Shashi Tharoor: Doing

“How easily we Indians see the several sides to every question! That is what makes us such good bureaucrats, and such poor totalitarians. They say the new international organizations set up by the wonderfully optimistic (if oxymoronic) United Nations are full of highly successful Indian officials with quick, subtle minds and mellifluous tongues, for ever able to understand every global crisis from the point of view of each and every one of the contending parties. That is why they do so well, Ganapathi, in any situation that calls for an instinctive awareness of the subjectivity of truth, the relativity of judgement and the impossibility of action.”

Shashi Tharoor book The Great Indian Novel

The Great Indian Novel (1989)

Truth , Understanding , Question , Success

“No Indian nationalist leader ever needed to say: We have created India; now all we need to do is to create Indians.”

Shashi Tharoor

Rediff News, "Who is an Indian?", Available Online http://www.rediff.com/republic/2000/apr/06shashi.htm, April 6, 2000
2000s

“But no - what’s this? The branch on which he is sitting is weak. That is not all: wood-mice are gnawing away at it: before long they will eat through it and it will snap and fall. The branch sags down over a well. Aha! Escape! Perhaps our hero can swim? But the well is dry and there are snakes writhing and hissing on its bed. As the branch bends lower, he perceives a solitary blade of grass on wall of well. On top of the blade of grass gleams a drop of honey. What is our hero to do? What action does our puranic man quintessential Indian, take in the situation? He bends with the branch and licks up the honey…. What did you expect? Some neat solution to the problem? The tiger changes its mind and goes away? Amitabh Bachchan leaps to the rescue? Don’t be silly. One strength of Indian mind is that it knows some problems cannot be resolved and it learns to make best of them. That is the Indian answer to the insuperable difficulty. One does not fight against that by which one is certain to be overwhelmed; but one finds the best way, for oneself, to live with it. This is our national aesthetic. Without it, india as we know it could not survive.”

Shashi Tharoor book The Great Indian Novel

The Great Indian Novel (1989)

Way , Problem , Grass , Learning

“"It was as if he had heard what I wanted," she said. But a skilled magician can do that, and it would be wrong to see Sai Baba as a conjurer. He has channeled the hopes and energies of his followers into constructive directions, both spiritual and philanthropic.”

Shashi Tharoor

The Hindu, "Reality - Spiritual and Virtual", Nov 10, 2002 Available Online http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/mag/2002/11/10/stories/2002111000620300.htm.
2000s

Hope

“Secularism as principle and practice is in danger, but I do not see it falling anytime soon: India embodies tolerance and pluralism in its very essence, and I do not believe that forces of hatred can permanently overcome our fundamental secularism.”

Shashi Tharoor

Source: "Secularism as principle and practice in India is in ‘danger’: Shashi Tharoor" https://indianexpress.com/article/india/shashi-tharoor-new-book-securalism-religion-6912107/, The Indian Express, November 1, 2020.