India facing climate of mounting intolerance: Tharoor

Kolkata, Jan 15: Admitting he was fortunate his book "The Great Indian Novel" wasn't banned when it released 25 years ago, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor Thursday said there is a trend of "mounting intolerance" in India today and he was not confident if the same book would have survived in this age. "The Great Indian Novel" was one of the first of its kind in India 25 years ago that poked fun satirically at both the hallowed heroes of the nationalist movement and also timeless legends of the great legend Mahabharata, said Tharoor, the bestselling author of 15 books, both fiction and non-fiction. "When the book came out, initially it was rather rapturously received in India because I had signed a separate contract with David Davidar to do an affordable Indian edition and it was very well received. "To my both delight and horror the doyen of Indian writing at that time Khushwant Singh devoted an entire column to this book but he said , 'Go out and buy this book immediately because it will be banned within a week' a that was not what I wanted to see," Tharoor said during a discussion at a literary festival here. Published in 1989, the novel penned by Tharoor was his first work in fiction. 2014 marked its 25th anniversary.