Failing to teach history of British Empire in schools means children do not understand role in shaping UK, claims Salman Rushdie

Speaking at a ceremony in central London to recognise his support for freedom of expression, the Satanic Verses author said his two sons, educated at “very good schools” in the UK, did not receive a single lesson on the history of the British Empire.

Sir Salman said: “I have two sons who were educated in England in very good schools, and I think I’m right in saying that in their entire education they didn’t have one lesson on the history of the British Empire.

“Nobody teaches it, and if you don’t teach your history, you won’t understand what it means.

“’Why are all these people with brown skin walking around this country?’ My friend wrote an essay where she said ‘we are here, because you were there’. In order to understand that, you have to know that you were there, and what you did.

“When the British arrived in India it was one of the richest countries in the world, it was fantastically affluent. When the British left India it was one of the poorest. What happened to the money? What it did was build the power and wealth of this country.”

Sir Salman, who was born in Mumbai in 1947, before he emigrated to the UK in 1961 to attend Rugby School, was speaking at an event organised by the cultural diplomacy organisation, Liberatum, in King’s Cross, central London.

He added: “The Empire happened all over the world and people here knew very little about it. I always found it very interesting that the great literature of England in the 19th century, at its pinnacle with Dickens etc, there’s almost no mention of the British Empire.

“There’s one or two characters who have been to strange foreign parts. (But) very little attempt to take on the question of this country as a world power.”

Sir Salman was stabbed on stage in 2022 by an extremist after his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses was perceived by the then Iranian Supreme Leader to be blasphemous.

The author of the Booker Prize-winning novel Midnight’s Children also took the opportunity, before he collected his award, to lament what he believes is an attack on free speech in America.

He said: “America is having a very difficult moment in this area because we have administration who are really going after free speech.

“There are states in America where one parent can object to a book in the school library and the book will be withdrawn. These are not just any old books, these are Huckleberry Finn, Toni Morrison’s Beloved.

“The books have something in common: they talk about the experience of America from the point of view of the black community. There is a conscious attempt to erase that part of American history, which is in many ways the original sin of the US, the slave trade.

“You have a part of the country that is definitely trying to control or change the narrative of American history, especially in this year of its 250th anniversary. It has to be fought against.”