Obtain Immediately India: From Midnight To The Millennium And Beyond Authored By Shashi Tharoor Presented In Visual Format

Tharoor the man with the foreign accent, the snob who called us economyclass travellers cattleclass, a pseudosecular who seemed totally outoftouch with India and Indians.
Maybe he could write a biting, irreverent satire like sitelinkThe Great Indian Novel but did he really know India's history, society and politics I thought he was a onebook wonder too.

Then in the past couple of years, due to friends and critics' recommendations, I read "Riot" which was on the communal tensions in the earlys and "An Era of Darkness" on the British Raj and finally "India : From Midnight to the Millenium".
This irreverent man revers truth and can write with empathy ! And he knows far more than he lets on !
This book is part memoir, part commentary on India.
Some parts were absolutely beautiful and the chapter on his memories of Untouchability as a child is one of the best shortstories that I have ever read.
In characteristic style, Tharoor spares neither the socialists nor the communal forces, And what makes this book such a delight was that Tharoor digs deep and tries to understand the reasons behind each of our failings.
This is not a quickfix superficial work and I would place it at par with the popular sitelinkIndia Unbound: The Social and Economic Revolution from Independence to the Global Information Age.

His recent books have not been up to the mark and unfortunately, we have lost a superb author because of his joining politics.
Here is what I will take away from this book

, Tharoor's understanding of Hinduism, and his wellreasoned arguments that justify why Hindu nationalists are actually disloyal to the very religion they claim to uphold.

. His view of India as an expatriate and observations about the nation that only an expatriate can make.

. His theory about the decline of the Indian intellectual, His belief that with time we think less and less about the intellectual, laughing at their dissent and shunning them as reclusive madcaps.
As an educated Indian, I see this happening all around us with the party at the centre ridiculing anyone that questions their actions.

. Finally, his book filled up the little nuggets of modern Indian history that Mr, Guha may have overlooked in his magnum opus sitelinkIndia After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy.
Apart from this, there is no comparison between the two books, Because this book veers more towards opinion while Guha's is a retelling of history as it happened,

Never read books from Shashi Tharoor before but once I started to read this one, it seems like I can't put it down.
The questions he had raised made me think of my concepts and ideologies about India, The dogmas he questioned against like whether Democracy is at all necessary for economic development and whether India is really secular are hard to answer.
India has solved the problem of communalism but it failed to bring the feeling of belongingness or Indianess among its citizens.
He mingled facts about India and his personal stories so well which makes you turn pages, The correlation he sought between literacy and riots is shocking that proves with increase in literacy more poor and illeterate people vote than the educated ones.
The poor are of the idea that they can change the system whereas the graduates think that there votes would hardly matter.
He discussed the same yet preached as different visions of different parties in India and how corruption is getting entangled with politics.
He also administered the rights of NRI and their responsibility in shaping up the new India, He had shown statistics how Kolkata has loosened its spirit of cultural and heritage and remained as a copier of events in India.
He pinpointed evry state and showed paths of improvement, He proved why most of the educated Indians have started living in two or three metro cities most of them abandoning India altogether.

He busted the myths that most people confuse secularism with atheism, Secular India never interrupts in people religion but only because of a few religion is forming a base of differentiation.
This book is not about the post independance India and its flaws, it is about the age old concepts, beliefs, principles dogmas which the political parties somehow forcefully enforcing upon us and the educated masses are eventually getting succumbed to it.
If you like nonfiction and can read about India and its political history from apages book then this book is for you.
Its largely written from the view point of an expatriate Indian, a Keralite and that of a Hindu.
It was quite surprising for me as I never thought of Shashi Tharoor having such a patriotic inside view of India as he had spent most of the time outside it.
Even when he speaks about Kerala its as if he has first hand experience of it, But the truth is that he was an expatriate Indian for a long time,

His writing is very convincing, Each issue is talked about with accuracy and certain places he takes sides too, He always has proper explanation for his stance and expresses it openly,

What was more surprising about this book is that there is a lot of Indira Gandhi bashing and in some places Congress bashing also in it.
Now, this was some thing that I never expected from someone who belonged to the same party, And this is what has elevated Shashi Tharoor's place in my mind, He is not criticizing anybody without a reason,

I really did like this book but reading nonfiction that too history is not that easy.
I had gotten bored in between because of the genre this book belonged to and not because of the book in itself.
The book is very well written, Good read about India. Very well written! Writing style is awesome! India from midnight to the millennium and beyond unravels Indianness marked by the epoch of postindependence India.
Tharoor chisels the sculpture of indian identity against the backdrop of the countrys political, economic and religious past, so as to delineate the shape of indian secularism, democracy, economic liberalisation and nonalignment that define the country today.
While Tharoors analysis is outdated byyears, culture within india remains somewhat constant etched by regional traditions and religious history that define it.


Therefore as an individual, whose peripatetic life, has led to obscure his sense of identity, this book has served to ingrain my indian roots, as it will for many other nonresidential indians.
Throughout his book Tharoor, discussesimmortal ills that have plagued indian conscience, and how india has or should overcome them.
Principally these include, antagonism towards minorities within the framework of a secular constitution, the fitness of socialism to uplift the population out of poverty, and the debate of what is more important social justice or democracy.


While I respect Tharoors prose, his writing style can often obfuscate the message he is trying to deliver.
Thus making the read more difficult than it should be, Combined with his nature to repeat many topics previously discussed, the book becomes a drag towards the end and realistically I couldnt treat the last chapter of the book with the same integrity as I did with the previous chapters.
This is one of the best books I've read about India, I had been meaning to read something on postindependence India for a long time and this book did not disappoint.
The author makes a great case for democracy, pluralism and "unity in diversity", while at the same time explaining how India has evolved to its current state since independence.
Roots of many things in Indian politics, society, economy, etc, which my generation takes for granted, are elucidated in a way that even an outsider can understand, His objective and balanced analysis of democracy especially the democracy in India, of NehruGandhi dynasty and their impact, Emergency, liberalisation of economy, etc.
makes the book a delight to read, A well written book which gives insights in to lot of interesting things in India, however not as comprehensive like 'India after Gandhi' by Mr.
Guha. Mr Tharoor's disagreement with the socialistic approach of Nehru is well known and he has every right to be disappointed as the economic indicators were pointing in the negative direction.
However he should have also considered Nehru's herculean effort in uniting the country against communal forces, He might well be the single person responsible for India not following the Pakistani way of mixing politics with religion.
I enjoyed the narration of kerala and the chapter where he touched upon his interest in Lord Ganesha.
A must read for all those who have interest in History, who are willing to come out of text books and are rational enough to understand the hidden agenda of Youtube Historians : If India would've been a living lady, this book would've been her personal diary.
I gaveto this book, I only do this with those books which change my life, Forget about all the information and knowledge that you would derive out of this masterpiece, the real gist of it lies in the astute observational inferences which goes a mile further by not only giving a realistic picture of India and its evolution, but also by explaining the reason behind it.


"Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now that time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially.
At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.
"" With these words, our country woke up to freedom and with freedom, a whole new direction and dreams with a diefied guide none other than Mr Nehru.
But the principle error in diefying a human being or an organisationINC for that matter is that the very act of dissent becomes sacrilegious.
It has often been observed that bad experiences teach wrong lessons and in this case it was India's perception of capitalistic traders turning into rulerscolonialism which pushed it towards the embrace of soviet model of socialism.
Our leaders could only see the equitable distribution of jobs , food and prosperity but they turned a blind eye towards excessive controls, overegualtion and parochialism of the ideology.
years of continued socialistic practises created an India which was unheard of in the ancient historical and mythological books, a corrupt immoral society which only desired to have power and pelf.
Let's see how did this happen,

The basic assumption of socialism is that government holds the interest of its people above everything and based on that logic it should've control over all the major components of an economy which includes sectors like mining, petroleum etc.
Now whatsoever minuscule amount of private entrepreneurship which was mushrooming was nipped in the bud under stupid regulatory rules like , to produce more and reinvest their profits they had to seek permission of the government.
Rather than focusing on

self improvement and innovation, government offices became new temples for the entrepreneurs, officials became the gods and wishes were of licenses and quotas.
In time, as Indian culture has always been an epitome of, we endured, We realised that rather spending energy on creative endeavours, it's easier to gratify the needs of government officials as well as democrats.
Unfortunately, decades of practise in managing government has led to a severe decline in creative energies of Indian population as it lost the very importance, utility and relevance.


It may seem to one that our country is doomed now and there's no hope and some would even say that's the popular opinion even among the natives.
Is it so Plenty of tomes can be found on how congress should've proceeded but that is something we came upon after the postmortem didn't we If only there was a premortem maybe the course of the history of our country would've had spanned out differently.
But there is one thing that congress did which it hardly gets credit for, It represented a multicultural India united and even proud of the diversity but as we know that it is an unfortunate weakness of a democracy that it cannot specify the time period in which it can deliver on to the promises to every community which eventually leads to the disenchantment of democracy and engenders sectarianism.
Since then, more or less, it has always been about which community is moving forward and at which community's expense.
Religious fundamentalism has taken its roots and is fostering at an alarming rate, An interesting interpretation of Hinduism is enunciated by Mr Tharoor in this book which says that Hinduism is the only religion in the world, which has not claimed to be the only path to attain salvation, doesn't consider itself to be infallible and establishes the concept of dualism that encapsulates life in a circle.


Now to quote the rainbow parts, since all the dirt has already been amply described, of the India since independence.
What we really miss out on, as we are really not looking for it, is that while we continuously focus on what could or should've been done when there was time or opportunity but we really did endure that.
Despite of all the negativities that impeded our growth emergency, corruption, politicisation etc we have still remained a shining star in the subcontinent, even though our shine kept flickering now and then but it remained there.
Literacy, self sufficiency in case of food, private entrepreneurship are some of the major highlights post liberalisation which has brought India onto the global map and there are various ways in which we can continue these series of miracles.
But in my personal opinion, the best method is through education be it social awareness, giving a fillip to creative forces of the natives, sex education and what not.
Nothing works better than education, What we can really do is that work on the nuances of education by edifying people as to what consists of education and how really can it help and this includes examples like spreading awareness regarding certain laws like women cannot be kept in jails after sunset and can only be arrested by a woman officer, financial literacy like helping people to open up Demat accounts and start through safe trading in government bonds then stock markets, educating people in tax laws like capital bonds which can save capital gain tax uptolac.


Hope is a toxic intoxication they say, but I relate it to an elixir named felix felesis mentioned in Harry Potter which means liquid luck.
Our country is rapidly changing from a place where " Anything is possible to be imbibed by peopleunfortunately even the bad habits of intoxication" to a place where " People cannot be trusted with their own freedom".
I cannot provide you with any statistical data but just a humble apprehension that if we fail to take action now, our posterity won't be kind towards us.
Especially with the current pace of intolerance that is growing, Someone has rightfully saidMr Tharoor:

"History is its own revenge",
How
Don't worry, our posterity will let us know,