After Winston Churchill, who is accused of aggravating the effects of the 1943 Bengal Famine in which two-three million Indians perished, the most controversial figure is probably Clive (1725- 1774), whose conquests were crucial in consolidating British rule in India. He is usually referred to as “Clive of India”.
His bronze statue outside the Foreign Office, by the sculptor John Tweed, was not erected until 1912. It shows him in formal dress with one hand resting on the pommel of his sword, the other clutching papers. The inscription on the statue’s pedestal declares him simply as “Clive”.
The latest debate has been provoked by the Labour peer Baroness Debbonaire, who would have been culture secretary had she not lost the newly created Bristol Central seat in last year’s general election to the Lib Dems. As the MP for Bristol West, she had supported the removal of the statue of the slave trader Edward Colston in 2018 – this was pulled down during the Black Lives Matter demonstrations in 2020.
Thangam Elizabeth Rachel Debbonaire (née Singh) was born on August 3, 1966, in Peterborough to a father of Indian and Sri Lankan Tamil origin and an English mother.
Speaking at the Edinburgh International Book Festival earlier this month, she said that Clive’s statue “continues to promote him in a victorious mode and as a symbol of something that had universal good. I don’t think it’s helpful for any visitor to the Foreign Office, particularly those of us from Indian origins in the diaspora, but also visiting Indian people, Indian dignitaries, ambassadors, trade ministers, to walk into the Foreign Office past that statue. I don’t think that presents Britain in a particularly good light in the 21st century.
Baroness Debbonaire
“What it doesn’t do is contextualise or indeed give any honesty about what his presence in India actually did. He extracted a vast fortune. His former home, Powis Castle in Wales, contains hundreds if not thousands of objects that he took.”
She added: “Before colonial rule, India was a very developed country. It understood free trade, it was trading with its neighbours – something the East India Company and the other colonising forces successfully crushed. Since independence, India has grown economically, scientifically, in engineering terms, in computing terms, artistic, and so on.”
There were some predictably hostile responses.
Andrew Rosindell, Conservative MP for Romford, said: “I condemn, in the strongest possible terms, the calls from Baroness Debbonaire to remove the historic Clive of India statue – an essential part of the architectural landscape outside the Foreign Office. Not least, it would smear the name of a war hero who not only secured British influence in India against French ambitions, but expanded it, laying the foundations for the unification of an Indian state. I stand, alongside patriotic societies like the Royal Society of St. George, in opposing this needless selfflagellating whitewashing of history, and defending our proud British heritage.”
GB News interviewed James WindsorClive, who is said to be Clive’s “greatgreat-great-great-great-great-grandson” who suggested “a debate on giving the statue context with a plaque rather than removing it.” He made the point that it was “unfair to judge an 18th-century soldier-statesman by 21st-century morals”.
Clive is blamed for the 10 million death toll during the Bengal Famine of 1770, when, as governor of the region, he i mp o s e d punishing taxation and land reforms.
But Windsor-Clive, 35, argued: “I don’t think we can airbrush our history as simply as that. We’ve got a proud tradition and history and heritage, and we shouldn’t be looking to hide it. I personally think that Robert Clive helped make Britain a global power. We shouldn’t apologise for our history, but we should learn from it and be proud of what we achieved during that period.”
GB News did not interview another of Clive’s descendants, John Herbert, the eighth Earl of Powis, who takes a rather more critical view of his ancestor.
He was interviewed in 2021 by the writer Sathnam Sanghera for a Channel 4 programme, Empire State of Mind, and expressed reservations about the statue of Clive that was erected in his hometown of Shrewsbury. The local council in Shropshire decided to keep the statue following a debate triggered by the Black Lives Matter protests.
Standing by the statue, Herbert said: “There was very much a request to bring it down and there were quite strong feelings. The council resolved in the end to keep it, but put a plaque on it that will tell us more. I have often wondered if it ought to come down. It’s very imperial and I’ve never been very comfortable with it. I have always wished it wasn’t here, put it that way.”
In 2020, Haberdashers’ Adams school in Newport, Shropshire, dropped “Clive” as the name of one of its houses because he had “played such a leading role in the ill-treatment of Indians and in the expropriation of Indian assets in his time as a British military leader and governor of Bengal”.
The historian William Dalrymple, author of The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company, is among those who support the “Clive must fall” movement: “Bengal’s wealth rapidly drained into Britain, while its prosperous weavers and artisans were coerced ‘like so many slaves’ by their new masters, and its markets flooded with British products. A proportion of the loot of Bengal went directly into Clive’s pocket.”
The eminent author Nirad C Chaudhuri published a biography, Clive of India, in 1975, which was even handed in assessing the man projected as “the greatest figure in the history of British India”.
The statue of Clive of India outside the Foreign Office entrance
He concluded that “the only legitimate interpretation (of history) is the historical one. In respect of Clive and the rise of the British Empire in India, I have tried to give that. With that I shall leave the account given in the book to take care of itself.”
It does say that “corruption and looting saw Clive amass a huge amount of wealth and he returned to Britain in 1760, aged 34” and that he later “defended himself in Parliament, saying, ‘By God, at this moment, do I stand astonished at my own moderation!’, and in 1773 Parliament declared that he did ‘render great and meritorious services to his country’.
” His “moderation” is reflected in the 1,000 artefacts dating from 1,600 to the 1830s displayed in the Billiard Room turned into the Clive Museum cum South Asian gallery at Powis Castle. The National Trust intends displaying the contents in a “culturally sensitive way”.
The old British view of colonial rule is reflected in a large portrait of Clive dominating a mantelpiece lined with the statutes of such Hindu deities as Vishnu, Krishna, Ganesh and Hanuman – “minor Gods,” according to a helpful volunteer.
Money did not buy Clive peace of mind. He allegedly cut his own throat with a penknife at his London house in Berkeley Square on November 22, 1774 and was hastily buried in St Margaret’s Church, Moreton Say, in Shropshire.
Dignitaries including Deputy Mahant Shri Bhagwatjivandasji Swami, Pujya Kothari Parshad Shri Jadavji Bhagat, Harrow Mayor Anjana Patel, councillors from Newham, Redbridge, Epping and Harrow, Professor Kishan Devani BEM, and members of the Shri Swaminarayan Gadi Parivar UK attended the occasion.
A highlight of the festival was the recitation of the ‘Vasudev Mahatmya Katha’ by saints of Bhuj Mandir. Revered within the Swaminarayan tradition, the text was being recited in the UK for the first time. The Katha began on 11 August and concluded with the Mahabhishek on the final day, inspiring devotees with messages of faith, unity, and service.
India’s Independence Day was also observed on 15 August with a flag-hoisting ceremony, the singing of the national anthem, and prasad distribution.
Alongside spiritual activities, the festival celebrated culture, education, and youth engagement. Students from the temple’s Gujarati school were honoured for outstanding results, including GCSE achievements in Gujarati. The youth wing organised a games night for children and teenagers, while a cultural evening featured traditional dances, plays, and devotional performances.
Temple leaders and saints reflected on its 38-year journey, emphasising values of love, respect, unity, and collective growth. Inspired by the symbolism of Samudra Manthan and this year’s Mahakumbh, the Manthan Mahotsav reinforced the Swaminarayan ethos of contemplation, harmony, and shared devotion.
In an emotionally charged address, Dr Kapashi expressed his heartfelt wish to witness the community’s affection during his lifetime. “I just wanted to see, while alive, how people are connected to me and what they think of me,” he said, before evoking the poignant song, “Kal khel mein hum ho na ho, gardish mein taare rahenge sada” — a reminder that while individuals may pass on, their values and contributions continue to shine for generations.
Sudhaben, visibly moved by the overwhelming warmth, reflected on their lifelong journey and the promise of the future: “Hum laye hain tufan se kishti nikal ke… Now we can say that Jain religion will flourish more and more, seeing the association of the young generation.”
Throughout the morning, tributes poured in from prominent community leaders, including Nemubhai Chandaria OBE, Jaysukhbhai Mehta BEM, Dr Mehool Sanghrajka MBE, Rumitbhai Shah, and Nirajbhai Sutaria. A video message from India by Dr Kumarpal Desai added to the heartfelt honours. Speakers described Dr Kapashi as “a real scholar, a true gentleman, and an encyclopedia of Jainism and Sanatan Dharma,” commending his tireless work to promote and preserve Jain values not only within the Jain community but for the benefit of all.
Adding a deeply personal dimension to the day, the couple’s daughters- Raxita, Punny, and Neha, along with their five grandchildren, shared treasured memories that revealed the humility and humanity behind the couple’s public achievements. Family members Alka Shah and Purvi Shah also offered moving recollections.
The programme blended touching narration with photographs, theme songs & dance, along with lovingly prepared collage by the Ladies Wing, casting a golden glow over the celebration.
He was known as a distinguished economist who had taught at the London School of Economics, where he remained an emeritus professor after his retirement, but his knowledge of Bollywood films was also impressive.
He admitted whistling songs from Guru Dutt movies in the corridors of the House of Lords.
His favourite song, he once said, when launching his autobiography, Rebellious Lord, was Mera Joota Hai Japani from the 1955 Raj Kapoor starrer, Shree 420.
That’s because deep down despite travelling and lecturing all over the world, he felt Indian, and the line that summed him up was, “phir bhi dil hai Hindustani”.
He had many books on economics and politics to his credit, among them Marx’s Revenge: The Resurgence of Capitalism and the Death of Statist Socialism, The Rediscovery of India, and The Poverty of Political Economy: How Economics Abandoned the Poor.
Desai (sixth from left) with Jo Johnson, Sajid Javid, Rami Ranger, David Cameron, Lady Kishwar Desai, guest statue sculptor Philip Jackson and Priti Patel
But he was also the author of Nehru's Hero: Dilip Kumar in the Life of India. He had a wide range of interests and also wrote a crime thriller, Dead on Time.
He was born in Baroda and had his early education in India, but though he had an enjoyable enough spell in America, he chose to settle in the UK because he felt his spiritual home was the LSE.
“I have been to more than 50 countries to give lectures,” he said. “In America, I could have earned much more money, but being at the LSE was much more fun. Because I’m interested in many things I can talk to people about what they are interested in. Basically, I like reading and writing. I’ve been to three countries I consider my own – US, UK and India. I think I belong to all three in some form or another. Everybody has been nice to me. I have had a lovely life.”
On one occasion he said his greatest achievement was possibly raising money for the statue of Mahatma Gandhi that went up in 2015 in Parliament Square, facing the Palace of Westminster and not far from that of Winston Churchill.
He said: “I would say that Gandhi is relevant not just to Indians or British Indians – he is relevant to everybody. Gandhi is universal and still relevant as an alternative way of launching a struggle in a century that has continued to have violence. It’s astonishing what he achieved. Indians born here (in the UK) may know of Gandhi from their parents but they would only know a stylised bit of Gandhi. If, as a result of this statue, they are inspired to explore Gandhi more thoroughly and read about his life and look at what he did, that will be great. I hope lots and lots of schools come to look at the Gandhi statue and people carry on teaching a bit more about Gandhi because he is a fascinating, very complex character. You can criticise him quite a lot and there are a lot of critics there but on balance he is the most unique person of the 20th century.
Desai during the Mahatma Gandhi anniversary in Parliament Square on October 2, 2019
“Attenborough’s movie is a remarkable classic movie – the movie that more than anything else introduced Gandhi to the world. More people have learnt about Gandhi from the movie, especially people outside India, than anything else. Attenborough’s movie made Gandhi a much more known person round the world for a new generation. I don’t think any Indian would have been allowed to make a movie like that given the restrictions that the Indian government places on film making. You see they only want hagiographies.”
In Rebellious Lord, his autobiography published in 2020, he explained why he did not always do well in exams in India: “One of my problems was that I could not give the standard answer which was what got you the marks. I deviated from the straight and narrow and showed off my reading or tried some jokes. None of this helps you in an Indian examination where you have to display memory and rote learning.”
He said that “in early January 2004, I was at my desk in the House of Lords when I got a call. The call was from Delhi, asking me if I would accept the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, awarded to an expatriate Indian. I said, of course, I would. They must have thought that being left-wing, I might publicly refuse to accept an honour from a BJP-led coalition government, but any government elected by the Indian people was acceptable to me.
“So it was that within a couple of days, I was off to Delhi to receive my award. When I met Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, I was in for a pleasant surprise. After he gave me the award, I asked him, ‘Why did you choose me? I have criticised you so much.’ As in any conversation with that marvellous man, there was no immediate response. Then he smiled and said, ‘You criticise everybody.’ That reply made me happy, as I was particular about my non-partial standpoint.”
One of the abiding friendships he made while at Berkeley in America was with fellow economist Amartya Sen, who was later to win the Nobel Prize.
“I was 24 and he was 31,” recalled Desai. “I had, of course, heard his name while I was a student in Bombay. People talked about this young Indian whom his Cambridge teachers – Joan Robinson and Nicholas Kaldor, authors whose books we read – were praising very highly. Amartya was visiting Berkeley in my second year. I went to hear him at a seminar he was giving in the economics department. The original venue was too small for all the people who had come to listen so it was moved to a much larger hall on the campus. I was thrilled when I heard him speak. The topic was about peasant behaviour in developing countries. It was technical but also full of insights into the political economy of the problem. Dale Jorgenson played the part of the acerbic critic and Amartya stood up to him easily. We met up afterwards and then many times during the year he was there. Amartya was there with (his then wife) Nabaneeta, who had a literary background and became a famous Bengali author subsequently. We got on very well and have done so ever since.
“Amartya is a great person. I guess he is my longest acquaintance among Indian economists, because I met Amartya in Berkeley in 1964. He’s a nice man, a very nice man. I think I think he’s slightly cross with me because I’m much softer on (Narendra) Modi than he is. But then you know, I’m me. And he is he. But I don’t think those things are serious for either.”
Desai had three children with his first wife, Gail Wilson, an LSE colleague whom he married in 1970. He met his second wife, Kishwar Ahluwalia, a literary editor, in India when he was working on the Dilip Kumar biography, The couple married in London in 2004.
Desai with Amartya Sen (right)
Desai has talked of his love of Bollywood films.
“I began to be taken to see movies at the age of four,” he said. “I could never understand people who try to intellectualise films. All the critics who wrote about films intellectually hated Hindi films. And I loved them. To this day I love ordinary, commercial Hindi films. I like Guru Dutt because he made commercial films which had content.
“The thing about Guru Dutt is he is thought to be one of those amazing art film directors because most people have only seen Kaagaz Ke Phool. I myself did not like it very much. I still don’t. I think it is a badly made film, very, very confused.
“When he started Guru Dutt had a slight racy reputation. When he appeared in Aar Paar as a hero, the Times of India wrote a very angry review that he was bringing values down, singing love songs in a dingy garage with a heroine. There was Guru Dutt putting forward as hero a car repair man who had been a criminal. People were shocked that the hero was no longer a noble hero.
“He made Mrs & Mrs 55 which is a fantastic film. He actually discovered that Madhubala had a flair for comedy.
“In Mrs & Mrs 55 – I remember seeing it at the National Film Theatre in London –there is a little episode where Kumkum, who plays the hero’s sister-in-law, tells this girl Madhubala that, yes her husband beats her up but that’s not bad, you know, husband do beat up wives – you could see the frisson of disappointment in all the trendies who had come to see the great Guru Dutt. They hadn’t realised he was very much a conservative.
“Then, he made Pyaasa – and Pyaasa just hit me like a ton of bricks. It was basically Devdas, made beautifully, written by Abrar Alvi, music by S D Burman, that redeemed his reputation as a serious film maker.
“Then Chaudhvin Ka Chand is another absolutely fantastic film. It is one of the greatest ‘Muslim socials’ ever, something an entire Muslim family could see.
“Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam is another great film – wow! What a beautiful, beautiful film, made with great understanding of Bengali society. He trained with Uday Shankar, the dancer, in Calcutta. He married Geeta Roy who became Geeta Dutt. He was a man of great sensitivity.
“I was at Ramnarain Ruia College in Matuna, studying BA economics. I can tell you Aar Paar in 1954 made an impact absolutely. Once you have experienced life, you become a bit cynical and you can distance yourself whereas, when you are young, films have an immediate impact on your sexual and ethical consciousness. I am a fan of all Hindi films of the 1940s and 1950s. I am an Indian until the 1950s and then later I came to England and eventually became a ‘Brit’.
“One day I will write a story about the cinema houses I frequented in Bombay: Arora at King’s Circle; Chitra and Broadway near Dadar; and Surya and Bharat Mata near Parel. I still believe, not because I was young then, that that was the golden age of Hindi cinema.”
Desai with wife Kishwar
Desai has made many speeches in the House of Lords, which he joined in 1991, the first Asian man to be given a peerage in contemporary times. He was then a member of the Labour party.
In his maiden speech on 19 June 1991, he spoke of the decline of British manufacturing: “I well recall that as a child I thought that it was axiomatic that British manufacturing was the best. Of course, I learned the lesson under somewhat advantageous circumstances for British manufacturers, for in those days Japanese or German manufacturers were synonyms for shoddy goods. I never thought then that I should rise so many years later on my first occasion in this House to speak on the manufacturing industry in this country.”
He switched to education: “I was surprised when I first heard many years ago before I touched the shores of this country that there is widespread here a kind of contempt for education, a glorification of the untaught genius—someone who cannot read a book but who can innovate. If that was ever true, that time is past. Innovation is no longer the privilege of the single, lonely person. It is a corporate activity which requires sustained investment in high-powered scientific and technical knowledge.
“We must raise the general level of education and knowledge in this country and continue to invest in the education and training of everyone from age five onwards. We must not drop people at 16 or 19. Let us make sure that there is no conflict between basic research and applied research. Basic research is extremely important to innovation. There is no false dichotomy between basic science and applied science. Unless we invest much more in education—primary, secondary and tertiary—and in research and development, we shall not be able to have the sustained foundation that we require for manufacturing.”
Last year he spoke in the Lords about the Palestinian problem: “The Israel- Palestine problem, or the Israel-Hamas problem, did not start in October 2023; it started in November 1917, and we still have it. Some here may remember Arthur Koestler, who was a communist and then became an ex-communist and was one of the few people who worked on a kibbutz in the 1920s. He said that: ‘One nation solemnly promised to a second nation the country of a third.’
“That was very much the message. Before Palestine had fallen from the Ottoman Empire, it was signed over to welcome Jews from all over Europe and America to come and make a nation.
“It is a fact—I have been reading lots of books about this—that at no stage did we say that the Palestinians had any claim on the territory where they had been living for several centuries. That is the dilemma: two communities of very ancient origin can claim, truthfully and simultaneously, that it is their country and no one else’s. It has taken 100 years to prove who is right, and neither group is. We have to solve this problem because for a long time, not just since October 2023, there has been a lot of killing and damage done to both communities, carried out with a passion that is quite surprising. Obviously, being an atheist, I blame religion for this. The children of Abraham have quarrelled with each other now for about 2,000 years. After all, anti-Semitism was not invented recently; it was invented by the Christians, and the rest we know.
Desai said, “Everybody has been nice to me. I have had a lovely life.”
“We need to think about how to stop the Israel-Palestine war right now, as soon as possible, and then about how to rehouse the refugees scattered throughout Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and all those places, as well as people who are being thrown out of Gaza, the West Bank and everywhere else.”
His voice will be missed not only in the Lords but the wider British Asian community where he was a familiar figure at book launches and political and cultural functions.
Desai said he has never faced racism: “Everybody has been nice to me. I have had a lovely life.”
