Talk:Shashi Tharoor's Oxford Union speech

Shashi Tharoor's Oxford Union speech has been listed as one of the Social sciences and society good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
August 5, 2021	Good article nominee	Listed

A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on June 27, 2020.

The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that during a 2015 speech at the Oxford Union, Indian politician Shashi Tharoor claimed that Britain owes reparations to India?

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A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion[edit]

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

Shashi Tharoor (cropped).jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 00:24, 23 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Sentence construction[edit]

Noswall59, You wrote in an edit summary "though I don't understand the rest of the sentence"— Ottaway argued that today's Britain has nothing to do with injustices of the past, as did those living in former colonies today, now independent states. Would this be a better way to frame the sentence:

Ottaway argued that today's Britain as well as those in former colonies have nothing to do with injustices of the past.
Ottaway argued that today's Britain has nothing to do with injustices of the past.

The reference frames the sentence like this:

Mr. Ottaway maintained that "to ask today’s tax payers to finance reparations to the free citizens of independent states merely assuages at 21st century guilt."(source: India Real Time (WSJ))

Please suggest a way to incorporate it into the article. Are there any other suggestions related to other parts of the article? Is this article anywhere near FA status? DTM (talk) 13:22, 6 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

To be honest, I think both alternatives leap too far from Ottaway's original statement as reported (though I note that "assuages at" is not grammatical so I'm not sure what he meant by that part of the sentence). In the quote you've offered, he doesn't say something to the tune of "today's Britain has nothing to do with" colonialism, simply that it's been a long time and, now that these states are independent, it seems wrong to expect people living in Britain to pay them money. A possible alternative therefore might be Ottaway argued that it would be wrong to expect people in contemporary Britain to make reparations to now-independent countries on the basis of perceived past injustices.

As for questions about FAC and general improvements, I'm quite busy at the moment so I'm not sure I'll be able to give this much time. You could take it to Wikipedia:Peer Review though I hear that it's not as active as it used to be. —Noswall59 (talk) 13:51, 6 August 2021 (UTC).[reply]

DTM, I've now given this a copyedit and added some background about the Union. This could probably benefit from having a few more reviewers take a look at the prose. I also think it would be a good idea to mention debates about Britain's colonial past in the background section; Tharoor's speech took place at a time when there were renewed discussions about Britain's colonial legacy, debates which continue now over what to do with the proceeds of slave-owning. Particularly important here are discussions about Rhodes Must Fall, which was a very contentious issue at Oxford at the time; while I doubt a source will say it, that political climate was no doubt what inspired the Union to schedule this debate in the first place and it was certainly that over-arching question which they were engaging with, albeit through the more limited scope of reparations. —Noswall59 (talk) 09:13, 10 August 2021 (UTC).[reply]