Thank you to The New Indian Express for inviting me to be part of the jury for the Ramnath Goenka Sahithya Samman 2026. Named in honour of Ramnath Goenka, the distinguished newspaper proprietor whose legacy is closely associated with the history of Indian journalism, the award celebrates the written word and writers who enrich our understanding of the world. At a time when we are surrounded by more information than ever, the opportunity to recognise books that make us pause, reflect and look at familiar questions in new ways is especially valuable.
I have always believed that books do something that no other medium quite manages to replicate. They slow us down. They ask us to inhabit another person’s mind, confront unfamiliar experiences and occasionally reconsider convictions we have held for years. A good book does not always leave us with answers; sometimes its greater achievement is to leave us with better questions. And a literary award, at its best, recognises precisely this ability to enlarge our intellectual and imaginative horizons.
Looking at this year’s shortlist, what strikes me is the sheer range of subjects, approaches and voices represented across fiction, non-fiction and debut writing. The fiction shortlist reminds us of the many possibilities of the novel: to enter the interior lives of individuals, explore the relationship between people and their environments, and capture aspects of society that are often missed by more formal accounts of our collective experience. Fiction can take us beyond the immediate demands of public debate and allow us to inhabit contradictions without rushing to resolve them. It can make the unfamiliar intelligible and the familiar newly strange.
The non-fiction shortlist takes us into a different, but equally important, territory. What unites works of serious non-fiction is not simply their commitment to facts, indispensable though those are, but their ability to make sense of them. The writer must decide what deserves attention, what connections illuminate a subject, and how an account of particular events or people can help us understand the larger forces shaping our society. The best non-fiction does not merely tell us what happened; it helps us understand why it matters.
The debut category is particularly interesting because it gives us an opportunity to encounter writers entering the literary conversation with fresh perspectives. A debut need not be flawless to be significant; sometimes what makes it exciting is the freshness of its vision, the courage of its questions or the possibilities it reveals for future work.
Some of the titles suggest how wide-ranging the conversation around India can be. History is never merely a procession of dates and events. It involves evidence, interpretation and argument. Different scholars may approach the same period with different questions, and it is through the testing of those interpretations against evidence that our understanding advances. The important thing is to remain rigorous about facts while being open to the possibility that familiar accounts may need to be revised.
In a country as diverse and historically layered as India, no single discipline, ideology or individual can claim exclusive ownership of the national story. The novelist, the historian, the journalist and the political thinker each illuminate different parts of it.
Their approaches may sometimes conflict, but that is not necessarily a weakness. A healthy literary and intellectual culture must make room for disagreement, provided that it is accompanied by seriousness of purpose and respect for evidence. Indeed, one of the most valuable things a book can do is challenge an established interpretation without simply replacing it with another unquestioned orthodoxy.
There is, in fact, a close connection between the enterprise of writing and the enterprise of journalism. Both depend on curiosity, a willingness to question received wisdom, and the recognition that no account of events is enriched by suppressing inconvenient questions.
Journalism records and interrogates the present; literature often gives us the distance to understand it, while history allows us to examine the longer continuities beneath it. When these pursuits are at their best, they resist easy answers and invite us to think for ourselves. That is an essential service to any society, and particularly to a democracy as argumentative, diverse and self-questioning as ours.
We should celebrate writing that is imaginative without being indifferent to reality, scholarship that is rigorous without becoming inaccessible, and new voices that are willing to ask questions others have overlooked. Literary merit, of course, must remain central.
Serving on a jury inevitably involves difficult comparisons, even when selecting winners within their respective categories. How does one weigh the relative merits of works that may differ considerably in their subjects, approaches and ambitions? There is no simple formula, and perhaps there should not be one. Each book must first be considered on its own terms, with an appreciation of what it set out to achieve and how successfully it has done so. The task then is to make judgements that are thoughtful, fair and defensible, while recognising that literature will always retain a dimension that resists neat measurement.
Let me conclude by congratulating all the shortlisted authors and thanking The New Indian Express for sustaining a platform that brings writers and readers into conversation. The real achievement of a literary award is not only the recognition it confers on a handful of books, but the attention it draws to the larger world of ideas, stories and arguments that books make possible. I hope the Ramnath Goenka Sahithya Samman continues to encourage that engagement, and I look forward to being part of the process this year.
Thank you and Jai Hind!
(Excerpts from a speech delivered by the author as Chairman of the RNGSS jury)
Read all columns by Shashi Tharoor
Shashi Tharoor
Lok Sabha MP, Chair of the Standing Committee on External Affairs and Sahitya Akademi-winning author (office@tharoor.in)
