1st Indian Liberals Annual Lecture | The Case for Individual Liberty in India by Ms. Sagarika Ghose

1st Indian Liberals Annual Lecture | The Case for Individual Liberty in India by Ms. Sagarika Ghose

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjOWX9zaUGc Duration: 5399.3s

Speaker 1 (00:00): Thank you so much everyone for joining us today morning. Before we begin and start a talk and introduce the guest who needs no introduction, a bit about the Indian Liberals program. The IndianLiberals.in is a digital repository of the Indian Liberals tradition. It is an initiative by the Center for Civil Society, which is a public policy think tank based in Delhi in collaboration with the Frederick Newman Foundation for Freedom.

Speaker 2 (00:31): The Indian Liberals website contains numerous articles, videos, podcasts in English and other

Speaker 3 (00:38): regional languages covering both economic and social aspects of liberalism.

Speaker 1 (00:43): I would highly encourage all the listeners here to visit the website after the lecture.

Speaker 3 (00:48): We’ll be dropping the link in the chat. It’s IndianLiberals.in. A huge shout out to our supporters for this program, the Frederick Newman Foundation for Freedom.

Speaker 1 (00:58): I would also like to thank two other organizations which helped us make this program a success,

Speaker 2 (01:03): which is the Students for Liberty, which is the largest pro-liberty student organization in the world, in terms of leaders, countries represented and events, and the Swettel Traster Center, a social enterprise that promotes choice, opportunity for all individuals to build a decent life with dignity. Now, to skip the much other and start the lecture, it’s my honor and responsibility

Speaker 3 (01:29): to introduce the speaker and I’ll try to do that justice. Shagri Ghos is one of India’s most noted journalists as well as an author and broadcaster.

Speaker 2 (01:39): She has worked with the Times of India, Outlook Magazine and the Indian Express.

Speaker 1 (01:44): She was a prime time television news anchor for the BBC World on Question Time India as well as on the news network CNN IBM. She’s the author of two novels, The Gin Drinkers and Blind

Speaker 3 (01:56): Free, as well as a recently published bestselling biography of Indira Gandhi, India’s most powerful

Speaker 2 (02:03): prime minister. Her most recent published work is the critically acclaimed Why Am I a Liberal?

Speaker 1 (02:10): A Manifesto for Indians who believe in individual freedom. And we’ll hope that we’d hear more about

Speaker 3 (02:15): this book today in the top. So she has won numerous awards in journalism, such as the CS Muhammad Goya National Journalism Award. And is listed as the world’s most famous Rhodes

Speaker 2 (02:25): scholar. She has a BN history from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University, and a second BA and MPhil from Magdalene College, Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes scholar. She’s a popular

Speaker 1 (02:38): Indian scholarship columnist who currently writes for the Times of India and appears

Speaker 3 (02:42): as an analyst in the NDTV. Before we begin, just a quick word.

Speaker 2 (02:48): We would be adding a Slido link in the chat. So throughout the talk, we highly encourage whatever questions you have, first of all, you should put them in the Slido link.

Speaker 3 (02:57): The Slido link also allows you to upvote other questions which you’d like to be taken up first. Okay. Thank you so much, everybody. And with that, we’ll just throw the floor open to you.

Speaker 1 (03:09): Thank you very much, the Center for Civil Society for inviting me to talk to you. In our country, the case for individual liberty has never been more urgent. We are living in a time when liberty across the board is deeply threatened. As the father of Western liberalism, John Stuart Mill feared, individual freedom is in danger

Speaker 4 (03:30): of becoming more restricted in a democracy

Speaker 1 (03:32): than in a dictatorship because of what Mill called tyranny of the majority. In the last weeks alone, we have seen several instances where individual liberty has been attacked.

Speaker 4 (03:43): The comedian Veer Das has had a legal complaint filed for his talk in the United States. The comedian Munawar Farooqi’s shows in Goa were canceled. Two women journalists were detained under the terror law, Unlawful Activity Prevention Act in Tripura, and various advertisements of businesses

Speaker 1 (04:03): from Fab India to Dabar were forcibly taken down. Earlier, we have seen how a young climate activist,

Speaker 4 (04:10): Disha Ravi was jailed for sharing information on the farmer’s agitation. Many student activists continue to be in jail for protests against the new Citizenship Amendment Act.

Speaker 1 (04:21): They have been charged under terrorism law or the UAPA. Five academic activists, including Sudha Bhardwaj, who was honored by Harvard University and others arrested in 2018, remain in jail. The revelations of the government has acquired Pegasus

Speaker 3 (04:38): software to spy on citizens phones shows that state surveillance on citizens is increasingly a fact of life the great liberal thinker and writer and founder of the swatantra party who you know very well c rajagopalachari wrote there is suppression of individual liberty

Speaker 1 (04:57): and the state is a leviathan a giant entity poised against the citizen menacingly interfering in life mistrusting people imposing restrictions creating an army of officials hypnotizing the people with slogans a scheme in which government is taken for granted and citizens are ignorant of their interests fear is growing and because of fear people are getting

Speaker 5 (05:26): corrupted immoral and fraudulent these words were said in time when the state structure created by Nehru and Indira Gandhi was in place, but they are apt and prescient today. I particularly like

Speaker 3 (05:38): Rajaji’s observation on state power and fear and the capacity of fear to degrade and destroy the individual spirit. Is liberty divisible? Can we have freedom in the economy but stultifying control

Speaker 1 (05:53): in society? I don’t believe so. A recent debate has been ignited between liberals about the repeal of the three farm laws and the morality of the farmer’s agitation.

Speaker 3 (06:03): Freedom is indivisible. We cannot only argue for economic freedom and liberation from the licensed Raj and open

Speaker 4 (06:10): markets if we do not at the same time argue for freedom in society or freedom in politics

Speaker 1 (06:16): or freedom in university campuses or in Bollywood or in the field of the arts. Now, I believe that Indian agriculture, like all liberals, must be freed from suffocating

Speaker 5 (06:26): grip of rules and have greater access to the market. Endless open-ended state procurement of grain at high prices is not sustainable. But my argument with some liberal friends is, should these reforms, within quotes,

Speaker 1 (06:40): be imposed on people through a coercive act of state tyranny? Economic reforms, after all, are about people.

Speaker 4 (06:48): And it is people who must be persuaded that these changes are in their interest, not be forced through state violence into so-called reforms, in which citizens remain vulnerable to the arbitrary exercise of state power and cannot hold the state accountable.

Speaker 5 (07:05): The playwright Anton Chekhov said,

Speaker 1 (07:07): despicable means used to achieve laudable goals render the goals themselves despicable. The firm bills did not fail because they divided opinion, but the means adopted led to collapse of the policy.

Speaker 4 (07:21): The laws were rammed through Parliament through ordinance and voice vote in a health emergency where insecurities and anxieties were already sky high. It is precisely these kinds of non-democratic means

Speaker 3 (07:34): that discredit the reforms process. If we say that the withdrawal of the farm laws

Speaker 1 (07:41): indicate that reforms have taken a back seat, it would only be a demonstration of the fact that liberals think reforms can never be popular with the people. And therefore, to implement reforms, we need top-down state action and tyranny that goes against the popular sentiment. Is this sustainable? Should liberals ride the coattails of executive diktat if there is the token promise of an allegedly liberal policy? This would deprive reforms of public support and legitimacy in even greater degree and necessitate that they be brought in by stealth and state violence.

Speaker 3 (08:17): Mahatma Gandhi, the founding father, as I call him, not just of India’s freedom, but also of Indian liberalism, saw liberalism located at the grassroots and in social and political action on the ground. Persuading and interacting with the last woman, that change, and it was by persuading and interacting with the last woman that change in society was to be created. This, of course, requires hard work.

Speaker 1 (08:46): We cannot compartmentalize freedom, assuming that economic reforms can spur society on towards progress, even as authoritarianism and central control and abuse of individual dignity descend like clouds. The unique features of India cannot be compared to the Chinese mix of economic miracle and social and political authoritarianism because the simple fact is India is a proud liberal democracy and has been for 75 years. 75 years. We cannot now give up our hard-earned democratic freedoms. For me, greater freedom for the individual and less freedom for government is the ideal in all spheres of life. The liberal philosopher Isaiah Berlin spoke of two kinds of liberty, positive liberty and negative

Speaker 5 (09:30): liberty. Negative liberty is freedom from dictatorial control by another, but positive liberty is the right to choose my own path to prosperity and well-being and to be persuaded and not coerced. We call ourselves lovers of liberty. This means we all believe broadly in individual liberty and dignity, open markets, a limited government and rule of law. These are the

Speaker 3 (09:57): ideals of India’s founding fathers who wrote into the preamble of our constitution that every citizen of independent India will have liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship.

Speaker 5 (10:08): From the word liberty comes the word liberalism which is derived originally from ideas born in America and Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries focusing on the rights of the governed and placing

Speaker 3 (10:17): limits or restraints on the monarch or the ruling class. Today India’s liberals must concern

Speaker 4 (10:26): themselves with placing limits and restrictions on an overwhelmingly powerful political executive

Speaker 1 (10:34): whatever the hue of the political party that may be in power. Liberal ideas are not just a westernized import into India as I argue in my book why I’m a liberal we in the subcontinent have a rich history

Speaker 5 (10:49): of liberal thought and we have a rich liberal inheritance. When we adopt individual liberty as

Speaker 1 (10:55): our goal we are not being westernized or anti-indian but harking to a long tradition of iconoclasm and individual expression that has existed in india for centuries india’s free

Speaker 3 (11:06): questioning traditions go back to the brihadaranyaka upanishad and the free dialogue between

Speaker 1 (11:12): gargi and the great sage yajniya valkya whom she dared to question the freedom to argue and debate is enshrined in the bhagavad gita in the argument and counter argument of krishna and arjuna where even God had to argue his case. The Buddha and Mahavira were great seekers of individual dignity against the orthodoxy and control of traditional priests. During the bhakti movement of the 15th and 16th centuries, poets like Kabir and Meera championed individual freedom in the individual in the spiritual sphere, calling for an individual

Speaker 3 (11:45): union with the divine away from the strangled mold of clerical authorities and taboos of caste groups. Sufi Islam in the northern subcontinent interacted with Hindu mystical traditions to produce variations of this theme of an individual quest for the divine. The quest for individual freedom is a long one in India, whether it is freedom from state

Speaker 1 (12:09): tyranny or freedom from group tyranny. In Hindu traditions, the Atma is the center of philosophy.

Speaker 5 (12:15): What is the atma but the individual soul, free individual, free to choose her own path to God? Hindu traditions are devoid of a single temple or a single holy book or a single deity or a single set of priests.

Speaker 4 (12:30): Instead, in the dizzying diversity of Hindu practices lies the freedom for the individual to choose her path.

Speaker 3 (12:38): The seeker seeks alone. Freedom for the soul is the ultimate goal of Hinduism, said Vivekananda.

Speaker 1 (12:45): The Hindu religion consists not in believing certain sect doctrines and dogmas, but in spiritual verities like the free atma.

Speaker 4 (12:55): To destroy the individuality inherent in Hinduism by insisting on a single holy book or a single temple or a single way of worship or a single set of rituals or a single deity is tantamount to attacking the nature of Hinduism itself and reducing it to a caricature of its philosophical self.

Speaker 1 (13:15): Ramakrishna Paramahansa said, Jyothamot, Tothopoth. There are as many paths to God as there are opinions.

Speaker 5 (13:23): In subcontinental belief systems,

Speaker 1 (13:25): every faith is a legitimate spiritual pursuit showing the deep roots of individual liberty to question in our land. The 14th century Vaishnavite poet Chandidaqs

Speaker 4 (13:37): echoing an individualist message said, Shobaropure Manush, Shottotaha Ropure Nain.

Speaker 3 (13:43): Man is above all. There is no truth above man. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was steeped in these

Speaker 5 (13:52): spiritualist traditions and because he was, he believed so fervently in the individual that there was no greater and more passionate defender of individual liberty than Mahatma Gandhi. In his passionate belief in individuality, in his constant skepticism of state power,

Speaker 1 (14:11): In his commitment to non-violence and the focus on means over ends, Gandhi is perhaps the most successful liberal politician in history. For Gandhi, political transformation was about personal and individual transformation and the journey to becoming our best selves. It is only moral beings, individuals who observe very strict rules of personal conduct, such as nonviolence, discipline, and who engage in self-mastery, who have the moral right then to engage in the Gandhian satyagraha or to break the law. The Gandhian Satyagraha is not anarchy or breaking the law for the sake of it, but it is the moral duty of those who follow the higher law of truth and nonviolence to protest against unjust laws. Gandhi was passionate about the defense of individual liberty and the defense of the truth-seeking individual from the violent power of the state. He said, the state represents violence in a concentrated and organized form. The individual has a soul, but the state is a soulless machine. It can never be weaned away from violence to which it owes its existence. Gandhi also said, I look upon an increase in the power of the state with the greatest fear,

Speaker 4 (15:34): because while apparently doing good by apparently minimizing exploitation, the state does the greatest harm to mankind by destroying individuality,

Speaker 5 (15:44): which is at the root of all progress. democracy, said Gandhi, cannot be worked by 20 men sitting at the center. It has to be worked

Speaker 1 (15:52): from below by the people of every village and locality. If liberalism is about putting people first, then Gandhi is the foremost exponent of it as he saw society as a totality of individuals,

Speaker 4 (16:05): each of whom makes possible progress and reform through a process of self-transformation. The state, however well intentioned, and we are living in times of an increasingly powerful state, of the big state, which is taking charge of many aspects of life, including climate change and the pandemic. I’ll come to that later.

Speaker 1 (16:25): The state, according to Gandhi, cannot act in a way that does not preserve the dignity and autonomy of individuals.

Speaker 3 (16:33): that’s the individual and his liberty to think speak and act is central to Gandhianism just as it is the just as the soul or the atma is central to Hindu philosophy Gandhi’s prayer

Speaker 1 (16:46): meetings were strictly non-denominational and we have never seen Gandhi in a temple or in the presence of a single deity ask yourselves this question have you ever seen Gandhi with a deity Have you ever seen Gandhi in a temple? Gandhi arrives at the formulation of God as truth to provide a path to individual evolution, because truth resides in every human being.

Speaker 3 (17:12): And our search for truth is actually a lifelong journey towards self-transformation. This self-transformation, which will make the transformation of society and the polity possible. For Rabindranath Tagore, poet of our national anthem, humanism and freedom for the human spirit ranked even above the nation state.

Speaker 1 (17:37): As you know, Tagore was a great critic of the nation state. Tagore did not see the nation restricted to any particular ethnic group or a particular religion or race, but a collection of diverse individualities. Wrote Tagore in Gito Bitar, come Aryan, come non-Aryan, come Hindu, come Christian, come Muslim, come English, come all to this great India, this shoreline of great humanity. The individual was the starting point for the draftsman of India’s constitution, B.R.

Speaker 3 (18:08): Rambedkar, who wrote, the assertion by the individual of his own opinions and beliefs,

Speaker 1 (18:16): his own independence and interest over and against group standards is the beginning of

Speaker 4 (18:21): reform. With such a huge inheritance of individual liberty and freedom, successive Indian governments

Speaker 5 (18:30): paradoxically and very unfortunately, since the decades of independence have sought to destroy precisely this precious individuality and freedom and stamp out liberties to a greater or

Speaker 1 (18:41): lesser degree. The Indian state which inherited much of its apparatus from British Raj, from the bureaucracy, the police and even to the penal code, may be inefficient at service delivery but it is very efficient at repression and efficient at casting its own citizens as the

Speaker 5 (18:58): enemy to be mistrusted and persecuted just as a colonial government mistrusts and persecutes

Speaker 1 (19:04): the subject people. We are governed by a penal code enacted in 1860, laws of sedition acted in 1870, when sedition actually was repealed by Britain, the country of the British Raj herself in 2009.

Speaker 5 (19:19): Hundreds are being booked under sedition simply for availing of liberty of thought and expression,

Speaker 1 (19:25): belief, faith and worship which is explicitly provided for in the constitution. Books and movies have been banned for decades whatever the hue of the political party in power let me read

Speaker 4 (19:38): out an extract from my book which shows the limits to which uh which shows the examples of how many

Speaker 1 (19:45): times liberty has been taken away these are just a few examples that i’m so many more want to eat

Speaker 4 (19:50): beef in maharashtra sorry it’s bad want to have a drink in gujarat sorry it’s bad want to read salman rajdi’s the satanic verses sorry it’s bad living in gujarat and want to read the book great

Speaker 5 (20:02): soul by joseph lillyville sorry that’s also banned want to see the movie 50 shades of grace sorry it

Speaker 4 (20:08): hasn’t been cleared by the censor board living in gujarat and want to see the film fana that’s banned

Speaker 5 (20:13): too does an indian greenpeace activist want to voice her views in london sorry she’s banned from

Speaker 1 (20:19): traveling do you want to see india’s daughter a documentary of the nirbhaiya rape case of 2012 sorry that’s banned are you a comedian or a cartoonist you could be banned at any time

Speaker 4 (20:32): today what we have is a highly centralized highly controlling regime which is using state power to literally snatch away personal liberties at every level from students to bollywood stars to comedians to writers to poets to dalit activists to opposition leaders to journalists india is free

Speaker 3 (20:50): But is the Indian citizen free to read, write, eat, drink, dress, love, marry, watch movies, make movies?

Speaker 5 (20:59): These freedoms are in serious danger now.

Speaker 1 (21:02): The recent outlawing of food carts vending non-vegetarian food in Gujarat cities is a case in point.

Speaker 3 (21:10): The state is effectively imposing food choices on citizens. Liberals believe above all in solving society’s problems through dialogue.

Speaker 5 (21:20): Dialogue is a key to collective self-government.

Speaker 4 (21:23): If democracy is defined as collective self-government, dialogue is the very cornerstone of self-government.

Speaker 5 (21:31): When there is dialogue, there is a range of opinion and every hypothesis or theory is challenged and tested. While we may disagree, when we have different ideologies or ideas, we still respect our interlocutors and respect their individualities. individualities. Today’s state agencies or the political executive are engaging in an incessant labeling of those who do not support the ruling ideology and casting them as enemies.

Speaker 1 (21:58): Tukre Tukre Gang, Khan Market Gang, Andholan GV, Urban Naksas, the constant labeling is resulting

Speaker 3 (22:04): in the space for dialogue being shrunk. This is another serious assault on individual liberty,

Speaker 1 (22:11): the right to dialogue or bad, vivat, sambad, as we have been arguing, is as old as the Bhagavad Gita. When students are browbeaten and called names, when citizens are booked for sedition, when companies are forced to take down advertising, the Indian mind begins to close. And when minds close, can there be innovation and free thought in the economy? How can citizens who are afraid to think and express themselves create a dynamic entrepreneurial society?

Speaker 5 (22:41): individual liberty the capacity of the individual to be her best self and fulfill her potential is

Speaker 3 (22:46): vital for those of us who believe in an entrepreneurial economy buzzing with new startup ideas and new business ideas if the free entrepreneurial drive is stamped out

Speaker 1 (22:58): free-spirited entrepreneurs will flee india rather than submit to government dictates businessmen will turn into cronies living off political patronage rather than satisfying paying

Speaker 5 (23:09): customers. For example, the first startups in America, the innovative entrepreneurial ideas

Speaker 4 (23:14): that transformed the economy did not bloom under the aegis of government power in Washington DC. Instead, Silicon Valley, home to some of the world’s most exciting new businesses such as Apple, Facebook and Google, which did benefit at first from government support, blossomed in the

Speaker 5 (23:29): state of California, the land of hippies and flower power. It was in California where in the late 60s,

Speaker 1 (23:36): In the 60s, authority was rejected and individual freedom was embraced. And it is today the home of talented new business.

Speaker 3 (23:46): California has always been noted for its liberal spirit. Let’s hear from C. Rajagopalachari again.

Speaker 5 (23:54): Talent and energy must find scope for play without having to cringe and obtain special individual permission from officials and ministers.

Speaker 3 (24:02): their efforts must be judged by the open market in India and abroad.

Speaker 1 (24:07): Now this was written in 1959 when Rajaji and Meenu Massani, as you well know, as students

Speaker 4 (24:13): of liberty founded the Swatantra party. The liberal Swatantra won 18 seats in 1962 and as many as 44 in 1967.

Speaker 5 (24:20): So let’s not ever be under the false impression that Indian voters do not have an appetite for a liberal party or for a party dedicated to individual freedom, individual choice,

Speaker 1 (24:32): individual dignity against overweening statism. The Swatantra could not stand up to the populism unleashed by Indira Gandhi nor the 1969 nationalization of banks which cut off its funds. As Indira Gandhi’s biographer, I know that one of her main motivations were not just to

Speaker 4 (24:51): bolster her image against the Congress old guard but also to strike a blow at the Swatantra

Speaker 5 (24:56): which had become the main opposition party by 1967. The government takeover of banks was another disastrous step of big statism,

Speaker 1 (25:05): converting banks into political fiefdoms or the personal property of politicians. The governmentalization of banks illustrates the point we have been making about the fact that it is the secular parties who first introduced overweening statism into India.

Speaker 3 (25:21): This statism now taken to maximalist heights by the Hindu nationalist regime. It is the Congress which first started pushing political ideology through the apparatus of state power.

Speaker 4 (25:34): And the BJP who have taken the state to its maximum possible height of power until the state is now intruding into our kitchens, bedrooms, classrooms and recreational centers.

Speaker 1 (25:46): So actually this trend of increasing state power and pushing political partisan ideology through state apparatus is common to all parties in India, except for that brief moment, the

Speaker 3 (26:03): Swatandra.

Speaker 1 (26:04): I have just finished writing a biography of Adal Bihari Bajpayee, which is due for publication in December. Now, Bajpayee often spoke in parliament on the evils of nationalization, which he called

Speaker 5 (26:15): governmentalization. But today the BJP presides over a vast and centrally controlled state which can be compared to the command and control oriented socialistic state. Indeed such a state

Speaker 3 (26:26): would make Bajpayee shudder. Now at the forefront of this highly intrusive state and I want to dwell

Speaker 5 (26:34): on this for a bit because I think it’s central to individual liberty. At the forefront of this state the arm by which state power is pushed into our personal lives, the informal instrument of control is an entity that is now dominant in all spheres. This is the vigilante mob or the goon squad or almost paramilitary outfits or a kind of armed moral police. These operate as proxies of state

Speaker 3 (27:03): power and often enjoy support of the state. Now how does a mob become so uniquely empowered?

Speaker 4 (27:12): The rise of mobs is linked to the rise of identity politics. As the state expands into more and more areas of life, it keeps acquiring clients or client groups who it seeks to keep happy in

Speaker 5 (27:22): order to increase its own power. These clients are invariably identity groups, caste groups,

Speaker 1 (27:28): religiously fired up strongmen or moral policemen claiming to be loyalists of the government. Because the state is reliant on them and does not want to alienate them, they then acquire impunity because they are clients of the state or clients of ruling politicians. No law can touch them.

Speaker 4 (27:44): When the political executive is so powerful that it can override the rule of law or guarantee safety from the law, then the mob enjoys complete impunity to dictate terms and enforce its ideas and values through the power of violence. For example, when the Rajput Karni Sena went on the rampage vandalized public property in 2017 because it objected to certain depictions of Queen Padmavati in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s film Padmavar, politicians were helpless to stop the Karni Sena or bring it to book for

Speaker 5 (28:15): fear of alienating the caste and religious vote banks that it represented. Today, a range of identity mobs or vigilantes can attack freedom of expression, freedom of choice and individual dignity and liberty because they are clients of state power.

Speaker 4 (28:32): Gandhi was fearful of state power precisely for this reason, precisely because it is capable of

Speaker 5 (28:37): massive use of force and also therefore legitimizes and permits the use of force.

Speaker 1 (28:44): Once, on the one hand, the government abdicates responsibility in maintaining law and order and

Speaker 3 (28:49): on the other tacitly endorses violence if such violence is useful to its politics.

Speaker 1 (28:53): After all, if governments are accused of staging fake encounters, why shouldn’t vigilante mobs

Speaker 5 (29:00): do the same?

Speaker 4 (29:01): If governments are accused of being complicit in riots or stand by in the face of violence by the Karni Sena, they signal that non-government actors have been given permission to do exactly

Speaker 5 (29:11): what they want to do. Thus, there is state permission for the mob, both in lack of action by top politicians

Speaker 1 (29:18): as well as in their own violent prejudice.

Speaker 5 (29:21): In Mangalore in 2009, you remember this incident, the Sriram Sene dragged women out by the hair and beat them up because they were seen drinking in a pub. The same Sriram Sene’s chief, Pramod Muthalik, said that the killing of journalist Gauri Lankesh was shot dead in 2017, also by vigilantes, was the death of a dog.

Speaker 3 (29:39): In Uttar Pradesh, mobs of moral policemen have intervened to stop even marriages based on consent.

Speaker 4 (29:45): Even when the couple are insisting that this is consensual, the mob insists that this is a case of love jihad or women being allegedly forced to convert to Islam. We saw this in the case of Pinky and Rashid of Muradabad in 2020, where the husband Rashid was jailed and the wife Pinky claimed to have suffered a miscarriage as a result of mob persecution. Mobs have routinely threatened lectures, academic seminars, such as in 2017 when a mob disrupted the seminar on descent at Ramjas College in Delhi University. The chilling incidents of mob lynchings of cattle traders or those suspected of being cattle smugglers dating from 2015 to 2017 are well known. In an illustration of the mob enjoying political patronage, we saw how the former union minister

Speaker 1 (30:29): Jain Sinha even garlanded eight persons accused of lynching in 2018 in Hazaribag.

Speaker 4 (30:37): in Dhargat. Now the Anglo-Saxon Western world at the moment is agitated about the threats to freedom from the left or the woke liberals in Western Europe or America and their power to impose their

Speaker 1 (30:49): cancel culture and force a certain orthodoxy of speech and expression. But in India we have a cancel culture which is very different. Ours is the cancel culture of the right-wing armed mob

Speaker 4 (31:03): or the paramilitary uniquely empowered by ruling party politicians to cancel events, books, plays,

Speaker 5 (31:10): movies, art exhibitions, even weddings through sheer force of violence. None of us is really

Speaker 3 (31:15): safe from the mob and all we can do to face the wrath of the mob is not only build an awareness

Speaker 4 (31:21): of our own liberties but also reach out to collectives to strengthen and empower ourselves. We need to reach out to groups and like-minded people to strengthen ourselves collectively and and to approach the courts or our representatives and not be afraid to come out onto the streets

Speaker 5 (31:37): and shout and agitate to express our resistance to moral policing. As the farmers’ protests have shown, peaceful civic action on the street,

Speaker 4 (31:47): Gandhi and Satyagraha, social and political action are often the only way forward to shift the power balance

Speaker 3 (31:55): from state power to individual freedom. Let me now turn to a subject which I, as a journalist,

Speaker 1 (32:02): cannot miss talking to you about, and that is individual freedom or individual liberty or the lack of it in today’s media. Now, as a journalist over the last three decades, I have seen up close and personal the havoc reached by government control over the media. The government’s control over the media is immense. From TV licensing to government advertising to journalists access to government decisions and policies, the government increasingly has the power to have troublesome journalists removed from their organizations.

Speaker 4 (32:35): It is strange indeed that democratic governments elected by the people can in turn deny the people, for what are journalists but only agents of the people, access to or knowledge

Speaker 1 (32:46): about how policies are being made and deny access to decision-making processes.

Speaker 3 (32:51): Perceived instances of corruption in the media are thus no different from corruption in other spheres.

Speaker 5 (32:57): sector is hugely controlled and regulated by the government. Media bosses like typical corporate

Speaker 3 (33:02): bosses in India will always tread very carefully and become trained to second guess what politicians want. Journalistic freedom is increasingly under threat because journalists are being asked to take patriotism tests and nationalism tests which are euphemisms basically for loyalty to the government,

Speaker 5 (33:21): loyalty to the government of the day.

Speaker 4 (33:24): Because let us emphasize that every government, whatever the color of that government, whatever the political ideology of that government in every state can be similarly dictatorial.

Speaker 1 (33:35): So no party is free from abusing freedom of the press. But the patriotism of the journalist lies above all in telling the truth and reporting honestly and accurately.

Speaker 5 (33:49): Neutrality is the new buzzword

Speaker 1 (33:51): journalists are being asked to be neutral and participate in an amoral whataboutery. You know what whataboutery is. You can’t protest about something today because what about something

Speaker 4 (34:04): that happened 20 years ago. You can’t say anything about corruption, about communal riots today, because what about something that happened 30 years ago. You can’t say anything about political violence today because what about something that happened 50 years ago. So this whataboutery

Speaker 3 (34:18): is highly immoral and completely negates all notions of right and wrong. I would submit that a journalist is never neutral. We must always be on the side of the truth,

Speaker 4 (34:30): even if that truth is not palatable to whichever party is in power, whether X political party or Y political party.

Speaker 5 (34:37): The journalist should not be the high priest in the church of both-sidedism, where we say that X says it’s raining, Y says it’s not raining.

Speaker 4 (34:47): therefore the middle ground is between raining or not raining is it may be raining that’s not the job of the journalist we have to look outside the window and see if it is raining and tell the truth about whether it is raining or not that is the fact that we have to report

Speaker 3 (35:02): instead we have to always tell the truth irrespective of who that truth makes comfortable uncomfortable. In reporting caste crimes or crimes against women or crimes against the dispossessed is the journalist supposed to be neutral with facts? No, no, facts are facts and they need to be told without fear or favor because there is no scope for so-called neutrality over facts. For the so-called muscular nationalists of today the desire is not always to be truthful but to always be right. That’s because the pursuit of truth, the Gandhian pursuit of truth, necessarily requires that one accept the possibility of mistakes. But if you always want to be right,

Speaker 1 (35:49): then it’s necessary to paint everyone else who may be saying something different from you as wrong

Speaker 4 (35:54): and as the enemy or eliminate that viewpoint because you have to always be right. You cannot

Speaker 1 (36:00): accept the possibility that you may have made a mistake. During the emergency, Indira Gandhi imprisoned over 200 journalists. Hers was a declared emergency passed by presidential

Speaker 3 (36:11): proclamation and ratified by both cabinet and parliament. Today we have state power exercised

Speaker 4 (36:17): through ostracism, denial of access of interviews, denial of advertising and government publicity, perhaps in a way an undeclared emergency in which the press has been effectively tamed

Speaker 5 (36:27): and media owners brought to heel. Of course there are internal challenges too. The media suffers from what I call the three C’s, the crisis of co-option, the crisis of commercialization, and the crisis of compromise, moral, intellectual, and professional. This is a catastrophe for the

Speaker 1 (36:45): media, which is supposed to be the vanguard of holding the powerful to account. It is as if

Speaker 3 (36:49): the most fearsome guard dog of democracy has been defanged and sedated. The journalist George Ramos,

Speaker 1 (36:57): who was famously thrown out of a Donald Trump press conference in 2015, said, neutrality is often an excuse journalists use to hide from their own true responsibility our responsibility is to challenge those in power i didn’t become a journalist to be a tape recorder what happens if you are covering a dictatorship are you going to report what the dictator wants or will you confront them will you report only the official version spanish has a great word to describe the position journalists should take contra poda or anti-establishment we journalists always have to be on the opposite side of power and on the side of individual choice individual freedom and individual liberty sadly journalists today or most of the media today is formally

Speaker 5 (37:44): aligned with the side of power and state media freedom has disappeared into a wasteland of politicization at a time when individual liberties need trenchant and ferocious defense for the press the press sadly has simply vanished it is not there except for a handful of journalists and some

Speaker 1 (38:01): stout-hearted digital outlets the business model has let television down in fact the business model of television news is broken when you are dependent on advertising you will always want to keep the advertiser happy and the government happy because of the enormous power of the political executive

Speaker 3 (38:17): to simply shut your outlet down there are 397 licensed tv channels approximately all competing for the same advertising pie and all chase trps that determine who gets the most advertising

Speaker 4 (38:33): in this situation all of us who consume the television media must become much more media literate and media aware and realize that often what we see on screen is simply that crazily

Speaker 1 (38:44): competitive dash for trps and not an objective presentation of the news you are blessed to

Speaker 4 (38:51): have at your disposal a wide range of digital outlets and digital entities that can give you the news the days of a single newspaper or single tv channel that i will only use my news uh get my

Speaker 5 (39:03): news from this particular tv channel or this particular newspaper those days are gone all of

Speaker 3 (39:09): us as media literate individuals must consult and get our news from a wide variety of entities. Earlier this year we saw income tax rates at the offices of the Dainik Bhaskar group and the

Speaker 5 (39:22): feeling was that the group was being punished because of its coverage of the COVID deaths in Uttar Pradesh and photos of bodies floating in the Ganga. What chance is there for press freedom

Speaker 4 (39:30): when the government can raid you, imprison you, shut you down, charge you under sedition or UAPA

Speaker 1 (39:36): or simply cut off all access and use access as a lever. In some situations, journalists have lost

Speaker 5 (39:43): their lives such as my good friend Gauri Lankesh. The journalist Siddiquh Kapan was simply on his

Speaker 1 (39:48): way to file a story on a crime against a woman in Hathras and he remains in jail today. He has been

Speaker 5 (39:55): in jail since the last year in fact charged under terrorism laws. Why are journalists and students being charged under terrorism laws. Such arrests create the chilling effect and journalists begin

Speaker 4 (40:07): to self-censor and citizens then do not get the truth. So what can we all do? Let me now turn in the latter part of this lecture to liberal solutions and what we can all do to keep

Speaker 1 (40:20): individual freedom and liberty and individual choice as safe as we can. The first thing of

Speaker 3 (40:26): all of course is to recognize the perils of state power and try and take back the power

Speaker 1 (40:31): or you know that Brexit slogan, I don’t want to use a Brexit slogan, but that slogan, take back control. Take back the power for individual freedom, for individual liberty, and don’t be

Speaker 5 (40:41): afraid to express these views publicly. One of the things we can begin to raise our voice on,

Speaker 3 (40:47): and this is a cause very dear to me and one that I campaign for, is the politician’s power of censorship. Now we all love watching movies. Why don’t we as citizens begin to speak out on why

Speaker 4 (40:59): the Central Board of Film Certification or the dreaded Censor Board be entirely abolished and

Speaker 1 (41:06): the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting as a whole be shut down? In a world where information is free and available, should there be a Ministry of Information? Think about the absurdity of that.

Speaker 3 (41:19): Is there any other democracy in the world where politicians have the power to censor films or popular entertainment. Back in 1999 when Jaipal Reddy was the INP

Speaker 5 (41:30): Minister of the I.K. Gujral government, he actually asked me to become a member of the Censor Board. At that time I studied the Censor Board and I took a considered decision at that time to refuse Mr. Reddy’s invitation. This is because a film Censor Board, I believe, should not be made up of political appointees or people who politicians want but be an industry body. The Board of The Board of Film Certification is actually mandated to only certify films.

Speaker 4 (41:55): It’s the Board of Film Certification for age groups. But instead it has over time, aggregated so much power to itself that it dictates what words can be used or not used,

Speaker 5 (42:05): images that can be used or not used, sentiments that can or cannot be aired. As a result, popular entertainment of the day, or the massive industry of filmmaking in India,

Speaker 1 (42:17): becomes subservient to the politicians of the day, of the day. In 2015, the censor board came up with a list of cuss words that could not be used.

Speaker 4 (42:27): What does this mean for creative freedom in movie making? Other democracies too have bodies that oversee filmmaking. In Britain, you have the British Board of Film Classification. In America,

Speaker 1 (42:37): the Motion Pictures Association of America. But these are industry bodies that classify films. Only in India is there a censor board made up of ruling party political appointees who have the

Speaker 5 (42:46): power to decide on movie content. Now the CBFC and the Ministry of Information was of course set up in

Speaker 1 (42:51): 1951 during the time of Nehru showing that these statist initiatives have existed since the dawn of independence and only gotten worse over time. Since then Congress governments have operated as

Speaker 4 (43:04): policemen over cinema, banned films, patronized films, exercised power through the censor board

Speaker 5 (43:09): and the BJP government has taken this to a maximum extent and given over the censor board almost entirely to the party faithful. A politically appointed board of censors is an Orwellian abomination. It must go. So one liberal solution is go for the low-hanging fruit. Both Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and censor board must be immediately abolished. In fact two INB ministers, Jaipal Reddy and Manish Tiwari have argued the same, writes Jaipal Reddy. It is important to note that no advanced democracy, be it in Western Europe or North America, has a ministry called Information and Broadcasting Ministry. Those democracies instead have independent

Speaker 3 (43:52): commissions. In the US, for example, the Federal Communications Commission has been effective in

Speaker 5 (43:58): regulating the functioning of television companies for more than half a century. Public broadcasting services are autonomous in every democracy, though private channels are as prevalent as they are in our country. If a minister is there in the portfolio of INBA, this is a minister himself writing, If a minister is there in the INB portfolio, he or she cannot sit idle. They always poke their nose into the functioning of such institutions by way of self-employment. Hence, the urgency to immediately abolish this INB portfolio. Now, this is being written by the Minister of Information and Broadcasting.

Speaker 1 (44:32): Abolishing the INB ministry would lead to a great deal more freedom for the press and, by extension, more freedom for the arts, Bollywood and society in general. Another liberal solution is to understand that state power is expanded by all political parties

Speaker 4 (44:46): in India. To extend my argument about why I refuse Mr. Dehapal Reddy’s invitation to join the censor board, I would argue that as lovers of liberty, we need to ensure that if we work with the state or work with the government under whichever political party, we must guard against becoming too enamored of the trappings of state power and guard against ourselves becoming

Speaker 1 (45:06): agents who enable an excessive state intrusion into civil society. Now, there is going to be more and more government in our lives. As challenges increase,

Speaker 4 (45:15): government is going to become important in our lives. So the question for liberals is going to have to be to ensure that the government or state intervenes in areas where it is necessary

Speaker 1 (45:26): and where it can deliver rather than in areas where it creates new bureaucracies and new devices of control. So where the state intervenes, how it intervenes has to be a central question for

Speaker 4 (45:40): liberals who work with states or work with governments. The left ruled in Bengal for three decades to a structured arrangement to push state power into every aspect of society and many respected scholars and academia became overly identified with state power and patronage, thus providing a veneer of respectability to expansions of state intervention in textbook

Speaker 5 (46:03): writing and interference in curricula. Working and advising with governments must carry a duty for us liberals that we ensure that the state maintains a light touch, does not abuse individual

Speaker 1 (46:15): dignity or liberty, and always puts people first. The challenges of healthcare in pandemic times

Speaker 5 (46:22): and climate change are going to necessitate massive government and a bigger role for the state and state spending. But for those of us who believe in limited government, we should be on guard

Speaker 4 (46:31): to see that the state is pushed to be impartial. It intervenes only in areas where it is needed, and it does not set up new bureaucracies and delivers on governance instead of creating a distorted system which is incentivized to increase control. The distorted incentives that the state always introduces into the system of reams of paperwork and people deriving their power from endless form filling. That is the kind of state bureaucracy and creation of

Speaker 3 (47:02): new structures of control that the liberal must be on guard to prevent. Another liberal solution is always to guard against one party rule. As a journalist, I’ve witnessed that one party rule is

Speaker 4 (47:15): always detrimental to governance. In Kerala, where governments alternate between LDF and UDF, as you know there’s an alternating arrangement of LDF for five years, the left led LDF for five years, the Congress led UDF for another five years. This is recently, the trend has recently been

Speaker 1 (47:32): bucked in the last assembly election but this is generally the trend in Kerala. Where the political culture is competitive, there is incentive to deliver services and bring citizens

Speaker 4 (47:42): on board because politicians face regular competition every five years. In UP or Madhya where Congress ruled for many years as a dominant force, before being replaced by caste-based or

Speaker 3 (47:51): religious-based outfits, the incentive for governance has been missing for decades. If you use identity to win elections in any case, where’s the need for governance delivery?

Speaker 4 (48:01): As aware voters, we need to vote in a way that we keep politics competitive and not fall into the

Speaker 5 (48:05): trap of hero-worshiping politicians and enable one-party rule for decades. As you may know, former RBI governor, YB Reddy, has argued that coalition governments are the best, actually, for economic growth. And he, according to Reddy, he puts the high rate of growth

Speaker 3 (48:23): between 1990 to 2014 to the fact that governments were coalition governments and had to work on finding consensus and finding reconciliation and had no room to slap down massive executive

Speaker 5 (48:38): power. Single party authoritarian rule, as Reddy concludes, is conversely bad for growth because it is about a citizen controlling state and partisan ideology pushed through the state apparatus. For example, the act of shutting down cattle slaughterhouses or the so-called nationalist campaigns on Maggie noodles or attacks on restaurants means that the ease of doing

Speaker 1 (49:01): business and business diversity is imperiled by too much political interference. Diversity

Speaker 3 (49:07): cannot bloom in the marketplace if diversity is stamped out in society and politics.

Speaker 4 (49:14): I’m concluding now. So liberals and democracies must also speak up very strongly for minority rights and unpopular causes and the belief that the individual is the smallest minority.

Speaker 5 (49:26): Democracy is not majority rule, instead it is a recognition of the rights of minorities, the smallest minority being the individual. This is because mandates are maybe massive, but they are transient and today’s majority could be tomorrow’s minority. So what will happen if we only protect the rights of the majority and not of the minority because the majority today could

Speaker 3 (49:47): be the minority of tomorrow. The defense of the rights of minorities is the hallmark of the pursuit of liberty. There are five features of smart governance that I believe

Speaker 5 (49:57): liberals should campaign for. I’ll very quickly touch on these. These features I believe protect

Speaker 4 (50:03): individual liberty. First, less government and less bureaucratic logjam. So even if the state is interfering on pandemics and climate change or other issues, the idea should be that the state

Speaker 5 (50:14): does not create its own bureaucracy, more bureaucracies and perpetuate control.

Speaker 4 (50:21): Second, leadership by experts and stakeholding of citizen experts in increasingly challenging areas like pandemics and climate change. Third, decentralization and devolution of powers to local bodies. Fourth, insulating decision making from politicization. Fifth, demanding truthful, substantive and accurate information from the government. This is, I believe, a fundamental

Speaker 5 (50:43): right of all citizens. We need to campaign for this on a war footing. Truthful, substantive and accurate information is our right. Facts and truths are key to democracy. Without facts,

Speaker 1 (50:58): we cannot defend individual liberty because we simply don’t know how liberty is being snatched away. To conclude, the COVID pandemic has seen the return of big governments and citizens have become reliant on the state for basic welfare, health care and climate change has imposed its own

Speaker 4 (51:14): opportunities for government expansion. But today in India it is not the welfare state that we’re seeing but the big state which is intruding into too many aspects of our personal lives and leaving

Speaker 1 (51:23): the citizen at the mercy of arbitrary government action. We can turn to the courts to protect our liberties. If that fails, we can turn to each other by forming associations and groups and

Speaker 5 (51:32): create what Baklava Havel called the parallel polis or small communities bound together, creating human relationships that revitalize trust and respect among each other. We can also keep liberty safe by embarking on that great transformational journey that Gandhi wanted

Speaker 4 (51:50): us to undertake the journey towards truthfulness and courage. Don’t escape or try to get away,

Speaker 5 (51:56): instead plunge in and make the most of the opportunities of democratic citizenship. There is no substitute in the end, I believe, for political and social peaceful action by citizens

Speaker 1 (52:07): of the kind that the farmer’s agitation has shown us. When citizens mobilize against the state in

Speaker 5 (52:12): a non-violent manner and pursue the Gandhian satyagraha, that is when the balance of power

Speaker 1 (52:18): can be shifted between an all-powerful state and the liberty-loving citizen. India is a free country but now we must collectively work to set every citizen free, to set every citizen free. There

Speaker 5 (52:31): is need, as Raja Gopalachari said, for a second freedom movement to protect the personal liberty,

Speaker 4 (52:37): to read, to write, to think, to do business, to love, to marry, to eat liberties which we all treasure.

Speaker (52:45): Thank you.

Speaker 2 (52:48): Thank you so much. Like I’ll let give people to about 30 cents for this to sink in because I’ve got tons of questions from the 50 plus audience has been constantly continuously listening from so let me just quickly start with the first question that we have. Which essentially hits at a problem they’re talking from it’s from one for audience from

Speaker 1 (53:08): this here Adnan. So he asked, how do we put a limit on the power of the government to us to see because So as you said, there are cast most banks, other vote banks, rent seekers, cronies. So considering that it’s not in their incentive and in the government’s incentive, how do we as citizens put a limit?

Speaker 4 (53:27): See, you know, it’s important for us to recognize that the government’s role is going to increase in our times, right? In times of pandemic, the government’s role will increase. government we look to the government to provide health care to provide vaccines to make possible public health care on a vast scale when you have climate change or the drive towards net zero again you’re going to have to have government spending you’re going to have governments increasingly

Speaker 1 (53:55): taking a role but the way we can limit the power of the government to set up new bureaucracies to

Speaker 4 (54:06): to have its cronies, to work through militias, to create distorted incentives in the system

Speaker 1 (54:16): to actually increase its own control. The way we can do this is first by becoming aware of this, aware that governments do this. And second of all, if any of us are working in government or any of us are advising governments,

Speaker 5 (54:30): We can safeguard, we should try to safeguard against these evils.

Speaker 1 (54:38): Also I think that at this moment in time for us who are classical liberals and who believe

Speaker 5 (54:43): in a minimal government, the issue really is to see where the government can intervene

Speaker 4 (54:49): and where it should not and how it is intervening. So we have to be very nuanced in the way we look at government intervention. I think the blanket, there can be no government intervention

Speaker 3 (55:00): is not realistic because in today’s time, we are going to have government intervention. Also, the arguments for minimal governments

Speaker 4 (55:09): are not fashionable. You and I are not, this is not the argument at the moment. At the moment, the argument is all for big government, for big state, for state power and all of that. But we need as liberals, as classical liberals, we have to try and push back the power of the government. We can do that by being aware of it, but if you’re working in government to actively try

Speaker 1 (55:26): push back the power of the government. And thirdly, you know, as importantly, as I said, through creating the parallel polis or, you know, a network of civil society organizations

Speaker 4 (55:38): outside the state. And if the government interference becomes too high, then in my opinion, there

Speaker 1 (55:45): is no option but peaceful social and political action on the street.

Speaker 3 (55:51): Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (55:54): Something you just said allows me to move into the next question that we have here, which is, would you think philosophically, India generally prefer a more authoritarian government? Is that a reason we have repeatedly ended up with authoritarian governments? Are we afraid of the responsibility which might come with liberty?

Speaker 1 (56:11): Or would you say India has always been liberal? That is a very, very good question.

Speaker 5 (56:15): The Pew survey, as you know, which I’ve quoted in my book, I think the year 2012, or I think it was either 2012 or 2015, quoted that almost 50% Indians, over 50% Indians actually

Speaker 4 (56:28): wanted a strongman leader who was unencumbered by judiciary or parliament. And over 50% also said they wanted army rule. So there is a thirst for authoritarian governments. I think when economically communities are very vulnerable. They feel that they need a savior or they need someone as a kind of messiah or a kind of protector, but in the process they surrender their own freedoms. So the hankering of a strong man at the top is a patriarchal construct of all

Speaker 5 (57:01): traditional patriarchal societies and India is no exception. The philosophy of Hinduism is radically different you know when i was writing my book i delved into the writings of s radhakrishnan

Speaker 4 (57:13): and hiriyana and the ved and the upanishads and the uh writings of vivekananda and all of it is centered on individual freedom and the freedom of the atma and the atma’s responsibility to perceive

Speaker 5 (57:26): the brahma but uh as a nation and as a society perhaps because of the prevailing insecurities

Speaker 3 (57:32): that we face, we are in search of a savior. You know, as has been said, this is the time of

Speaker 4 (57:41): electoral autocracy. You know, in the 1930s, the enemy of democracy was communism. In the 1940s,

Speaker 5 (57:48): the enemy of democracy was fascism. Today, the enemy of democracy is democracy because it is

Speaker 4 (57:54): through the democratic process that we are getting leaders who are turning their back on democracy and abusing democratic freedoms and actually depriving the individual of sovereignty. So

Speaker 1 (58:07): it is the democratic leaders who are turning their back on democratic institutions and who are engaging in the cult of personality and the cult of absolute power. Now our Indians by

Speaker 4 (58:21): definition gravitate towards this strong man cult, they gravitate towards the absolute ruler,

Speaker 5 (58:29): do we gravitate towards the sultan type ruler? I believe so, yes. Which is why my opinion or the opinions of those who love liberty are often not popular. But that doesn’t mean we should

Speaker 4 (58:43): not have these opinions and canvas for these opinions because at the end of the day, our philosophy teaches us that the individual is sovereign. Democracy teaches us that the individual is sovereign. Gandhi teaches us that the individual is sovereign. Why then are we giving up our sovereignty and surrendering our atma to the cult of worship for any form of elected

Speaker 5 (59:12): leader. So this is the question that a lot of us wrestle with. And I think it is also,

Speaker 4 (59:20): as I said, a factor of economic and social insecurity or feelings of vulnerability, and anxiety that economically vulnerable communities are uniquely susceptible to the cult of personality

Speaker 1 (59:39): of so-called savior strongman. So this is a fact, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t continue to canvass on the need for individual choice and individual freedom and individual

Speaker 5 (59:52): sovereignty.

Speaker 1 (59:53): Thank you so much. I think it was very well rounded out. So, so I’ll try to merge couple of the next questions because they’re kind of similar in my opinion.

Speaker 2 (01:00:03): So one of the questions from one of our audience members here, D up who points out that considering that, uh, the opposition to the current government might be as state as authoritarian, right?

Speaker 3 (01:00:18): And which is something, some of the other questions also hint at should we be blank

Speaker 1 (01:00:21): in blanket as liberals supporting any and other opposition which comes from the singular purpose of opposing the current government because they might be as status and they might be looking to get the same power you know my view is all indian political parties are statist

Speaker 4 (01:00:39): you know car tourists and professors have been imprisoned in dhrinamul-led bengal

Speaker 5 (01:00:47): films and books have been banned by congress government it was a congress government that

Speaker 4 (01:00:53): banned salman rashleigh’s satanic verses uh and of course we have seen many bans and many restrictions on liberty of this government so uh statism and increasing power of the state yes is not the monopoly of one political party my point is that you know we we as liberals should

Speaker 1 (01:01:11): work towards political competitiveness we need to keep the political culture competitive in Kerala, the alternating spheres of influence, spheres in alternating times in power,

Speaker 4 (01:01:24): LDF and UDF, I believe makes politics uniquely competitive. When politics is competitive, politicians are then incentivized to deliver because they’ll be out of power in the next five years. So they are incentivized to deliver and incentivized to involve citizens and to involve stakeholders in their governance. You know, when I was in Kerala, I was always struck by

Speaker 5 (01:01:49): the remarkable dynamism of civil society groups, you know, church groups,

Speaker 4 (01:01:55): temple groups, Muslim groups, bunches, local business groups, fishermen’s communities, there are lots and lots of citizens groups who are all leveraging their interests with the government and with their politicians. And the government cannot but take these groups into consideration because they’re very powerful and they’re locally very active. So I believe that a culture of political competitiveness is what I would argue for, not necessarily that this party

Speaker 5 (01:02:22): or that party is the savior. No political party in India is the defender of individual liberty. Let’s get that very straight. So that defense will have to come from civil society,

Speaker 1 (01:02:35): but at least we can attempt to keep the political culture competitive. So it’s not about, you know, will this party be better than this party or that party better than this party. If we take it that all parties are similarly statused, at least by keeping the culture

Speaker 4 (01:02:53): competitive, the political culture competitive, we are encouraging a defense of individual liberty. That’s what I would argue, that we can’t seek to convince politicians to safeguard individual liberty. That’s up to us. That’s up to civil society. have to do that through political and social action. Frankly, I have now come to believe a

Speaker 3 (01:03:13): great deal in political action. You know, there’s no substitute for that. There’s no substitute for

Speaker 1 (01:03:20): political and social action on the street because that is what transfers the balance of power from

Speaker 5 (01:03:30): state to citizens. Well, it’s peaceful action, you know, peaceful Gandhian Satyagraha will be, will have to be one of the steps that citizens take and citizens are taking those steps. I mean,

Speaker 4 (01:03:41): university students, farmers, ladies of Shaheen Bagh, other doctors, people are taking those steps. Now, what other recours does the citizen have to push back statism? But in terms of political

Speaker 1 (01:03:55): parties I believe that if you at least keep the political culture competitive that at least is a guard against authoritarianism. Thank you so much but it also brings me to another question that we have here like I think two people have asked more or less the same question saying that can India be currently where we stand right now today we considered a liberal democracy anymore considering

Speaker 3 (01:04:22): and declining economic freedom and personal freedom we still get to call ourselves a liberal democracy

Speaker 1 (01:04:28): i don’t think so i think we are a uh as you know as a foreign agency has referred to us we are an elected autocracy this this trend is uh prevalent throughout many countries of the world uh you know

Speaker 4 (01:04:44): in Poland, in Hungary, in the Latin American countries, Russia, these are countries which are

Speaker 5 (01:04:53): elected autocracies, where the rigors of electioneering may continue, but in terms of democratic institutions, in terms of the integrity of democratic institutions,

Speaker 1 (01:05:08): or the freedoms available for citizens or the power of democratic institutions to function with autonomy and these have disappeared. So you have a kind of state power which is settled on us like a cloud and which is stamping out these institutions and the norms, restraints, and rules of democracy.

Speaker 5 (01:05:40): You know, I’ve just finished writing a biography of Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

Speaker 4 (01:05:44): It’s the next in my series of biographies. I’m writing three biographies of three prime ministers. I’ve written one on Indira Gandhi

Speaker 3 (01:05:52): and my one on Vajpayee is coming out in December. And Vajpayee was, you know, he was quintessentially a Democrat.

Speaker 4 (01:06:02): Yes, you know, he was, of course, he utilized the Hindutva movement, but he kept insisting on the rules, norms and restraints of democracy and parliament.

Speaker 1 (01:06:15): Vajpayee was ultimately a man of parliament and he kept insisting on parliamentary procedure, on parliamentary rules, on parliamentary behavior.

Speaker 5 (01:06:25): Those are slow, those are maddening, those are not suited for the TV age, but they are

Speaker 1 (01:06:36): what keep democracy, they are what keeps democracy going.

Speaker 4 (01:06:39): You know, I mean, there’s been so much written already on the role of media and social media in actually undermining democracy. What social media is doing, what the tech giants are doing, and you don’t need me to

Speaker 5 (01:06:51): tell you this, this has been all over the press and people have been writing about it.

Speaker 4 (01:06:55): Facebook, Twitter, social media, I believe are creating a kind of an ecosystem, an information ecosystem which is actively undermining the truths and the facts that are needed to keep

Speaker 3 (01:07:11): democracy working. You know, because the algorithm of Facebook and Twitter and Instagram is mapping your

Speaker 1 (01:07:22): mind, right? having mapped your mind it is then feeding you subliminal messages which is keeping you trapped

Speaker 4 (01:07:31): in that ecosystem where you’re only hearing uh yourself and other people like you so you’re trapped in your silo of like-minded people so everybody’s getting trapped in a silo and we’re

Speaker 1 (01:07:45): becoming intolerant of opinion we are becoming incapable of dialogue uh we are only being fed information we want to hear. Social media platforms are increasingly disseminating hate speak,

Speaker 4 (01:08:02): you know, violence. They are actually, you know, there are documented instances of social media leading to riots and, you know, communal conflicts. So social media is, I believe, undermining the basis of democracy in a way. You know, I think it’s weaponizing information in a way. It’s creating cyber capacity for those who are trying to undermine democracy by flooding it

Speaker 1 (01:08:35): with this or that information. So the role of social media and undermining democracy cannot be underestimated. The role of media as well. media promotes the cult of personality, media promotes the large individual who is against

Speaker 5 (01:08:53): an epic backdrop, who is, you know, seeing amidst crowds, the media image promotes personality

Speaker 4 (01:09:01): cults and promotes the cult of, you know, of what I call the big boss syndrome, you

Speaker 5 (01:09:07): know, in the big boss, the television show, the person who is the worst behaved, or the person who behaves the worst, is most badly behaved, is the most popular person. So in that sense, television is promoting this, you know, the more outlandish, the more sensationalist, the more larger than life, that person is the most powerful. So television is again

Speaker 1 (01:09:33): promoting this personality. So I believe the role of social media and media cannot be underestimated

Speaker 4 (01:09:41): in creating this illiberal democracy or elected autocracy. So my solution, I have some solutions in my book as well, is really don’t spend your time arguing with strangers on the internet. Get out there, make physical contact, make small talk, talk to people, form associations, form groups, get out there and get into the physical world and be part of an interconnected world physically, face-to-face contact. Of course, in the pandemic that’s difficult, but I would say that if we are spending all our energies, expending our anger and frustration on the internet, that is in a way not going to get you far. What really will, I think, spur change in society or make you a more conscientious democratic citizen is if you get out there and actually interact with people and get into physical contact with people. So that is one way of resisting this illiberal democracy. But are we a liberal democracy? No, we are I think at this point, you know, Ashish Nandi

Speaker 5 (01:10:45): called it a sephocracy, that is we have elections and that’s about it. But we are at this moment

Speaker 1 (01:10:52): in time, I would say an electoral autocracy. Thank you so much. So let’s have a conversation in a bit of different direction from something I have got some questions on. It’s does the liberal movement in India, the liberal ideology, is there an access problem or an image problem?

Speaker 2 (01:11:10): Because a couple of questions you think that like is generally liberals are considered

Speaker 1 (01:11:15): because at least you have no touch with the ground reality, right? And a lot of times, some of the liberal movements end up being for the privileged few and not for the masses. So is it more due to an access problem or just an image problem that we have?

Speaker 5 (01:11:28): Very good question. You know, I think that as someone who has been out there promoting

Speaker 4 (01:11:35): liberal ideas as much as I can, the first thing that we need to do as liberals and want to extend our liberal movement is to speak in different languages. I’m very glad that you actually, I think you just mentioned at the beginning of the program that you have it in English and Hindi, is that right? Multiple languages. I think that’s extremely important.

Speaker 1 (01:11:58): that we don’t take the liberal message simply out of the English speaking universe. In the thick of electioneering, Hillary Clinton once referred to Donald Trump

Speaker 5 (01:12:11): and his supporters as a basket of deplorables. That is the kind of sort of aristocratic liberal elitism

Speaker 4 (01:12:19): that I think we really need to shed like yesterday’s baggage, because that kind of elitism will not be able to take the liberal movement forward in India

Speaker 5 (01:12:30): at all. You know, this is why I have so many arguments with my liberal friends about the farm reforms. I am a proponent of reform. I firmly believe in, you know, in the politics of reform and in one more economics and the need to reform society, need to reform India’s economy. But You see, you can’t have reforms that are perceived as benefiting only a small few or benefiting the

Speaker 4 (01:12:57): elite or benefiting cronies or benefiting business. The way that reforms can get rid of the image trap

Speaker 5 (01:13:06): or come out of the image trap is actually by locating them with people and so the means

Speaker 4 (01:13:12): become very important. You know, this is the Gandhian means over ends. Means are very important. if the means are anti-democratic, if the means are state violence and state power, then the reforms

Speaker 5 (01:13:26): will not have legitimacy, will not have popular support. And look at what happened in the farm laws. You know, they were passed by an ordinance. First, the government propagated an ordinance.

Speaker 1 (01:13:35): They went through the Rajasabha voice vote. And then they were promulgated at a time when the

Speaker 4 (01:13:41): country was reeling in a health emergency. So, you know, where you’re already in the anxieties and and the insecurities are very high. So the liberal liberals in India, I feel, first need to speak a language other than English. We need to, you know, be much more with people in social and political

Speaker 5 (01:14:01): action on the ground with people. We also need to, I believe liberals need to be able to communicate

Speaker 4 (01:14:09): much more with younger people. You know, we need to talk to younger people and encourage them to think like liberals or to be aware of individual sovereignty or to be aware of individual freedoms and to understand what individual freedoms mean. So we have to come out of the ivory tower. We have to speak to people out of, you know, in different languages, have to go down to the ground, you know, grassroots liberalism, barefoot liberalism

Speaker 1 (01:14:37): It’s what I have been campaigning for, for almost three years now. And the only way to do it in my view is to, is to locate the liberal project

Speaker 4 (01:14:49): in social and political action on the ground. So for this, the liberal movement has not succeeded. It has not, we have been trapped and liberals in India have become,

Speaker 3 (01:15:00): have in the past been too enamored of state power, have been too enamored of the trappings of state power.

Speaker 4 (01:15:11): As I mentioned the example of the academics, the left academics in Bengal, we have been too enamored of state power,

Speaker 1 (01:15:20): we have been too enamored of government power. So liberals have a unique responsibility now, to come out of the ivory tower,

Speaker 4 (01:15:31): to stop speaking in English, to participate in social and political action at the grassroots, and to engage in barefoot liberalism. So I’ve been doing this in my own way. I give talks to a wide range of groups. I’ve been pressing for a Hindi translation of my book. I have

Speaker 1 (01:15:51): been going to schools, college, you know, to groups of people across North India where been invited and I try to speak of these ideas and lots of people are involved in these ideas

Speaker 4 (01:16:04): but the ingrained notion of my baap sarkar and you know sarkar is the sort of giver of all is so ingrained that it’s difficult for us to conceive of a belief system where we talk about

Speaker 5 (01:16:18): our freedoms and not the power of the government which is highly paradoxical because our philosophy

Speaker 1 (01:16:23): is telling us it’s all about us, it’s all about the Atma. But somehow we have lost that philosophy

Speaker 4 (01:16:31): and we have become enamored of the state. So liberals have to come out of the ivory tower and must work at the grassroots. I was in Singhu border where the farmers were protesting. I thought that was a very important moment of direct political action, direct social political action,

Speaker 3 (01:16:53): which is non-violent and I think those movements are where liberals need to be.

Speaker 1 (01:16:58): We need to be with citizens movements. Thank you so much. Just to have a quick follow-up question there. Is there a reason why and this is also a question that you took the term liberal instead

Speaker 2 (01:17:12): of something like say libertarianism and an additional question to that which is also here in our slido from Anvin, is it a reason why because of the term liberal, automatically a lot of leftists were also statists associated with it. Is that also possibly a reason why classical

Speaker 1 (01:17:33): liberals don’t get a lot of say? You know classical liberals like me, I call myself a classical liberal. I don’t, I actually don’t go as far as libertarianism because you see I believe that practically it is not going to be possible for us to imagine a situation where the state entirely ceases to exist. I think the challenges that exist at the moment in our world, as I mentioned,

Speaker 3 (01:18:02): whether it’s climate change, whether it’s pandemics, whether it’s the need for education, on a need for primary education,

Speaker 1 (01:18:11): the challenges are so vast.

Speaker 3 (01:18:13): The scale is so huge that it’s no good

Speaker 1 (01:18:18): just wishing away the state. It’s no good wishing away the government. But as a classical liberal, and that’s why I call myself liberal rather than libertarian,

Speaker 4 (01:18:28): I believe our role has to be to see that the government or the state intervenes as little as possible, intervenes as strategically as possible,

Speaker 1 (01:18:38): intervenes with as light a touch as possible and is prevented, is pushed back from intruding on

Speaker 4 (01:18:48): personal liberties as much as possible. Is it going to be possible or do I regard it as feasible

Speaker 5 (01:18:55): that the state entirely ceases to exist and we only have the market play of market forces? I

Speaker 4 (01:19:03): don’t think that’s going to be feasible in the future. It’s not going to be, it’s not realistic.

Speaker 3 (01:19:08): it’s it’s a it’s utopian so i don’t go as far as libertarianism i actually call myself a classical

Speaker 1 (01:19:13): liberal um i’m sorry what was the second question uh often in india when you refer to liberals you

Speaker 4 (01:19:20): have the leftist sort of also yeah no you know i think the left is uh the left the the left hates me because uh you know i went to a i went to a talk i gave me to people talk in hyderabad and somebody stood up and said you know we thought you were writing a book on liberal values and here you are quoting Raja Koppalachari and you’re quoting Milton Friedman and are you a right winger?

Speaker 5 (01:19:44): And I thought, oh God, this is real left orthodoxy here because as a liberal, you get it from the

Speaker 4 (01:19:52): right as well as the left. Everybody hates you. So the left is extremely statist in India. The

Speaker 1 (01:19:59): The state structure that the left perpetrated in Bengal has to, you know, has to give us,

Speaker 4 (01:20:08): gives us an example of how authoritarian left regimes can be. So the left has, you know, has traditionally been very statist in India. And you know, it’s interesting because the term liberal actually in America means, you know, left liberal. But I am defining liberal in the Gandhian sense. I am defining liberal as citizens power, decentralization, versus statisms of all kinds, right and left. But I still don’t go as far as libertarianism. I go as far as Gandhian notions of liberty, which is anti-left as well as anti-right.

Speaker 1 (01:20:57): any form of statism is what Gandhi opposed and that’s where I come down. But the alienating

Speaker 5 (01:21:06): of progressive opinion hurts me and injures me because I am a believer in individual liberty

Speaker 4 (01:21:16): to the T. I mean, I’m completely in favor of individual, I mean, I am as much against the

Speaker 1 (01:21:25): brutal power of the state as any leftist. But it seems to me a little, you know, an anomaly

Speaker 4 (01:21:34): in the left way of thinking that socially, you know, we must argue for freedom, but economically we’re going to argue for the socialistic controlling state. So this comes down to what I was saying is that, you know, freedom cannot be divisible. You can’t divide freedom and say compartmentalized freedom. You know, many right-wingers would say we need a free economy, but socially we

Speaker 5 (01:21:54): will have complete control. Left-wingers will say we need a free society but economically we’ll have complete control. I oppose both. I say that you can’t divide freedom in this way. You need freedom

Speaker 3 (01:22:04): in the economy and freedom in society. Thank you so much. I know we are running out of time and

Speaker 2 (01:22:11): we have a hard stop soon. So just like with a final closing thoughts on this question. So it’s like if we start contextualizing state skepticism in India and start inculcating state skepticism in India. Where do we go from there?

Speaker 5 (01:22:27): Well, where do we go from here is, you know, that’s a difficult question because

Speaker 4 (01:22:33): first of all, we have to start convincing people why they have a right to their own freedoms, right? Why the state does not have the right. In our preamble, our constitution, which is the most

Speaker 1 (01:22:47): liberal document actually our constitution is telling us we have the liberty of thought freedom

Speaker 4 (01:22:53): expression belief and worship so the rights that we have are given to us by the constitution by the ruling arrangement that presides over us by the constitutional structure that presides over us

Speaker 3 (01:23:07): the sambhi dhan ne humain dia to ye azadi to sambhi dhan ne humain dia to ye sambhi dhan ki

Speaker 1 (01:23:14): So I posited it as a defense of constitutional values, as a defense of constitutional freedoms against governments. So I feel that if we, by emphasizing constitutional values, we can promote state skepticism without it becoming oh now what do I believe in if I don’t have the state then what do I have where do I go you know the the the awareness of the constitution and awareness of constitutional freedoms

Speaker 4 (01:23:53): uh is the starting point that’s what how that’s how I start I start as as as first championing

Speaker 5 (01:23:59): constitutional freedoms and then where do we go from here is basically that uh we keep pushing

Speaker 4 (01:24:06): back on state power, we keep pushing back on state encroachments on liberty through communitarian efforts, through building the parallel polis, through building networks,

Speaker 1 (01:24:18): and being in many ways, you know, not fighting shy, as I say, of direct political action. I know this sounds sort of as if I’m being extreme, but it’s not actually, you know, it’s not. Because if you look at the farmers’ protest,

Speaker 4 (01:24:38): now a lot of liberals are, I know, attacking the farmers, and I know a lot of my liberal friends are championing the cause of reform, even in the face of the farm agitation.

Speaker 3 (01:24:48): I would say it is possible, as my journalist colleague TK Arun has recently argued,

Speaker 1 (01:24:56): that you can support the endless procurements of grain

Speaker 4 (01:25:02): as well as celebrate the repeal of the farm laws. do both because in the end the farmer’s agitation has taught us the value of direct political action, the value of peaceful political and social action. So where do we go from here is if you if you start with state skepticism, you start with you know awareness of sovereign of constitutional rights and skepticism of state power, you then have to reach a stage at some

Speaker 5 (01:25:35): point to say that if the state is snatching away your personal rights to such an extent,

Speaker 1 (01:25:42): then as I come down to it, there is no substitute for political action.

Speaker 2 (01:25:49): Thank you so much and on the point you just mentioned about the constitution, something I really like saying which is essentially that a constitution does not exist to protect the state, it exists to protect us from the state. Yes it’s about people,

Speaker 1 (01:26:08): it’s about people and think about it you know I was at a talk, I was giving a talk once and I was

Speaker 4 (01:26:14): talking about liberal values and you know a mob came in and I talked about the vigilante mob and a group came in and they said you’re going to banh karwao and you know you know she must stop

Speaker 1 (01:26:23): talking and all that and everybody around at that gathering stood up and actually shoot these people away and said no we want to hear her so you please go out so i’m saying that you know you can do it

Speaker 5 (01:26:33): of course you know if the mob is violent and there is uh vigilantism uh by a paramilitary and often these groups are paramilitaries you know i have been in situations where i’m not being

Speaker 4 (01:26:44): allowed to speak and I had to be escorted out by police because there were people with arms who were there, weapons who were there. But if the citizens, when the citizens at that,

Speaker 5 (01:26:56): in this particular incident, you know, they all got up and they forced these people to go out of

Speaker 1 (01:27:01): the room. So in that sense, my liberty and their liberty was protected by citizens. So this was something that I was very hopeful about. That it’s the citizen who’s at the center of democracy.

Speaker 3 (01:27:17): It’s the citizen who’s at the center of the constitution. You know, we are the owners of democracy. The citizen is the sovereign, right? We are the rulers. The constitution exists for us.

Speaker 1 (01:27:33): the democracy exists for the citizen. As Obama said, the most important person in democracy, the most important entity in any constitutional democracy is the citizen. You are, I am, all of us are, we are the most important people. It’s our freedoms and our right.

Speaker 3 (01:27:56): We rule in a democracy. We the people, right? We the people have given ourselves the constitution. We, the people, have given ourselves representative government. So it is we who have to take up the responsibility and the challenges of citizenship.

Speaker 1 (01:28:14): It is we as young citizens, as old citizens, particularly young citizens.

Speaker 4 (01:28:20): Actually, I’m extremely impressed by the energy of young students these days. Extremely impressed by the kind of spirit I see in campuses and in schools.

Speaker 3 (01:28:29): because a lot of young people are extremely, you know, enthusiastic about taking up the cause of citizens’ freedom. So ultimately this entire enterprise of democracy and constitution and

Speaker 1 (01:28:45): liberty is all about you. It’s about you and your freedom, right? It’s about your personal freedom and why are you going to let the state take it away from you when it is your freedom, this is your individuality this is going to transform society and transform politics remember you are the voter right you elect whichever government so take seriously the responsibility of citizenship nobody can take that away from you nobody can take away the fact that you are the most powerful person actually in a democracy thank you so much and i think that would be a brilliant note to close it right now and we are not on time here so thank you so much and thank you so much for all our attendees and our questions i know we had a tons of other questions but because we have a hard stop right now we cannot go into the other questions uh as this

Speaker 2 (01:29:37): bush had already mentioned the material in the indian liberalist website is currently available in bengali marathi gujarati and hindi but we are also planning to expand into more regional languages soon so do keep checking on the website for more information always feel free to get in touch with

Speaker 1 (01:29:51): us and thank you once again for spending your time today with us. Thank you so much for having me, it was a pleasure.