Gods & politicians

Only months after witnessing India's democratic crisis in 1975-when Mrs Gandhi invoked Emergency powers to gaol her opponents - Bruce Grant, Gough Whitlam's appointee as Australian High Commissioner in India, returned to take part in the most dramatic elections in Australia's history. The two crises became linked in his mind, so that his perception of events in Australia was sharpened by what he had seen and experienced in India.

Drawing upon his years as foreign correspondent and political commentator, earlier visits to India, and his role as a diplomat for a new Australian government determined to strengthen its links with Asia, Bruce Grant gives a personal view of the nature of democratic government in two vastly different countries. He ranges widely from the contemporary role of diplomacy to the relationship between economic development, culture and politics; from the politics of the superpowers to Australia's role in Asia and the Third World.

Gods and Politicians is also a private odyssey. Bruce Grant finds India the most sensual of countries: his evocations of sights, tastes, sounds and smells, of heat as palpable as rainstorms, of conversations and coronations, of remote Himalayan valleys and New Delhi's international set, create a vivid background against which are highlighted the events which made diplomacy an unexpectedly personal and dramatic experience for him.