Shashi Tharoor

“Brutish’ as an acceptable substitute for ‘British’ rule in India!”

— Shashi Tharoor

“history is neither for excuses nor for revenge 1.”

— Shashi Tharoor

“In debate he thought high and aimed low.”

— Shashi Tharoor

“History belongs to the past, but understanding it is the duty of the present”

— Shashi Tharoor

“One cannot take revenge upon history; history is its own revenge”

— Shashi Tharoor

Terrorism is a principal preoccupation in most of our international contacts.

— Shashi Tharoor

I don't go by my caste, creed or religion. My works speak for me.

— Shashi Tharoor

The only possible idea of India is that of a nation greater than the sum of its parts.

— Shashi Tharoor

“Forget heaven and hell, yaar,” he says as he leaves. “It’s purgatory I’m concerned about. We call it Earth.”

— Shashi Tharoor

There is not a thing as the wrong place, or the wrong time. We are where we are at the only time…

— Shashi Tharoor

India has been born and reborn scores of times, and it will be reborn again. India is forever, and India is forever…

— Shashi Tharoor

“...(It) is to one British colonial policy-maker or another that we owe the Boxer Rebellion, the Mau Mau insurrection, the Boer War,…

— Shashi Tharoor

“Justice, in British India, was far from blind: it was highly attentive to the skin colour of the defendant.”

— Shashi Tharoor

“The British ruled nineteenth-century India with unshakeable self-confidence, buttressed by protocol, alcohol and a lot of gall.”

— Shashi Tharoor

“India is my country, and in that sense my outrage is personal. But I seek nothing from history—only an account of itself.”

— Shashi Tharoor

The abrupt and sudden death of my wife has taken a severe emotional and psychic toll on me. On top of that,…

— Shashi Tharoor

I returned to India because I believe in an India of honesty and hard work, not of corruption and crookedness. I believe…

— Shashi Tharoor

“It is a bit rich for the Brits to suppress, exploit, imprison, torture and maim a people for 200 years and then…

— Shashi Tharoor

Above all, Danny Boyle's 'Slumdog Millionaire' is the work of an artist at the peak of his powers. India is his palette,…

— Shashi Tharoor

The U.N. guards the vital principles entrenched in its charter, notably the sovereign equality of states and the inadmissibility of interference in…

— Shashi Tharoor

Hindu fundamentalism is a contradiction in terms, since Hinduism is a religion without fundamentals; there is no such thing as a Hindu…

— Shashi Tharoor

When I grew up in India, telephones were a rarity. In fact, they were so rare that elected members of Parliament had…

— Shashi Tharoor

“Like most Hindus, I think I have. I am, as I told you, a believer, despite a brief period of schoolboy atheism…

— Shashi Tharoor

“Jinnah proved obdurate: he was determined to obtain Pakistan. The Muslim League leader declared 16 August 1946 as ‘Direct Action Day’ to…

— Shashi Tharoor

“As Henry Nevinson also pointed out, the rule of law, such as it was, functioned in a system in which Indians were…

— Shashi Tharoor

“At the beginning of the eighteenth century, as the British economic historian Angus Maddison has demonstrated, India’s share of the world economy…

— Shashi Tharoor

Basically, there are two kinds of stereotypes out there in the world about America. There's America the Goliath - the big, powerful,…

— Shashi Tharoor

This is the one international institution we have in which governments get together to work collectively for a common purpose. International crises,…

— Shashi Tharoor

“An India that denies itself to some of us could end up being denied to all of us. This would be a…

— Shashi Tharoor

“Agood part of the British case for having created India’s political unity and democracy lies in the evolution of three of democracy’s…

— Shashi Tharoor

A philosopher is a lover of wisdom, not of knowledge, which for all its great uses ultimately suffers from the crippling effect…

— Shashi Tharoor

“The parliamentary democracy we have adopted involves the British perversity of electing a legislature to form an executive: this has created a…

— Shashi Tharoor

“And then, of course, there was the sari itself. What a garment, Randy! There isn’t another outfit in the world that balances…

— Shashi Tharoor

“Jawaharlal Nehru, who wrote in a 1936 letter to an Englishman, Lord Lothian, that British rule is ‘based on an extreme form…

— Shashi Tharoor

“1891, a journalist from the Amrita Bazar Patrika managed to rummage through the wastepaper basket at the office of Viceroy Lord Lansdowne.…

— Shashi Tharoor

“Sometimes a rut can be a comfortable place to be, but ours was full of too many differences and resentments to be…

— Shashi Tharoor

“Opening lines of The Great Indian Novel narrated as a modern day MahaBharata. They tell me India is an underdeveloped country. They…

— Shashi Tharoor

“Personally, I am far from convinced that the British system is suited to India. The parliamentary democracy we have adopted involves the…

— Shashi Tharoor

“The Mahatma’s singular insight was that self-government would never be achieved by the resolutions passed by a self-regarding and unelected elite pursuing…

— Shashi Tharoor

I'm not a techno-determinist. I believe we need to improve our existing human resources, and technology can only be a complement.

— Shashi Tharoor