Shashi Tharoor

India Shastra is a collection of 100 articles and essays, some longish, some rather short, that seek to convey a portrait of contemporary India from the perspective of late 2014. Many of the pieces began life as columns in the media, but have been updated and expanded for this volume; some are adapted from speeches. Few have been left as they were originally written and delivered, since they are meant to be read at the dawn of 2015. The judgements in the book should stand as contemporary… Show more

India Shastra is a collection of 100 articles and essays, some longish, some rather short, that seek to convey a portrait of contemporary India from the perspective of late 2014. Many of the pieces began life as columns in the media, but have been updated and expanded for this volume; some are adapted from speeches. Few have been left as they were originally written and delivered, since they are meant to be read at the dawn of 2015. The judgements in the book should stand as contemporary reflections of the India in which they are now being published. Show less

India: The Future Is Now, published in 2013, is a collection of thoughts of young Indian Members of Parliament. This book raises many questions about various problems and challenges that India faces today. The contributors come from opposing political parties, and urban and rural backgrounds. However, they show that despite walking on different paths, each one of them hopes to uplift every underprivileged Indian.

Indian diplomacy, a veteran told Shashi Tharoor many years ago, is like the love-making of an elephant: it is conducted at a very high level, accompanied by much bellowing, and the results are not known for two years. In this lively, informative and insightful work, the award-winning author and parliamentarian brilliantly demonstrates how Indian diplomacy has become sprightlier since then and where it needs to focus in the world of the 21st century.

Shadows across the Playing Field tells the story of the turbulent cricketing relations between India and Pakistan through the eyes of two men – Shashi Tharoor and Shaharyar Khan – who bring to the task not only great love of the game but also deep knowledge of subcontinental politics and diplomacy.

Interest in India has never been greater. Here Shashi Tharoor, one of the subcontinents most respected writers and diplomats, offers precious insights into this complex, multifaceted land, which despite its dazzling diversity of languages, customs, and cultures remains more than 60 years after its founding the world's largest democracy. He describes the vast changes that have transformed this once sleeping giant into a world leader in science and technology, a nation once poverty-stricken that… Show more

Interest in India has never been greater. Here Shashi Tharoor, one of the subcontinents most respected writers and diplomats, offers precious insights into this complex, multifaceted land, which despite its dazzling diversity of languages, customs, and cultures remains more than 60 years after its founding the world's largest democracy. He describes the vast changes that have transformed this once sleeping giant into a world leader in science and technology, a nation once poverty-stricken that now boasts a middle class of over 300 million people as large as the entire population of the United States! Show less

At the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, a new nation was born. It has 17 major languages and 22,000 distinct dialects. It has over a billion individuals of every ethnic extraction known to humanity. It has a population that is nearly a third illiterate, but also one of the world’s largest pools of trained scientists and engineers. Its ageless civilization is the birthplace of four major religions, a dozen different traditions of classical dance, and three hundred ways of cooking a potato.

In the title piece, we learn what Iraqis go through in their beleaguered land merely to get hold of a book, and how selling books from their own libraries on the street helps some put bread on the table. Tharoor reminisces about growing up with books in India and discusses the importance of the Mahabharata in Indian life and history. There is also a poignant homage to Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, whose home was raided by the oppressive military regime while he lay on his deathbed, and who… Show more

In the title piece, we learn what Iraqis go through in their beleaguered land merely to get hold of a book, and how selling books from their own libraries on the street helps some put bread on the table. Tharoor reminisces about growing up with books in India and discusses the importance of the Mahabharata in Indian life and history. There is also a poignant homage to Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, whose home was raided by the oppressive military regime while he lay on his deathbed, and who famously said: “There is only one thing of danger for you here—my poetry!” Show less

The man who would one day help topple British rule and become India’s first prime minister started out as a surprisingly unremarkable student. Born into a wealthy, politically influential Indian family in the waning years of the Raj, Jawaharlal Nehru was raised on Western secularism and the humanist ideas of the Enlightenment under his father’s careful guidance. Once he met Gandhi in 1916, Nehru threw himself into the nonviolent struggle for India’s independence, a struggle that wasn’t won… Show more

The man who would one day help topple British rule and become India’s first prime minister started out as a surprisingly unremarkable student. Born into a wealthy, politically influential Indian family in the waning years of the Raj, Jawaharlal Nehru was raised on Western secularism and the humanist ideas of the Enlightenment under his father’s careful guidance. Once he met Gandhi in 1916, Nehru threw himself into the nonviolent struggle for India’s independence, a struggle that wasn’t won until 1947. Show less

God's Own Country is an Endeavour to capture the essence of this land extraordinaire by a great artist whose paintings in the Book bear his signature in Malayalam, a language he cannot speak, and a writer who traces his Roots to Kerala, a homeland he has only visited on his holidays! In a curious collaboration, these two avant-garde visionaries-one who is a veritable "outsider" and the other whose only "insider" claim is his ancestry-come together to salute their common love : Kerala.

Who killed twenty-four-year-old Priscilla Hart? And why would anyone want to murder this highly motivated, idealistic American student who had come to India to volunteer in women’s health programs? Had her work make a killer out of an enraged husband? Or was her death the result of a xenophobic attack? Was she involved in an indiscriminate love affair that had spun out of control? Had a disgruntled, deeply jealous colleague been pushed to the edge? Or was she simply the innocent victim of a… Show more

Who killed twenty-four-year-old Priscilla Hart? And why would anyone want to murder this highly motivated, idealistic American student who had come to India to volunteer in women’s health programs? Had her work make a killer out of an enraged husband? Or was her death the result of a xenophobic attack? Was she involved in an indiscriminate love affair that had spun out of control? Had a disgruntled, deeply jealous colleague been pushed to the edge? Or was she simply the innocent victim of a riot that had exploded in that fateful year of 1989 between Hindus and Muslims? Show less

In the title story — written in a lonely hotel room in Geneva soon after the author began his work with the United Nations — a young Indian orphan is on his way to visit America for the first time, and his anguish and longings in the airplane seem hardly different from those of any American child. Tharoor’s admiration for P.G. Wodehouse makes “How Bobby Chatterjee Turned to Drink” a delightful act of homage, while “The Temple Thief,” “The Simple Man,” and “The Political Murder” bring to mind… Show more

In the title story — written in a lonely hotel room in Geneva soon after the author began his work with the United Nations — a young Indian orphan is on his way to visit America for the first time, and his anguish and longings in the airplane seem hardly different from those of any American child. Tharoor’s admiration for P.G. Wodehouse makes “How Bobby Chatterjee Turned to Drink” a delightful act of homage, while “The Temple Thief,” “The Simple Man,” and “The Political Murder” bring to mind O’Henry and Maupassant. Show less

This triumphant novel about the razzle-dazzle Hindi film industry confirms Shashi Tharoor’s reputation as one of India’s most important voices and a writer of world stature. His hero –or antihero– is Ashok Banjara, one of Bollywood’s mega-movie stars, a man of great ambition and dubious morals. With irrepressible charm and a genius for star, Tharoor portrays the film world, with all its Hollywoodesque glitz and glamour, egos and double standards, as a metaphor for modern Indian society.

The Great Indian Novel is a satirical novel by Shashi Tharoor. It is a fictional work that takes the story of the Mahabharata, the epic of Hindu mythology, and recasts and resets it in the context of the Indian Independence Movement and the first three decades post-independence. Figures from Indian history are transformed into characters from mythology, and the mythical story of India is retold as a history of Indian independence and subsequent history, up through the 1980s. The work includes… Show more

The Great Indian Novel is a satirical novel by Shashi Tharoor. It is a fictional work that takes the story of the Mahabharata, the epic of Hindu mythology, and recasts and resets it in the context of the Indian Independence Movement and the first three decades post-independence. Figures from Indian history are transformed into characters from mythology, and the mythical story of India is retold as a history of Indian independence and subsequent history, up through the 1980s. The work includes numerous puns and allusions to famous works about India, such as those by Rudyard Kipling, Paul Scott, and E. M. Forster. Show less

“Reasons of State”, based on Shashi Tharoor's doctoral thesis at the Flecther School of Law and Diplomacy, written in 1977-78, is a seminal study of Political Development and the making of India’s Foreign Policy Under Indira Gandhi during her first period of rule, 19966-77. Tharoor takes classic political development theory and applies it to the making of foreign policy, analyzing the functioning of the Prime Minister's Secretariat, political parties, parliament, interest groups and the media… Show more

“Reasons of State”, based on Shashi Tharoor's doctoral thesis at the Flecther School of Law and Diplomacy, written in 1977-78, is a seminal study of Political Development and the making of India’s Foreign Policy Under Indira Gandhi during her first period of rule, 19966-77. Tharoor takes classic political development theory and applies it to the making of foreign policy, analyzing the functioning of the Prime Minister's Secretariat, political parties, parliament, interest groups and the media in the formulation of policy by Mrs Gandhi. Show less