The Case for Liberalism in Indian History

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-N8fgzrIro Duration: 234.5s

Speaker (00:05): Most people, when they hear about these ideas about markets, empowering poor to enter markets, to make better life for themselves through the markets as opposed to through states from handouts and subsidies. Right? People are still finding very difficult, and they feel that these are sort of Western ideas. They don’t see that these are Indian ideas, which actually is one of the biggest challenge. Nothing is great disservice we have done in teaching our own history to our own children. Right? They feel that some of these ideas are completely Western ideas. Even though it’s very true that, you know, most of these ideas have been there in our own intellectual life, particularly in the, you know, late nineteenth, early twentieth century, and, of course, even before him to some extent. So I think looking at these ideas as much as part of the Indian ethos, yes, they have not been dominant ideas, which is true. Like, they’re not the most prominent ideas in the intellectual life of India, but they have been there. Right? There’s a publication called Indian Libertarian in nineteen twenties. Right? Even though I think most people find the term libertarian very out of the context in India today. Right? But we had Indian Libertarian magazine being published regularly. There’s a huge intellectual life of India that did focus on some of these ideas in a very fundamental way. Somehow we have lost that sort of trajectory, you know, in in the likes. This is not being taught anywhere in our history books, not just in school, but also in, you many people who masters in history for that. I think that’s important part of our journey that we need to remember. Right? I think, secondly, if you look at the ideas of Gandhi, for example, Tagore, Ambedkar, Rajaji, right, some of just a few names of recent modern times that one can think about, you can pull those ideas together, and you will see that there is very unique Indian sort of liberal theme or a version of liberalism that one can construct. Right? Just it’s already there. Right? So Gandhi’s ideas in politics, for example, which are very much anarchist ideas, Gandhi did not believe in the last state. Actually, he did not believe in state at all for that matter. Right? And believed in sort of people taking charge of their lives, the public life, and not running into the state. Right? Rajaji obviously talked about free markets, completely markets, laissez faire in very different context, but very similar ideas. Right? I will talk about why this would be cosmopolitan, why world is of a theater, and we should not be limited by the boundaries of our sort of walls of the house or windows being not being opened. Right? And Ambedkar talked about how the social transformation needs to happen in India. Right? And how and there are very liberal ideas in that sense about how societies would treat each individual with the same dignity and respect. Right? Irrespective of the caste or class. Right? And that’s very much a very liberal ethos in a sense that Ambedkar had talked about in terms of what India has to do to bring people the same level of dignity. I think these are very much Indian ideas. And I think we can build on those ideas. And CCS has tried, as you know, do since academy work and many other program that we run to build on those ideas. I’m hoping that, you know, as we move forward, as we have more and more people thinking about this deeply, addressing the current challenges that we are facing, that we’ll we will go back and look at these ideas and begin to see how we can apply them, how we can adapt them to the modern sort of current situation.