Oh Really, Mr. Rushdie!

Life does seem to have come a full circle for Shashi Tharoor who was once decorated with the Commonwealth Prize and who’s now being pilloried for charges of corruption in a week when another Indian Rana Dasgupta has bagged the coveted top prize for the year 2010 for his book ‘Sous’.

For the ignoramuses, the Commonwealth Writer’s prize is a prestigious award that goes to the best fiction novel from the Commonwealth countries. That is nations that were once a part of the British colony and includes various parts of Asia, Africa, Australia, Canada and the Carribean islands. Instituted in 1987, its aim is to encourage new Commonwealth fiction, and to ensure that works of merit reach a wider audience outside their country of origin.

But as most things that involve our beloved subcontinent, the Commonwealth prize is courting its own share of controversies. India’s most hi-profile writer Sir Salman Rushdie goes on record to call it a ‘phantom and imaginary prize’ with the intention of rubbishing it, only to then fiercely compete for it as recently as last year! Rushdie of course lost out to Philip Heshner in a closely contested race.

Full report here Mumbai Mirror