[Nehru] Is A Book For Today, Not Heavy And Cumbersome, But Sharp And Witty, And Relevant Not Just To India, But To Other Countries As Well Biblio This Short, Beautifully Written 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, With Whom He Didn T Always See Eye To Eye, Die-Hard Secularist And 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: Democratic Institution Building, Staunch Pan-Indian Secularism, Socialist Economics At Home And A Foreign Policy Of Non-Alignment, All Of Which Were Integral To A Vision Of Indianness That Is Fundamentally Contested Today. Praise For The Book Exceedingly Well-Informed, Passionately Conceived And Elegantly Written Outlook It Is A Must Read To Understand The Fact That With The Passage Of Nehru S Time The Country S Intellect Has Narrowed Tremendously Telegraph Sparkling, Anecdotal And Not Necessarily Controversial, [Nehru] Is Inventive In Its Own Delightful Way, Low-Keyed, Unpretentious But Highly Readable Free Press Journal Shashi Tharoor Is . . . Full Of Verve And Flashing Insight. [Nehru] Is A Short, Accessible, Intelligent And Lively Book The Washington Post

About the Book : - Written by Nayantara Sahgal, prize-winning novelist and political commentator, Jawaharlal Nehru presents an intimate view of the influences, encounters and defining historical moments that forged the vision of India s first prime minister. Drawing from the Nehru and the Vijayalakshmi Pandit Papers, and from Nehru s letters to Sahgal, his niece, this book combines history with personal recollections to show how Nehru helped navigate India s transition from a colony to an influential, modern nation. Discussing the significant issue of independent India s foreign policy characterized by the non-alignment principle and the establishment of relations with the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union and China Sahgal reveals much about Nehru s political astuteness, realism and aversion to rigid economic doctrines, as well as the profound impact India s non-aligned policy had on the world of the time. Perceptive, original and stimulating, Jawaharlal Nehru draws much-needed attention back to the man and his unmatched ability to engineer a consensus among seemingly irreconcilable sides. About the Author : - Nayantara Sahgal is the author of nine novels, five non-fiction works and wide-ranging literary and political commentary. She has received the Sahitya Akademi Award, the Sinclair Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Eurasia. She is a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has held fellowships in the United States at the Bunting Institute, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the National Humanities Center. A resident of Dehradun, she has been awarded the Doon Ratna, and has also received the Distinguished Alumna Award from Wellesley College, Massachusetts, in 2003 and from Woodstock School, Mussoorie, in 2004.

‘Nobody has done more harm to me . . . than Jawaharlal Nehru,’ wrote Subhas Chandra Bose in 1939. Had relations between the two great nationalist leaders soured to the extent that Bose had begun to view Nehru as his enemy? But then, why did he name one of the regiments of the Indian National Army after Jawaharlal? And what prompted Nehru to weep when he heard of Bose’s untimely death in 1945, and to recount soon after, ‘I used to treat him as my younger brother’? Rudrangshu Mukherjee’s fascinating book traces the contours of a friendship that did not quite blossom as political ideologies diverged, and delineates the shadow that fell between them—for, Gandhi saw Nehru as his chosen heir and Bose as a prodigal son.

Elegant, perceptive, and startlingly prophetic, Nehru: A Contemporary’s Estimate is one of the finest accounts of Nehru ever written. Walter Crocker, the Australian high commissioner to India, admired Nehru the man—his grace, style, intelligence and energy—and was deeply critical of many of his political decisions—the invasion of Goa, India’s Kashmir policy, the Five Year Plans. This book, written shortly after Nehru’s death, is full of invaluable first hand observations about the man and his politics. Many of Crocker’s points, too—especially the implications of the Five Year Plans and of the introduction of democracy to India—are particularly relevant today. Out of print for many years, this classic biography has been reissued with an authoritative foreword by Ramachandra Guha.

From being elected as Congress president in 1929 till his death in 1964, Jawaharlal Nehru remained a towering figure in Indian politics, a man who left an indelible stamp on the history of South Asia. As a leading light of the nationalist struggle and as India's first and longest-serving prime minister, his ideas shaped the political contours of the country and left an imprint so deep that his legacy continues to be debated furiously today. In life, as in afterlife, Nehru was many things to many people. Going beyond the imposed labels of contemporary discourse, this book illuminates four encounters that Nehru had with contemporaries from across the political spectrum - Muhammad Iqbal, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Sardar Patel and Syama Prasad Mookerjee - that are critical to understanding his ideas, and his long afterlife and impress on the present. Nehru may no longer be alive to answer his critics today, but there was a time when he pitted himself vigorously against his opponents in the marketplace of ideas, debating the most profound questions in South Asian history and decisively influencing political events. It is this intellectually combative Nehru whom we meet in this book - voicing ideological disagreements, forging political alliances, moulding political opinion, offering visions of the future and staking out the political field - a key figure in the debates that defined India

In this award-winning novel, Tharoor has masterfully recast the two-thousand-year-old epic, The Mahabharata, with fictional but highly recognizable events and characters from twentieth-century Indian politics. Nothing is sacred in this deliciously irreverent, witty, and deeply intelligent retelling of modern Indian history and the ancient Indian epic The Mahabharata. Alternately outrageous and instructive, hilarious and moving, it is a dazzling tapestry of prose and verse that satirically, but also poignantly, chronicles the struggle for Indian freedom and independence.