Gurcharan Das

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Gurcharan Das
Lyallpur, British India
OccupationAuthor

Gurcharan Das is one of India's most celebrated authors and thinkers. He is best known for two iconic, best-selling books: India Unbound offers a personal account of India’s economic rise and is available in numerous languages and filmed by the BBC. The Guardian called it 'a quiet earthquake!' The second,The Difficulty of Being Good, illuminates our day to day moral dilemmas, and ‘one of the best things I’ve read about contribution of great literature to ethical thought,’ according to the philosopher, Martha Nussbaum. The New York Times says, 'Something tremendous is happening in India, and Das, with his keen eye and often elegant prose, has his finger firmly on the pulse of the transformation.'

Gurcharan Das graduated in philosophy with honors from Harvard University, where he was inducted in 2013 into Phi Beta Kappa for ‘high attainments in liberal scholarship.’ He also attended Harvard Business School (AMP) where he is featured in four case studies. He was CEO of Procter & Gamble India and Managing Director, Procter & Gamble Worldwide (Strategic Planning) before he retired early to become a full-time writer. His newspaper columns on current issues and philosophy are among the most widely read in the country.

His other books include India Grows at Night: A liberal case for a strong state, which was on the FT’s best books for 2013. Another major work, Kama: The Riddle of Desire, teaches how to cherish desire in order to live a rich, flourishing life. He has also written a novel, A Fine Family; a book of essays, The Elephant Paradigm, and an anthology, Three Plays. His most recent titles are a memoir, Another Sort of Freedom, which describes his lifelong struggle to give meaning and purpose in life, and a longish essay, and The Dilemma of the Indian Liberal. He has edited for Penguin a 15-volume economic and business history of India, and he lives in Delhi with his wife.

Early life

Gurcharan Das was born in Lyallpur, British India (now Faisalabad, Pakistan) . His father was an engineer with the government of Punjab. The family lived in Lahore at the time of the partition of India in August 1947 when they had to flee for their lives. They arrived as refugees in Shimla, and this is where the young boy grew up. His father was a passionate mystic and meditated for many hours a day and the boy was raised in an atmosphere charged with Bhakti mysticism. His partially autobiographical novel, A Fine Family, sheds some light on his early life.[1]

In 1952, the family moved to Bhakra Nangal; in 1953, to Delhi, where he went to Modern School. In 1955, his father was transferred to Washington DC, to represent India in talks with Pakistan on the sharing of the waters of the rivers of the Punjab, mediated by the World Bank. He went to high school in

Washington D.C. In 1959, he won a scholarship to Harvard University.[2] He graduated from Harvard in 1963 with honours in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. He wrote his senior thesis under the political philosopher, John Rawls
, who had a great influence on his life. Harvard later elected him to Phi Beta Kappa for "high attainments in liberal scholarship."

Corporate career

Instead of accepting a fellowship to do a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Oxford, Gurcharan Das returned home to India. Just before coming back, Das wrote in a letter to his mother that he "just could not imagine living the rest of my life at that stratosphere of abstract thought."[3] While waiting to decide what he wanted to do with his life, he got a job as a trainee in a company that made Vick Vaporub. He soon discovered that he liked the rough and tumble of the business life "and like the man who came to dinner, I stayed on."[4]

Gurcharan Das rose to become the managing director and Chairman of Richardson Hindustan Limited. Before that he spent two summers at Harvard Business School's Advanced Management Program, where he is featured in three case studies.[5] In 1985, his parent company, Richardson Vicks was acquired by Procter and Gamble and he became the first CEO of Procter & Gamble India and vice-president for Procter & Gamble Far East from 1985 and 1992. He then moved headquarters to become vice-president and managing director, Procter & Gamble Worldwide, responsible for global strategic planning.

At the end of 1994, after a 30-year career in six countries, he took early retirement to become a full-time writer. Before leaving he wrote, 'Local Memoirs of a Global Manager in Harvard Business Review.[6]

He has joined a Bangalore-based edtech company, BrightCHAMPS as an advisor on their Global Curriculum Advisory Board.[7][8]

Literary career and books

Gurcharan Das began his writing career as a "weekend writer". In his twenties, he wrote three plays, which were published together as an anthology, titled Three English Plays, by Oxford University Press in 2001 and later re-published as Three Plays by Penguin India in 2011.

At age 23, he wrote his first play, Larins Sahib, which won the Sultan Padamsee Prize in 1968.[9] It was produced by the Theatre Group in Bombay in 1969, published by Oxford University Press in the UK in 1970, and later presented at the Edinburgh Festival in 1991.[10] A historical play about the British in India, it is set during the confused period after the death of Ranjit Singh in the Punjab with a focus on an unusual Englishman in India named Henry Lawrence.

His second play, Mira—a "rite of Krishna for five actor-dancers" – explores what it means for a human being to become a saint through the story of Mirabai, the sixteen-century Rajput princess-poet. It premiered at the La Mama Theatre in 1970 to much critical acclaim. Clive Barnes of the New York Times wrote, "Remarkable in the way it combines Indian legend with the sophistication of Western total theater…Mira has the quality of a dream ritual."[11] It was produced in Bombay by Alaque Padmsee and was called "a major artistic achievement of immense merit and supreme significance to the re-blossoming of theatre in India" [12]

He wrote a third play also in his twenties. 9 Jakhoo Hill is set in the autumn of 1962 in Shimla. "During the autumn of discontent of a once-wealthy family [9 Jakhoo Hill] broods over better days…on the hold that mothers have over their sons…a family coming down in the world…remnants of the Raj, disillusionment with politics. Sixties? The script is here and now."[13] It has been performed in major Indian cities.

In the midst of a corporate career in his thirties, Gurcharan Das also wrote a novel, A Fine Family, which follows the stories of several generations of a Punjabi family, beginning with the Partition. It was published by Penguin in 1990. The Hindu called it "a worthy addition to the body of fiction that deals with the anguish and bitter memories of one of the most sorrowful disasters in recorded history,"[14] and India Today said, "The canvas is broad and the scope enormous. But Das' success lies in making people ordinary without making them dull…A Fine Family shines because of its simplicity."[15]

Gurcharan Das turned to non-fiction when he became a full-time writer in 1995 and began to write a regular column in the Times of India. He travelled for four months in 1995 and out these travels emerged a 20-page cover essay, 'A Million Reformers' about how the reforms were changing India.[16] From this essay grew his first major non-fiction work, India Unbound, the story of the economic and social transformation of India from Independence to the global information age.[17] Amartya Sen called it, "a wonderful book…a great mixture of memoir, economic analysis, social investigation, political scrutiny and managerial outlook thrown into an understanding of India."[18] The New York Times wrote, "Something tremendous is happening in India, and Das, with his keen eye and often elegant prose, has his finger firmly on the pulse of the transformation."[19] The book has been published in many languages and filmed by BBC,[20]

India Unbound was followed in 2002 by a book of essays, The Elephant Paradigm: India wrestles with change. It recounted the "story of an ancient civilization's reawakening to the spirit and potential of its youth", arguing that "India may not roar like the Asian tigers, it will advance like a wise elephant, moving steadily but surely."[21] A decade later, Gurcharan Das returned to the theme of India's rise, confessing wryly that 'India grows at night when the government sleeps'. In India Grows at Night: A liberal case for a strong state, he argued that India's is a story of private success and public failure and it is rising despite the state. In this book, which was rated as one of the best books of 2013 by London's Financial Times, he offers significant governance reforms so that 'India can grow during the day.' [22]

Prosperity had, indeed, begun to spread in India, as India Unbound predicted, but so had corruption and Gurcharan Das turned to the ancient epic, Mahabharata, to understand role of dharma or 'doing the right thing' in our lives in

The Difficulty of Being Good: On the subtle art of dharma.[23]
"It is one of the best things I have read about the contribution of great literature to ethical thought," said Martha Nussbaum.

Having written about artha and dharma, Gurcharan Das turned to the third aim of life in Kama: The Riddle of Desire, and discovered that if dharma is 'our duty to others', kama is a 'duty to ourselves'.[24] The dilemma often is whether to betray the other or oneself. This fictional memoir narrates a philosophical journey "creating a sense of enchantment, using memory as a device to summon the many forms of desire that play upon the mind [thus] entering an imagined world of beauty."[25]

Gurcharan Das is also general editor of a fifteen-volume series, The Story of Indian Business (Penguin), which "mines great ideas in business and economics that have shaped commerce in the bazaars and high seas of the Indian Ocean. Leading scholars examine historical texts, inscriptions and records and interpret them in a lively, sharp authoritative manner. Beginning with the ancient Arthashastra: The Science of Wealth, it narrates tales of trade over two thousand years, including the story of The East India Company: The World's Most Powerful Corporation, and The Marwaris."[26]

Reviews

Reviews related to the non-fiction and fiction books of Gurcharan Das.

Academic articles on Gurcharan Das

See also

References

  1. ^ A Fine Family, Penguin Books India: Delhi, 1990.
  2. ^ The Washington Post, 'Boy on Visit from India Stays to Excel at School, 3 June 1959.
  3. ^ Letter of Gurcharan Das to his mother dated August 1963.
  4. ^ The Statesman, New Delhi, 22 July 1970.
  5. ^ .1) Harvard Business School, 0-385-176, 1984, 'Richardson Hindustan Limited', by Professor Francis J. Aguilar; Harvard Business School, N 9-388-083, 1988, Gurcharan Das: A Career Under Management Assessment.
  6. ^ Harvard Business Review, March–April 1993
  7. ^ "BrightCHAMPS establishes Global Curriculum Advisory Board". Financialexpress. Retrieved 6 January 2023.
  8. ^ "News – Insurance". Retrieved 25 January 2023.
  9. ^ The Times of India, 24 November 1968
  10. ^ Indian Express, 'Edinburgh Bound', 8 October 1991
  11. ^ Clive Barnes, 'Mira': La Mama's India Play', The New York Times, 3 June 1970.
  12. ^ The Times of India, Bombay, 'Mira; Major Artistic Achievement', 8 March 1972.
  13. ^ India Today, Gurcharan Das' 9 Jakhoo Hill, 19 March 2001
  14. ^ K.C. Nambiar, The Hindu, Trauma of Partition and Emergency, 24 July 1990
  15. ^ Salil Tripathi, India Today, 15 March 1990
  16. ^ 'The cover essay appeared in Business World in its 27 December 1995 – 7 January 1996 issue.
  17. ^ First published in English by Penguin Random House in 2000, India Unbound was also published in the US by Knopf and in the UK by Profile Books in 2002. The book has been translated into many languages.
  18. ^ Talk at the Nehru Centre, London, 7 May 2002.
  19. ^ The New York Times, book review on India Unbound, 25 March 2001.
  20. ^ BBC Television: India Business Report: The Road Ahead, 9 March 2003, 11 am and 10 pm
  21. ^ Gurcharan Das, The Elephant Paradigm: India Wrestles with Change, 2002, Penguin India
  22. ^ 'Books of the Year', Financial Times, London, 29 November 2013, 27 June 2013.
  23. ^ Published by Allen Lane through Penguin India, Delhi 2009; Oxford University Press, New York 2009
  24. ^ Gurcharan Das, Kama: The Riddle of Desire, first published in Allen Lane by Penguin Random House India, Delhi, 2018.
  25. ^ Geeta Doctor, in The Hindu, 11 November 2018.
  26. ^ The Story Of Indian Business, edited by Gurcharan Das, various authors, Penguin Random House India, Delhi, 2012 – 2018
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