Commentaries on the one-year-old Narendra Modi government are starting to trickle in, and very early remarks are compiled in India Shastra: Reflections on the nation in our time by Shashi Tharoor.
This 100-article, 473-page volume, was published by Aleph in January 2015, barely six months into Modi’s tenure. But it doesn’t stop Tharoor, the twice-elected Congress Party MP from Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, from asking definitive questions about whether the ruling government is already sowing the seeds of its failure by shunning the liberal path it promised to follow, now that it is in power in New Delhi.
“Is the promise of good times a mere illusion? Have we forgotten the democratic, humane, secular and liberal values that our founding fathers endowed us with? Are high-speed trains and missions to Mars eclipsing the vital need to achieve universal literacy, eradicate poverty, and provide food, shelter and healthcare-for all?” asks the book’s cover flap.
These are questions that Tharoor could well have asked his own party’s leadership which held the helm in India for the last decade. And he acknowledges that his view of “India Modi-fied” is one that is critical of the current government’s six months in office – so the reader knows clearly where Tharoor stands.
Shastra, explains Tharoor, is the last of a trilogy of books begun in 1997 with India: From Midnight to the Millennium, followed by The Elephant, the Tiger and the Cell phone in 2007; which have evolved as his personal works of “Smriti (memory), Shruti (hearing) and Shastra (thinking).”
Tharoor will have plenty of time to continue his Shastra-kaam, given that his party has another four years out of power to mull over its internal crises, and the mound of problems he says Modi will have to find solutions for. Tharoor gladly offers advice for both.
For the Modi government, he suggests, inter alia, abolishing the Information & Broadcasting ministry but a) keeping Prasar Bharti independent and accountable only to Parliament, b) letting an industry-run National Motion Picture Association run the Films Division under the Ministry of Culture, and c) letting the PMO or Cabinet Secretariat house the government spokesperson rather than the Press Information Bureau. He recommends s cutting the cabinet to 44 needed ministers (including ministers of state) versus the 64-ministry jumbo cabinet that exists. Tharoor wants to let language machismo, especially of Hindi, stay off the agenda or risk offending south India. And he would like the BJP to generously give the Congress official status as the Opposition, despite it not having the required 10% of Parliamentary seats. He also provides counsel for the new conscripts in the foreign service on how to sell India abroad, and so on.
Some of his counsel is welcome, like speeding up the reform the Indian Foreign Service, and serious suggestions on how the Congress can course-correct to “restore its past glory.”
These to-do lists, now dreary reminders of India’s many lacune and looming troubles, make pleasant reading thanks to Tharoor’s deft pen and witty, elegant turn of phrase. For instance, having been in government, Tharoor lets the reader in on some inside-y tid-bits. The Ministry of External Affairs was once known as the “Ministry of Eternal Affairs,” he writes. Now, given Modi’s active foreign policy and India’s growing global presence and place, “the eternal must now make way for the urgent.” And with regard to Non-Resident Indians, always at the receiving end of convoluted acronyms some of which Tharoor himself coined – ‘Not Really Indian’ or ‘Never Relinquished India’ – Tharoor, having been one himself for three decades, accedes that perhaps they can now be more meaningfully used as the ‘National Reserve of India.’
Otherwise, the book is a commentary on everything possible: the ravages of colonialism, the perfidious British, India’s forgotten role in World War I, Sardar Patel, Vivekananda, Rabindranath Tagore, St. Stephens College and its ‘tahzib,’Annadurai, Natwar Singh, India’s fallen economy, the country’s usual paradoxes, civil society, asylum and why India should always participate in “this noble task,” black money, poverty, astrology, women, prohibition, digitization, his own years at the United Nations, multi-alignment over non-alignment, etc. It’s an easy read, if one wants a quick reference into India’s current status on these many issues – from Tharoor’s viewpoint. (One can do the same with Ramachandra Guha’s many tomes, a one-stop shop for modern Indian history.)
At a panel discussion on July 14 at Mumbai’s grand but crumbling Asiatic Society, Tharoor said the book was intended as “a portrait of today’s India. My testament, and set of ideas and hopes for India” at a time when India was only experiencing “government by photo-op,” a clear dig at the many images of Modi’s global travels–to 24 countries so far–and diligent use of social media as Prime Minister, without visible, immediate outcomes. Certainly all heads of state are the most photographed of any of their countrymen – save film stars. So it is unfair for Tharoor to take a swipe at Modi, especially as his own Congress party leaders were never seen in public, nor were their movements public knowledge.
That day was also one when the landmark agreement to lift sanctions on Iran was signed by the P5+1 countries. When asked how this would impact India, Tharoor was unexpectedly critical: India has lost an opportunity, he said, “We should have struck deals with Iran before hand, we have lost the moment.” Iran accumulated billions of rupees for oil payments from India, which it could not spend. Now, says Tharoor, all they can use it for is to buy some real estate in India.
A better idea, Mr. Tharoor, may be for Tehran to invest those billions to Make in India for Iran. And provide more girst for your next Shastra.
India Shastra: Reflections on the Nation in our Time by Shashi Tharoor (Aleph Book Company, 2015)
Manjeet Kripalani is the co-founder and executive director of Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations, Mumbai.
This review was exclusively written for Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. You can read more exclusive content here.
For interview requests with the author, or for permission to republish, please contact outreach@gatewayhouse.in.
© Copyright 2015 Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. All rights reserved. Any unauthorized copying or reproduction is strictly prohibited.