India

July 31, 1997
This year, India, whose population is expected to overtake China's within three decades, which will make it the largest country in the world, celebrates the 50th anniversary of its independence from British rule. Tharoor (The Great Indian Novel) offers here the perspective of an Indian who has spent much of his life abroad, in recent years as a senior official at the United Nations. Indeed, his take is multi-layered, because he describes as well what it is like to be a native of the southern Indian state of Kerala, whose language--Malayalam--he and his family do not even speak fluently. The narrative presents colorful stories of village life, ruminations on the Hindu religion, accounts of political turmoil and upheaval as well as of the author's own experiences as an expatriate. If there is a villain in this book, it is former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who invoked a state of emergency in 1971 and suspended certain constitutional rights. Whereas many in the West viewed her as the tough daughter of founding father Nehru who successfully prosecuted the war against Pakistan and sundered that nation in the process, Tharoor portrays her as "skilled at the acquisition and maintenance of power, but hopeless at... wielding... it for larger purposes." He also accuses her of relying too much on her sons, Sanjay and Rajiv, to govern the country. Readers with an interest in the history of the subcontinent will find this a literate and affecting panorama of the world's largest democracy.