Nehru: The Invention of India

“Tharoor writes with shrewd wit and cautious ambivalence about Nehru, whom he admires as the Thomas Jefferson of India...[an] engaging short biography.” —Publishers Weekly

Shashi Tharoor delivers an incisive biography of the great secularist who—alongside his spiritual father, Mahatma Gandhi—led the movement for India’s independence from British rule and ushered his newly independent country into the modern world. The man who would one day help topple British rule and become India’s first prime minister started out as a surprisingly unremarkable student. Born into a wealthy, politically influential Indian family in the waning years of the Raj, Jawaharlal Nehru was raised on Western secularism and the humanist ideas of the Enlightenment. Once he met Gandhi in 1916, Nehru threw himself into the nonviolent struggle for India’s independence, a struggle that wasn’t won until 1947. India had found a perfect political complement to her more spiritual advocate, but neither Nehru nor Gandhi could prevent the horrific price for independence: partition. This fascinating biography casts an unflinching eye on Nehru’s heroic efforts for, and stewardship of, independent India and gives us a careful appraisal of his legacy to the world.

“A good summing up of Nehru’s triumphs and failures...Tharoor’s style is smooth and pleasant.” —The New York Times Book Review

“How Tharoor achieves such lucidity along with scholarly exigence is absolutely remarkable.” —Nadine Gordimer, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature