This is a man who has spent most of his life, he’s 56 this year, as a compulsive overachiever (famously, he earned the title of ‘Dr.’ at the tender age of 22 when he wrote his thesis, ‘Reasons of State’, a text that remains compulsory reading for many students of Indian foreign policy). However, a controversy in 2010 centred around the IPL Kochi franchise had his party asking for his resignation. Having declared his innocence, Dr. Tharoor is back in the fray and is considering a new book. Below are excerpts from our interview, conducted partly in person and partly over email.

Your father loved to introduce himself as ‘the author’s author’. He sounds like an unusual man. Would you tell me about him?

My father was an amazingly unusual man. He was a self-made man, the child of a farmer who died when he was 10. My father recounts walking barefoot eight kilometres to school every day from the village. He had a tough upbringing. The elder brother – much older, 17 years older – went away and made good and then took the younger brothers with him to England and so my dad was able to move suddenly from a village life of poverty to go off and study in England at the end of the second WW.

He taught himself English reading Byron and Shakespeare and he wrote beautifully. He wrote mainly letters, and these are gems of correspondence and human contact. He was an amazingly broad minded person for someone growing up in a village in Kerala before the Second World War. It’s amazing that someone like that existed. I am desperately fond of him. He passed away when he was only 63 and the pain still lingers now, 18 years later. One doesn’t quite overcome it.

I’ve often wondered whether God made me the way I am or my parents made me the way I am, but I can’t now do only one thing. I react to the world both through my intellectual reactions if you like, which is what comes out through my writing, but also as a man of action, as someone who wants to deliver results and that manifests itself in my work and both to me are fully necessary. I think if I gave up one or the other, a part of my psyche would wither on the vine.

Even though you weren’t in India when Indira Gandhi declared Emergency in 1975, it had a profound impact on you. Did it discourage you from joining the Indian Foreign Service?

I didn’t take the government exams and I’ve written about this in ‘From Midnight to Millennium’. I felt that as a student during the Emergency, knowing that our government could do such things, and suspend the constitution, at least for a year and a half, that made me profoundly unwilling to serve the government and so I actually did a PhD as a way of postponing the decision to take the IFS exams and then when I joined the UN that was that and I never looked back. After having had a UN career, however, when I wanted to explore my options, the hankering to serve my country came right back again. It had never really left. A lot of my books were about India, a lot of my writing was the perennial scratching of a psychic itch about India.

In a time when so many people are disillusioned with the U.N, what was your own experience of the organisation from the inside?

I was privileged that my 29 years in the UN were all areas that were action-oriented. I began in the UN High Commission for Refugees. It was then so small that we all knew each other by our first names and it kind of grew under me, while I was there because of all the dramatic global crisis that happened soon after I joined the UN in 1978. From the Vietnamese ‘Boat People’ crisis to the Central American crisis to the invasion of Afghanistan, everything happened almost simultaneously, and it suddenly became a very large and serious organisation. But it began very small and I was able to crest that wave of exciting jobs, heading the UN operations in S.E Asia, in Singapore that is dealing with the cases of refugees rescued at sea and those coming into Singapore.

Then after 11 ½ years of that I moved to peacekeeping, again when it was very small, when we had only five people, five civilians and three military in the entire peace keeping staff in New York. I found myself not only being Assistant to the then Under Secretary General Sir Marrack Goulding, but I also ended up being the person handling the Yugoslav crisis when it erupted. It became the largest peacekeeping operation in UN history and there I was helping run it from New York.

So I was very lucky, very busy and given tremendous responsibilities throughout my career. I then worked in Kofi Annan’s immediate office when he was Secretary General and finally ended up as Under Secretary General with 800 staff in 77 countries around the world. So I ended up at no point having a dull day or feeling underwhelmed or under challenged until I tried for the top job and lost it. Lost it narrowly but lost in nonetheless and felt I should move on.

You were so close to becoming the UN Secretary General. It must have been very disappointing.

It was because I had overlooked the simple reality that this was not a job where the guy with the best resume makes it. And I think I would be unnecessarily modest if I didn’t say that I had the best resume as a resume. It’s a political job and there are political considerations on the minds of the 15 countries voting on the council. From their point of view – the then American ambassador to the UN has written a very indiscreet memoir in which he has said that his instructions were to the tune of America didn’t want a strong secretary general and there were bilateral considerations with South Korea for example that would have come in the way of that choice and so on. I have absolutely no resentment about that, that’s the way the game is played. I came in an honourable second, in a race with seven contenders that included a serving president, a number of prime ministers, deputy ministers, foreign ministers, so for me as a mere UN official to be able to do that was enough satisfaction back from that experience.

Are you sometimes surprised to find yourself in politics after all?

I’m certainly surprised to find myself in politics because I don’t come from what is considered the traditional political pedigree i.e is either coming from a political family…there was a study by Patrick French in his book recently where he established that every member of the Indian parliament under 40 (or was it 45? I can’t remember) was a son or daughter of a politician. It worries people obviously because the feeling is that it shouldn’t be such a closed world but it is.

Someone like me would have been a complete misfit in the normal course but I have been privileged to have been given an opportunity by my party president Sonia Gandhi to contest. Then I had to go out there and prove I could do it. I had to go out there in the hot sun in Kerala, talking a language I hadn’t used for three decades or at least only in a very, very limited context. I had to get the message across that I could be someone they could trust to get their message across in the national context.

You’re frequently accused of being elitist – did it concern you that they would not respond?

It was precisely because I anticipated that sort of criticism that I felt I should go the Lok Sabha route and go into the Lower House…I felt it was necessary to earn my credentials as somebody who could connect, but it didn’t stand me in any good stead, after having won the election I still found that I had attracted the deep resentment and hostility of many members of the political class and that is something I probably have not fully overcome and this is people who have done politics all their lives and are probably never going to see an interloper like me, someone who has come from a totally different background in life as somebody who is honing in on their patch.

Does the fallout from the IPL controversy linger? From the outside, it looked like it was the charges against your integrity that seemed to cut deepest at that time.

Yes, after a lifetime of leading a life unblemished by the slightest taint on my integrity, it was hard to be falsely attacked for that. But it also cut deeply to give up a job that I enjoyed and felt I was doing rather well, that of helping shape and shepherd my nation’s place in many parts of the world.

Was the decision to dive back into the fray a difficult one?

I never really left. I’m not a quitter. I stayed, licked my wounds, and continued. I gave up a great deal to make my foray into Indian politics, and I wanted to stay true to the convictions that had brought me into it in the first place, even if my idealism had taken a bit of a bruising.

Your writings – both fiction and non-fiction – have been about India or based in India almost without exception. What makes the country and ‘the idea of India’ such a rich source of inspiration for you?

I look in the mirror and I see an Indian, that’s who I am. I grew up in India from age 2 ½ to age 19 ½ and my spirit was shaped by the experience of being Indian and to me therefore a lot of my own creative energies have been spent in exploring what it means to be Indian, what it means to be India in the world. On the bookshelf are some of the products of that exploration.

I suppose my commitment to India was always something of a conscious choice, since by birth I was entitled to a British passport, and my long residence in the US could have provided an American option for me as well – but I never sought either. I grew up convinced that India was the most interesting country in the world and that it was a privilege to be part of its narrative – let alone help, in a small way, to shaping it.

Just 140 characters leave a great deal of room for misunderstanding – post-several mini-controversies over your tweets, what has kept you online and tweeting?

Imagine you can send something out and 1.2 million people read it. The 140 character limit actually has one very valuable plus point and it means it takes very little time to write… Having done that of course, there are pluses and minuses because even if you do feel it takes less time the consequences of an ill guarded remark can take a lot of time. I’ve been there and you’re far more liable to misinterpretation because you have to be brief.

I began tweeting because I was so thrilled that there were actually three hundred odd people who wanted to follow me as soon as somebody opened an account for me. I really actively started tweeting the day the election results were being counted. As I went around seeing the results and I was getting more and more confident that I would win.

What does 2012 hold for you? Do you have any new projects planned?

Always, though what is unplanned often turns out to offer the most interesting experiences! The first priority is to find a 25th hour every day so that I can finish the book I’ve been struggling to find the time to write… It’s a real frustration. It’s a non-fiction book, though I have various ideas for novels bubbling away in the back of my head, at this point, as someone relatively new in politics, I believe my first book after entering politics ought to be on a subject of policy interest and this is also a subject that matters to me – India’s foreign policy and its place in the world. We’ll see how that goes.

Name of Source: SundaY Times

Sir, you’ve had a glittering career full of professional achievements – and hope it continues. But what do you think is your biggest personal achievement?

My twin sons.(Laughs). On a personal front, I speak with pride, of their success. They’re both in New York – Ishan is working on a novel, and Kanishk is a journalist – both turning out to be very good writers. What more personal accomplishment can you ask for.

Speaking of that, where do you see your writing career going?

At the moment its going nowhere because I’m not getting enough time to write!!

I’ve been a columnist for newspapers in India and abroad, and that’s all I’ve done for a while. I’m currently working on a book about our nation and its place in the 21st century world. Now that book, like any other, requires application of your mind in some way, and sadly, I just have not been able to spend much time on it. So, I have to admit that it’s a bit of a struggle. But, I never want to be a former writer. One day, I’ll get used to being a former minister, but not a former writer.

Your last novel, ‘Riot’ was published almost 10 years back. Can your readers expect a work of fiction anytime soon?

Not immediately, because fiction requires not just time, but some space inside your head too- A space to create and inhabit an alternative moral universe, one whose realities have to be consistent in your own mind. And you can’t allow the spell to be broken by intrusions of reality too much. You can’t easily write a fragment of a novel and return to it eight weeks from now. You simply find you have to reinvent the novel each time you do that. A politician like me has to travel day in and day out, bring work home, stay away from home for a while – those kinds of interruptions are deadly for writing fiction. And I found that an enormous struggle.

So, if I write now, I’d say its more easy to, or I am more likely to write non-fiction. Because non-fiction, its interruptible. Your life is non-fiction. (smiles). Like somebody once said, “I didn’t realize I’ve been speaking in prose all my life”. So even if I interrupt writing (non-fiction), and I’ve been doing it for a while now, I feel I can go back to it at a later point.

Sir, Would you like to speak about your fondness for PG Wodehouse, which somehow reflects in ‘The Great Indian Novel’, perhaps the most celebrated of your works?

(It reflects) Only in sections. (Laughs)

I love Wodehouse – his tremendous escapism, tremendous humor and tremendous sense of alternative reality. And I love his style- his use of language. The ability to make people laugh- its such a gift. Hilarious situations, very cleverly contrived comical plots, and great writing – all of it come together in his books.

As for ‘The Great Indian Novel’, I was once reading a translation of the Mahabharata by the Calcutta professor P Lal who uses a very racy and modern style. I must say that I was struck by the immediacy of the narrative. I said -“I’m reading a 2000 year story that reads as if it could’ve been written yesterday.” And then I thought –“Hey, what if it were written yesterday? What would a contemporary Veda Vyas write about the great events of his time?” So, it started as a sort of playful experiment, taking the frame narrative of the Mahabharata, and some of its style and digressions, its philosophies and situations, and applying them to a retelling of a subject which had fascinated me most- 20th century Indian political history. I think it has really worked – the book is now in its 42nd edition, the new generation is loving it. Readers who weren’t even born when it was written tell me how enjoyable they find it. So what could be more gratifying!

We hope you enjoyed your brief stay at IIM Calcutta. Do you have a message for us?

The message is to be the best you can possibly be. Whether you become a manager, or a professor or a writer – it doesn’t really matter what you are; what matters most is how good you are at it. The worst thing you can do is let yourself down. Do well in your life, and do something good for the country. Best of luck!!

Sir, it’s a privilege to have you in our midst today. Thanks a lot for your words and your time.

Name of Source: Jokatimes

Name of Source: Asian Age

“Books were the salvation. I read voraciously,” the Indian politician said. “When I rapidly exhausted the books available to me, I wrote. Writing caught up with my very existence. It gave me a way of escaping my own suffering.”

When Tharoor’s work got published, the effect of the written word became further evident to him. “It was a thrill comparable to a first kiss, an intensely passionate memory,” he said. “That makes you want to keep going.” It is lucky for his readers that he did keep going. Tharoor is now an award-winning author of 12 acclaimed books of both fiction and non-fiction.

In a style both witty and profound, Tharoor’s works grapple with the nature of truth, love, the collision of cultures and the intersection of the political and personal.

Riot is an unflinching examination of Hindu-Muslim violence; The Great Indian Novel, a retelling of the Hindu epic of Mahabharata in the context of the Indian Independence Movement, is now required reading in many post-colonial university literature courses; Show Business, a parody of formulaic Indian cinema, was made into a motion picture titled Bollywood.

Tharoor’s talent took him far from his bed-bound days of childhood. Born in London, raised in Bombay, educated in Delhi and the US, Tharoor would occasionally return to Kerala for “an annual reaffirmation of roots”. After university, he joined the United Nations and worked as a peacekeeper, a refugee worker, a human-rights activist, an under-secretary general for communications and public information and a minister of state for external affairs. He resigned from that position last year due to political pressure stemming from his alleged involvement in the Kochi IPL cricket franchise bid. He is currently a member of the Indian parliament in Kerala.

In addition, Tharoor is a columnist in each of India’s three most-read English-language broadsheets. His monthly column “India Reawakening” appears in close to 80 newspapers around the world. His following was evident at the recent 30th Sharjah International Book Fair, where Tharoor spoke of the contributions made by the large diasporic community of Indians to the UAE and how his books explore the making of India.

Tharoor shared that his dream for India is to keep improving the well-being of its citizens. He pointed out that with 70 per cent of the population living under US$2 (Dh7.34) a day, “there are still so many challenges to create decent lives for our people” and that “we can all help contribute to a better world”.

The author has employed stylistic techniques – including multiple perspectives – to impart empathy to his readers. “Non-fiction appeals to the mind. It is analytical, an argument. Fiction, however, aims at the heart. When the reader relates to a character, empathy flows from that connection,” he explained. “Some of the most moving kind of feedback I’ve had has been precisely when readers have felt a connection.” The issue of empathy is one he’s explored both in his life and literature. As a UN peacekeeper in the former Yugoslavia, he saw how “history and religion divided people”.

“A lot of violence, terrorism, hatred comes from a failure to connect with the other, the demonisation of the other,” he said. “You attack people as you don’t see them as being like yourself.”

He raises profound questions that cut to the core of life and death: When people are able to conduct such terrible butchery of each other, how is it that they forget their essential humanity? “Those who kill are rejecting their basic humanity and denying the humanity of the person they have killed. We need to understand the other, to look across the chasm of religion, nationality – whatever it is that divides us – to the humanity that unites us,” he said.

Tharoor continues: “All human beings basically want the same things in the world – they want to be able to live and love, to breathe, to eat, to feed their children, educate their families, have better opportunities to lead better lives tomorrow than yesterday. It becomes very difficult to kill or maim a person who is breathing the same air as you, seeing the same stars, dreaming the same dreams.”

In his own life as an author and politician, Tharoor has effectively combined the written word with action, the details with the big picture.

“We can’t ever be perfect but we can work at perfecting ourselves – and that applies to individuals, to relationships, families, countries,” he said.

Tharoor hopes the next generations will have the courage to make writing a vocation.

“The famous Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw said, ‘I write for the same reason a cow gives milk.’ It’s inside you and has got to come out and if a cow is not milked, it’s in terrible pain.”

Tharoor is currently writing a book on India’s place in the world, set for release on the first half of next year.

Name of Source: The National

Shashi Tharoor’s joy at meeting Erapalli Prasanna was palpable, as was his wife Sunanda’s excitement at meeting Bhagwat Chandrasekhar. The sight of these two great cricketers alone must have made the day for many of the guests. Chandra does not step out a lot, and if he can avoid a public meeting, he will.

At an interactive session, both players and the chief guest Tharoor exhibited a generosity of spirit that not only raised the tone of the discussions, but lifted the gathering to a rarely-visited place. A place where another’s skill and achievements are readily acknowledged, where the talk is not about statistics or the latest financial deals but about cricket and all that its stands for in its purest form.

Myths were busted, anecdotes exchanged, and the respect and love fans have for an earlier generation was on display.

Asked who was the best batsman he bowled to, Prasanna had no hesitation: “Tom Graveney,” he said. The Englishman had made 151 in the Lord’s Test of 1967 against Pras, Chandra and Bishan Bedi. “For me, the best batsman is the one who played Chandra best,” explained Pras, with startling simplicity.

Chandra, modest and diffident, said of his own approach to bowling, “All I needed was a slip, backward and forward short legs.” The rest could field anywhere, as far as he was concerned. By the time the 1970s dawned, there was Ajit Wadekar at slip, Eknath Solkar and Abid Ali at the short leg positions, and India’s spin quartet was set to rule the world.

Sportsmen today are so conscious of being politically correct and saying the right things that they neither criticise nor praise their colleagues with any honesty. Generosity does not come easily to those trained from an early age to keep all comments within narrow parameters. On the other hand, former sportsmen, denied the kind of media exposure or the money that current stars do, tend to come across as bitter, not having made their peace with the changing times.

Yet, occasionally, stars trash the cliche, as they did that day.

“If Muthiah Muralitharan could succeed, so would I,” explained Prasanna to another questioner, “off-spin will survive.” There was pride in his achievements, pride in his craft. Keen to provoke, another asked, “How is it that India have not produced great spinners after your time?”

Prasanna’s response was wonderful. “What are you saying? Anil Kumble was as good as any of us.” And then this: “Perhaps we had the benefit of the doubt since television cameras were not always focussed on us as they are these days.”

It surprised many to know that Chandra remembered all his dismissals. Most great bowlers have a long memory – they have to remember every detail of a dismissal and how it might be used against the batsman again or against a similar batsman. At one point, he smilingly corrected a Prasanna anecdote after the off spinner said Chandra had taken five wickets in a particular innings. He stretched out three fingers of his hand to put the record straight!

I have seen this remarkable ability in Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid too. In fact, I once played a parlour game with Sachin where I would throw out a team, year and venue and he would come back with his score, and mode of dismissal. Likewise, with Ramanathan Krishnan, the only Indian in the singles semifinals of Wimbledon twice. Krishnan would even tell you at what point he changed his racquet during a game!

How good were the original Fab Four (Venkatraghavan being the fourth) of Indian cricket? Were the preceding generation’s Vinoo Mankad (left arm), Subhash Gupte (leg spin), Ghulam Ahmed (off) as good or better? One thing that worked in the later group’s favour was that wickets were prepared for spin. Another was the superior support in the field, especially close in. And with the arrival of Sunil Gavaskar and Gundappa Vishwanath, two world class batsmen ensured that the spinners would have a total to bowl at.

Led first by Tiger Pataudi and then by Wadekar, the quartet developed both as individuals and a team of attacking bowlers. “Our policy was simple. We looked to take wickets, not keep the runs down. The modern spinner is too conscious of restricting the scoring,” said Prasanna.

So rich is India’s spinning tradition that some of the best would have to stand aside in an all-time eleven. As Tharoor said, someone like Padmakar Shivalkar, a contemporary of Bedi who never played a Test was possibly the second best left-arm spinner in the world!

Source: Suresh Menon’s blog at Cricketnext

One of the architectural marvels of Kerala can be found in Trivandrum, the capital of the south Indian state. Situated at the centre of the city, at the top of a small hill, the Kanakakunnu Palace is a sprawling complex of beautiful buildings surrounded by lush green open grounds. The palace was built by Sree Moolam Thirunal, the Maharaja who ruled the territory between 1885 and 1924.
Moolam Thirunal was a reformist ruler who encouraged female education and road building. The British, the real rulers of India at the time, rewarded his progressive measures with a 21-gun salute.
Architecturally, the palace is a mixture of Indian and European styles: alongside the crimson walls are white Greek-style columns.
Independence in 1947 signalled the end of the line for the maharajas. Kerala, like all the other states, was gradually absorbed into a unified democratic India. The palace is now protected by the tourism department and, as well as being a place where families can relax at weekends, it has served as a venue for a wide variety of cultural events – including, last November, the inaugural Hay Festival in Kerala.

The palace’s position as a point of cultural intersection makes it an ideal place in which to hold a literary festival. What makes it even more fitting is that the local MP, Shashi Tharoor, is also an acclaimed novelist. Tharoor began his career as a diplomat at the United Nations and in 2006 came a close second to Ban Ki-moon in the race to become secretary-general.
While at the UN he published novels – the most famous of which is The Great Indian Novel (1989), an epic satirical work that uses the framework of the Hindu holy book the Mahabharata (literally, “Great India”) to tell the story of independence and its aftermath.
Speaking at the Kanakakunnu Palace at the festival last year, Tharoor recalled how a passion for literature had shaped his upbringing: “The nature of my early Kerala experience has been one of important literature, ideas and words… What my cousins were reading, thinking and being taught was what I was learning in expensive schools,” he said.
Kerala is famous for having a literacy rate of nearly 100 per cent. Thanks to its radical governments (the communist party regularly does well in elections) there is less poverty than in most other Indian states; and as of the start of October, Kerala had a banking facility in every village – though few multinational corporations invest there because of strict labour laws.
Trivandrum’s relaxed and friendly atmosphere reminded Tharoor of the Welsh borders town of Hay-on-Wye, and for years he encouraged his friend Peter Florence, director of the Hay Festival, to bring his event to Trivandrum.
As well as Malayalam, the native language, many people in Kerala speak and read English. When I attended last year’s festival, the crowd was almost entirely local. (It helps that it was free to enter.) What I found striking was the openness and enthusiasm of the crowd, full of people from differing backgrounds, united by their love of literature.
One especially popular event was that involving William Dalrymple, the travel writer, who read from his books about India and the Middle East, including his most recent, Nine Lives, an account of the variety of Indian religious experience.
Even by Indian standards, Kerala is highly religiously mixed. Known as “God’s own country”, the state is 50 per cent Hindu, 25 per cent Muslim and 20 per cent Christian. However, compared with other Indian states such as Gujarat, it has seen little sectarian violence in recent years. (Tharoor, whose wife, Sunanda Tharoor, is also a driving force behind the festival, has described the place as exemplifying the “best of India’s diversity and plurality”.)
The state was once home to a Jewish community which sailed to the Malabar Coast after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans in AD 70. The oldest synagogue in the commonwealth can be found in Kerala – in Kochi (Cochin), a port city about 135 miles north of Trivandrum and a place from which it is possible to hire Kerala’s famous houseboats. In the 16th century the Jewish community built Paradesi Synagogue and it is still in use today. Unlike some synagogues, which can look austere, this one has Belgian chandeliers hanging from the ceiling and a brass pulpit. The building is a fascinating hybrid of ancient Jewish culture and Hindu influences: worshippers wear special coloured clothing on feast days. At last year’s festival the historian Simon Schama, who is researching the Jewish diaspora, spent his final day journeying north to see this remarkable place.
Kerala’s capital is not short on religious sights, either. Trivandrum is the anglicised spelling of Thiruvananthapuram – literally “the abode of Lord Anantha”. The Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple at the heart of the city is dedicated to this Hindu incarnation of the divine. Rising above the city’s tropical greenery the temple, run by the descendants of the royal family, is swarming with brightly coloured pilgrims, and the visitors who come to admire the intricately carved images that cover the rectangular facade. Non-Hindus are not allowed in, but there is much to admire from the outside.
About 30 miles north-west of Trivandrum is the coastal town of Varkala. Visitors can see the 2,000-year-old Janardana Swami Temple, close to the Papanasam beach – or “beach of redemption”. According to local lore, a wise man in ancient times named Narada flung a cloth into the air and where it landed the beach now stands. Since then it has been the place where Hindus throw the ashes of their dead.
Varkala has a natural spring that has healing properties, supposedly as a result of the medicinal plants that grow near the water source. There is also a centre for Ayurvedic treatments and yoga.
In his inaugural speech at last year’s festival, Tharoor spoke of the practical challenges in bringing the festival to Kerala. But one of the great things about Hay is the choice of unexpected venues. After all, why bring a festival to a familiar place or one that is already being served by an existing literary culture?
It is a chance to introduce the people of Kerala to foreign stars as well as Indian figures such as the journalist Basharat Peer, whose memoir about Kashmir and the Indian army’s undistinguished role there provided some of the most robust audience participation last year. Or indeed famous local authors such as the Malayalam poet K Satchidanandan, who by some accounts only narrowly missed out on the Nobel Prize this year.

Visitors from Britain to this year’s festival will have the opportunity of hearing some fascinating speakers from around the world – Germaine Greer, Jung Chang, Simon Singh – as well as being introduced to Indian and Keralan authors they might not have heard of before. All in the lush tropical surroundings of what must be India’s most intriguing state.

Name of Source: Telegraph

One of the architectural marvels of Kerala can be found in Trivandrum, the capital of the south Indian state. Situated at the centre of the city, at the top of a small hill, the Kanakakunnu Palace is a sprawling complex of beautiful buildings surrounded by lush green open grounds. The palace was built by Sree Moolam Thirunal, the Maharaja who ruled the territory between 1885 and 1924.

Moolam Thirunal was a reformist ruler who encouraged female education and road building. The British, the real rulers of India at the time, rewarded his progressive measures with a 21-gun salute.

Architecturally, the palace is a mixture of Indian and European styles: alongside the crimson walls are white Greek-style columns.

Independence in 1947 signalled the end of the line for the maharajas. Kerala, like all the other states, was gradually absorbed into a unified democratic India. The palace is now protected by the tourism department and, as well as being a place where families can relax at weekends, it has served as a venue for a wide variety of cultural events – including, last November, the inaugural Hay Festival in Kerala.
The palace’s position as a point of cultural intersection makes it an ideal place in which to hold a literary festival. What makes it even more fitting is that the local MP, Shashi Tharoor, is also an acclaimed novelist. Tharoor began his career as a diplomat at the United Nations and in 2006 came a close second to Ban Ki-moon in the race to become secretary-general.

While at the UN he published novels – the most famous of which is The Great Indian Novel (1989), an epic satirical work that uses the framework of the Hindu holy book the Mahabharata (literally, “Great India”) to tell the story of independence and its aftermath.

Speaking at the Kanakakunnu Palace at the festival last year, Tharoor recalled how a passion for literature had shaped his upbringing: “The nature of my early Kerala experience has been one of important literature, ideas and words… What my cousins were reading, thinking and being taught was what I was learning in expensive schools,” he said.

Kerala is famous for having a literacy rate of nearly 100 per cent. Thanks to its radical governments (the communist party regularly does well in elections) there is less poverty than in most other Indian states; and as of the start of October, Kerala had a banking facility in every village – though few multinational corporations invest there because of strict labour laws.

Trivandrum’s relaxed and friendly atmosphere reminded Tharoor of the Welsh borders town of Hay-on-Wye, and for years he encouraged his friend Peter Florence, director of the Hay Festival, to bring his event to Trivandrum.

As well as Malayalam, the native language, many people in Kerala speak and read English. When I attended last year’s festival, the crowd was almost entirely local. (It helps that it was free to enter.) What I found striking was the openness and enthusiasm of the crowd, full of people from differing backgrounds, united by their love of literature.

One especially popular event was that involving William Dalrymple, the travel writer, who read from his books about India and the Middle East, including his most recent, Nine Lives, an account of the variety of Indian religious experience.

Even by Indian standards, Kerala is highly religiously mixed. Known as “God’s own country”, the state is 50 per cent Hindu, 25 per cent Muslim and 20 per cent Christian. However, compared with other Indian states such as Gujarat, it has seen little sectarian violence in recent years. (Tharoor, whose wife, Sunanda Tharoor, is also a driving force behind the festival, has described the place as exemplifying the “best of India’s diversity and plurality”.)

The state was once home to a Jewish community which sailed to the Malabar Coast after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans in AD 70. The oldest synagogue in the commonwealth can be found in Kerala – in Kochi (Cochin), a port city about 135 miles north of Trivandrum and a place from which it is possible to hire Kerala’s famous houseboats. In the 16th century the Jewish community built Paradesi Synagogue and it is still in use today. Unlike some synagogues, which can look austere, this one has Belgian chandeliers hanging from the ceiling and a brass pulpit. The building is a fascinating hybrid of ancient Jewish culture and Hindu influences: worshippers wear special coloured clothing on feast days. At last year’s festival the historian Simon Schama, who is researching the Jewish diaspora, spent his final day journeying north to see this remarkable place.

Kerala’s capital is not short on religious sights, either. Trivandrum is the anglicised spelling of Thiruvananthapuram – literally “the abode of Lord Anantha”. The Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple at the heart of the city is dedicated to this Hindu incarnation of the divine. Rising above the city’s tropical greenery the temple, run by the descendants of the royal family, is swarming with brightly coloured pilgrims, and the visitors who come to admire the intricately carved images that cover the rectangular facade. Non-Hindus are not allowed in, but there is much to admire from the outside.

About 30 miles north-west of Trivandrum is the coastal town of Varkala. Visitors can see the 2,000-year-old Janardana Swami Temple, close to the Papanasam beach – or “beach of redemption”. According to local lore, a wise man in ancient times named Narada flung a cloth into the air and where it landed the beach now stands. Since then it has been the place where Hindus throw the ashes of their dead.

Varkala has a natural spring that has healing properties, supposedly as a result of the medicinal plants that grow near the water source. There is also a centre for Ayurvedic treatments and yoga.

In his inaugural speech at last year’s festival, Tharoor spoke of the practical challenges in bringing the festival to Kerala. But one of the great things about Hay is the choice of unexpected venues. After all, why bring a festival to a familiar place or one that is already being served by an existing literary culture?

It is a chance to introduce the people of Kerala to foreign stars as well as Indian figures such as the journalist Basharat Peer, whose memoir about Kashmir and the Indian army’s undistinguished role there provided some of the most robust audience participation last year. Or indeed famous local authors such as the Malayalam poet K Satchidanandan, who by some accounts only narrowly missed out on the Nobel Prize this year.

Visitors from Britain to this year’s festival will have the opportunity of hearing some fascinating speakers from around the world – Germaine Greer, Jung Chang, Simon Singh – as well as being introduced to Indian and Keralan authors they might not have heard of before. All in the lush tropical surroundings of what must be India’s most intriguing state.

* Highlights of Hay Kerala Hay Festival Kerala, in association with Qatar Airways, runs from November 17 to 19 at Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum). This year’s speakers include Jung Chang, the author of Wild Swans and a biography of Mao; Simon Singh, who will lecture on cosmology and codes; and Germaine Greer, who will be discussing Shakespeare’s lovers. For the full programme visit www.hayfestival.org and for full coverage, including live reports, go to www.telegraph.co.uk/hayfestival

Getting there

Sameer Rahim travelled with Qatar Airways (0870 389 8090; www.qatarairways.com) from London to Trivandrum via Doha; return fares in November from £491.33 including taxes.

Staying there

Vivanta by Taj (00 91 471661 2345; www.vivantabytaj.com), an elegant five-star hotel run by the Taj group, is in the centre of the city and only five minutes from the festival site; £100 a night.

Varikatt Heritage (471233 6057; www.varikattheritage.com), a colonial-style bungalow in the centre of the city with lovely grounds, has an Ayurvedic spa and a badminton court; from £58 a night including breakfast.
Where to eat

Arya Nivas, opposite the railway station, is easily the best place to eat in the city. A vegetarian restaurant that serves up thalis in banana leaves, it’s popular with locals and offers great value.

Kalavara, an inexpensive place with basic decor on Press Road, a side street down from M G Road, is a family restaurant that serves Keralan, north Indian and Chinese food. In the evenings you can sit out on a roof terrace.

Maveli Café, the Keralan equivalent of a greasy spoon, with dosas and omelettes aplenty, is on Station Road, next to the bus station, in a wonderful building designed by the British architect Laurie Baker. It’s part of an Indian chain of coffee shops.

Source: The Telegraph

In a democracy, there are specific rights accorded to citizens by the state to help them exercise their political freedoms: freedom of speech and political association and related rights allow citizens — in other words, members of civil society — to get together, argue and discuss, debate and criticise, protest and strike, and even go on fasts and hunger strikes, in order to support or challenge their governments.

This is an essential part of promoting governmental accountability between elections: no one can seriously argue that a citizen’s democratic rights begin and end with the right to choose his government through voting alone. Indeed, as Amartya Sen so brilliantly pointed out with reference to India in his The Argumentative Indian, it is through such discussions and engagement that a deliberative democracy is created.

There is often a useful distinction between law and legitimacy: the greater the extent to which ordinary people are engaged with, concerned by and empowered to determine their own political destiny, the more they accept the decisions of the state institutions and the more legitimate the law becomes to the people.

So to that extent, civil society does and should have an influence on law-making. But that is not the same thing as saying it should have a direct role. In Switzerland, for example, ordinary citizens can actually bypass the elected legislature and write laws by voting for them in referenda that are organised by the state and whose outcomes are recognised by the government as having the full binding force of law. A few US states have adopted the same practice, most famously California.

That is not the case, however, in most other democracies, where civil society’s impact is confined to the influence it is able to bring to bear on the elected law-makers, through the shaping of public opinion, effective lobbying, media campaigns and mass movements.

The current debate in India on the role of civil society should be seen in this broader context, but also in relation to the workings of our democratic system. The Indian system of parliamentary democracy has stood the test of time and is highly respected by many nations and peoples across the world.

The founding fathers of our republic had been clear in their minds that the parliamentary form of democracy of the Westminster model was what they wished to establish in Independent India. This was understandable, not merely because we were demanding exactly the democracy that our colonial masters had enjoyed for themselves but denied us, but also because it could be said to suit the democratic temper of our people.

Our ancient civilisation had the history of having sabhas and samitis where kingdoms were ruled on the principle of democratic functioning, extending right from the grassroots level in the form of panchayats and councils (which represented the broad as well as specific segments of the populace), to the royal courts where maharajas took advice from learned and wise elders. In this tradition, both majority and minority opinion were given due importance in the formulation of public policy.

This was no mean achievement in a nation and society as diverse and heterogeneous as India, with its innumerable groups and socio-religious identities. But it helps that the very idea of India is of one land embracing many. It is the idea that a nation may endure differences of caste, creed, colour, culture, cuisine, conviction, costume and custom, and still rally around a democratic consensus.

That consensus is around the simple principle that in a democracy you don’t really need to agree — except on the ground rules of how you will disagree.

Part of the reason for India’s democracy being respected in the world is that it has survived all the stresses and strains that have beset it, and that led so many to predict its imminent disintegration, by maintaining consensus on how to manage without consensus. Our democracy has indeed been an astonishing success for the past six and a half decades.

The working instrument of our democracy is the Constitution of India. It lays down the basic framework of our democracy, defines the roles and powers of the Legislature, the Executive and the Judiciary, delimits their jurisdictions, demarcates their responsibilities and regulates their relationships with one another and with the people.

The adaptability of the Constitution to the ever changing realities of national life has effectively made it a vehicle of social change.

The Constitution created itself as a self-generating and self-correcting entity, a living document that allowed for its own amendment to meet the changes of the times. In a way, it reflected the confidence in the people of this land to make adjustments to meet every new challenge to society.

Equally important, the process has been substantially facilitated by our Parliament, the institution conceived for that very purpose by the Constitution. During the past six decades of Independence, the Constitution has been amended more than 100 times by Parliament. The small-minded may consider this as one of its weaknesses, but those with a broader vision would understand that it is actually a sign of its inherent strength — a strength that derives from its ability to be flexible without the risk of self-destruction.

It has the exemplary in-built ability to adjust to the needs of the times and the fact that this is enabled through a thoroughly democratic and representative process has been the key to its effectiveness in moving our society forward in a democratic and reasonably efficient manner.

So how do we reconcile civil society, the Constitution and Parliament in making laws that respond to pressures arising from within our society? More in my next column.

Name of Source: Deccan Chronicle

In the last two decades, India has gone from being one of the least globalised economies in the world to one of the most dependent on international commerce. Right up to the late 1980s, foreign travel was a rare and much-coveted luxury for the middle classes. If one got to go abroad, one had to depend on the largesse of foreigners, since you could carry out of India only a measly foreign exchange allowance of (for much of that time) $8. Foreign goods were largely unavailable; visitors from abroad, bringing what for them were routine consumer items, were greeted almost as if they had introduced frankincense and myrrh to Bethlehem.

Today, to use a cliché, India is not what it used to be. The world has changed, and in order to take advantage of it, India has changed too. Our markets are more open, we enjoy a wider range of consumer items than ever, and those who go abroad (far more than ever before) finance their travel and expenses with foreign exchange. Business process outsourcing has tied large numbers of Indians to foreign work environments and business partners. The world is no longer a strange, intimidatingly inaccessible place for most Indians. And in turn, the world sees India differently too.

Indian companies continue to expand outwards. They continue to set up overseas subsidiaries and partnerships. From the behemoths like Tata Consultancy Services in China and Bharti Airtel across Africa to small diamond trading units in Belgium or agricultural firms like Harrisons Malayalam buying plantation land in South Africa, to turnkey infrastructure project firms like GVK Power and Infrastructure in Indonesia, and many more examples too numerous to mention, Indian firms continue to expand and operate successfully in the rest of the world.

Now the India that is going global is also a remarkably young country. India’s youth population remains an under-utilised economic asset. Census figures tell us that nearly 1/5th of India belongs to the 15-24 age group. By 2020, the average Indian will be 29 years. (At that time, the average Chinese will be 37 years old, the average European 49.) It is precisely this age group that, given the opportunity, seeks to travel, to escape home, to leap past the humdrum of school or college and see the world.

This provides us with a unique opportunity as a society. We are at a golden moment of being able to create a more globally-aware generation to shore up India’s place in a globalised world.

The need is acute. Either we train and prepare our young people for a 21st century global economy, or we face disaster. Each year, based on 2005 figures, we will add around 5 million young adults (between 15-24 years) per year. These are 5 million potentially productive workers. But if they are unemployed or unemployable, they are also potential revolutionaries, Naxalites or stone-pelters. The frustrations of jobless young men lie behind most of the violent protests in the world.

Indian companies that operate outside India should be encouraged, through the diligent application of tax incentives, to use our young people as interns and specialist trainees. There are two benefits from such an arrangement: the firms get the ability to scrutinise and develop talent in-house for the future, while the young person gets the opportunity to work in a professional setting in a foreign country. Over the period of the contractual agreement, it is only natural that this young intern will travel around, interact with the local societies and — over a period of time — we will have Indians who know the world much better than the generation before.

There are many models we can study to fine-tune such a programme. The French, for example, have a governmental division that oversees its VIE (internship) programme, which is subordinated to the Secrétariat d’Etat au Commerce Exterieur (State Secretariat for Foreign Trade). Young French citizens apply to go work abroad for French firms via this agency. Their remuneration is such that one part of it is fixed, while the other is contingent on local wage levels. Often the retention levels at the firms that engage them are high as well. Over the years, the French have created a pool of young people who have served in far-flung areas — and reinforced Paris’ own global vision and sensibilities.

In India, our industries and firms are at the cusp of expanding globally in an unprecedented fashion. Our young people are raring to travel, work and experience the world. There is no reason why we cannot bring them together and why a systematic competitive programme run by the government can’t create a new generation of Indians who — while they enrich their own lives’ experiences — will help build and project India’s reach into the world.

Shashi Tharoor is a Lok Sabha MP and Keerthik Sasidharan is a New York-based investment banker. The views expressed by the authors are personal.

Name of Source: Hindustan Times

Consider the current session, which began on August 1. The opening day was adjourned, in keeping with traditional practice, to mourn the death between sessions of a sitting member of parliament. But the adjournment did not come before a routine courtesy greeting to the visiting Speaker of Sri Lanka’s parliament was interrupted by Tamil MPs from a regional party, who rose to their feet to shout demands for his expulsion because of his government’s behavior towards that country’s Tamil minority. The errant MPs were rapidly silenced, and the visitor received a table-thumping welcome from the rest of the House.

Matters were not so swiftly resolved, however, the next day. No sooner had a newly-elected member taken his oath than a number of MPs from the Bahujan Samaj Party, which rules India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh, stormed into the well of the House, shouting slogans and waving placards in protest against the government’s land-acquisition policies.

The Speaker attempted for a few minutes to get them to return to their seats, then gave up and adjourned the session for an hour. When the MPs reassembled, the opposition members – now joined by MPs from a rival regional party – marched towards the Speaker’s desk, making even more noise. After a few more ineffectual minutes of trying to be heard above the din, the Speaker adjourned Parliament again. One more attempt was made before the House adjourned for the day, with no item of legislative business transacted.

That, unfortunately, is often par for the course in India’s parliament, many of whose opposition members appear to believe that disrupting proceedings, rather than delivering a convincing argument, is the most effective way to make their points. Last winter, an entire five-week session was lost without a single day’s work, because the opposition parties united to stall the House, forcing adjournments every day. There has not been a single session in recent years in which at least some days were not lost to deliberate disruption.

It wasn’t always this way. Indian politicians were initially proud of the Westminster-style parliamentary system that they adopted upon Independence. India’s nationalists were determined to enjoy the democracy that their colonial rulers had denied them, and convinced themselves that the British system was best. When a future British prime minister, Clement Attlee, traveled to India as part of a constitutional commission and argued the merits of a presidential system over a parliamentary one, his Indian interlocutors reacted with horror. “It was as if,” Attlee recalled, “I had offered them margarine instead of butter.”

Many of India’s new MPs – several of whom had been educated in England and observed British parliamentary traditions with admiration – reveled in the authenticity of their ways. Indian MPs still thump their desks, rather than clap their hands, in approbation. When bills are put to a vote, an affirmative call is still “aye,” rather than “yes.” An Anglophile Communist MP, Hiren Mukherjee, boasted in the 1950’s that British Prime Minister Anthony Eden had commented to him that the Indian parliament was in every respect like the British one. Even to a Communist, it was a proud moment.

But six decades of independence have wrought significant change, as exposure to British practices has faded and India’s natural boisterousness has reasserted itself. Some of the state assemblies in India’s federal system have already witnessed scenes of furniture upended, microphones ripped out, and slippers flung by unruly legislators, not to mention fistfights and garments torn in scuffles.

While things have not yet gone so far in the national legislature, the code of conduct that is imparted to all newly-elected MPs – including injunctions against speaking out of turn, shouting slogans, waving placards, and marching into the well of the House – is routinely honored in the breach. Equally striking is the impunity with which lawmakers flout the rules that they are sworn to uphold.

There was a time when misbehavior was dealt with firmly. One of my abiding recollections from childhood was the photograph of a burly Socialist parliamentarian, Raj Narain, a former wrestler, being bodily carried out of the House by four sergeants-at-arms for shouting out of turn and disobeying the Speaker’s orders to return to his seat.

But, over the years, standards have been allowed to slide, with adjournments being preferred to expulsions. Last year, five MPs in the upper house of India’s parliament were suspended for charging up to the presiding officer’s desk, wrenching his microphone and tearing up his papers. But, after a few months and some muted apologies, they were quietly reinstated.

Perhaps this makes sense, for it allows the opposition some space in a system in which party-line voting determines most legislative outcomes. Four decades ago, in more genteel times, an opposition legislator once ended a debate whose outcome was a foregone conclusion, with the words, “We have the arguments. You have the votes.” Years later, the same MP, Atal Behari Vajpayee, became Prime Minister, and took pride in giving the opposition as much leeway as possible.

The result is a curiously Indian institution, whose prevailing standards of behavior would not be tolerated in most parliamentary systems. In India’s Parliament, many members feel that the best way to show the strength of their feelings is to disrupt the lawmaking rather than debate the law. The Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith, who served under President Kennedy as US Ambassador to India, described the country as a “functioning anarchy.” We need look no further than the temple of Indian democracy to see it in action.

Name of Source: Project Syndicate