The Elephant, the Tiger, and the Cell Phone: Reflections on India, the Emerging 21st-Century Power

by Shashi Tharoor

Book Overview

In his critically acclaimed previous work, India: From Midnight to the Millennium and Beyond, Shashi Tharoor, one of India's most respected writers and diplomats, traced the country's history from... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1559708948
• ISBN13: 9781559708944
• Release Date: October 2008
• Publisher: Arcade Publishing
• Length: 498 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A excellent book about India by an Indian not just for Indians

Shashi Tharoor has presented an objective analyses of India by discussing its strengths and weaknesses in a wonderfully endearing manner, that makes this book a great read. I especially liked the preface where he summarizes the world-view about India as a lumbering elephant that lorded over the jungle in the distant past, but is now superseded by tigers and other animals that were quicker to change. The preface concludes with an observation that the rest of the jungle now sees the elephant growing stripes and acquiring a spring in its steps. Only time (or his next book) will tell us whether the transformation of the elephant into the tiger is here to stay or not. I, for one, am itching to know!!!

Mandatory reading if you want to understand India

The Elephant, the Tiger, and the Cell Phone, The: The Emerging 21st- Century Power, Shashi Tharoor - We Indians are often so starved for some metric -- any metric, really -- of validation that we blindly embrace Indians of all stripes residing outside India. What else could explain our head-long rush to claim Bobby Jindal as one of our own while demonstrating obvious restraint for Mr. Shashi Tharoor? (For those readers who may not know Mr. Jindal, he is the Indian-American governor of the US state of Louisiana.) Unarguably, and just as unfortunately, present the names of Mr. Jindal and Mr. Tharoor to any Indian in the US and the chances are better than even that they have pride in Mr. Jindal while drawing blanks when Mr. Tharoor's name is mentioned. This is an egregious sin, for Mr. Tharoor revels in being an Indian as much as Mr. Jindal repudiates it. This revelry in all things Indian is evident in Mr. Tharoor's latest book. He staunchly believes and defends the Indian notion of secularism, which he maintains is not the absence of any religion, but the proliferation of many religions, all equally protected under the constitution (a point he makes in other books as well, most notably in India: from midnight to the millennium). Going further, he makes the point that where else can you find a political landscape so diverse that in the 2004 Indian elections, a Sikh (Manmohan Singh), representing a Congress party headed by a Catholic (Sonia Gandhi), was sworn in as prime minister by a Muslim president (A.P.J. Abdul Kalam)! It is certainly hard to argue against that now, isn't it? The book is great reading. Besides the weighty issues of politics, religion, constitution, and culture, Mr. Tharoor also makes detours to cover the light-hearted issues of ever-changing city names in India (Bombay becomes Mumbai, etc.), and the desire to add extra consonants and vowels in soap operas because the producers believe that this extra letter will certainly and undoubtedly lend an air of success to the endeavor! Oh, did I mention the fascination that Indians have with cricket? Any student of modern India -- be it in the political arena or cultural one -- can ill afford to eschew the ruminations of Mr. Tharoor. My advice: if you are Indian and really want to be proud of it, read Mr. Tharoor and leave Mr. Jindal to his devices.

Pleasant Patriotism

I adore Tharoor's erudite and amusing writing. This book feels like home with its loving description of all that matters - cricket, family, community, cinema, history, religion and politics - in that order. The author's pet theme is the ostensibly unwieldy yet absurdly functional pluralism fed by a range of coalition memberships - geographies, cricket solidarities and common political antipathies. I love that Tharoor describes his India as an individual experience rather than an objective concept. Tharoor subtly endorses the thumping progressive new Indians with his metaphor of an elephant who became a tiger - suggesting provocatively that the vulgarly ostentatious 'five star culture' is more authentic than the discreet opulence of the club culture. However, his intense nostalgia quite clear in the subtext of every syllable - the longing for the old names Madras and Bombay, the self-conscious diginity of Nehruvian democracy and the portrayal of St. Stephens as a modern Nalanda of sorts! Yet, there is nothing fatalistic or too precious about Tharoor - he denounces superstition and horsocopes and doesn't mind writing that as a man he'd like to see women in elegant saris. It's the sort of nice nationalism that warms one without being too jarring or jingoistic.

Excellent book on Modern Day India

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Shashi Tharur's well-rounded analysis of various issues in Modern India. A must-read for non-resident as well as resident Indians !!!

A great book for non Indians too

I wanted to know a bit more about Indian culture and Indian history and I love this book. It's so well written. You must have some basic knolwedge of Indian history to understand it though. If you don't know who Nehru was and what the "partition" was you need to read some books before this one. The book helped me to discover many facets of the Indian culture and society: the importance of secularism (and the current threats), the basic tenets of hinduism, the difference between north and south, the passion for cricket, the odd habit of changing cities' names, the use of the sari (or the lack of use), etc. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in knowing more about India.