This short biography examines a great figure of twentieth-century nationalism from the vantage point of the beginning of the twenty-first. Deftly weaving personal facets with historical events, it tells the fascinating story of Jawaharlal Nehru-aristocrat, socialist, anti-imperialist, foremost disciple of Gandhi, diehard secularist and India's first prime minister, who sought to educate the Indian masses in democracy by his own personal example. Shashi Tharoor also analyses the principal pillars of Nehru's legacy to India, all of which were integral to a vision of Indianness that is fundamentally contested today.
About the Author
Shashi Tharoor is the bestselling author of sixteen previous books, both fiction and non-fiction, besides being a noted critic and columnist. His books include the path-breaking satire the Great Indian Novel (1989), the classic India: From Midnight to the Millennium (1997) and most recently, An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India, for which he won the Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism, 2016 for Books (Non-Fiction). He was a former under secretary-general of the United Nations and a former minister of state for human resource development and minister of state for external affairs in the Government of India. He is a two-time member of the Lok Sabha from Thiruvananthapuram and chairs Parliament's external affairs committee. He has won numerous literary awards, including a Commonwealth Writers' Prize and was honoured as New Age Politician of the Year (2010) by NDTV. He was awarded the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, India's highest honour for overseas Indians.
