Libraries Of Leaders: Arun Shourie And His Passion For Books
What Arun Shourie reads and recommends...
Arun Shourie, whose 27th book just hit the stands, has written on a variety of issues ranging from foreign policy to jurisprudence to history and secularism. And his writing spans his career as an economist, journalist and politician.
Shourie, who graduated from Delhi’s St Stephens College and has a PhD from Syracuse University in New York, has worked at the World Bank, was the editor of the Indian Express during Emergency, was named one of the International Press Institutes World Freedom Heroes, and has won the Ramon Magasasay Award and the Padma Bhushan.
His most recent title ‘The Mind of the Saints: Speculations around Ramakrishna Paramhansa and Ramana Maharishi’ dwells on how religious experiences can be explained just like any other natural phenomenon. They are nothing but tricks that our mind plays on us, Shourie asserts, while taking the reader through prominent ideas in psychology, neurobiology, neuro-theology and philosophy.
In Shourie’s own words, the larger message of the book is that the “inner directed search” is the essence of Indic religions. “As long as we are pursuing that search, we will be one. If we start focusing on externals – he is wearing green and so his heart is Islamic. He is venerating the cow, or not venerating the cow, then the country will go into great problems.”
Like all authors, Shourie is also an avid reader, and reads two or three books at a time. Most of his reading revolves around historical circumstance. Authors such as William Boyd, Robert Harris and Hilary Mantel find prominence. The former Member of Parliament and Union minister shared some of his favourite books with BloombergQuint.
1. The Mirror Of Beauty by Shamsur Rahman Faruqi
According to Shourie, the book has an “audaciously wide canvas” and encapsulates the glory of the Mughal Empire at the end of its days. The vividly descriptive novel combines seemingly unrelated characters, landscapes, people and professions, and makes for an engaging read.
In the last few years, among novels set in India, I liked most Shamsur Rahman Faruqi’s ‘The Mirror of Beauty’. Because of its exquisite details and its digressions, and because it shows that the century we have forsaken as decadent had in fact developed a highly sophisticated culture and a subtle aesthetic.Arun Shourie
2. Man's Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl
This is an autobiographical account by a man who was once an inmate at the dreaded Auschwitz concentration camp. The book expounds the idea that there is more to life than pleasure. Though tragedy and suffering are unavoidable, there is always a way to look within and cope with whatever life throws at you. The book, Shourie said, helped him “deal with the blows of fate”.
3. Philosophy and Poetry
Shourie said he always carries three sets of books around with him – a compilation of Buddha’s teachings, a volume of poetry by the prominent Urdu and Persian poet Mirza Ghalib, and another by the revolutionary poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz.