Arun Shourie - Publications

Publications

Arun Shourie has written about 26 books. He is known for his well-researched and thought-provoking writings. His writings have gained him a considerable following around the country, as well as several national and international honours. Among these are the Padma Bhushan, the Magsaysay Award, the Dadabhai Naoroji Award, the Astor Award, the K.S. Hegde Award and the International Editor of the Year Award and The Freedom to Publish Award.

• In Does He Know a Mother's Heart? Arun Shourie discusses the perennial question that has grappled mankind since eternity: "If there is a kind,compassionate, all-knowing God, how can there be extreme suffering in this world?". Shourie analyses various religious scriptures in his quest for the answer to this question. The book is also a personal narrative of a father whose son was diagnosed with cerebral palsy as a child (Shourie's son Aditya is now 34 years old), and of a husband whose wife is a Parkinson's Disease patient. The personal narrative is particularly heart wrenching.
• In We Must Have No Price, which is a collection of his articles published earlier in The Indian Express, and of his speeches in the Rajya Sabha and several lectures that he delivered at IIT Kanpur and elsewhere, Shourie presses for reforms in the higher education sector, in the economic sector and in political parties (specifically BJP, the party to which he belongs).
• In his book Worshipping False Gods, Shourie criticized B.R. Ambedkar, the leader of Dalits, for alleged complicity with the British and lust for power and wealth. In pune his face was blackened by Dalit peoples for criticizing Ambedkar in his book.
• In A Secular Agenda (1997, ISBN 81-900199-3-7), Shourie discusses various problems faced by India due to minority appeasement and pseudo-secularism practiced by the Indian politicians. The book starts with a discourse on the definition of a nation. He cites examples of other nations in Europe to counter the arguments of people who do not consider India as one nation due to its different languages and religions. He argues for a Uniform Civil Code in the book and the abolition of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution. He also discusses the problem related to infiltration from Bangladesh and the inability of the Indian government to solve it.

• Eminent_Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud (1998, ISBN 81-900199-8-8) discusses the NCERT controversy in Indian politics and attacks Marxist historiography. Shourie asserts that Marxist historians have controlled and misused important institutions like the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR), the National Council of Educational Research Training (NCERT) and a large part of academia and the media. He criticizes well-known historians like Romila Thapar and Irfan Habib. Shourie argues that Marxist historians have white-washed the records of rulers like Mahmud of Ghazni and Aurangzeb. Shourie presents examples to further his argument of how many of these text books describe in great detail foreign personalities like Karl Marx or Joseph Stalin, while they often barely mention important figures of India or of the Indian states. Shourie writes that this is in contrast to Russian Marxist text books. The standard Soviet work A History of India (1973) is according to Shourie much more objective and truthful than the history books written by the Indian Marxists.

• In Falling Over Backwards: An essay against Reservations and against Judicial populism, Shourie examines the history of reservations as to why they were originally introduced, the relevant sections in the Indian Constitution and the reasoning behind the exact words used. He then cites the rulings of courts to emphasise on the degeneration of judiciary from an upholder of the original values to openly flouting them. He examines how the Constitution was generously interpreted by consecutive court rulings to arrive at conclusions completely opposite to what the Constitution makers originally intended. He cites exact rulings and judgements to make his point. He then proceeds to discuss the introduction of reservations in promotions, the Rooster System, the arrival at the 50% limit and the subsequent flouting of it. Next, he proceeds to the logic behind the Mandal recommendations and the basis on which the same were made. He then examines the base of the commissions rulings, i.e., the 1931 census (the last time caste-based census was held in India), and showcases how the findings, ambiguous to begin with by the census takers' own admissions, was conveniently used by the commission. In the final part of the book, Shourie examines the effects of reservations in bureaucracy and elsewhere, citing specific examples and cases to highlight the absurdness that has set in and its adverse effect on the institutions. He discusses the future that the trend portends, and makes ominous predictions if the slide is not stopped. Shourie ends by quoting Nehru's remarks on reservations 'This way lies not folly, but disaster.'
• Governance and the sclerosis that has set in: Arun Shourie discusses the rot prevalent in the bureaucracy and the inordinate delay that accompanies every task. Various cases are cited along with their timeline and their motion through the various channels bringing home the inefficiency of the structure. Shourie also discusses certain incidents involving his stint as the Disinvestment minister in the Vajpayee government. Lack of efficacy of various state governments, PSUs and departments is also discussed. Shourie suggests doing away with obsolete legislation and simplifying the processes.
• The World of Fatwas or the Sharia in Action: Shourie discusses the concept of fatwas, the premises surrounding the sharia code of laws, its universality and how it is being used as a tool to keep the Muslim masses in a state of agitated isolation. He exposes the secular view of Islam's institutions and its ulemas in India as being incomplete and shrouded in hypocrisy. He discusses the need of a concerted program of reform headed by Muslim Liberals to vitiate the deleterious effects of the all-pervading power of the ulema. He also touches upon some contemporary issues such as the Shah Bano case and dissects the response of the fundamentalists as being symptomatic of the view of women as second class citizens propagated by the Quran and the Hadis. The book also focusses on the conflict between the world view advocated by the fatwas and that of modern science.