Before delivering a talk on India in the 21st century, organised by Round Table India in association with The Telegraph on February 25, Shashi Tharoor (in picture) got talking with Metro on Calcutta, censorship and more. Excerpts.

You have an old connection with Calcutta. Do you like coming back here? Is there any particular place you visit?

I do enjoy many aspects of Calcutta but this time there’s one special thing. My batch in St. Xavier’s is celebrating its 40th anniversary. Well, it’s a few months late because we finished school in December 1971, but in those days the exam papers had to be shipped off to Cambridge so we got our results only in March or April 1972. We’re all gathering on a launch tomorrow (February 26) and it will cruise the Hooghly. That is something I’m particularly looking forward to on this trip.

Otherwise, I like seeing some of the changes. There’s a cliché that Calcutta never changes but the physical changes have actually been quite significant. I mean this hotel [ITC Sonar] didn’t exist when I was growing up; the Indian Museum has got such a wonderful scrub-down that you can see it’s a gorgeous white building! I see the city coming to life — a huge flyover over Lower Circular Road is another remarkable accomplishment. So I think there is progress, there are things coming up that make Calcutta like any other Indian city but there are things that are special about Calcutta, whether it’s College Street, Marble Palace or Victoria Memorial. I used to live near Victoria, I still have a fondness for it. The city is full of various kinds of charms. But usually it’s the people you remember, so rather than visiting sites, I tend to visit people.

You recently your reservations about the government’s move to censor the Internet…

I spoke to Mr Sibal [IT minister Kapil Sibal] and he assured me that there was no such intention. However, there is a real problem with some of the very offensive material that is being posted on the Internet that would offend people’s religious sensibilities. In a country like ours, you can’t really afford to have things out there that could be used by people, including opportunistic politicians, to stir up trouble…. So, there are laws in the country against hate speech, inciting violence, communal hatred and so on… and those are the kind of laws we have to try and invoke. It’s not specifically Internet-directed. That is the understanding I have of what Mr Sibal was trying to do and when he spoke to me along those lines I had no difficulty accepting that.

I am fundamentally attached to the freedom of the press and I think the Internet is a part of that. I think that particularly issues involving art, literature and, of course, politics should be beyond government interference. I think if people say nasty things about politicians, we have to take it. I’ve had more than my fair share and I’ll say that at the end of the day you have to basically tell yourself that when you are in the kitchen, you’ve got to be prepared for the heat.

You had tweeted your disagreement with the judiciary too, on this issue … [On January 13, Tharoor had tweeted, “Wonder if courts aren’t going after the wrong target: Can phone companies be sued if someone sends a defamatory/obsceneSMS?]

I was just concerned to read about the Delhi high court trying to go after Internet service providers. If a newspaper publishes something bad, you would prosecute the newspaper, you wouldn’t prosecute the delivery boy. And the Internet service provider is like a delivery boy… I hope the Internet service provider will feel an obligation to cooperate with the government in tracking down the person who has deliberately put up hurtful matter on the Internet. But it makes no sense to prosecute them [service providers].

But isn’t there a thin line between what, as you say, a responsible government needs to keep an eye on, and censorship like in China?

But there’s a huge difference! China employs 40,000 people to do nothing but monitor the Internet to take down anything remotely critical of the Communist Party in China, the work of the government or whatever. If we ever went that way, I would be myself out on the streets protesting it.

Having worked abroad and now in India, is there anything that you miss?

Well, I try not to miss things! It’s foolish to look back in the sense of missing something because that means you are not wholly committed to what you are doing now. My horizons are now India. If I’m a Lok Sabha MP the challenges of my constituency have to be my priority. If we are looking at the kind of challenges you and I are talking about, I need to have my whole attention there than worry about that oh, in New York, it would’ve been different (laughs).

So you see yourself in the Indian political situation in say, the next 10 years or more?

Well, I’ve certainly come in with a tremendous commitment to try and contribute to the change and progress of our country. And I do believe I have been able to make a small contribution. As minister I did several things that hadn’t been done before… I’ve earned the respect of people in that ministry, including some who were rather sceptical when I came in… In Parliament also, I’ve been given the opportunity by my party to participate in some major debates, I led the Treasure Benches on the debate on foreign policy, when the BJP ruled a motion against our foreign policy, I’m proud of my performance there. I participated in a major way in the Lokpal Bill debate, in the black money debate… And if my party in its wisdom gives me a ticket again, I’m certainly keen on contesting….

Coming to your other avatar, the author, are you working on anything right now?

I am. I’m working on — well, struggling to work on because finding time is a challenge — a book on the place of India in the 21st century world. It’s a sort of foreign policy book but it’s not just foreign policy. It’s about things we need from the world and how we can relate to other countries to get them….

What about fiction? You haven’t written a novel since Riot in 2002…

I would love to but with fiction, you need not just time, which is scarce enough in my life, but you need a space in your head. A space to create an alternative universe, to populate it with characters, episodes, dialogue, etc, that are as real to you as the people you are meeting in real life. Non-fiction is interruptible… but with fiction it’s worse because when there is an interruption of a considerable period, the entire magic spell is broken and the dream world you have created gets shattered.

Since Riot, I’ve begun two or three novels that I have simply abandoned because you really have to be immersed. I have three novel ideas bubbling at the back of my head. I’m not going to talk about them yet, but god willing, one day, after this book is out of the way, I will try and go back to fiction because so many of my readers are clamouring for more.

By Samhita Chakraborty