The former Minister of State for External Affairs, Shashi Tharoor was recently in the city to launch his latest book-‘Pax India: India and the World of 21st Century’.
Speaking at the event, Mr Tharoor, an elected Member of Parliament, widely-published critic, commentator and columnist said, “Many years ago when I was first researching my doctoral thesis, which became my first book on foreign policy: ‘Reasons of State’, I was told by an already retired ambassador 35 years ago ‘My dear boy! Indian diplomacy 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 book, the award-winning author and parliamentarian demonstrates how Indian diplomacy has become sprightlier since then and where it needs to focus in the world of 21st century.
He added, “There has been an amazing transformation in India’s engagement with the world. That’s what I try and describe in this book which really takes stock of the last couple of decades of change in the Indian foreign policy and looks forward to a new role for India on the world stage.” The book has separate chapters on India’s specific relationships with different countries like China, Pakistan, US and new relationships being forged with European and African countries.
Explaining why foreign policy matters to an India focused on its own domestic transformation, Tharoor surveys India’s major international relationships in detail, evokes the country’s soft power and its global responsibilities and offers his thoughts on a contemporary new “grand strategy” for the nation, arguing that India must move beyond non-allignment to ‘multi-allignment’.
Shashi Tharoor added, “I have also written about the extraordinary appeal of our culture which is one our biggest assets in world affairs, the role of the United National Security Council. There is a chapter on the domestic underpinnings of our foreign policy including the work of the Ministry of External Affairs and some reforms which I believe are needed and perhaps overdue. I feel that the time has come for us to recognise that the binary era of the Cold War-two superpowers between whom we navigated uneasily- that era is long over and today the metaphor is much more than that of the internet and the world wide web.”
When we ask him what writing means to him, he says, “Writing is a compulsion. I am also happiest when I am writing, which is an odd thing for a politician to admit, because a politician is a people’s person.” He adds, “I spend half the month in my constituency. But you can feel a little tired of constantly interacting with people and hearing their problems. Whereas sitting down before a screen with the world inside your head is a very different experience altogether.”
Governor H R Bhardwaj, who released the book, said given the dearth of quality leadership in the present-day politics, Mr Tharoor was among those who were capable but underutilised.
The former under-secretary-general of the United Nations, Shashi Tharoor is the prize-winning author of twelve previous books, both fiction and non-fiction.
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