Published Paper Details:

The Great Indian Novel takes on the entire subcontinent beginning with India under British in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century down to India post Emergency period. It covers all the major political historical event of the twentieth century �the events of national freedom movement like the Champaran Satyagrah, the Dandi March, the Round Table conference and the Quite India Movement along with the events of the partition, India�s independent, the wars with china and Pakistan, the liberation of Goa, the Emergency and after. Writing about The Great Indian Novel, Sashi Tharoor sets out his intention: �The great Indian novel� speaks for an India of multiple realities and multiple interpretation of reality. Throughout the novel runs an acknowledgement of the multiplicity of truth that has given shape and substance to the idea of India. But these realities about India conveniently fall into the categories of good and bad, transitory and lasting, wishful and undesirable. The India Tharoor talks of is as much a product of virtues as vices, and demonstration in their consummation a purpose of enlightenment, and awareness of the pit full that could have been avoided to preempt the process of the big events like the partition and the Emergency. India, as now, emerged in the freedom struggle, when various strands of social, political and cultural consciousness converged. It was a heroic mass struggle against an alien power structure, which subjugated India on the plea of trade. As this common colonial enemy is defeated, and the power is to be inherited, shared and administered, enemy from within disrupts and divided. This strange reality un-folding the inner self of man, impacts a value or creed to every calling, which culminates in the realization of momentary identity rather than the eternal. The process of being together is forgotten for the products of self serving ends. The light value of human existence is ever going, and the need to suppose and sustain how best the worst could be avoided is somewhat basic in the history of mankind as underscored here.