Pax Indica: India and the World of the Twenty-first Century

Acknowledgements

This book is a work of reflection, not scholarship, though it draws upon a variety of published and unpublished sources. As a harried member of Parliament attending to his own research and writing amid a number of other preoccupations, I consciously cast this work as an extended analytical essay, devoid of footnotes or reference material. However, most of the attributed quotations in this volume can be found in one or another of the handful of books and other sources cited in the Bibliography.

Though a number of friends inside and outside the diplomatic profession have contributed (sometimes unknowingly) to my appreciation of the issues analysed in this book, I would like to single out for gratitude my former MEA colleague Sandeep Chakravorty and my occasional op-ed collaborator Keerthik Sasidharan, who ploughed through the entire manuscript, for their invaluable comments and insights. To them, to my son Kanishk Tharoor and to my friends Virat Bhatia and Arun Kumar, who offered comments on specific portions of the book, as well as to my editors Jaishree Ram Mohan and Udayan Mitra of Penguin, I am most grateful. Nonetheless I remain solely responsible for the contents, arguments and conclusions of Pax Indica, and responsibility for any sins of omission or commission is mine alone.

Portions of the book have appeared, in different form, as articles or columns in the Asian Age/Deccan Chronicle, Times of India, Guardian, The Hindu, Mail Today, Fortune India, the journal Ethics and International Affairs and in my internationally syndicated column (issued through Project Syndicate), all of which publications are gratefully acknowledged.

It also bears stressing that though I am a member of the Indian National Congress party and a Member of Parliament, the opinions expressed in this book are strictly personal and engage neither the Government of India, nor the political party of which I am a member, nor any other institution with which I may happen to be associated.

My wife Sunanda rightly forced me to devote the time necessary to complete the book when its writing, beset by too many other distractions, had been dragging on for far too long. For her determination, tenacity and love, I have no words that are adequate. I promised her that the book would be in her hands in time for her birthday, and I present it to her with gratitude as a humble offering — and a promise fulfilled. New Delhi, March 2012 SHASHI THAROOR