Gurcharan Das was born in Lyallpur, India (now Pakistan) into a Punjabi Hindu family. His mildly autobiographical novel sheds light on his early life. After Independence, Das' family fled to India as refugees. His father was an engineer with the government and he spend his childhood in Shimla and Delhi. He went to high school in Washington D.C. when his father was posted there in the mid-1950s. He won scholarships to Harvard, Princeton and Yale upon graduation in honors in Philosophy, with a minor in Politics and Sanskrit. He wrote his thesis under John Rawls. Later he attended Harvard Business School (AMP), where he is featured in three case studies.

Gurcharan Das was the CEO of Procter & Gamble India and Vice President for Procter & Gamble Far East between 1985 and 1992. He was later Vice President and Managing Director, Procter & Gamble Worldwide responsible for global strategic planning. Prior to P&G, he was Chairman and Managing Director of Richardson Hindustan Limited from 1981 to 1985, the company where he started as a trainee.

In end 1994, after a 30-year career in six countries, he took an early retirement to become a full-time writer.

He began to write a regular column on Sundays for the “Times of India” and continued to do so for 15 years. Gradually, he added “Dainik Bhaskar (Hindi)”, “Prabhat Khabar (Hindi)”, “Eenadu (Telugu)”, “Sakal (Marathi)” and “Mathrubhumi (Malayalam)”. He also wrote occasional guest columns for “Time” and “Newsweek” magazines and occasional pieces for the “New York Times", “The Wall Street Journal", “Financial Times", and “Foreign Affairs" .

Gurcharan Das is now mainly known for his two best-selling books, India Unbound and The Difficulty of Being Good. India Unbound, is a narrative account of India from Independence to the global information age, and has been published in over a dozen languages and filmed by BBC. The Difficulty of Being Good: On the subtle art of dharma (Penguin 2009) examines contemporary moral failures through the lens of the 2000 year old epic, the Mahabharata. Apparently he spent nearly 7 years researching the book at the University of Chicago. It uses quotes from the Mahabharata yet also other ancient works such as The Illiad etc. and cites examples as recent as the financial crisis.

Gurcharan Das began to write soon after college. He wrote three plays in his twenties, which have been published as an anthology, Three English Plays (Oxford University Press, 2003) (Oxford). It consists of Larins Sahib, a prize-winning play about the British in India, which has been presented at the Edinburgh Festival; Mira, which was produced off-Broadway to critical acclaim from New York critics; and 9 Jakhoo Hill which has been performed in major Indian cities.

He wrote a novel in his thirties, A Fine Family, which follows the stories of several generations of a Punjabi family beginning with the Partition.

The Elephant Paradigm is a book of essays which ranges over subjects as varied as panchayati raj, national competitiveness, and the sacred and philosophical concerns of the average Indian consequent to India’s entry into what the author calls the ‘age of liberation’. While India may never roar like the Asian tigers, Das argues, it will advance like a wise elephant, moving steadily and surely, pausing occasionally to reflect on its past and to enjoy the journey.

Gurcharan Das is married and lives with his wife in New Delhi. He has two children.