British started railways in India for their own selfish reasons: Tharoor

November 17, 2016 18:31

Congress leader Shashi Tharoor today said the British started railways in India for "their own selfish reasons" and it was in fact a "very big colonial scam."

Tharoor said there is often a perception that Indians should be grateful to the British for giving the country the facility of Railways, something which is not really true.

"Everyone thinks that the British gave us Railways, shouldn't we be grateful. We don't realise that the railways was a very big colonial scam. The purpose of the Raliways was to serve the British to extract goods, minerals, raw materials from the Indian hinterland which were hitherto inaccessible," Tharoor, who is the Member of Parliament from Thiruvananthapuram, said.

"To send soldiers there, get the labour to move and get these goods out of the hinterland... That was the first purpose," he added.

Tharoor was in conversation with noted author Amitav Ghosh about 'The Legacy of the Raj' during the opening ceremony of the 7th edition of 'Tata Literature Live' festival in Mumbai.

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