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0:06

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today. From

0:37

New York Times Opinion, this is The

0:40

Ezra Klein Show. Hey,

0:56

it is Ezra. I'm thrilled

0:58

today to have this fantastic conversation from

1:00

my colleague at Times Opinion, the co-host

1:03

of Matter of Opinion, our cousin podcast,

1:05

Lydia Palgreen, on one of the other

1:07

foreign affairs stories we've wanted to cover

1:09

more and that deserves a lot

1:12

of attention, which is rising illiberalism in India.

1:23

Fifteen years ago, I moved to New Delhi as a

1:25

correspondent for The New York Times. It

1:27

was a heady moment. After years of uncertain

1:29

growth, the country seemed primed for a kind

1:31

of rapid economic expansion that could vault its

1:34

billion-plus people out of poverty, just as China

1:36

had. But unlike China, India

1:38

was a boisterous beacon of democracy,

1:40

secularism, and freedom. India

1:42

today has fulfilled a lot of the promises I heard when

1:44

I was there. It became

1:46

the world's most populous country this year. According

1:49

to the World Bank, India's economy is one of the fastest

1:51

growing in the world. The country

1:53

even hosted the G20 in September. At

1:55

the same time, there's been a clear erosion of

1:58

democracy. The state has stoked violence. against

2:00

religious minorities, Prime Minister

2:02

Narendra Modi and his administration, have

2:04

silenced both critics and independent institutions.

2:07

And Indian government officials have been linked

2:09

to two assassination plots against Sikh activists

2:11

in Canada and the United States, a

2:14

pretty stunning diplomatic scandal that puts new

2:16

stress on India's relationship with the West.

2:19

So looking back in 2023, it's

2:21

clear that India has risen, but not quite

2:23

in the way we necessarily expected. So

2:26

I asked Pratap Banu Mehta to walk me through what

2:28

has happened to Indian democracy and what it means for

2:30

the rest of the world. Mehta

2:32

is a professor at Princeton University. He

2:35

has written widely on political theory and is the

2:37

author of The Burden of Democracy. He

2:39

has a regular column at the Indian Express where

2:42

he makes sense of Indian and global affairs. We

2:45

talked back in early October, but I think his

2:47

insights have only become more relevant. As

2:50

always, you can email the show at

2:52

Ezra Klein show at nytimes.com. Here's

2:54

Pratap Banu Mehta. Pratap

3:00

Banu Mehta, wonderful to be here with you.

3:03

Thank you very much. It's wonderful to see you as well.

3:06

So it's been a while. You

3:08

know, I lived in Delhi from 2009 to 2013. And

3:10

in that time, you

3:14

were really an indispensable guide for me in

3:17

trying to understand the extraordinary place that

3:19

is India. I'm just curious, how's life

3:21

for you in India these days? Well,

3:24

there's never a dull moment in India. That's

3:27

for sure. You know, it's a

3:29

cliche about India that you always experience India as

3:31

a paradox. And I think the paradox of this

3:33

moment is clearly India's

3:35

political significance, economic significance,

3:39

cultural creativity is kind of as

3:41

vibrant as ever. On

3:43

the other hand, the science for Indian

3:45

democracy are looking very ominous indeed. I

3:48

co edited a big Oxford Handbook of the Indian

3:50

Constitution. I have to say now when I go

3:52

to class, I say I cannot tell you what

3:54

the Constitution of India is. I

3:56

cannot tell you if you go with the habeas corpus

3:58

case to the Supreme Court. Court, whether it will

4:01

be heard. I cannot

4:03

tell you when opposition politicians

4:05

are being targeted by

4:07

the government for tax reasons, they will

4:09

actually get the same fair relief from

4:11

the Supreme Court. So

4:13

there is a sense of kind of dread

4:16

about where this democracy is heading. And I

4:18

think we have to register both of those kind of

4:21

emotions at the same time. We're going

4:23

to talk a lot about democracy. It's

4:25

a sort of line that we all

4:27

hear. India is the world's largest democracy.

4:29

It's been a democracy almost without interruption

4:32

since its independence. That sort of uniqueness

4:34

and boldness of the experiment. I mean,

4:36

you cannot visit India and not be

4:39

profoundly moved by what is

4:41

being attempted. I mean, I'm wary

4:43

of exceptionalism, but you know, I

4:45

think never in human history has

4:47

a more ambitious experiment in coexistence

4:49

through government by common

4:52

consent been attempted. So maybe

4:54

a good place to start is just to ground

4:56

us in some history. Tell me a

4:58

little bit about the history of India

5:01

as a democracy and what

5:03

India has had to learn from being the

5:05

world's largest democracy. Look,

5:07

I mean, Indian elections were probably more important

5:09

to us than religions. And I think there

5:11

still remain. I mean, there's a certain kind

5:13

of vibrancy, a

5:16

sense of diversity

5:18

dealing with difference. And

5:21

I think India's nationalist movement's greatness

5:23

was that it actually recognized that

5:26

the only way you could hold India together

5:29

was if it was a

5:31

product of widespread consensus across

5:34

religions, across communities, across caste,

5:36

across classes. I think

5:38

that was in a sense, I think it's

5:40

instinctive grasp of what democracy is. So

5:43

one story you can tell about Indian democracy is

5:45

that a lot of the

5:47

constituent parts or groups in society don't

5:50

actually have to be democratic. I mean, they

5:53

can be internally sometimes quite intolerant, they can

5:55

be quite conservative. And yet

5:57

the balance of social power among

6:00

amongst groups, amongst caste, regions,

6:03

is such that no single group

6:06

or no single identity can hope

6:08

to dominate without generating

6:10

some kind of resistance and backlash.

6:14

And we always used to say

6:16

that India's politics was fated to

6:18

a certain kind of centrism, precisely

6:20

for this reason, that there wasn't going

6:23

to ever be a single identity force

6:26

that could command sufficient

6:28

power to be able to govern India

6:30

as a whole. In fact, the joke used to

6:32

be that any party that governed India would have

6:34

to look like the Congress party, or maybe a

6:37

better version of the Congress party. The Congress party,

6:39

the party that was started

6:41

by Mahatma Gandhi, and just give us a little

6:43

bit of the history of the Congress party. Well,

6:45

it was actually started by, I mean, officially its

6:47

founder is A.O. Hume. But

6:49

it's Mahatma Gandhi that actually gave the

6:51

party its modern form. He converted that

6:53

party into a mass movement, and

6:56

really of extraordinary portions, what

6:58

he managed to do, I think quite significantly, was not

7:01

just forge a mass movement, but

7:03

create an imagination of modern

7:06

India, where each of

7:08

its constituent parts would find

7:10

its fullest expression. So

7:12

for example, he was a political genius.

7:14

Each state had a linguistic unit, which

7:16

then became the basis for how India

7:18

dealt with the language question later on.

7:21

We created this brilliant compromise that

7:23

there would be official linked language

7:26

English, aspirationally, Hindi

7:28

as a kind of national language, but

7:31

each state would be able to

7:33

use their own language, Tamil, Bengali,

7:35

so on and so forth, Malayalam. And

7:38

it avoided the fate of so

7:40

many postcolonial countries that

7:42

experienced civil wars or got divided on

7:44

the basis of language. And

7:46

I think that really was an

7:49

extraordinary political innovation. It

7:51

was an anti-colonial movement, but

7:53

it was an enormously cosmopolitan

7:55

movement in its aspirations, founded

7:58

in a much more authentic. perception of

8:00

rights, free expression, recognizing

8:03

individuality and dignity, and

8:06

a pursuit of politics through nonviolent

8:08

means, which is not an insignificant

8:10

contribution in the context

8:12

of so many postcolonial movements. India was

8:14

one of the few nationalist movements that

8:17

avoided both the extremes of left

8:19

violence and the extremes of right

8:22

violence. And I think

8:24

that Gandhi's an extraordinary contribution. I

8:27

think one of the remarkable things about the

8:29

Indian nationalist movement, when I compare it to

8:31

other nationalist movements, is it

8:33

is a movement for self-determination, but it

8:35

has very little resentment against the idea

8:38

of the West. In

8:40

fact, I sometimes feel that our postcolonial

8:42

movement now carries much more of a

8:44

sense of resentment than our

8:46

anti-colonial nationalist movement did. It's

8:48

interesting because for me as a correspondent, I moved

8:50

to India from West Africa. I

8:53

had been raised in East Africa and had spent

8:55

my childhood in West Africa as well. So

8:57

I had this deep sense of India

8:59

as this kind of beacon of what

9:01

a large

9:04

polyglot, multi-religious,

9:06

multi-ethnic nation could

9:08

be. And it's worth

9:10

just dwelling for a moment on the violence

9:12

and difficulty of India's birth. It was born

9:15

out of the partition of the British Raj.

9:17

It was a colony of Britain at the

9:19

time. Can you just talk

9:21

a little bit about how these ideas

9:23

came out of that experience of the

9:26

horrors of partition? I'm

9:28

glad you raised the issue of partition, which

9:30

is, I think, one of the most kind

9:32

of decisive events in modern South Asian, I

9:35

think, history. India always

9:37

thought it could be the exception

9:39

to the European experience. The process

9:42

of the formation of nation states

9:44

everywhere, including in Europe

9:46

and North America, has

9:48

been an extraordinarily violent,

9:50

exclusionary and majoritarian movement.

9:53

There is almost no exception to this, I think.

9:56

And the aspiration of the nationalist movement was that,

9:58

look, can we... forge a

10:00

new kind of identity that doesn't

10:03

repeat the mistakes of Europe. Now,

10:06

partition was the first shock to

10:08

this aspiration because in some senses,

10:10

partition was premised on

10:12

something like the European idea of a

10:14

nation state. There must be some single

10:17

identity that actually binds the nation. In

10:19

the case for the demand for Pakistan,

10:21

it's the idea of a kind of

10:23

Muslim homeland in South Asia. And

10:26

since that, since Pakistan actually came

10:28

as a deep shock to that

10:30

nationalist project, I mean, you

10:33

know, that image of Gandhi in a

10:35

sense, grieving at independence, because

10:37

he saw India's independence as a failure. It

10:39

was born out of violence. He

10:41

saw it as a rebuke to that extraordinary

10:43

project that the nationalist movement had tried to

10:46

create. And it would

10:48

have been very easy for India founders to never

10:50

said, look, India has been already

10:52

divided on religious grounds. Let

10:55

us complete the task of partition, declare

10:57

in India a Hindu state. And yes,

11:00

Muslims can live here, but we should be

11:02

absolutely no doubt that the logic of partition

11:05

is actually the creation of a Hindu state

11:07

in India. And Muslims are

11:09

the largest minority, but

11:12

they're very significant, right? I mean, what

11:14

is the percentage proportion between Hindus and

11:16

Muslims in India? It's a very sizable

11:18

minority. You're looking at about, you know,

11:20

200 million, 200 billion people. And

11:24

I think what is remarkable is that despite

11:26

partition, they actually, I think, continued with that

11:28

project of trying to create an Indian exceptionalism.

11:31

I think Jawaharlal Nehru, he was India's first

11:33

prime minister and really in some sense, the

11:35

founder of India's democracy in some ways. I

11:38

think the two deep ideas that he

11:41

had, if you read his books like Discovery of

11:43

India and stuff. So one was

11:45

this idea of India as a palimpsest

11:47

of all of the world civilizations. India

11:50

is a Hindu country. It's a Muslim country. It's

11:52

a Christian country. It's an

11:55

Asian power, but it's also an enlightenment

11:57

country. And that phrase you

11:59

use is over and over, India has

12:01

a palimpsest on which every civilization has

12:03

left a mark, but a palimpsest

12:06

which is that transformed each of those

12:08

civilizations and made it into its own.

12:11

I think that was a kind of

12:13

a deeply philosophical and I think profound

12:15

orientation to India. But

12:18

second, I think at a more practical level, that

12:21

India has such cross-cutting diversity

12:25

that if you privilege any

12:28

basis of identity as the basis

12:30

of nationhood, what

12:33

you risk is a great

12:35

deal of violence, expulsion and bloodletting.

12:37

So I think in a strange

12:40

way, partition actually just reinforce the

12:42

idea. Even what

12:44

remains of India cannot flourish

12:46

and survive unless it says

12:48

we are going to create

12:51

a kind of nation states that's very different

12:53

from anything that has happened in the world.

12:55

Yeah, you invoked Nehru and I think one

12:58

of his most famous and

13:00

historic speeches is the tryst

13:02

with destiny speech. What do

13:04

you think was India's tryst with destiny and what

13:06

is it today? Right.

13:09

So the first and most important one was

13:13

actually overcoming poverty

13:16

and the extraordinary levels

13:18

of human misery and

13:20

oppression that this

13:22

society had internally experienced,

13:24

particularly through the institution of caste.

13:27

This is the sort of the undergirding

13:29

system of people being born into a

13:31

particular community and that forming a social

13:34

hierarchy. Absolutely, a social hierarchy which you

13:36

could not escape, a social hierarchy that

13:38

was in some senses deeply

13:40

oppressive and particularly if you were at the

13:42

bottom end of that social hierarchy, Dalits,

13:44

untouchables, as we used to be called

13:46

in those days, the bottom 20%. It

13:50

really would rank up there with slavery.

13:52

I mean, we can always kind of

13:54

nuance these comparisons intellectually, but there's just

13:56

no getting around what a moral abomination

13:58

it was. In

14:00

some senses, the Indian state was embarking for the

14:02

first time on this project of saying, look,

14:05

we need a model of development

14:07

that can overcome the tyranny of

14:09

this compulsory identity that is called

14:11

caste. And so I think this

14:13

idea, which is important in the

14:15

Indian constitution of the idea of

14:18

liberty, equality, fraternity, in

14:20

conditions that are otherwise

14:22

were deemed to be inhospitable

14:24

to them, India gained

14:27

universal suffrage at

14:29

a moment where it was one of the poorest countries in

14:31

the world. So if you look at levels

14:33

of economic development at which countries get

14:35

universal suffrage, India gets it

14:37

at the lowest level of economic development. It

14:40

was one of the least educated countries in the world. And

14:43

yet this enormous hope that through constitutional

14:46

politics, you could actually overcome

14:48

this scourge of poverty and

14:50

at least social inequality. I

14:54

think the second thing that I think is very

14:56

remarkable to me about the tryst with destiny speech

14:58

and the Indian constitution and the preamble to the

15:00

Indian constitution is

15:04

God knows Nehru and the

15:06

founding generation fully understood that

15:09

God, history and identity

15:11

matter to Indians. I mean,

15:13

you can't imagine this country in some senses

15:15

without a deep religious and

15:17

spiritual engagement, without deep contestation over

15:20

history and identities proliferate. I mean,

15:22

people bear them on their sleeves.

15:25

But that in order for these

15:27

identities to flourish, in order for

15:29

that cultural heritage to come alive,

15:32

it was very important that the political

15:34

social contract not

15:36

be burdened with the weight of

15:39

God, history or identity. So

15:41

people don't feel

15:44

that they have to be

15:46

benchmarked to a

15:48

single identity or access of loyalty.

15:51

So yes, God will flourish, but God will

15:53

flourish. I mean, India's idea

15:55

of secularism wasn't that religion would be

15:57

marginalized. It would be that.

16:00

it would be put on a basis

16:03

of individual freedom such that

16:06

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18:12

looking at the past few years and you

18:14

see the way in which India is sort

18:16

of meeting this kind of truce with destiny,

18:18

right? India is by most

18:20

accounts now the most populous country in the

18:22

world over out, you know, outstripping China. And

18:25

for me, the GDP expanded by 7.8% last quarter. India

18:29

hosted the G20, a very important

18:31

gathering of global leaders. And you're seeing

18:34

India kind of step up to its

18:36

place on the global stage, but it's

18:38

happening at a time when the sort

18:40

of internal contradictions and tensions is, I

18:43

think, really coming to bear. So

18:45

maybe this is a good time for us

18:48

to turn to Narendra Modi and spend some

18:50

time talking about who he is, where he

18:52

came from, and maybe focus on a couple

18:54

of key moments. And I think one key moment

18:57

for me certainly is the 2002

18:59

riots in Gujarat. So

19:04

I think the three most important

19:06

things to bear in

19:08

mind about Narendra Modi, who is an extraordinary

19:10

political figure. I mean, just as an analytical

19:13

proposition, you don't have to endorse his politics

19:15

to recognize what

19:17

a transformative figure he has

19:19

been. So the first most important

19:21

thing is that he is a

19:23

member of and

19:25

had much of his political and

19:28

cultural upbringing in

19:30

an organization called the RSS, the

19:32

Rashtriya Swamsevak Sangh, which was founded

19:34

in the 1920s. And

19:38

the RSS has had one

19:40

core objective, which

19:42

is the creation

19:44

of a Hindu

19:46

political consciousness that

19:49

India has been subjugated to what they

19:51

call a thousand year period of slavery.

19:54

They regard even Mughal India, for example, as

19:56

a period of slavery. Their

20:00

political commitment is to create

20:02

a form of Hindu consciousness

20:05

and identity such that Hindus

20:07

are never subjugated again and

20:09

have a political straight and

20:11

instrument of their own. So

20:14

this straightforward political

20:17

objective has been, the Rayan Ramodi

20:19

is in a sense guiding Steehar.

20:22

Everything he does in some senses flows

20:25

from realizing this political

20:28

objective. An economic policy,

20:30

right, making India an economically developed nation

20:32

is in some senses part

20:35

of an instrument to achieve

20:37

this objective. I

20:39

think the second thing about him, which I think

20:42

in the Indian context is remarkable, is

20:44

he's a completely self-made politician

20:47

and leader. Biographically

20:49

he's from India's less

20:51

privileged caste and

20:54

had absolutely no

20:56

privileges, either economic,

20:59

social or political

21:01

that usually mark the

21:03

political careers of so many Indians. And

21:06

what this allowed him to do was two

21:08

things which are really quite central to his

21:10

success. One is

21:12

to produce a kind of instinctive

21:14

identification with large masses of people.

21:17

The political party represents the Bharti

21:19

Janta Party used to be accused

21:22

of being largely an upper caste

21:24

party or sort of privileged traders,

21:26

privileged Brahmins. He

21:28

single-handedly transformed that party

21:32

into a party that has a much

21:34

wider social base now. He managed

21:36

to run and still runs on this plank that

21:39

what kept India back, particularly over

21:41

the last 20, 30 years,

21:45

was the fact that India was

21:47

being ruled by something like a

21:49

dynastic Anshan regime. The

21:52

Congress Party was dominated by

21:54

the Nehru Gandhi family in some ways. And

21:57

so when he speaks of corruption, he doesn't...

22:00

He's not just referring to the fact that,

22:02

you know, there might have been sort of

22:04

monetary corruption. He's actually just

22:06

referring to the fact that Indian

22:08

democracy had acquired the characteristic of

22:10

being something like a closed club.

22:13

And he has in some senses opened

22:15

the gates of this politics to

22:18

ordinary Indians, to

22:20

languages they speak. So for

22:22

example, he's a very gifted orator in Hindi.

22:25

The BJP is much more comfortable in the

22:27

vernaculars than the Congress Party is. So

22:30

he would represent that old

22:32

complex as a privileged elite

22:34

with a narrow social base

22:37

against whom his kind of persona stands.

22:39

And I think

22:41

the third thing about him, which I think goes

22:44

back to his days in Gujarat, is

22:46

in Gujarat he acquired the reputation

22:48

for both being

22:50

an effective administrator on the one hand. And

22:52

the second thing, of course, he was known

22:54

for his conduct during the 2002 Gujarat riots.

22:59

What happened in these riots? This

23:01

is very contested. And

23:03

I think one has to go back to the

23:06

late 80s, early 90s, where

23:08

the Bharati Janta Party, which

23:10

Mr. Modi represents, launched

23:13

a agitation for

23:16

reclaiming what

23:18

they called was the site of the

23:20

birthplace of Lord Ram, where a mosque

23:23

had been built in the

23:25

16th century. And the BJP's demand

23:27

has been that this should in some senses be returned to

23:29

the Hindus. And they

23:31

created a mass movement. Now

23:34

what that mass movement did was

23:36

that it in a

23:38

sense created pockets of Hindu Muslim

23:40

tension all across India, because in

23:42

some senses these rallies were quite

23:45

aggressive. They really were

23:47

signposting the fact that a

23:49

Hindu movement was arriving to claim India

23:52

for Hindus. One

23:54

of the results of that mass movement was

23:56

the tearing down of the Babri Masjid. Ayodhya.

24:00

Now this movement was actually

24:03

trying to collect volunteers

24:07

and collect actually literally bricks

24:09

from different parts of India to take

24:12

to Ayodhya as a kind of symbolic

24:14

gesture of kind of building you know

24:16

these be used to build temple. Now

24:20

as this movement is going on intentions

24:22

are on the rise. A train in

24:24

Godhra was set on fire and

24:27

roughly around 50 of these volunteers

24:31

in the volunteers that were going to

24:33

Ayodhya was killed. This

24:35

immediately set off a

24:37

set of now what the BJP

24:40

would call retaliatory violence. This

24:42

violence was directed at Muslim

24:45

residents in Gujarat. Absolutely and about

24:47

2,000 people died and it was

24:49

absolutely gruesome violence. I mean it

24:51

really it's just you know it's

24:53

just it's just very hard to

24:56

describe. Yeah neighbors set upon neighbors.

24:58

Neighbors set upon each other. Now

25:01

his role so

25:03

there is a range of positions in this.

25:06

One of course holds him directly

25:08

responsible for instigating the retaliatory

25:10

violence. There was

25:13

a commission of inquiry and for

25:15

what it's worth that commission of inquiry absolved

25:19

him of that charge. I mean

25:21

that's again for what it's

25:23

worth. But we

25:26

do know in India that

25:28

if the state is committed

25:30

to stopping violence it

25:33

can actually stop it fairly quickly.

25:35

You know you can bring the

25:37

law enforcement agencies out. The

25:40

army can be called out and

25:42

I think the political question mark over

25:44

Narendra Modi whatever you think may be

25:47

the direct instructions he may or may

25:49

not have given is that

25:51

this was clearly a massive

25:55

abdication or responsibility on part

25:58

of the chief minister. state.

26:01

This violence could have been stopped and

26:03

there is no excuse, no excuse. No

26:05

matter how deep the

26:07

passions run, no matter how widespread the

26:10

desire for revenge is, there is absolutely

26:12

no excuse for the scale of violence

26:14

that actually took place in Gujarat. The

26:17

fact that he was accused of

26:20

formatting this violence by the Congress

26:22

party, he had been denied a

26:24

visa to the United States, as you know, till he

26:26

became Prime Minister. I think that

26:29

convinced him that the

26:31

entire world is a kind of gigantic

26:34

conspiracy out to get Hindus. I

26:36

mean, and that conspiratorial mindset is

26:39

actually very, very central to the

26:41

BJP analysis thinking about the rest

26:43

of the world. That somehow

26:45

there has been this global conspiracy since, you

26:47

know, I don't know, maybe 900 AD to

26:50

keep Hindus as a political community

26:52

down. And the fact

26:54

that people were accusing him of formatting this

26:56

violence was just another element in that conspiracy.

26:59

So it was completely turned on its head.

27:02

And I hate to say this,

27:04

but there is a sense in which I think

27:06

there was a significant number of Hindus who

27:09

began to radically subscribe to this

27:11

much more radical and aggressive message

27:14

that the

27:16

BJP was going to be much

27:18

more aggressive in protecting

27:22

Hindus, if you want to put it creatively, or

27:25

aggressively targeting minorities.

27:29

I think that message went out loud and

27:31

clear from that Gujarat experience. The

27:34

sense that violence can

27:36

pay long term

27:38

dividends for Hindu nationalism

27:40

as a movement. It became

27:42

a central plank of the BJP. I mean, till

27:44

2002, there always used to be this

27:49

sense that you

27:51

could not win a national election

27:54

only with the votes of Hindus. That

27:57

somehow you'd always have to stitch a broad coalition. I

28:00

think Narendra Modi managed

28:03

to convince his party, and that has

28:05

been their electoral strategy, that

28:07

they could come to power only

28:10

with Hindu votes. And in fact,

28:12

you could actually increase your share

28:14

of Hindu votes, consolidate a Hindu

28:16

constituency if you

28:18

were to clearly send a

28:20

signal that you were going

28:22

to politically marginalize Muslims.

28:25

But then 2009, there's another election. This

28:28

is the moment that I land in

28:30

India. And I think you're right that

28:32

this fire has been lit around Hindu

28:34

nationalism. But at the same time, there

28:36

was a sense that India had a,

28:38

you know, a teetotaling economist as its

28:41

prime minister, that India's tryst with destiny

28:43

is about to be fulfilled. It felt

28:45

like a moment. And the

28:47

thing that I remember particularly was a sense

28:50

that the sectarian divides

28:52

felt much less alive.

28:55

One of the first stories that I did was I actually

28:57

went to the city of Ayodhya, where the Babri

28:59

Masjid Mosque was. And it was

29:01

striking to me how the temperature at

29:03

that place was basically just, you know,

29:05

room temperature. And you had this,

29:07

you know, kind of too busy

29:10

to hate India moving forward, you

29:12

know, we're joining the global economy

29:14

where, you know, and that

29:16

was very much the vibe when I got there. And

29:19

there was a sense that Narendra Modi, no chance he could

29:21

be prime minister. The guy can't even go to the United

29:23

States. And the BJP seemed like

29:25

they were nowhere. And you

29:28

know, Congress was ascendant. And boy,

29:30

were we wrong. So

29:32

walk me through what happened. How did

29:34

Modi go from being an international pariah

29:36

to prime minister of the world's largest

29:39

democracy? I think, you know, as

29:41

I said at the beginning of the show, this

29:44

sense we had of a kind of India

29:46

fated to a certain kind of centrism actually

29:49

made all of us complacent that a

29:51

force like Narendra Modi or at least

29:53

a very radical Hindu nationalist ideology could

29:55

never be dominant or if it even

29:57

came to power, it would have to allow us to be

29:59

dominant. with other kinds of groups to

30:01

moderate its stance. So I

30:04

think what happened post 2009 is

30:06

I think a bunch of things. So

30:08

the first is of course the

30:10

2009 financial crisis globally, right, which

30:13

is a pivotal moment in

30:15

democracies across the world, because India

30:17

was going at 8%. And

30:20

it was a nice place to be

30:22

you're going at 8% the state was

30:24

getting enough resources to begin to build

30:26

out slightly more ambitious welfare state, something

30:29

Narendra Modi has then sought to accelerate.

30:33

And yet what the 2009 financial

30:35

crisis did, at least in

30:37

the Indian context was two things. One,

30:39

it actually did expose the

30:42

corruption at the heart of

30:45

that growth regime. You know, lots of

30:47

projects kind of suddenly seem unviable to

30:50

people. And there is an

30:52

anti corruption movement, which kind of paved

30:54

the way for saying, look, this

30:57

old regime, this ancient regime headed

30:59

by the Congress, this coalition government,

31:02

it may have done us some good,

31:04

but now it is a

31:06

corrupt, torturing regime. India

31:09

has a moment, an opportunity

31:11

here, but it is actually frittering

31:13

it away because of a weak

31:16

government. In fact, the slogan

31:18

Narendra Modi used was policy paralysis. So 2014,

31:20

he ran largely on

31:24

this plank, I'm going to

31:26

overcome this paralysis, I'm a strong decisive leader,

31:28

look at my record in Gujarat. And

31:31

he ran against plutocracy. But plutocracy in

31:33

this very generalized sense, you know, this

31:35

is a kind of old corrupt ancient

31:37

regime. And like I

31:40

think politics elsewhere, it was

31:42

the implosion of the alternative, the internal

31:44

implosion of the Congress Party, that

31:47

created much more of the space that

31:49

somehow it had lost this will to fight this

31:52

will to govern. There was

31:54

very little communication mass, very little mass mobilization,

31:56

it just had lost, you know, all the

31:58

kind of The

32:01

second thing that I think happened,

32:04

and this may take some explaining,

32:06

but I actually do think it

32:08

is important. So the

32:11

BJP's primary base is

32:15

in North India. It has

32:17

now expanded. So it is a

32:19

genuinely pan-Indian party, but its core

32:21

political support is

32:24

drawn from North India, and particularly the largest

32:26

state in North India, which is Uttar Pradesh,

32:28

which is the size of

32:30

Brazil, I think, in terms of population

32:32

or something. In

32:35

North India, English does

32:38

remain a language of privilege.

32:41

So Hindi and the vernacular languages

32:44

are important, but they are the

32:47

languages of culture. They are the languages

32:49

of the past. They

32:51

might be the register of

32:54

emotions in some ways. We

32:57

might kind of curse each other, but the language of

32:59

the future is English. If

33:06

you want to get access to social privilege

33:09

and if you want to get access to

33:11

the production of knowledge, and

33:13

particularly future knowledge, science, technology,

33:16

medicine, law, you

33:18

have to have English, or at least be

33:20

fluent in it. Our

33:23

education system actually produced large

33:25

masses of students, young people,

33:28

who are kind

33:30

of linguistically stranded. They're linguistically stranded

33:32

in the sense that they are

33:34

fluent in the vernaculars, but

33:37

actually will find it difficult to compete

33:39

in the cutting edge of English, that

33:42

we have a form of

33:45

language competence that does not make us full

33:47

participants in this

33:49

privileged social structure. What

33:52

it has done is that it

33:54

made it very easy to

33:56

mobilize this kind of resentment

33:59

against an entrenched elite.

34:01

When you were in Delhi, you went to Khan Market a

34:04

lot, I'm sure. I mean, it's a great place

34:06

to hang out with bookshelf, coffee shops. Restaurants, yep.

34:09

Mr. Modi frequently uses

34:12

this phrase, I stand against

34:14

the Khan Market gang. It's

34:17

a brilliant piece of political

34:19

communication because everybody instinctively recognizes

34:23

that it refers to the

34:25

narrow social privileges of an elite.

34:29

And so I think what he was able

34:31

to tap into, apart from his kind of

34:33

caste identification, is that

34:35

I actually stand for something that is

34:37

much more authentic and connected. Our

34:41

heritage, our languages, do not

34:43

just have to be about the past. Now,

34:46

quite what he does with his education policies is

34:48

another matter. But I think

34:50

that sense of, I think, Rizanthi

34:52

Mohr, that India was being governed

34:54

by a small exclusive elite. I

34:57

think he managed to give that voice

34:59

and expression very powerfully. And

35:02

because of his uniqueness in some

35:04

senses, his own biography, his

35:07

own extraordinary communicative skills, I

35:09

think he was in a sense able to tap

35:12

into that. And I think

35:14

more than the specifics of Hindu nationalism, it's

35:16

this particular trope that I

35:20

am rescuing India from a small

35:22

elite out of touch that

35:25

I think still resonates very powerfully. Yeah.

35:27

And I think it's not just an elite

35:29

that's out of touch, it's an elite that

35:32

is looking outward. And there's something about the

35:34

sort of return to the vernacular that's saying,

35:36

no, no, no, the real strength of India

35:38

lies within. And we will engage with the

35:41

rest of the world on our own terms.

35:43

So, Modi gets elected in 2014. His first

35:45

term, to my mind, as

35:48

I followed it, seemed mostly

35:50

to be focused on these economic issues.

35:52

There were some cultural issues focusing on

35:54

hygiene and toilets. I mean, what a

35:56

lot of people maybe don't know about

35:58

India is that the lack of

36:00

clean water and access to toilets is a

36:02

huge public health issue, you know, holding people

36:05

back in a lot of ways. There

36:07

were a lot of just sort of fundamental development issues that he

36:09

focused on. But it seems to me

36:11

that it wasn't until he was reelected, that

36:13

his government was reelected in 2019, that you

36:16

really started to see the clause come

36:19

out. And you've written, I think, quite

36:21

powerfully on this, on the government's policy

36:23

in Kashmir, because there was a very

36:25

sharp change. And I'll quote you, the

36:28

BJP thinks it's going to Indianize Kashmir,

36:30

but instead, what we will see is

36:33

potentially the Kashmirization of India.

36:36

Tell me about what happened in Kashmir and what

36:38

you meant by that idea, that Kashmirization

36:40

of India. Right. Gosh. So,

36:43

you know, Kashmir has

36:46

historically been one

36:48

of the deepest failures of Indian democracy.

36:50

So when India became

36:52

independent, there was a whole bunch of

36:54

princely states that

36:57

had to take the decision of whether to

36:59

exceed to India, whether to exceed to Pakistan

37:01

or potentially even remain independent. I mean, most

37:03

of them weren't viable, but at least in

37:06

theory, that was an option. Now,

37:09

Kashmir was one of the

37:11

last holdouts. It had a Hindu

37:13

Raja, but its population was

37:15

majority Muslim. But interestingly,

37:18

one of the most kind of

37:20

secularized and led by a radical

37:23

leftist Sheikh Abdullah. And

37:26

Pakistan decided to

37:28

force Kashmir's hand by

37:30

actually invading Kashmir. And

37:33

India said it could help only if the

37:35

Maharaja signed an instrumental succession

37:39

joining India and Kashmir joined India.

37:41

Pakistan never recognized the legitimacy of

37:44

that extension. And there's a long

37:46

history of Pakistan

37:48

fermenting active terrorist and

37:50

militant violence in Kashmir for much

37:52

of the 20th century. And

37:55

just to put a fine point on

37:57

it, I mean, this Himalayan province. one

38:00

of the most beautiful places on

38:03

Earth. I've been there many times

38:05

and it's extraordinary. But you're talking

38:07

about a flashpoint between two nuclear

38:09

armed countries, right, Pakistan and India.

38:12

And it's a very explosive situation.

38:14

I mean, I just wanted to underscore how

38:16

sort of tender and fragile the status of Kashmir

38:19

is. It is, and unfortunately, I think it

38:21

was a failure for Indian democracy. Kashmir

38:24

also had special status in the

38:26

Indian Constitution. According to

38:28

the terms of accession, the

38:30

Indian state was going to conduct Kashmir's

38:32

foreign policy. There'd be a minimum set

38:34

of common laws, but Kashmir was supposed

38:36

to have a great deal of autonomy

38:39

in terms of governing its own affairs. But

38:42

unfortunately, I think the

38:45

Indian state's relationship with Kashmir

38:47

got securitized very early on.

38:50

I mean, every political protest, every kind

38:52

of political dissension was being looked at

38:55

through this prism of, are

38:57

there really kind of courts, secessionists in

38:59

place, right? Kashmir is the only

39:02

state in India where there was a sense

39:04

that the elections were not entirely free and

39:06

fair. It's constantly interfering

39:08

in elections. It is

39:10

putting Kashmir internally under the state of siege.

39:13

Pakistan is actively, in some senses,

39:16

formatting violent and terrorist groups. Even

39:19

when it was open for tourism, it

39:22

became an immensely militarized place,

39:24

about half a million troops,

39:26

guarding kind of Kashmiri security checkpoints. There was

39:29

a sense of great sense of siege about

39:31

Kashmir. Yeah, and it's this

39:33

place, there's this beautiful lake and people

39:35

stay in houseboats and you've got the

39:37

amazing Himalayan skyline. But there was this

39:40

sense that you were stopped and asked

39:42

for identification constantly, flying in

39:44

and out of the airport. You

39:46

felt a sense of

39:49

surveillance. And this is

39:51

for an outsider, for my many

39:53

Kashmiri friends and particularly journalists, this

39:55

sense of being surveilled and having

39:59

your rights curtailed was really, really

40:01

powerful. And so what did Modi do

40:03

in 2019? So

40:06

one of the RSS's

40:08

planks, the organization

40:10

that Modi belongs to, was that

40:12

if you actually wanted the integration

40:15

of Kashmir into India, Article 370

40:18

had to go. That would be

40:20

a constitutional statement that Kashmir is a

40:22

part of India, just like any other

40:24

part. And it would also send a

40:26

signal to Pakistan that we are not

40:28

even thinking that this is disputed territory. I mean,

40:30

just forget about it. And

40:32

this has been part of BJP's manifesto

40:34

forever. I mean, so at one level,

40:36

there was no surprise. I mean, I

40:38

think we just never took them literally

40:40

in some ways, right? So

40:43

what they did was they

40:45

basically revoked Article 370.

40:47

And on the grounds that

40:51

Kashmir needs to be a state

40:53

like any other state in the

40:55

Indian Union, no special

40:57

privileges. And

41:00

the government's view was we are going

41:02

to restore administrative order. So we are

41:04

going to clamp down on militants. We

41:07

are going to attract investment by

41:09

creating law and order. And

41:12

to be honest, it has had

41:14

mixed results. I mean, the government can

41:16

claim that at least the outbreak of

41:18

violence has not been as bad as

41:21

many had feared, many of us had feared actually. But

41:25

it still remains the case that

41:27

there are still pockets of militancy.

41:30

And there is still a

41:32

significant clamp down on

41:35

civil liberties, on reporting on Kashmir, on the

41:37

free movement of

41:39

journalists in Kashmir. If you're

41:41

a journalist in Kashmir, you really have

41:44

an impossible task ahead of you. Even

41:46

outside of Kashmir, most

41:48

Indian mainstream papers will not

41:51

carry stories critical of what's

41:53

happening in Kashmir. Now,

41:55

what I mean by the Kashmirization of India,

41:57

I mean, partly, of course, you know, it's

41:59

a call of was sort

42:01

of a pre-decure kind of provocation. But unfortunately,

42:03

I think the grain of truth in this

42:05

was that what

42:08

the government was trying to demonstrate in

42:10

Kashmir was that a

42:14

strong repressive surveillance state

42:18

was going to be

42:20

the more effective means of

42:23

integrating Indian citizens into

42:25

the state, rather than

42:27

a faith in democracy, pluralism,

42:29

and open society. And

42:32

many of the practices that we

42:35

experimented on in Kashmir, detailed

42:38

surveillance, preventive

42:40

detention, the idea

42:43

of expanding the remit of

42:45

who you hold under suspicion,

42:48

that those practices of the state

42:50

would become much more generalized and

42:53

be replicated elsewhere in India. You

42:56

can see that in a state like

42:59

UP, where the Chief Minister is very

43:01

popular, but one of

43:03

his characteristic modes of governance is a

43:05

form of vigilante justice. If

43:08

you are suspected, and the

43:10

key word here is suspected, and particularly

43:12

if you're a member of the minority community, of

43:15

let's say even participating in a protest, your

43:18

house can become in bulldozers without due process. So

43:22

this arsenal of repression

43:24

and looking upon the

43:26

citizens as objects of

43:28

presumptive distrust, that's

43:31

really what the Indian state did in Kashmir at the end of

43:33

the day. That is

43:35

becoming a much more generalized practice

43:38

of governance, I think

43:40

across India. It's interesting

43:42

because I'm always trying to kind of check

43:44

my own assumptions here because, you

43:46

know, the people that I talk to, my friends, they're journalists,

43:48

they're people who are in kind

43:51

of activist communities or politics

43:53

adjacent. And the report that I hear

43:55

from them about sort of

43:57

the general mood across India is very much.

44:00

what you're describing, this kind of

44:02

cashmerization. Muslims have felt

44:04

the sort of the first brunt of it.

44:06

But anybody seeking to live a different kind

44:08

of life or to report honestly on what's

44:11

happening in the country and, you know, is

44:13

ultimately feeling the sharp end of that stick.

44:16

But the thing that you sort of balance that up again

44:18

is that I think really

44:20

striking popularity of Narendra Modi. And my

44:23

friend, the journalist from here, Sharma, wrote in

44:25

2019, after Modi's party

44:27

was reelected, he said, we do

44:30

not live in Modi's India. We live

44:32

in India's India. And the reason so

44:34

many Indians adore Modi is because he

44:36

represents their preferred conception of the Indian

44:38

state and the Indian nation. And it

44:41

reminded me of something that you wrote, which is that

44:44

tyranny can be the stepchild of democracy,

44:46

which is a great paraphrase from Plato.

44:49

The theory that, you know, you

44:51

could build a majoritarian project on

44:53

the votes of Hindus alone, it's

44:56

clearly working. No, it

44:59

is clearly working. So look, you

45:02

know, if you want to take a hopeful story, and the

45:04

opposition will keep reminding you of this, they will keep saying

45:06

something like 60% of Indians

45:08

still don't vote for the BJP. In

45:11

a first pass the post system,

45:13

parliamentary system, roughly about

45:15

38 to 40% of the

45:17

world can actually get your pretty dominant majority

45:19

in parliament. But there

45:21

is a lesson in that. And the

45:23

lesson is that, like everywhere in the

45:25

world, that ethnic

45:28

majoritarian forces have come to

45:30

power. It is largely

45:32

because the forces arrayed against

45:35

them have failed to credibly

45:37

unite on a coherent platform.

45:40

So the center and left in India, you

45:42

know, 20 different ways, but

45:44

I think more deeply, I think, and

45:46

I actually do think the cultural transformation

45:49

that I see of India is truly

45:51

astonishing. Large sections of

45:53

India's elites in particular, right,

45:56

those who are most

45:58

powerful. place

46:01

to resist this. I

46:04

think their ideological conversion to

46:06

this project is

46:08

actually quite significant. If you look

46:11

at the Indian media landscape, it's

46:14

one thing to say that the

46:16

media does not criticize government. Maybe

46:18

they fear reprisals. Often

46:21

the owners of media might fear

46:23

reprisals. But what you are

46:25

seeing in the Indian media is

46:27

actually something much more than simply

46:30

complying with the state. It

46:32

is actually creating and disseminating

46:34

structures of hate, fully

46:37

funded by the most

46:39

powerful echelons of Indian

46:41

capital. This is

46:44

going way beyond we fear the state and

46:46

we will not criticize it. There

46:48

is almost like a positive investment

46:50

in that information order, day

46:52

in and day out. It's actually unbearable to

46:55

read many of the regional papers

46:57

these days. English media you see

46:59

somewhat little less of it, but

47:01

it stays there or on television

47:03

media for example. The Indian Supreme

47:05

Court, really an extraordinary

47:07

puzzle. We used to say in 2009, the years

47:09

you were here, that

47:12

the Indian Supreme Court had become one of the

47:14

most powerful courts in the world. In fact, the

47:17

criticism of the Indian Supreme Court was it pretty

47:19

much did what it wanted meddled in, whichever

47:22

issue it wanted, far

47:25

beyond its jurisdictional competence. One

47:28

of the most disappointing things has been the near

47:32

abdication of the Supreme Court in

47:35

protecting basic civil liberties. The

47:38

extent of it is so mind boggling that

47:41

you have got to think that deep

47:43

down there is a kind of some kind of

47:46

allegiance to this project that is

47:48

actually surfacing. It's not simply held

47:50

together by fear of reprisal.

47:53

So for those of us who grew up

47:55

in India, I have not seen an elite

47:58

discourse that so

48:01

openly participates, revels

48:03

in disseminating hate,

48:06

as I see at this moment in India, not even

48:08

at the height of the temple movement in the 1990s.

48:13

The one most important function of

48:15

the leader is to be at least

48:18

able to articulate a norm. This

48:22

is right, this is wrong, this is what

48:24

we accept, this is what we don't. It's

48:26

a measure of how far India has

48:28

come that the leadership

48:31

is not only unwilling to articulate

48:33

this norm, it

48:35

is often dog whistling about

48:38

targeting minorities. We

48:41

had this extraordinary scene in parliament where

48:43

a senior leader of the BJP in

48:47

parliament said something of

48:49

one of the few Muslim MPs

48:51

in parliament that you

48:53

could not even say with censored

48:55

speech. It's the

48:57

kind of thing you'd expect out of

49:00

a text called Mein Kampf. In

49:03

the Indian parliament, senior BJP leader,

49:06

he has been rewarded. You

49:08

are now empowering a

49:11

set of people, an ideology,

49:15

and sending out a signal that if you want

49:17

to move up in this political system, you

49:20

have to engage in acts

49:22

of hate or violence

49:25

or commit yourself publicly to this

49:28

project. I mean, this is

49:30

completely unprecedented. This is a

49:32

shattering of the norms. This

49:57

podcast is supported by the ACLU. The

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ACLU needs your support to continue

50:02

defending the rights of all people

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nationwide. Right now, our freedoms are

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under attack. People are traveling hundreds

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of miles to find abortion care.

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Puerto Rico, the ACLU is taking

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these attacks head-on. Protect

50:27

everyone's rights. Donate at

50:29

aclu.org today. It's

50:39

really striking to me that we've gotten

50:41

to this place now where

50:44

you have India kind of

50:46

emerging on the global stage as such a critical

50:48

player because there are

50:51

big, powerful countries like the United

50:53

States but also others that

50:55

are seeking India to take its place

50:57

on the global stage as a counterweight

50:59

to China. What recommends it

51:02

for that role is precisely the fact

51:04

that it sees itself, it

51:06

describes itself and is seen by others

51:08

as a secular,

51:10

pluralistic democracy. So there's this

51:13

tremendous irony that at

51:15

precisely the moment you're seeking a democratic counterweight

51:17

to China, the obvious candidate

51:19

for that role, its

51:21

democracy is, from what we've discussed,

51:23

seems really deeply imperiled. No,

51:26

it is. And, you know, if you

51:28

look at India's projection

51:30

abroad, one of Mr. Modi's

51:32

favorite tropes these days, India is the

51:34

mother of all democracies. I

51:37

mean, that's the kind of tagline and a

51:39

kind of guru to the world. But

51:41

it is a performance. This

51:44

government's diagnosis, and Trump's election may

51:46

have something to do with it,

51:48

the way in which the kind

51:50

of world changed post-Trump, is that

51:52

there is not going to

51:54

be any penalty for

51:57

India's actions domestically.

52:00

And to be fair to them, their

52:02

reading of the international system has been just right.

52:05

That somehow they think in the end

52:07

the United States is strategic imperative, rather

52:10

than its imperative in democracy and

52:12

pluralism will actually trump

52:15

their engagement with India. By

52:18

the way, it's also happening in

52:20

the moment where the exemplarity

52:23

and authority of

52:25

almost all democratic countries around the world

52:27

is also at its lowest. I

52:30

can't remember a time where the prestige

52:32

and authority of American democracy was so

52:34

low. It's almost even in

52:37

this state, many Indians are willing to say, oh,

52:39

now we can talk back to the United States.

52:42

So there is no exemplarity and

52:44

authority left to that idea in

52:46

the international system, I think. And

52:50

this goes to one of the fundamental tenets

52:52

of Hindu nationalism as

52:54

a ideology. Their

52:58

diagnosis of India's success

53:00

and failure is very different from

53:02

at least mine, possibly yours

53:04

and most of the world's. The

53:07

two figures in Indian history,

53:11

they hate the most, they revile the most

53:13

are Gautam Buddha and

53:16

Mahatma Gandhi. I mean,

53:18

this is a party that openly

53:20

celebrates Mahatma Gandhi's

53:22

assassin. And

53:25

there is almost this sense

53:27

of embarrassment they have that somehow

53:29

this whole talk of nonviolence actually

53:31

made us weak. It

53:33

made us less respected in the world. America

53:37

took Pakistan more seriously because it created trouble

53:39

in the international system. We never were taken

53:41

seriously, which again, I think is a pretty

53:43

bizarre reading of history actually, but it

53:46

is a kind of political style whose core

53:50

is defined by a certain

53:52

kind of fascination with violence

53:54

and aggression. The

53:57

other has to be created in

53:59

order for this. Hindu

54:01

existential crisis to actually reap

54:04

political dividends. So it

54:06

can be Muslims, it can be secular

54:08

intellectuals, it can be liberals, it can

54:10

be George Soros. God knows why George

54:13

Soros in the Indian context, but... There,

54:15

too, huh? Oh, absolutely. I mean, it's... In

54:18

fact, today the BJP has just put out

54:21

a big political ad, which basically describes the

54:23

Congress party as a film being produced by

54:25

George Soros. So

54:28

in that sense, the

54:30

core of sensibility rests

54:33

on the idea of a kind

54:35

of perpetual Hindu victimhood. One

54:37

place where you sort of see this playing out, and

54:40

obviously this has been very, very big in the news,

54:42

is Canada's assertion that

54:44

India assassinated a Sikh

54:47

activist who is a Canadian citizen in

54:50

Canada. There's a lot of questions about

54:52

what exactly happened here. If

54:54

India is actually responsible for this

54:56

assassination, it's a huge violation of

54:58

international norms, but even

55:00

if they weren't directly involved in it,

55:03

it almost seems to play the game that India

55:05

wants to play on the global stage to

55:07

create the perception that India has

55:10

that capacity and will act as

55:12

it wishes on the

55:14

global stage without deference to the

55:16

kind of quote-unquote rules-based order. Yeah,

55:18

no, I think that's exactly right. What

55:21

is striking sitting in India looking at it is

55:25

how much the political machine of the

55:27

BJP is trying to milk this occasion.

55:29

It's almost like we

55:31

didn't do it, but

55:34

we are capable and it's been a great thing. But if we

55:36

did. It's truly

55:38

actually astonishing how much it

55:42

has been fed into part of that narrative

55:44

of bravado in some ways. You

55:47

know, it's interesting. There's another narrative that I

55:49

hear sort of bubbling along underneath all of

55:51

this, which is I think there's a

55:53

sense in the United States that perhaps we

55:55

were mistaken in how we managed our relationship

55:57

with China. The idea that, you know,

55:59

you. bring China under your wing, you

56:02

integrate them into the global economic system,

56:04

you see

56:06

prosperity rise, you create the linkages that make

56:08

it harder for a country to kind of

56:10

go off on its own. I think

56:13

there's a feeling, well, was that a mistake? Did

56:15

we sort of create the conditions for China to

56:17

become this incredibly powerful country? And now it's, of

56:19

course, our main geopolitical rival. And you hear in

56:22

some quarters a question of like, are we doing

56:24

the same thing again with India? And I wonder

56:26

what you make of that question. And

56:28

I have to be candid, I think sitting in Asia, you know,

56:32

this idea that somehow you

56:34

could structure a global development

56:36

process that shuts

56:39

out countries like China or India

56:42

just sounds so remarkably full of

56:44

hubris and presumption. And, you

56:47

know, I mean, the fact

56:49

that China's integration into

56:51

the global economy actually lifted millions

56:53

and millions of people out of

56:55

poverty, I don't think is

56:58

a human achievement to be sneered at. But the

57:01

idea that India and China could be

57:03

shut out in some

57:05

senses from being competitors or

57:07

participating in the global food,

57:09

science, technology development, frankly,

57:12

I don't think it's even practical

57:14

terms on. In fact, that

57:16

kind of assertion plays exactly into the hands

57:18

of nationalists everywhere. I mean,

57:21

even those who don't support authority

57:23

in governments, you know, when they

57:25

hear a statement like, oh, actually, what the United States

57:27

is going to do is structure the world economy in

57:29

a way in which it retains primacy

57:33

forever. It doesn't

57:35

matter what the authority or democratic right, you're

57:37

not going to particularly push. So I actually

57:40

think it I actually think that the United

57:42

States is on sale. I think I think

57:44

this way of posing the question is I

57:46

think a slightly self defeating one.

57:48

I mean, the easiest

57:50

way of reinforcing

57:53

the conspiratorial mindset of

57:55

Hindu nationalism is

57:57

to actually prove what they have been all

58:00

saying that the world is out to get in

58:02

line is to place it under siege. And

58:04

also I think particularly at a moment in

58:06

world history where it's very hard

58:08

for the United States or

58:12

any other country to pull

58:14

this policy off as if this were a

58:16

matter of principle and conviction. I mean

58:20

how many authoritarian regimes are you going

58:22

to exclude, not do business

58:24

with, right? So I actually

58:27

think if you make

58:29

people's development and democracy

58:31

a tool of geostrategic

58:33

politics, you end up

58:35

doing both geostrategic politics and the cause

58:37

of democracy and development great harm. I

58:40

mean many Indians often talk about this, you know, should

58:43

the Biden administration be doing more? You

58:46

know, they don't have to roll out the red

58:48

carpet. They can say the truth sometimes. I mean

58:50

it can be a perfectly candid relationship. But

58:53

I don't think there is an option but

58:55

to engage with India and I think both in

58:57

some senses will be better off

59:00

it. I also strongly believe that not

59:02

to take away anything from American power but I

59:05

actually think the United States' role

59:08

in how Indian democracy develops

59:11

will be miniscule at most. This

59:14

is a struggle that Indians will

59:16

have to undertake internally. I

59:18

mean maybe most of us are still complacent. The

59:21

way in which violence is being enacted

59:23

in Indian democracy still feels like in

59:26

drips and dribbles. I mean most of us can

59:29

still go around our daily business thinking

59:31

this is not going to affect us but

59:35

most of us still hope and still believe,

59:37

I mean otherwise we won't even be having

59:39

this conversation, that yes

59:41

the signs look ominous for Indian

59:43

democracy but at some

59:46

point will come a threshold

59:49

where ordinary Indians begin to

59:51

say that look this is

59:53

not us. Now

59:55

what that threshold is is an open question but

59:57

I actually do believe that that threshold will be

59:59

reached. and you will find

1:00:01

Indian society reacting appropriately. I

1:00:04

think that is a very good and

1:00:06

hopeful note to perhaps wrap up our

1:00:08

conversation on. And you

1:00:10

know, as a person who loves and

1:00:12

admires India very much, I very

1:00:15

much want to believe in

1:00:17

that prognosis. And you know, next year is an

1:00:19

election year. It'll be interesting to see what happens.

1:00:21

I think most people think that the BJP will

1:00:23

come back. But lots

1:00:26

of things can happen. The world

1:00:28

spins on. So at the

1:00:30

end of every episode of the Ezra Klein

1:00:32

Show, we ask our guests to recommend some

1:00:34

books. Could you recommend three

1:00:36

books that our listeners could

1:00:38

benefit from to understand India

1:00:41

democracy and the world better? Okay,

1:00:44

so I'll go with a couple of

1:00:46

unusual choices. One which is

1:00:49

not recent is I actually

1:00:51

still think reading V.S.

1:00:54

Naipaul's India trilogy,

1:00:56

which is now one book. I

1:00:59

think he and partly

1:01:01

because he himself was such

1:01:04

a complicated and many ways awful

1:01:06

characters. I think he

1:01:09

actually saw the moral psychology of

1:01:11

what's happening in various Indian social

1:01:13

movements. I think much more clearly

1:01:15

than I think many first

1:01:18

liberals and constitutionalists have recognized

1:01:20

this theme of India

1:01:23

thinking of itself as a wounded civilization

1:01:26

and now trying to kind of claim

1:01:28

something of that itself through this path

1:01:30

of violence and Hindu nationalism. Besides,

1:01:33

I mean, he's a wonderful writer to

1:01:35

read. I think the second

1:01:37

book I pick is a recent book

1:01:39

by Shiv Shankar Menon. The

1:01:42

title is India in Asian Geopolitics.

1:01:45

But it's really about India's place in the world, incredibly

1:01:48

well written, but also somebody who's

1:01:50

both a deep historian and has

1:01:53

had the benefit of having a ring-sized seat.

1:01:55

I think it's the single best book on

1:01:57

India's place in the world. The

1:02:00

third I would recommend, I mean

1:02:02

this is a sort of slightly more

1:02:04

kind of quirky recommendation,

1:02:08

is a book

1:02:10

by Snigdha Poonam called

1:02:12

The Dreamers. This

1:02:15

is a book that kind of captures

1:02:17

the craziness and the

1:02:19

contradictory textures of this

1:02:22

kind of young educated India, right?

1:02:24

I mean some of those linguistically

1:02:26

sanded people we talk about, the

1:02:28

IT hackers, you know, the would-be

1:02:31

Indian idols, I mean the Indian

1:02:33

version of American Idol, the music

1:02:35

program. It does have kind of

1:02:37

enough of those sort of quirky life biographies

1:02:40

to make it an interesting introduction

1:02:42

to India beneath the surface

1:02:45

of these large themes of

1:02:47

politics and economics. Those

1:02:49

are all wonderful, wonderful recommendations. Chris

1:02:52

Hoppanumesa, thank you so much for being with us.

1:02:55

Thank you so much and good luck to both our democracies.

1:02:58

Amen to that. This

1:03:07

episode of the Ezra Klein Show was produced

1:03:09

by Roland Hu. Fact-checking

1:03:11

by Michelle Harris. Mixing by

1:03:13

a theme Shapiro. Our senior engineer

1:03:15

is Jeff Gelt. Our senior editor

1:03:17

is Claire Gordon. The show's

1:03:20

production team also includes Emmepha Agawu

1:03:22

and Kristen Lin. Original

1:03:24

music by Isaac Jones. Audience

1:03:26

strategy by Christina Similoski and Shannon

1:03:28

Busta. The executive producer of

1:03:31

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1:03:33

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