Shashi Tharoor: Nehru\'s idea of India more accomplishable than Gandhiji\'s

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The highlight of the final day of Spaces Fest at Kanakakunnu was a talk by Dr Shashi Tharoor on Postcolonial Urbanism in India: The Nehruvian Vision of Modernity.

Despite reaching the venue late by an hour, the intellectually famished audience patiently waited for him, and he didn't fail to satisfy their hunger as his company left the audience applauding for him.

Dr Tharoor delved into enlightening historical references as to why Nehru's idea of India was more accomplishable than the one Mahatma Gandhi put forward.
"The soul was in the villages, but the body should be from urbanisation," he said, quoting the first Prime Minister on his idea of a future for India.

He further explained that Nehru saw urbanisation as the only solution to the various problems India faced.

Dr Tharoor also enlightened the audience on why would Nehru choose urbanisation and connected his reasoning to the scientific temper he had.

"Nehru used reasoning to explore various kinds of ways in which human beings can grapple with, 'how do we live? while delving about the type of reasoning Nehru used to find the best way to live," he said.

The talk went on covering various aspects of postcolonial urbanisation in India while bringing into focus how Chandigarh became Nehru's experiment on architecture with the help of a French Architect, Le Corbusier.

As he concluded with a question and answer session, he suffered a bout of coughing due to sore throat. The book signing session allowed the audience to have a brief one-on-one time with him.