Nehru The Invention Of India

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 twenty books both fiction and non-fiction besides being a noted critic and columnist. His books include the pathbreaking satire The Great Indian Novel (1989) the classic India From Midnight to the Millennium (1997) the bestselling 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) and The Paradoxical Prime Minister Narendra Modi and His India. He has been Under Secretary-General of the United Nations and Minister of State for Human Resource Development and Minister of State for External Affairs in the Government of India. He is a three-time member of the Lok Sabha from Thiruvananthapuram and chairs the Parliament InformationTechnology committee. He has won numerous literary awards including a national Sahitya Akademi award a Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the Crossword Lifetime Achievement Award. He was awarded the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman India's highest honour for overseas Indians in 2004 and honoured as New Age Politician of the Year (2010) by NDTV.