Video: Shashi Tharoor's witty reply when asked about Britain's contribution to India

Politician and author Shashi Tharoor is not one to mince words.

He proved that yet again when he attended Melbourne Writers Festivals 2017 in Australia.

He was a guest on ABC News Q&A hosted by Tony Jones. There an audience member asked Tharoor if India benefited at all from Britain's presence in the country, especially while inculcating skills in the field of engineering, infrastructure and education.

Tharoor, who is currently serving as a full-time MP from Kerala’s Thiruvananthapuram, did not hold back, as it also happens to be the subject of his book ‘An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India’.

"All the Indian Institutes of Technology, the engineering achievements you’re talking about were established after Independence by the Government of India,” Tharoor said. Adding, "Over 200 years of exploitation, depredation, loot and destruction, reduced it to a poster child for third-world poverty, just over three percent of global GDP, 90% of the population living below the poverty-line when the British left in 1947."

The video on Youtube of his response has gained a lot of attention.

Watch the video here:

His response in the video is after 44:55 minutes.