National recipe is more complex now we’ve a richer list of ingredients
His writings aren't required reading for philosophy students and his words don't make thought for the day on desk calendars. And, like most people with a passion about a subject, he runs the risk of speaking to a shrinking audience.
Which is a pity because Mr Sudarshan (properly titled - wait for it - Senior Governance Advisor UNDP Partnership for Governance Reforms) makes sense.
Mr Sudarshan was in Ireland for the launch of the United Nations Human Development Report 2004, which is packed with fascinating facts about the wealth of nations.
But instead of getting to talk about everyone's favourite topic - money - he was landed with the task of expounding on the secondary theme of this year's report, cultural liberty. (Ah yes, cultural liberty. Very interesting. So how much did you say the average Irish person earns?) But cultural liberty is not the abstract concept it sounds because, says Sudarshan, it simply means freedom to choose which cultures influence everything from your religion to what food you eat to who you are.
Not so long ago if those questions were asked of the average Paddy on this island, the answers would have been Catholicism, spuds and the son of Paddy senior. That was before immigration began and hordes of foreigners arrived to threaten with extinction the uncomplicated genealogical lines of potato-eating Catholics. That's the myth Mr Sudarshan tries to debunk.
Immigration doesn't threaten, he says. It enriches. To explain, he tells a story about the Parsi people from Persia who fled persecution in the 8th century and arrived on the west coast of India in the state now called Gujarat. Their arrival caused consternation among the indigenous inhabitants of the fertile coastal plains who guarded their land jealously and were adamant there was no room for newcomers, especially odd-looking ones who spoke in a peculiar tongue.
The local king demanded to meet the Parsi leader so that he could personally turn him around and point him seaward again. The Parsi leader acknowledged the king's concerns about his territory being swamped by strangers, and then asked for a full cup of milk.
"You feel you are full to the brim like this cup of milk and that you cannot add anything more," he told the king.
"But let me take a little sugar and add it to the milk. See how it doesn't spill over but only sweetens the milk. We won't add to your burden. We will sweeten your life."
Okay, so the whole story is so sweet it would take a vial of insulin to be absorbed. But the point is well made and it's a point that is particularly relevant and timely in this country where we only seem to be able to talk about immigration in terms of controls, laws and referenda and in sentences that begin, "I'm not racist but"
Mr Sudarshan isn't a complete cloud dweller. He knows that while immigration itself doesn't cause problems, the way immigrants are treated can. That's where cultural liberty comes in. Foreigners bring diversity to a country and the way a country responds to it means the difference between becoming a melting pot for a successfully mixed society and reamining a boiling cauldron of distrust and division.
On this point Mr Sudarshan smiles patiently at the West like a nanny reassuring a nervous child that there's nothing to fear from spiders.
"You know, some people think diversity is not natural but in actual fact, for many countries diversity is perfectly normal," he says. "Many developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America have had a multiplicity of language, communities and faiths for as long as anyone can remember and they have found all kinds of ways of coping.
"The phenomenon is more recent in most parts of Europe because communities here are relatively homogenous."
MR SUDARSHAN knows what he's talking about. He's based in Jakarta, capital of Indonesia, home to no less than 300 separate languages and dialects.
Seeing as we're beset with crises of conscience and cashflow over the future of the cúpla focail here, we won't even begin to contemplate an Ireland with 300 ways of saying "more rain on the way".
But there is already a reddening glow to the cooking ring and the pot is warming up. So we need to decide how to prepare the dish that is future Irish society.
According to Mr Sudarshan, in every country new to the experience of immigration, there is the chance that the head chef will have a bias towards familiar flavours and try to artificially maintain a traditional taste despite the exotic ingredients in his saucepan.
He tries to grate, grind and chop the oddities into inconsequential pieces, mask their flavour with overwhelming amounts of seasoning and boil them into oblivion so that, in the end, everything tastes bitter and burnt.
The message is that you need a cool hand and a creative mind in the kitchen rather than someone hell-bent on making coddle out of coconut. You need good government with an adventurous palate and, for the inevitable moments when the dish gets a little too hot, a strong stomach.
Of course, tastes don't adapt overnight.
Mr Sudarshan says there are three stages to dealing with difference.
First you recognise it, then you tolerate it and then, eventually, you might even begin to celebrate it. After all, a famous survey carried out in Britain a few years ago found that nation's favourite dish to be chicken tikka masala.
There are all sorts of moral, ethical and philosophical reasons for embracing diversity and nurturing a society where there is freedom of cultural choice. But Mr Sudarshan is no self-appointed swami dishing out sugary doctrines with little nutritional value. He is an economist who says cultural diversity and the freedom to choose it has sound practical arguments in its favour. Not just because somewhere down the line you might save on overtime bills for the riot police but because diverse societies have more to offer.
Healthy, wealthy, well-educated Norway is number one in the human development report this year but, according to Mr Sudarshan, it's a very limited society in ways.
"They have been reluctant to permit immigration so it is a very small population and you cannot get certain services. At 3am you can't say 'I'm feeling hungry' and go to get a pizza or a Chinese takeaway.
"In Oslo you cannot even get your shirt laundered without a week's notice. It's not life or death but it's a deprivation of sorts - a deprivation of diversity."
