The Hindu Business Line called the book "one breathless read".
The Guardian called it a "passionately argued book [which] provides a crushing rebuttal of such ideas with regard to India".
Tabish Khair praised the book for presenting an "intricate mixture of fact and anecdotes" that served as an effective counter to the view of "colonial apologists" but at the same time, did praise the British, when it merited. In a review published in the
Cambridge Review of International Affairs, economic historian,
Tirthankar Roy, a faculty at the London School of Economics criticized the book. He noted that "Tharoor makes his case with passion and plain good writing. The story is meant to be "blood-curdling and colourful language" — including liberal use of "depredation," "loot," "rapaciousness," "vicious," "brutality," "plunder" and "extraction" — produces that effect. Like a religious text, it tells a straight and narrow story with the zeal of a holy warrior. Yet "none of these qualities makes the interpretation right, however". Another review of
Inglorious Empire, published in the
Literary Review, by historian
John Keay, whose many writings on India include
India: A History, applauds Tharoor for "tackling an impossibly contentious subject". However, he deplores the fact that "his moral venom sometimes clouds his own judgement" and notes that many of Tharoor's statistics are very seriously out of date, many coming from the polemics contained in the American
Will Durant's Story of Civilisation written in the 1930s, which itself drew on the even earlier work of the crusading American missionary
Jabej T. Sutherland, author of
India in Bondage. A more detailed criticism of Tharoor's book and his use of statistics was set out by the writer of South Asian history
Charles Allen in a lecture entitled
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes: who owns Indian history? delivered to the
Royal Society for Asian Affairs in London on 25April 2018. A revised version was published in
Asian Affairs under the revised title ''Who Owns India's History? A Critique of Shashi Tharoor's Inglorious Empire''. ==References==