INDIAN-ORIGIN author Nikesh Shukla last month said that he turned down an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List because he did not wish to be associated with what it stands for — “Member of the Order of the British Empire”.
“Last month I was offered an MBE for services to literature. I said no thanks. I do not wish to be a member of the order of the British Empire,” he had tweeted.
He added: “The main reason for not accepting the MBE was because I hate how it valorises the British Empire, a brutal, bloody thing that resulted in so much death and destruction. To accept the MBE would be to co-sign it.”
Shukla, 40, was born and brought up in Britain while his father grew up in Kenya, with his ancestors having gone there from Gujarat. He writes about racism, identity and immigration in Britain and is also the author of three novels — Coconut Unlimited (2010), Meatspace (2014) and The One Who Wrote Destiny (2018).
In one of his opinion column in The Guardian, Shukla writes: "Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire? Is this the title I’m asked to carry? I cannot think of anything I want less than to be a member of that empire. There are renewed calls to look at the titles of these honours, and change the E from Empire to Excellence, which would be a good step in the right direction. But before making such a move, we must reckon with the legacy of the British empire."
He also added: "I think a lot about Operation Legacy, a Foreign Office programme to destroy files that might throw a light on the horrors of the empire. If Britain’s colonial history was something to be proud of, as 44 per cent of people in a YouGov poll said in 2016, then why did special branch officers feel the need to rid the world of documents that might give an insight into how racist the British empire was, how brutal?
"Were these people proud of the Bengal famine, the Amritsar massacre, partition, slavery, the forced castration of Mau Mau rebels? Or did they just like that Britain gave its colonies railways?"
While defending his decision of turning down the MBE, he says: "Time will eventually consume those people who are proud of Britain’s bloody, brutal colonial history. I am happy to watch them crumble and fall."
