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Shekhar Gupta | February 8, 2014 12:36 pm

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Dont say he didnt warn us.

Read his scary little manifesto,
in which it all starts with a king,
a courtesan and their gram
sabha.

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Dont say he didnt

warn us. Read his
scary little
manifesto, in which
it all starts with a
king, a courtesan
and their gram
sabha.
Tweet This

Philosophically, Kejriwal draws inspiration from ancient India. (PTI)

Dont say he didnt warn us. Read his scary little manifesto, in which it
all starts with a king, a courtesan and their gram sabha.
Its the season for us, of the older vintage in the media starting with
Arun Shourie, teacher to many of us to complain endlessly about
the juvenility and narrow short-termism in our public discourse. This
harms public interest and is also unfair to those targeted in such
arguments. My sympathies must, therefore, go out to Arvind Kejriwal
on this count. He put together his revolutionary thoughts on what is
wrong with India and how to fix it, in a tiny book of no more than
35,000 words or so, called Swaraj, published by HarperCollins in
2012. To make it more affordable, Kejriwal even waived his royalties
most graciously, so it costs all of Rs 135, in English. Its been printed
in large type-size with plenty of spacing to make it even easier to
read.

Greater public participation

must be combined with

Here is an exciting political debutante who does the one thing no

Indian politician has done perhaps since Nehru wrote his Discovery of
India over hundreds of intellectually challenging pages, or since Guru
Golwalkar of the RSS wrote his somewhat more simple-minded
Bunch of Thoughts. But what has been in discussion and debate
lately? Not Kejriwals thoughts, but a Noida-based writers doubtful
claim that Kejriwal plagiarised his book. Now you know what we are
complaining about: this horrible trivialisation of all public discourse.
Because what matters is the thoughts contained in the book, as long
as Kejriwal does not deny they are his.

07:30 pm, Feb 08, 2014

07:17 pm, Feb 08, 2014

08-02-2014 20:19

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08-02-2014 20:19

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