BOOKLESS IN BAGHDAD: Reflections on Writing and Writers by SHASHI THAR00R Viking-Penguin India

SHASHI THAROOR's new collection of essays, Bookless in Baghdad, is, as is to be expected, wide ranging, extending from analyses of literary figures to impassioned defenses of Tharoor's own works, and from incisive short pieces on culture in America — including a compassionate and startling piece on illiteracy — to a continuing attempt to defend the Indian writer in English. The last, in fact, is a thread that runs through these essays, and it is to Tharoor's credit that he continues to engage with this issue, because through it, he affirms an India that is pluralist and inclusive, the India, as he reminds you, he grew up in.

The book is divided into five sections, but it is only the last, called "Interrogations", which is overtly "political", in the sense that Tharoor makes a statement or refers to events post-9/11; here it is in the context of globalisation. He displays, of course, in the other essays, a relentlessly active intelligence: in questioning Calcutta's citizens for opposing the making of the City of Joy. The title essay, as it meditates on the fate of Baghdadis as they sell their books on the streets of Baghdad in 1998, affords a picture of a world under threat.

Piece on Muggeridge

The section that appealed to me most was the section called "Reconsiderations", on books and writers. Tharoor's deft and incisive mind is displayed to advantage in the piece on Nirad Chaudhari. His piece on Malcolm Muggeridge is a gem: "Much of Muggeridge's appeal, it must be said, lay in his irreverence. But if he was famously contrarian, it was in the service of a larger cause: the preservation of a society in which "everything should be subject to criticism', authority was always suspect and conformism was to be avoided". Tharoor's essay on Wodehouse and India will be a source of great pleasure too: "Part of Wodehouse's appeal to Indians certainly lies in the uniqueness of style, which inveigled us into a sort of conspiracy of universalism: for his mock serious generalisations were, of course, as absurd to those he was ostensibly writing about as to us".

However, it isn't only Tharooor's skill in bringing his subjects alive that interested me, but his choice of subjects: Lecarre, R.K. Narayan, Neruda. To all these he brings insights: the essay on Lecarre, particularly, illuminates the interstices of Lecarre's mind and his own rather horrifying politics in the shadowy world he has always engaged himself in. Tharoor is also fascinated, for obvious reasons, by the figure of the diplomat writer, and provides us with several examples of these writers. His essay on Naipaul pushes us further into the realm of the darkness of the heart, in scrutinising the relationship between Naipaul and his father.

It remains a pleasure, after these poignant insights, to be entertained with descriptions of cultural consumption at a literary festival in Los Angeles, or by a description of the literary festival at Hay-on-Wye where Rushdie comes out of hiding and addresses the audience. Tharoor makes it a point to return to Rushdie through several of these essays: Rushdie becomes a figure who represents a pluralist India, much like Tharoor himself , and in his dissections of Midnight's Children and The Moor's Last Sigh, he sees Rushdie as representative of "the Indian idea — the most gifted reinventor of Indianness since Nehru. Tharoor reminds us — and this, I think, is worth remembering: "That India still exists, it has not yet fallen to the bigotry of chauvinists".

A few minor quibbles: I'm not sure the defence of St. Stephen's is of as great interest to readers as it is to Tharoor: while he argues persuasively against bigotry in insisting that St. Stephen's not be seen as a bastion of elitism, and while he also rightly argues against complacent critics who see the "Stephanian" as deracinated , the essay is much too long and elides far too many issues. Similarly, the essay on globalisation and an analysis of the world post-9/11 falters as it tries to articulate its position: by virtue of the fact that Tharoor is with the U.N., he can scarcely be expected to afford a serious analysis of the situation.

However, this remains a collection worth reading, (the essays have appeared in a variety of publications) both for its writer's deft prose and for his liberal position, articulated through a masterful analysis of culture and literature.