A Bristol author has revealed he was offered an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list but turned it down.
Nikesh Shukla said he was offered the MBE for services to literature, but said ‘no thanks’.
The author is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, was the editor of the award-winning essay collection The Good Immigrant, and is the author of three novels and, most recently, Brown Baby, a memoir addressed to his young daughter.
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The London-born 40-year-old began his career in Bristol as the founding editor of the Rife magazine project at the Watershed, and is also a screenwriter and columnist, and author of young adult books like The Boxer.
But he said he turned down the invitation of the MBE because of its roots and background in the British Empire.
“I said no thanks. I do not wish to be a member of the order of the British Empire,” he said.
“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,” he added.
Mr Shukla also referenced Operation Legacy the Government programme to destroy or hide files to prevent them being inherited by the new administrations taking over former colonies as they became independent.
Operation Legacy ran from the 1950s into the 1970s and saw MI5 or the Special Branch vet and destroy or hide all the secret documents in countries around the world, select those that could embarrass the British Government for showing racial or religious bias, or outlined how the British Empire had tortured political opponents in its colonies.
The operation covered at least 23 countries the British were in the process of decolonising, and saw authorities in London even advise British colonial rulers on the best way to destroy the documents, by burning or dumping at sea.
“As the country fights over the history of Empire and whether it was good or bad, I considered Operation Legacy - a project to destroy all colonial documents that might embarrass the British,” said Mr Shukla.
“If the empire was so good, why need Operation Legacy?” he added.
Mr Shukla joins a long list of people of all races and religions who have turned down or handed honours back. Notable people from Bristol who have done so include John Cleese, who turned down a Lordship, and scientist Paul Dirac, who turned down a knighthood.
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