasted a day without the same material wealth, all of which came from India. In return, Britain gave us a “vaguely vague way of living democratically,” he said. He also gave the example of the Panchayat system and revealed that India had democracy “3500 years before the birth of Jesus Christ”.

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