Shashi Tharoor

Shashi Tharoor delivers an incisive biography of the great secularist who—alongside his spiritual father, Mahatma Gandhi—led the movement for India's independence from British rule and ushered his newly independent country into the modern world. The man who would one day help topple British rule and become India's first prime minister started out as a surprisingly unremarkable student. Born into a wealthy, politically influential Indian family in the waning years of the Raj, Jawaharlal Nehru was raised on Western secularism and the humanist ideas of the Enlightenment.

Narendra Modi is a paradoxical man. He says one thing and does another. He gives voice to a number of liberal ideas (such as the constitution being his holy book and sab ka saath, sab ka vikas), while at the same time pandering to some of the most illiberal elements in Indian society, on whom he depends for political support.