Jawaharlal Nehru is the most under-appreciated prose writer of the 20th century,” said author and former minister of state for external affairs Shashi Tharoor, speaking at the last day of the Hay Literature Festival in Thiruvananthapuram on Sunday.
The MP from Kerala, who was in conversation with Hay Festival founder-director Peter Florence, said Nehru wrote from a sensibility that today’s politicians lacked. “I would like to see more of that sensibility in our leaders today,” he said, adding that Nehru had to do most of his writings in jail. Tharoor said the “demands” of politics have affected his pursuits as a writer. “As an MP, I have discovered that I am expected to keep doing favours to the people of my constituency who come to me for things like pension, transfer, etc.,” he said. And he has to honour all such requests as he knows that a politician who fails to meet such “expectations” is voted out.
Tharoor, the author of novels like The Great Indian Novel and Riot, said he didn’t have the luxury to write novels anymore.