Writers on Writing: Shashi Tharoor and “Expanding Boundaries with
a Colonial Legacy”
Shashi Tharoor’s perspective on the writing
process emerges from the concepts of geography and language, of authenticity
and readership. Writing about India in English has its claims to inauthenticity
which Tharoor debunks. Tharoor states the circumstances around a writer should
not affect the reader. I disagree. I
think the writing process is just as much about the reader as it is for the
writer. When an artist paints, there is an end audience in mind, but what about
painting for art’s sake? What about writing for writing’s sake? Surely formats
such as stream of consciousness were founded in the act of letting writing
loose and are about the verb side of
writing rather than the noun side.
Well-balanced writers will write with the writer and the reader in mind, but
there is certainly room for those who tip the scales on either side. Writing
just as a form of expression has its merits as does someone who thinks nothing
of themselves and only of their audience.
Tharoor states he writes in English about India,
a language mastered only by about 2 percent of the Indian population. Tharoor’s
United Nations background lends him a blended cultural experience and claims
his most natural state is precisely what he writes from – an Indian writing in
English. He cites colonialism for the emergence of English as his preferred
language as well as other colonial developments. He states the time has passed
for concern about points in colonialism and that many Indians feel natural in
speaking and writing in English. Surely this state of mind is the truest form
as it is the most honest and most natural. English is also less biased in
writing about India because “English
expresses that diversity better than any Indian language precisely because it
is not rooted in any one region of my vast country” (Tharoor, 2001, para. 10).
The lack of regional language in writing about India makes it more universal
and able to be described in greater truth.
Given the ability to translate texts, he
feels the act of writing in a particular language is not important. “Inevitably the English language fundamentally
affects the content of each book, but it does not determine the audience of the
writer; as long as translations exist, language is a vehicle, not a destination”
(Tharoor, 2001, para. 13).
Ultimately, writing from whichever space is
the truest and most natural for the writer should be the frame in which the
best texts emerge. Writing is also of the heart. He states, “I have never been much of a literary
theoretician — I always felt that for a writer to study literature at
university would be like learning about girls at medical school” Tharoor, 2001,
para. 6). There is something organic about writing that cannot always be
dissected and I share this sentiment. Lastly, Tharoor feels “addresses don't
matter, because writers really live inside their heads and on the page, and
geography is merely a circumstance” (Tharoor, 2001, para. 17). Shared with this
sense of “non-location” is the realm of new and social media. Regardless of the
geographical space in which audiences' read, the principles remain the same in
weighing the writer and the reader. From this course it is clear journalists
have conscious codes of conduct to follow and police their own ethical guidelines
which do reach unto social media -- another arena devoid of geographical boundaries.
References
Tharoor, Shashi. (2001). “Expanding Boundaries with a Colonial
Legacy.” The New York Times.
Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/30/books/30THAR.html?pagewanted=1
“Writers on Writing.” (2009). The
New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/books/specials/writers.html
