Pujan Roka attended St. Xavier’s School before heading to the US for higher studies. An award-winning editorial cartoonist, Roka responded to Ashutosh Tiwari’s questions about his book Bhagavad Gita on Effective Leadership.

An interview

Q. Why Bhagavad Gita for a book on leadership?
A. Management thinkers have long studied spiritual figures such as Jesus and ancient texts such as Sun Tzu’s The Art of War in the context of leadership. I see the Gita as one additional contributor to the leadership literature.

Q.What motivated you to write this book?
A. No one had previously explored the Gita in the context of present-day leadership. This gap was my key motivator. During my research, I had an opportunity to exchange notes with Peter Senge and Marshall Goldsmith, two well-known management gurus. Their positive responses motivated me further.

Q. How did you do the research? How long did it take?
A. I did the research mostly by examining what the contemporary authorities say about leadership. It took a little over three years.

Q. What has been the reaction of businesses in general?
A. I have received positive reactions from businesses here in the US. I have given a few presentations based on what I wrote in the book.

Q. What is one essence about leadership that you distill from the Gita?
A. Leadership is about inspiring and guiding others by ideas, actions, and compassion. This is the essence of leadership as taught by the Gita.

Q. If cynics were to accuse you of using an ancient Hindu text to ride the “leadership studies boom” in the US, what would be your response?
A. Today, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of books on leadership. But only a few writers have looked into ancient texts to extract leadership wisdom for contemporary times. In the Gita’s case, prominent management thinkers had not devoted an entire book to it, while scholars of Gita had not put it in the context of leadership, especially extracting lessons for business readers.

My book bridges this gap. A US-born Indian-American manager at a Fortune 100 company told me that he grew up noticing a copy of the Gita in his parents’ puja-kotha. It was not until he read my book that he got curious enough to read the Gita itself.

Q. I have long enjoyed your cartoons on the Net. I am surprised that you chose not to illustrate this book with sketches and drawings.
A. I have heard similar things from others. I’ll keep that in mind for my next project.

Q. Your book is a self-published one. What are your thoughts on self-publication?
A. As you well know, many new and well-established writers are publishing their own books these days in the US. Self-publication as an approach has created a brand new publishing model which gives the control to the writers instead of to the publishers.

In my case, I found no publisher who could represent the genre that is demanded by my book. There are publishers that specialize in either business or spirituality. But there are none that specialize in handling both business and spirituality in a cohesive way. There are some publishers who have started combining Christianity and business. But Eastern religious traditions are very foreign to them.

Given these constraints, self-publishing has worked very well for me. I have a world-wide distribution through major retailers like Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and major wholesalers like Ingram. I am not aware whether any Nepali retailer has tapped into this distribution, but the opportunity is there. What’s more, through this approach, I have been able to channel most of the proceeds to Save the Children programs.

Q. In any case, it looks like you are the first Nepali writer of a business/leadership book aimed at an American audience.
A. To the best of my knowledge, that is correct.


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A shorter version of this appears at
http://www.nepalitimes.com/issue/348/Interview/13515

A review appears at:
http://www.nepalitimes.com/issue/348/StrictlyBusiness/13516

Here is the book on Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/Bhagavad-Gita-Effective-Leadership-Timeless/dp/0595370403/ref=sr_1_1/102-7772675-2697722?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1178983717&sr=8-1

More at http://www.pujanroka.com