Author: Shashi Tharoor
Publisher: Penguin/Viking
Year: 2007
Language: English
Pages: 387
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0670081450
Description
For more than four decades after gaining independence, India, with its massive size and population, staggering poverty and slow rate of growth, was associated with the plodding, somnolent elephant, comfortably resting on its achievements of centuries gone by. Then in the early 1990s the elephant seemed to wake up from its slumber and slowly begin to change—until today, in the first decade of the twenty-first century, some have begun to see it morphing into a tiger. As India turns sixty, Shashi Tharoor, novelist and essayist, reminds us of the paradox that is India, the elephant that is becoming a tiger: with the highest number of billionaires in Asia, it still has the largest number of people living amid poverty and neglect, and more children who have not seen the inside of a schoolroom than any other country.
So what does the twenty-first century hold for India? Will it bring the strength of the tiger and the size of an elephant to bear upon the world? Or will it remain an elephant at heart? In more than sixty essays organized thematically into six parts, Shashi Tharoor analyses the forces that have made twenty-first century India—and could yet unmake it. He discusses the country’s transformation in his characteristic lucid prose, writing with passion and engagement on a broad range of subjects, from the very notion of ‘Indianness’ in a pluralist society to the evolution of the once sleeping giant into a world leader in the realms of science and technology; from the men and women who make up his India—Gandhi and Nehru and the less obvious Ramanujan and Krishna Menon—to an eclectic array of Indian experiences and realities, virtual and spiritual, political and filmi.
The book is leavened with whimsical and witty pieces on cricket, Bollywood and the national penchant for holidays, and topped off with an A to Z glossary on Indianness, written with tongue firmly in cheek.
Diverting and instructive as ever, artfully combining hard facts and statistics with personal opinions and observations, Tharoor offers a fresh, insightful look at this timeless and fast-changing society, emphasizing that India must rise above the past if it is to conquer the future.
Contents
Preface
Why India Matters
ONE: THE TRANSFORMATION OF INDIA
Panchatantra 2007: The Elephant
Who Became a Tiger
The Davos Economy
The Myth of the Indian Middle Class
The Strange Rise of Planet India
Connecting to The Future
Calls from the Centre
Looking to the Future with Brand IIT
India and soft Power
The Branding of India
The Thrilling face of a Bold New India
India, Jones and the template of Dhom
Heroines of rural Development
Kerala: Open for business
Shaking Hands
Trade for Peace
The Dangers to India’s Future
TWO: IDEAS OF INDIAN NESS
The Invention of India
Hinduism and Hindutva: Creed and Credo
The Politics of Identity
Of Secularism and Conversions
On the Importance of being Muslim and Indian
Making Bollywood’s India a Reality
Epic Interpretations
THREE: INDIA AT WORK AND AT PLAY
Worshipping Filmi Heroes
Democracy and Demockery
The bond that Threatens?
Cricket’s True Spiritual home
Good Sports, Bad Sports
Bad Sports, Bad Sports
Sald Daze
Wholly Holidays
Memories of a Bombay Childhood
Indian Political Humour; Nothing to Laugh about
The Sari Saga
The Challenge of Literacy
Reconstructing Nalanda
Cops and Jobbers
Becoming Bengaloorued
India’s Lost Urban Heritage
FOUR: INDIAN WHO HELPED MAKES MY INDIA
The Legacy of Gandhi and Nehru
The Man who Saved India
The Man who Stayed Behind
The Man who Wanted More
Anchored in Himself
Tea and Antipathy
Smother India
The Spy Who Came in through The Heat
The Genius Lost to Infinity
The Other Saint Teresa
A Polymath’s Poetics
Art from The Heart
Carrying his Bat
Friends and Family: The Dear departed
FIVE: EXPERIENCES OF INDIA
Jewish Portraits, Indian Frames
Southern Comfort
God’s own Country
Oh, Calcutta!
Urbs Maxima in Indis
In Defence of Delhi
Of Cows Sacred and Profane
Of Vows and Vowels
Indian Realities, Virtual and Spiritual
The Prehistory of Indian Science
The Anatomy of Civil Conflict
Tipping the Scales of Justice
Stephanians in The House
Ayurveda Takes Off
NRIS: The ‘Now Required Indians’
Ajanta and Ellora in The Monsoon
SIX: THE A TO Z OF BEING INDIAN
The A to Z of Being Indian