The Best of Karan Thapar

By Karan Thapar

A famed and feared interviewer, Karan Thapar is known for his astute, probing questions and his persistence in getting clear answers. In this selection of tightly focused and penetrating interviews Thapar and the people he interviews examine hot-button issues of our times: India's economic health, relations with China, independence of the judiciary, being Muslim in today's India, how the nation fares 75 years after independence. Together, these interviews provide a comprehensive view of how India regards itself and its place in the world.

Naseeruddin Shah / Arundhati Roy / Farooq Abdullah / Faizan Mustafa / Harish Salve / Najeeb Jung / S.Y. Quraishi / Pronab Sen / Raghuram Rajan / Naushad Forbes / Romila Thapar / Ramachandra Guha / Palanivel Thiaga Rajan / Swapan Dasgupta / Avtar Singh Bhasin / Kanti Bajpai / Shashi Tharoor / Indra Nooyi / Mahua Moitra / Madan B. Lokur / A.P. Shah / Dushyant Dave

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Mar 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9789356400429

Book preview

Introduction

We’re all familiar with interviews and frequently watch them on television. But rarely, if ever, do we think about how they are done. I’m not referring to the obvious and inevitable response to an interview, which entails some thought about whether it is well or poorly handled, but to a deeper attempt to understand issues such as what are the different types of interviews, how should they be conducted, what is the nature of research required, is there an appropriate way of addressing your guest and, finally, though for some this might today feel pernickety, how should one dress for this sort of occasion?

Before you delve into the twenty-one interviews in this book, it might help if I share with you my answers to these issues. Then, when you start reading, you will immediately be able to identify what sort of interview it is, how well or poorly it is structured and how meaningful and helpful is the research that backs up the questions. It should also help you identify, and perhaps criticise, the style of questioning, that is, in terms of tone and manner as well as the relationship between the interviewer and the guest.

Let me start by identifying the different types of interviews that you will encounter in this book. Basically there are three.

There’s the news interview where you pursue something that has just happened and you want to know more about it. This interview is driven by a natural sense of curiosity. The length of this interview is determined by how much you can find out. But it’s usually short. Its cache is its immediate relevance.

The second type of interview is of the current affairs variety. Here, the aim is not to gather information but to probe opinions or seek understanding and, thus, push the envelope further. This interview is best done when the interviewee can be placed between the two horns of a dilemma—damned if they do and damned if they don’t. After establishing the interviewee’s predicament, the first task of the interviewer is to push the guest to embrace one horn or the other. Once that has been achieved, the next task is to point out the costs of this choice and then push the guest to accept them or, at least, acknowledge them. The final task is to explore potential solutions to those costs and see if the interviewee is willing to endorse them. If you succeed, you’ll make news.

The third type of interview is the celebrity/chat show interview. Here, you are talking to achievers or celebrities. You are interested in them as individuals and you are revelling in their glamour. This time the object is to get them to tell you, through sparkling anecdotes, about their life or their achievements or their emotions, etc. Anecdotes are critical. This is for three reasons. First, when people tell anecdotes, they do so in an animated way, that is, they perform with their voice as they play parts in the story they are telling. This makes for riveting viewing. Second, anecdotes capture emotions or situations or circumstances far better than any verbal description of them. This means anecdotes can get to the heart of a matter more succinctly and effectively than just a description. Third, anecdotes are remembered and repeated and, therefore, promote the interview long after it’s over. The Face to Face series I did for the BBC for five or six years was precisely this sort of interview.

The next key concern is a more technical one and, therefore, less descriptive. It’s the issue of how one should structure an interview. This lies at the heart not just of the questions asked but of the order in which they come up and, in at least one type of interview, the strategy that lies behind the questioning.

The news interview does not require obvious or very meticulous structuring because it’s dependent upon the naturally curious questions you would ask when you have just found out something has happened and want to know more. Even so, some structuring is necessary but it’s pretty obvious.

Structuring is far more important for the current affairs interview. To go by what John Birt, former director general of the BBC, used to say, structuring in the first instance flows out of the fact that there are four types of answers—yes, no, don’t know and won’t tell. The first object is to collapse the last two into the first two.

A more important part of the structuring of current affairs interviews is that you need to develop a linear format so that the discussion seems to flow without breaks and jumps or cul-de-sacs. Quite often clever wording can create the impression of linearity. But that’s a little trick few anchors will want to admit to!

However, to do this properly you need to be prepared for the types of answers you’ll get and you need to know in advance what you’ll do when you get them. In other words, if the interviewee says yes, you go down a particular route which is already mapped and planned. If he says no, you go down an alternate route which is also mapped and planned.

This makes research critical. It also means the interviewer has to be the ‘master’ of the subject, in the sense that he or she must be aware of what the possible answers are and the costs connected to them. I cannot emphasise this point enough. Often—actually frequently—our anchors have not done the necessary homework. They’re literally interviewing on the hoof. And, usually, it shows.

Research of a very different sort determines the structuring of the chat show/celebrity interview. Here you need to know about the stories/anecdotes drawn from the life of your guests. This is best obtained either by talking to them directly, which is often not possible if they are important. They don’t have the time. So then you have to talk to people who know them and they are happy you should talk to. This could be siblings, parents, friends, etc.

In each case, when you talk to these people, here are examples of the sort of stories you want: quirky or fun things that happened on their tenth birthday, an exam that they failed and how they overcame that setback, falling off a bike when they first tried to ride, their first drunken episode, how they met their husband or wife and fell in love, an incident with their first boss, how they found out they had won a Filmfare award, etc., etc., etc.

Now, although this may not strike you as immediately obvious—and, sadly, sometimes interviewers themselves are blithely unaware of it—how the interview is conducted, in terms of its tone and manner, is a very important aspect of the exercise. Even with the best questions, the interview can stumble and fail to convince if the tone and manner are inappropriate. How you ask the questions is, therefore, almost as important as what you are asking.

To put it briefly, in a current affairs interview you need to be fairly firm but not aggressive and never rude. However, firmness is important in terms of tone and in terms of the fluency with which the question is asked. Tentative asking of questions undermines the anchor. So you need to know what you are asking and ask it without hesitation.

Sometimes, in a current affairs interview, you will have to interrupt because the guest is either not answering or waffling on purpose. But you should never interrupt too often. Also, only interrupt when it’s clear to the audience (and not just to you) that the guest is waffling or refusing to answer. In other words, give it enough time for this to be clear. It’s often clearer to the interviewer before it is to the audience. So wait a little. Then, when you interrupt, you must do so firmly and effectively. Don’t interrupt and get overridden. Also, always do so politely. With an apology would be wisest.

In a chat show/celebrity interview, the tone needs to be friendly and engaging. There should be an obvious smile on your face. Remember, you are drawing out your guest. You won’t do this if you make him or her defensive. It is, therefore, a very different tone and manner to the current affairs interview.

This brings me to how you should address your guest. In a current affairs interview you should never call him sir because that places him on a pedestal and above you. Equally, never call him by his first name because that suggests chumminess and one is never tough with a friend. You, therefore, need to call the person either Mr X or Mrs Y or simply Minister. This is important because it will help establish a relationship of equality rather than one of friendliness or the guest’s superiority.

In a chat show/celebrity interview, you need to use the first name. If you use Mr X and Mrs Y, you are creating a distance, which will work against the spirit and tone of the interview.

Finally, let me, somewhat hesitantly, take up that pernickety point about how an interviewer should dress. I accept this is debatable if not contentious. But if the interviewer doesn’t think carefully about how he presents himself, his appearance could be misleading or inappropriate. Even if not a lot, some thought must be put into deciding how you want to look when you do an interview. And, remember, how you dress to interview the prime minister will be different to what you wear for a Bollywood actor, which in turn may not be the same for a college professor or a leading captain of industry.

Dress is no longer as important a point as it used to be, say, nine or ten years ago. Even on BBC, and occasionally CNN, a more casual appearance is acceptable. However, how you dress and how you present yourself is still important if you are young, inexperienced and starting your career. This is because at this stage of life you will not have natural gravitas and you need to present yourself in a way that helps compensate and make up for the fact you probably look young and inexperienced.

So for the current affairs interview, I would suggest a jacket and a tie or, at least, a tie. That suggests a certain formality which creates a better impression of the interviewer and ‘hides’ the fact he or she may be young or new.

In a news interview, which doesn’t last very long, a tie and jacket is not necessary but I think it’s still important not to wear a T-shirt. Don’t be too casual. A shirt with a collar is important.

For the celebrity/chat show interview, depending on where and how it’s being recorded, smart casual attire would be perfect. However, if your guest is dressed to the nines, which often actors may be, you need to look suitably attired without competing with them. On the other hand, authors and academics are often deliberately shabby and you may not need a tie or jacket with them.

What I’m really saying about the celebrity/chat show interview is that you need to have an advance sense of what sort of occasion it will be and dress accordingly. With a little bit of research you can establish this. Experience also helps.

Now, if you were watching the interviews in this book rather than reading their transcript, what I have explained and discussed would be far more obvious and you’ll easily detect the points I have made—or their absence, which you would have every right to criticise. But given what follows are transcripts, some of the issues like dress will be hidden from you. Not so the others. If the interviews have been done well, you should easily make out what type of interview it is, how well or weakly it has been structured, how aptly or ineptly the questions have been posed and whether the style, in terms of tone and manner, is conducive to getting the intended result or works at cross-purposes to it.

PART ONE

Communalism/Secularism

1

‘Narendra Modi’s Star Is Falling’

Arundhati Roy

On 12 February 2022, Arundhati Roy, activist and author of The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, was interviewed. She talked about the state of the country under the rule of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the fascist underpinnings of the Hindu nationalism propagated by the RSS, the BJP and their cohorts, and the suppression of the narrative of Kashmir in India.

Amidst the confusion, chaos and cacophony of Indian politics, there is a question that is rarely asked, and even when it is, it is often not honestly answered: What sort of country are we becoming? That’s the key issue that I shall explore today, and my guest is the Booker Prize-winning author, essayist and someone many consider a ‘voice of conscience’, Arundhati Roy.

Arundhati Roy, I want to start with a question you first raised in an essay you wrote in 2009, but the truth is, if anything, it is even more pertinent today. You ask, ‘What have we done to democracy? What have we turned it into? What happens when it has been hollowed out and emptied of meaning? What happens when each of its institutions has metastasised into something dangerous?’ Would you answer your question with reference to Modi’s India?

Two thousand nine is thirteen years ago. So, clearly, some of us were worrying about this before Modi came to power. Right now, what can I say? There has been a revolution. Narendra Modi’s favourite industrialist has overtaken his second most favourite industrialist as the richest man in India. I think Adani’s wealth is $88 billion and Ambani’s is only $87 billion.

Adani’s $51 billion (of his $88 billion) came in the last year, when most of India was falling into poverty, hunger and joblessness. So—I am giving a slightly elaborate answer to your question— these rails, which are inevitably to diverge, were set in place before Modi came to power.

At the time I wrote that essay, you already had around one hundred individuals who owned 25 per cent of the GDP. Modi came and pressed the accelerator for big business. Way back in 2009, after the Gujarat massacre—after Muslims were slaughtered on the streets of Gujarat—you had Ratan Tata and Ambani endorsing Narendra Modi as a future prime minister.

Now, what has happened—we have read the Oxfam reports on inequality—is that it has become absolutely obscene. I think a farmer in Uttar Pradesh recently put it perfectly. He said, ‘Desh ko char log chalate hain. Do bechte hain, do kharidte hain. Charon Gujarat se hain [Four people run the country. Two of them sell it, two of them buy it. All four are from Gujarat].’

You have these people who own ports, mines, petrochemicals, the media and internet. That kind of monopoly capital, I don’t think even capitalist countries practise. In Parliament recently, you had Rahul Gandhi talking about ‘ameer Hindustan’ and ‘gareeb Hindustan’ [rich India and poor India] and you had Asaduddin Owaisi talking about ‘mohhabat ke Hindustan’ [India of love] and ‘nafrat ke Hindustan’ [India of hate]. It was as if these were antagonistic things, but they have been dancing together for a long time because the corporate class underwrites Hindu nationalism. It is the bank guarantee.

Now, they have come together on the ‘chappan inch ka chhathi’ [56-inch chest] of Modi. If the institutions of democracy were being eroded even at a time when United Progressive Alliance [UPA] was in power—eroded by massive influx of corporate capital—you had a situation where we were heading towards, let’s say, the best democracy that money can buy or democracy for people who can afford it.

But now we have these institutions of democracy—whether it’s the press, the courts, the intelligence services and, worryingly, even the army and educational institutions—penetrated, overtaken or at least compromised by this Hindu nationalist ideology.

You have Parliament turned into maan ki baat—I mean it in the Hindi sense of the word—where you have clearly unconstitutional laws like the abrogation of Article 370 or the farm laws and, of course, the Citizenship (Amendment) Act [CAA], laws that devastate the lives of millions of people, and you have the Supreme Court still pondering over whether it is constitutional or not.

Then you have the office of the prime minister—being abused by the prime minister—coming out and making these announcements of demonetisation, which devastated the economy; the announcement of a lockdown with four-hour notice; and the announcement of withdrawal of the farm laws, which was as insulting as the promulgation of the laws. It’s toying with the idea of what a democracy is meant to be.

Finally, what I feel has happened is that the BJP and its leader has now begun to confuse itself with the nation and the state. If the BJP is rich, then the nation is rich; if you criticise the BJP, you are anti-national. This is a dangerous thing.

Are you saying that democracy has ceased to exist or it has been diminished or it has eroded? Which of the three?

I am saying that is has been seriously eroded and the shells of these institutions have been kept in place. We are in danger of becoming the show window as democracy.

So India’s claim to be the biggest democracy in the world is seriously questionable?

Absolutely.

I want very much to touch on some of the aspects of the sort of country we have become. First, in December in Haridwar there were bloodcurdling calls for the genocide of Muslims (for ethnic cleansing) and there was a deafening silence from the government. Not the prime minister or a single minister and not a single MP in the BJP had anything to say. In your eyes, is that a sign that India is moving away from its constitutional commitment to secularism and instead becoming a majoritarian Hindu country?

Those dharma sansads—there have been several of them—were literally calling for genocide, calling for Hindus to arm themselves. We have also had hundreds of attacks on Christians and churches (burning of statues of Jesus). Now, the person who was one of the main movers and one of the main speakers, Yati Narsinghanand, has just been given bail by the courts.

So it’s not just the government but the courts and the state machinery that are a part of this. While professors, activists, poets and lawyers are in jail, a man who calls openly for genocide has got bail.

You have other instances like the hijab controversy in Karnataka. Again, the courts have come out, temporarily maybe, in favour of Hindu majoritarianism, as we call it, which is a problematic term, but we will come to that. If it’s not all right for Muslim girls to wear hijabs in classrooms—debatable—how is it all right for the prime minister and the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh to prance around in saffron robes in their positions holding office?

What we have is a system where we are a country with a pretty sophisticated jurisprudence and laws, but how those laws are applied depends on your caste, religion, gender and ethnicity. This is like having a huge, spreading tree resting on a bed of sand.

On whether we are becoming a majoritarian state, this is the stated position of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh [RSS]. Mohan Bhagwat said it was non-negotiable that India is a Hindu state. Narendra Modi is a member of the RSS, so of course he is rowing us in that direction.

So we have stopped being secular?

No. The problem is that this idea of a Hindu majority is problematic because since the nineteenth century they have been trying to construct this political Hindu majority, starting with the Jat-Pat Todak Mandal (literally, society for the breaking up of caste) and Arya Samaj. Later on, the RSS came.

Hindus are a very diverse community, a community divided into castes, which are often antagonistic to each other. The process of trying to create this so-called majority is a very violent one and it will fail. It has to fail.

You are not answering my question. Are we becoming a Hindu majoritarian state?

Yes, we are.

Have we ceased to be secular?

Well, this government is rowing us in that direction. That’s where it wants to go.

This government doesn’t want India to be secular—it wants it to be Hindu state?

Obviously, it’s not a secret. They keep announcing that.

In your Jonathan Schell Memorial Lecture, you wrote, ‘The conceit of secularism—hypocritical though it may be—is the only shard of coherence that makes India possible. That hypocrisy was the best thing we had. Without it, India will end.’ What do you mean by the phrase ‘India will end’?

I mean that in the sense Yugoslavia ended. I mean that in the sense the Soviet Union ended.

You mean break up?

Yes, because India is a social contract between a number of religions, castes and ethnicities, the speakers of seven hundred eighty languages. It’s a social contract. Now, this vision of a Hindu nation—one language, one religion and one country—is like trying to distil an ocean and fit it into a Bisleri bottle. It is a process of extreme violence.

What Narendra Modi and his men are doing right now is literally like going around the country and laying a fuse attached to strips of dynamite. It will all blow up if they continue this pressure. Everything that is beautiful about this country is being turned into acid.

Just so the audience is clear, you are saying India is an ocean that comprises many different aspects—people, cultures, religions and ethnicities—and to try to pour it all into a Bisleri bottle is what the attempt to make India a Hindu country is like? You are converting an ocean into a Bisleri bottle, which is why the country will break up? Yes, eventually, in time.

You really are predicting the Balkanisation of India?

I have been reading about the Balkans and it gives me the shivers because you are seeing the process of violence that is being laid out. You are seeing something huge and diverse being shrunk and hardened. It will blow apart.

How soon? Do you have a timeline for that?

I don’t know, but already you heard what Yogi Adityanath said: Uttar Pradesh, Kerala, Bengal aur Kashmir banega. Let’s just keep you in this terrible ditch of no healthcare, no education, no money and no job. We will throw a few scraps at you, but don’t become like Kerala. It has got hospitals, it has got schools and it has got literacy. It’s a very, very dangerous situation.

Another aspect of the sort of country we are becoming is the way we treat Muslims and Dalits. In your Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture you say, ‘Over the last five years, India has distinguished itself as a lynching nation. Muslims and Dalits have been publicly flogged and beaten to death by vigilante Hindu mobs in broad daylight, and the lynch videos are gleefully uploaded on YouTube.’ Are we becoming a brutal country or, maybe more accurately, are we being brutalised by our government?

We have always been a brutal country. We are not becoming one. There has not been a day since Independence that the Indian Army has not been deployed against its own people, whether it is in the North-East, Kashmir or Hyderabad. Also, any country that practises caste in the way we do is a brutal country because that is a brutal hierarchy that can only be kept in place by the permanent threat of violence and its frequent demonstration—social, sexual, psychological. You have seen it in Hathras, in Khairlanji, day after day after day.

That violence is a social violence that is happening even though political parties are actually trying to woo the Dalit vote. But when it comes to Muslims and Christians, if you are involved in the rapes, the massacres, the lynchings, the killings, there is a good chance you will be inducted into the BJP, be garlanded or made a minister. God knows, one day you will become the prime minister or home minister. Anything could happen.

Inside this communal polarisation, Karan, I think one very important thing we have to remember is—like when Amit Shah went to Kairana and made that comment about ‘Hum log toh sau saal se Mughals se lad rahe hain [We have been fighting Mughals for the past hundred years]’ and using Mughals as a euphemism for Muslims—the portrayal of Muslims as the descendants of conquerors and of Christians as some agents of the West.

The fact is that caste is wrapped up in this. Millions of Indians converted to Islam, Christianity or Sikhism to escape the oppression of caste. These are victims of the Hindu caste system who are now being portrayed as the descendants of conquerors.

What is the point you are making?

The point I am making is that the brutality and the polarisation are all wrapped up in the social structure of this country and not just the government creating a situation. It is also society that has practised brutality.

But is the government encouraging the brutal side of our historical character?

Of course, it is. It is not just encouraging it. It is igniting, exploiting and working the fault lines.

The government is also brutalising us?

Of course, it is. I mean, that is not even a question.

Against this background, I want to come to what I suppose is a key issue that I want to ask you. Has India become a fascist state? In the introduction to your book Azadi, you write, ‘The infrastructure of fascism is staring us in the face and yet we hesitate to call it by its name.’ What are the signs of fascism that you see around us? What are the signs that are staring us in the face that we won’t recognise and call it by their name?

I was expecting the fascism question to come. What I have done is I have written down a list of what are accepted to be signs of fascism, not just in India but generally. I am going to read it aloud and you are going to tick the box or our audience is going to tick the box and see if you recognise any of these signs because fascism has become a loose word people throw around. So I did this little bit of homework because I predicted this question.

First, a deep social crisis that is seen as a threat to existing social hierarchies. We had the Mandal commission report come out, we had the fear of reservations for OBCs coming, we had the anti-Mandal protests and we had the rise of the new caste parties: Mayawati’s party (Bahujan Samaj Party), Lalu Yadav’s (Rashtriya Janata Dal), Mulayam Yadav’s (Samajwadi Party), etc.

Second, a longing for some mythic, national past, fantasising about a super pure, racial superman and the restoration of national vitality. Recognise it? A society that believes Brahmins are Bhudevas (literally, a god on Earth) just has to make a lateral shuffle.

Third, a mass movement with the support of some sectors of the national ruling class. Advani’s rath yatra and the movement to demolish the Babri Masjid. Simultaneously, the Indian markets open and privatisation comes in, which is going to now mitigate the whole business of reservation, which has now become a huge issue in the UP elections.

Fourth, the emergence of a single dominant authoritarian party.

Fifth, the fabrication of external and internal threat to the nation, often racial, religious or ethnic in form.

Sixth, an attack by an authoritarian state on the working class and an attempt to suppress any challenge to capitalism from below.

Seventh, the foreclosure of democratic or autonomous means of expression.

Eighth, the existence of street fighting elements or militias to intimidate, terrorise and, in some cases, murder oppositional forces. Read: RSS militia, Bajrang Dal, Vishwa Hindu Parishad.

Ninth, a militarised rhetoric of masculinity, anti-feminism, casteism, racism (in the cases of Europe and America) and xenophobia.

Tenth, paranoia. Pegasus.

Can I put something to you? The audience listening to you—at least some of them—will say that is just a list of nonsense. I will tell you what they will say. They will say that there are many countries that hark back to a glorious past. Britain does that all the time. There are many countries that have a dominant, single-party government and a weak opposition, which happens in several countries and democracies. You have just put together a list of things and claimed it’s fascism.

No, come on. I am not talking about a glorious historical past. I am talking about a glorious mythical past. I am talking about the idea of the ‘superman’ like the ‘superrace’, like the German Nazis had Aryans. I am talking about militias. Does Britain have a Bajrang Dal and RSS militia? Are they massacring people on the streets? Are they organising Muzaffarnagar and Gujarat?

I will tell you why it is hard to believe why we have become a fascist state. It’s because we have a government that buckles under pressure from farmers; we have a press that is sharply critical—at least from some quarters—of the government; we have elections where the government is defeated; Narendra Modi may win regularly at the national level, but often, at the state level, he loses; we have courts and judges that often check the government—what they have done over Pegasus is one example. Is it really fascism?

I am not saying that we have a fascist state. I am saying that the people in power are intrinsically fascist and leading us in that direction.

Narendra Modi is intrinsically fascist?

Yes, and so is the RSS.

And the BJP as a whole?

Yes. The RSS ideologues have openly admired Mussolini and Hitler and called Muslims the equivalent of the Jews of Germany. We know all that. We know the declaration of the idea that they want to declare India a Hindu nation. We know the experiments with eugenics. I believe they are losing their grip. I don’t believe that they will be able to succeed, but I believe that this is a tunnel that we have to go through. Eventually, the people of this country will make it a failed experiment.

Let me just understand for the audience. You are not saying we have become a fascist state. Are you saying we are in the process of becoming one?

We are in the process of becoming one. I would say even two years ago we were very much in danger of that experiment being more successful than it appears to be now.

What’s changed?

Huge protests—the farmer’s protests. If you look at what is going on in Uttar Pradesh now.

So India is fighting back? The people are fighting back?

Yes, the people are fighting back, not political parties.

Just to be clear, you are saying two slightly contradictory things: We’re in the process of becoming a fascist state. Two years ago, it looked like we were more likely to become one than it does today. What’s changed today is that the people—the farmers in particular—are fighting back? Also, the people who rose up against the National Register of Citizens (NRC).

But that was two years ago.

But this piece that I wrote was before that—before those protests began.

What is the situation today? Is India today on its way to become a fascist state?

I would say that that ideology has somehow saturated.

What does that mean?

If you look at what is happening in places like Uttar Pradesh and the farmers protest, they have realised somehow that they were being played.

But now you are saying that the threat of becoming a fascist state is very much receding. So the situation is improving?

I think so. I would say so.

So what you wrote in the Jonathan Schell Lecture isn’t quite as true today as it was when you wrote it, a year and a half ago?

I think part of it is that people, writers, protestors, activists, journalists—

Are responding to this?

They have recognised it and spoke about it. People listened and thought about what had happened.

Just to sum for the audience: What is the nature of the danger we face today? Are we still in danger of becoming a fascist state?

I think what is dangerous is that we have an election machinery that is sort of compromised; we have a very scattered and disparate opposition because, I think, in one way, federalism is coming up— But you are not answering my question. Are we in danger of becoming a fascist state?

Hang on, I’m answering. What I am saying is that the Hindutva card has played itself out now. The danger is, let’s say, in a place like Uttar Pradesh, I don’t know what is going to happen in the elections. But let’s say the BJP loses the election, I think there will be great danger then because unless you have—

You think the BJP’s defeat in Uttar Pradesh will resurrect the danger of fascism?

No, I am saying if the BJP loses the elections in Uttar Pradesh, it will go back to the business of trying to engineer violence along communal lines, and unless you have a government that can actually control that strongly, you might—

Hang on a second. The BJP lost in Rajasthan. They didn’t do that. They lost in Madhya Pradesh. They didn’t do that. They lost in Chhattisgarh. They didn’t do it. They have lost a lot of state elections under Narendra Modi.

But Uttar Pradesh is very important for them.

You are saying the prospect of a BJP defeat is more worrying for you than the prospect of a BJP victory?

No, it’s not more worrying. I am just saying that whoever comes to power next, in case they (the BJP) lose, will have to be very vigilant to make sure that polarisation is not allowed to happen.

But I don’t understand the confusion that has emerged suddenly. When I asked you, ‘Are we in danger of becoming a fascist state?’ you said, two years ago the danger was greater. Since then, people are fighting back. You said that the danger has receded, but now you are saying that a BJP defeat, which would actually, as most people say, bury the danger, will actually resurrect it?

It won’t resurrect the danger, but I think there will be a huge attempt to resurrect it and people have to be on guard.

A defeated BJP is more dangerous for India than a victorious BJP?

No. But a defeated BJP in Uttar Pradesh could try and create the kind of turbulence that it created.

That’s what I am saying.

Karan, cool off. What I am saying is that a defeated BJP in Uttar Pradesh in 2022 will see two years to the 2024 election, two years in which it does not have the responsibility of government and is free to create chaos and, therefore, whatever government comes and the people involved will have to be very vigilant to not let that happen.

That’s when the danger of fascism becomes stronger?

Yes, because it is not like you can throw a switch and it is over. Woh to khoon mein uttar gaya (Now it’s in their blood).

In your Clark Lecture (Trinity College, Cambridge), you raised two particular concerns about fascism. I want to put them to you one by one. First, you said, ‘As India embraces majoritarian Hindu nationalism, which is a polite term for fascism, many liberals and even communists continue to be squeamish about using that term.’ Are you saying that liberals and communists who traditionally and ideally should be standing up and fighting back are actually in denial?

Communists, yes. They should have been standing up and fighting back. Liberals have historically been wishy-washy on many things. But, yes, I would say ‘denial’ is a polite word.

What is a more appropriate word?

Well, ‘collaboration’ or ‘collusion’. There were many liberals who are intelligent and good people. Even after they knew what happened in, let’s say, Gujarat—the daylight massacres, the killings, the use of state machinery, the rhetoric—when Narendra Modi became the prime minister, there was a sort of euphoria. He was welcomed. But now, a lot of them have taken very brave positions at costs to themselves, and I admire that.

They are no longer squeamish?

Lots of them are not squeamish now.

So again, this is an opinion that is slightly different to the point when you wrote it, although you wrote it only about eighteen or nineteen months ago.

Yes, but there was a sort of red carpet rolled out. It was kind of hard for people like me to understand then.

But today you believe that liberals are standing up?

Some are, yes.

So the denial is not so strong today, as it was eighteen or nineteen months ago?

No. And I am talking about a denial that led to a situation in which Narendra Modi could come to power and be applauded and celebrated.

The second concern you raised—in some senses it may be a more important concern because it may chime with the audience more greatly—is the question ‘when does fascism become fascism?’ You wrote, ‘The division in opinions in the use of the term comes down to whether you believe that fascism became fascism only after a continent was destroyed and millions of people were exterminated in gas chambers’—you are referring to what happened in Germany—‘or whether you believe that fascism is an ideology that lead to those crimes or that can led to those crimes and that those who subscribe to it are fascists.’

In other words, what you are saying there is that the ideology that leads to fascism already exists in India, and you are also hinting, aren’t you, that if we don’t act fast, those horrible crimes that happened in Germany could inexorably happen in India too?

I think the crimes have begun in some ways. Not like the crimes of Germany, but the demonisation and otherisation of the Muslim community. You saw that sort of genocidal language used during the coronavirus lockdown when Tablighi Jamaat was blamed for spreading the coronavirus just like the Nazis blamed the Jews for spreading typhus. Then you had something like the NRC and CAA where, again, like the Nuremberg laws of 1935, citizens were expected to produce legacy papers which would be approved by the state and then grant you citizenship.

Like Hannah Arendt said, ‘Citizenship is the right to have rights’. It is a terrible thing to do to shake the ground under people’s feet, regardless of who is on the list and who is off. You have detention centres already being built in Assam and many other places. Of course, the millions of people who are already off the NRC cannot be accommodated in those detention camps, but it is the idea in the national psyche that this is where you belong. But I don’t believe that the kind of massacres and killings that happened in Europe can happen in India because I believe that given the history of this country, how the RSS came to be—

Haven’t you contradicted yourself ? You began your answer by saying those crimes are already happening and then you listed some of them, and now you are saying the opposite—that you don’t think they can happen.

I am saying that that won’t happen on the scale that it happened in Europe.

Why?

Because I believe that given the history of Hindu nationalism in India, which started long ago, we did have to go through this tunnel. But we will come out of it. The country will pay a price for it, but fascism will be a failed experiment.

How do you know? Is this something you are certain of or something you are hoping will happen?

This is something I feel as a person who lives in this country, who travels, who speaks to people who have their eyes and ears open. If you go and listen to what people are saying in villages and towns in places like Uttar Pradesh, where in the last elections you had this huge blinding saffron wave—

Can I interrupt? What you are saying is that you know the Indian people are not communal. They will not turn upon brothers, regardless of the fact that those brothers are Muslims, Christians and so on. And at the end of the day, the attempt by the governments or RSS or whoever to try and communalise, to try and make this fascist state, will be resisted by the fact that the Indian people are not like that?

I believe there will always be a rump of people who are like that, but I don’t think they will ultimately prevail in creating the kind of mayhem that happened in Europe.

I have to say now—and I think it may be true of the audience too— that I am a little confused. Is there a real danger of India becoming a fascist state under the RSS, BJP and Narendra Modi or is that going to be a failed attempt and, therefore, not a real danger because the Indian people are not going to be victims or they are not going to fall into that trap but are going to fight back because if the latter is true—that the Indian people are not communal—then the danger is not a big danger; it will be a failed attempt?

Things change, Karan. You are looking at things as if they are always fixed. Things change. A river flows. We have been through something terrible. My own feeling is that we are not out of danger because we do not have a very robust opposition. But I feel that people are coming to understand that somehow they fell into this way of thinking but now they are falling out of it because they have suffered greatly.

So they are still in the hole but they are climbing out of it?

I think it is a slippery slope. It is still dangerous, but I do think Narendra Modi’s star is falling. It may not be this election, it may not be the next election, but I don’t think that this country is going to go down the way Europe did.

There is one more point about fascism that you make in your Clark Lecture, which I think is very relevant to the situation in India today: the relationship between fascism, fake news and falsified history. You