Transcripts For CSPAN2 Age Of Anger 20170528

Welcome. Thank you very much for coming. My name is paul elie. Im an author and senior fellow at the Berkeley Center here at georgetown and im very pleased to welcome today Pankaj Mishra for a conversation about his new book age of anger. A few words about pankaj. He is one of the most accomplished, acclaimed and versatile writers working in english today. Born in north was india in 1969, he writes and reports from london, india and points worldwide. A contributor to the new york review books, the new yorker, New York Times magazine, bloomberg view, the leonard review books, Financial Times and plenty of other publications. His books include the novel the romantics, an end to suffering, a novel ive had to teach in my course at georgetown. Quotations to the west, from the ruins of empire in 2012, that book led the economist to characterize him as a leading indian public intellectual with a surprising perspective as the air. The turkish novelist and Nobel Laureate called the book the Amazing Stories of the grandfathers of todays angry asians. A novelist chose it as one of his books of the year in the Financial Times. That book won the crossroads award for the best nonfiction in 2013, and in 2014 became the first book by a nonwestern rider to win germanys prestigious book award for european understandings. Shortlisted for other awards, the worlds best Nonfiction Book in english on foreign affairs, the orwell prize for its most prestigious prize in political writing for the asian societies book award. The new book, age of anger a history of the present, called the first essential read of the trump era. A novelist put it this way. Pankaj mishra selects john gray by delving into the past in order to throw light on our contemporary predicament, the neglected and dispossessed to the world has suddenly risen up to transform the world we thought we knew. Pankaj mishra is meant by the Royal Society of literature. Its a great honor to have him, to have you, as aghast for conversation at georgetown. Thank you very much for coming, pankaj. [applause] so at the very front of the new book you describe the circumstances which you begin to write it. In 2014 after friends and family members of yours in india elected a hindu nationalist to power and that your effort to write the book coincided with angry emergent nationalisms in india and other places, can you tell us all a bit how that came about and what it was like to write a book of lets the intellectual history running in parallel to Current Events in the present . It was a strange experience. And as you say it was provoked by the election victory of modi in 2014. A man that many of us in india thought should be in prison, who has really many of us thought had been utterly disgraced by his conduct on different occasions in the past, and suddenly come into power with lots of people including members of my own family voting for him. This is not an experience, to other folks around the world, divided families. And it really forced me to examine some of my own presumptions. Assumptions that i never really in a way investigated, such as a belief in democracy, a belief in democracy producing a moral outcome. And suddenly i thought, well, you know, democracy is produced a kind of moral calamity in this instance. So what is this thing that i have believed in for so long . What are these ideas, these abstractions, these concepts that ive unconsciously embraced for so long . So it really sort of made me go much deeper than any other political event in the past 20 years since ive been writing. I suppose i had to move away from journalism as it were. I had to go somewhere deeper. And also examine, increase, i mean broaden my framework and sort of include in it events, personalities that had on the face of it very little to do with india, but to which india and events in india were intimately connected. So the 19th century, for instance, the fate of the russians trying to catch up with the atlantic west. And similar experiences and some of those ive already written about in my previous book, which is from the ruins of empire about japan trying to do the same, trying to catch up, importing ideologies, ideas from the modern west. And then sparking a kind of rush to imitation amongst various other asian countries. But this involved really going deeper into european history and looking at people who it also come late to the modern world, countries like him anyways the indian elite, the indian intelligence who have produced all kinds of figures with this great desire to match the achievements of the modern west. That is what we had growing up in india, those ideas, and i felt i had to really go back and consider them all. The book is built on large and very solid historical parallel, essentially that the history of lets say the 12525 years before the outbreak of world war i, was roiled by industrial capitalism in the socalled developed a world and the responses of different figures and then at social movements in that time. If you look at them they can give us an idea of how to understand similar developments and social movements happening now on a global scale as more countries face industrial capitalism and are introduced into Global Commerce and so forth. At what point did that big comparison between one century and another, european history and global history come into view, or did it not come into view without clarity you had to develop . Certain genealogies have long been evidence for instance, hindu nationalism which is try them but in india right now, its connections with german and fascism with the nazis and the fascists have been written about. So we know that these ideologies have traveled around the world and assumed very different forms, but shared certain similar ideas, certain similar comments. But i think this book or writing this book may be think that perhaps we have to go even further, not just top of the 1930s, look at the 19th century, look at the experience of people who were trying, as i said, catch up with the modern west and at the same time struggling with the political apologies unleashed by this attempt to catch up. So you embrace industrial capitalism. You i doubt the nation the model of the nationstate for your heterogeneous very diverse societies. And then you start struggling with the problems thereby unleashed by this process of adoption and adaptation. And so far weve been writing about ive been writing about how this process played itself out in asia and africa. I felt i had to go back and look at germany in the early 19th century as it faced the increasing wealth and power and sophistication of its neighbors, its indian neighbors. Also indeed a military and political challenge from them. How germany are the germanspeaking people first responded to this enormous challenge from the west, which was economic, military, intellectual, cultural. And those feelings also of being detained, being scorned, being actually humiliated in a military campaign and then having this many occupies your country, napoleon, mocking and scorning your culture. This particular kind of cultural interaction which is h the early on in the 19th century we see replicate itself across large tracts of asia and africa. So again i felt this is really a kind of global framework that we have to consider all these experiences within the framework of the modern, which begins essentially in the late 18th century back when the principles of the modern world were formulated. Thats when the world we live in starts to come into being. Thats when the most radical projects in yemen history which is the modern project is institutionalized and theorized. So that sort of really explains why difficult to stop and 19th century and to go back to the beginnings of this. Suppose emancipation from the past, from tradition, from customs, from traditional hierarchy, from religious authority, from the monarchy, all those liberations that were exalted back then and then actually had started to happen and still happening for many people around the world today. One of the key points you make is members of the Islamic State and terrorists and violet nationalists violet nationalists in the middle east and western roots here can you explain that . Its not so much western roots its modern roots. Im very much distrustful of these very ambitious genealogies that look at the roots of militant violence, for instance, in something that was said in the 13th century or 15th century. I mean, generally locating the roots of militant violence of terrorism any particular religion is really a catastrophic mistake. It is ignoring the long history of terrorism within the modern west which starts as i described in the book in the late 19 century with anarchist terrorists with russians, with people in spain and italy, indeed in the United States. These people, the religion is not the most important thing about them. This consistent mistake of identifying terrorism or militant disaffection with a particular religious community and in particular religious, and a particular religion and come up with all kinds of harebrained theories about how we should reform islam or let that the moderates win the battles against extremism and all these kind of bizarre theories. We are now realizing a lot of this that we identified exclusively with muslim countries, they can spring up anywhere. They have sprung up in all kinds, in all parts of the world, irrespective of what the local religion is up with a local culture is. They can spring up whenever the conditions are present, whenever the conditions of that possibility are there. But takes a little bit of economic decline. Takes a bit of the experience of humiliation and deprivation for those to be reanimated. They always lie there under the surface, and with muslim countries, many of them youre looking at essentially absolutely devastated societies, failed states. Its not surprising at all they would generate these young men, these figures who just want to go out and kill other people and join there is death cult. Weve seen this over and over again as i say in this book in just the last 100, 150 years. Theres nothing at all islamic about this. So you say that weve come to understand that these figures dont have essentially religious motivations for roots. But youve known that all along. I have known you for 1 12 years and youve been saying as long as ive known you, but what we have in the new book is a synthesis or an historical account or counter narrative to this narrative youve been tilting against really and all your work since 9 11, lets say. Is that the case, or is this, these are things you delete all along but i just managed to find the right shape or pattern for . Theres no way i could not believe that. Going up in india with all kinds of extremist, political ideologies that again were not exclusively locate, could not be exclusively located in the Muslim Community of the muslim population. There were hindu extremes, sikhk extremist. You looked around the neighborhood. I just returned from spending a month in myanmar where you have monks or ethnic cleansers. How does one explain that . Is there Buddhist Monks out there with violence against the infidels . Maybe there is. Some obscure take somewhere in some tibetan monastery. Im sure you can find it. But what will that prove . The reason why even buddhists have resorted to ethnic cleansing and extreme forms of violence, not just in myanmar or thailand, sri lanka, other parts of the world has very little to do with religion or religious text. It has to do with certain very specific social economic factors. And we have to investigate. Went to analyze and understand those. This is something ive been saying over and over again. Based upon my experience of these particular realities. In many ways we have been dealing, we have been exchanging intellectual produced for a long time. People constantly try to argue with me saying why is it most terrorists seem to come from muslim countries . I say, just think about this question. Why is it that so much violence in the first half of the 20th century was committed by europeans . Why did they slaughter each other in the way, millions and tens of millions of people killed. Is anything peculiar to europe or christianity . When you say that with, how incredibly crude that question is that how crude again specific economic, social cultural political realities. But this is how we been thinking about partners in the world today. The way h you put in the book is people thinking about the western narrative, the western narrative of progress are able to put into a box the exceptions to the idea of progress to horrible world wars and plenty of violet and perils ventures and so forth. There are exceptions and that enables the person promoting disparity to say that it is essential and narrative of progress. What youre saying is you cant put those things in the box. The problems were seeing today on a global scale at essentially enable us to see the problems that been run ancestral capital all along. I suppose that was the problem. That was the problem at the industry, is that it really in a white undermined critical faculties. Because in many ways that. , the posts 1945. , they called it a parenthesis. In a long history of violence and conflicts which starts in the 19 century, and we were delighted to this history by our faith in this substitute religion of universe of progress. And in this instance defined as the global spread of liberal democracy and capitalism. And we became steadily unaware of this large tormented history of the modern world where efforts to modernize, to embrace these new ideologies of progress of modernization invariably caused incredible conflicts, trauma, suffering, uprooted millions of people being uprooted, moving to large cities where they lived, why they were where they lived, why they were exposed to inhuman conditions. This is the major of so much of 19 century literature. I actually came to those experiences largely through novels, largely through reading 19 century literature. This is the experience they are talking about. So vast large scale, and we began to think that modernization was a benign process. And so i think especially since the end of the cold war we have lived with a lot of allusions, and they are just broken right now, with the United States itself, with western europe itself, the modern world of mobility, its ideas, principles rejoining this very tormented history. So not just this book but your previous book from the ruins of empire, that was it. The intellectual history of modern asia or more specifically the attempt of certain thinkers in asia to create a modern historical intellectual narrative that could counter the dominant narrative of the west. So thats a counter narrative to the western narrative for progress. In this book, the second counter narrative to the lush western narrative from you mention fraudulent history. Should we disregarded, that we need to do away with . Progress is a fact, but its always patchy. Its uneven. Its the result of the confluence of different factors. Not all of them have to do with capitalism or democracy. We tend to give too much credit to these abstractions we cherish and we love, but progress whenever it is made as a result of very many disconcerting conferences. The fact that womens rights were advanced, most of all by the two world wars, we can to think of progress as happening because Economic Growth is happening, the middle class is demanding certain rights and theres a big package of rights going through. Unfortunately thats not how history is worked. Its always patchy and uneven. Basing a whole narrative of universal progress on this very complex paradoxical story really does make it seem there something fraudulent about this, this notion that we all, the kingdom of god is about to be recreated on earth. And the people, i described in my previous book, who were challenging this particular narrative, they were again that challenging it in isolation. Many of them, special at the first world war, would echo the conclusions come increasingly reached at that time by europeans themselves, by some of the best european writers and philosophers after the first world war. That was the moment of reckoning for some of them with ideas of progress. And again examining assumptions in the way a lot of us are trying to do now is like was this one we were dreaming about . What was this great narrative, henry james or t. S. Eliot, they all question this particular narrative that so may people have believed in the 19 century is all this century about irreversible, unstoppable progress. In some like gandhi who are challenging this narrative, they also are drawn from western sources. Gandhi is inconceivable without some like tolstoy who can see the violence of this process of modernization and is writing about it. In a way we all kind of inhabited this particular framework of the modern response to it. Seen in its inadequacies, its faults and written about it and those ideas, those critiques have traveled widely and have been shared widely. I do think that the last two, three years have been an exceptional period of intellectual of a certain kind of homogenized narrative emanating from some of the early settlers of education, disseminated by newspaper editorials. I mean, basically informing assumptions, whether in speeches by politicians or policymaking, and they have all been informed by this great master narrative that progress is happening and its all working out. Well have to adopt these particular models of capitalism and democracy, and things will work out in the way it has worked out for us. So i want to talk about anger, but your reference to the kingdom of god makes me ask, as i understand it, tell me if ive got this right, so with the decline of religion in western societies, religions were placed by the sub religion of nationalism in some respects and the sub religion of ideology or, where there is communism or some other form of totalitarianism, in other respects, but what you really bring into this for is how this third sub religion emerged, the religion of some religion of progress and we are now placing the elusive qualities of that, of that belief. It is the great unbeatable religion really. I mean, in a way it seduces, it makes people discard their critical intellectual faculties. We know that religion and christianity in particular has been marked by doubt, but progress, the religion of progress does not admit to those doubts. In a way its more hardline than most religions. Its also deeply, deeply persuasive, especially if you stop believing, which is the case for most of us today, in any other form of transcendental authority. Then your horizons are basically defined by progress. The simple belief that the future would be better for your children and for your grandchildren and things are going to get better and better all the time, which has been the experience. It has been the experience of many people since 1945. This is not an experience that people say in the first half of the 20 century could have had. They could not if you are living through the civil in china, you could not imagine a Better Future for your children or your grandchildren, but hundreds of millions of people since 1945 have believed that things are Getting Better all the time and they believe is grounded in certain realities that progress has happened. But again that, it turns out that was a moment in the long sweep of time which has now ended and, in fact, were looking at a completely different reality altogether. So this is what its an age of anger. Give hundreds of millions of people who have glimpsed the promise of progress, who that some conflict in their own lives, they had a vision of what progress supposedly represents but they run up against the lack of actual progress in their own lives and their own societies, and are angry. It is, you know, it is a case of extravagant expectation, thinking that the privileges, for instance, in this part of the world that you have enjoyed for decades now, are going to continue forever. Not with globalization, not with the chinese joining the Global Economy with their large labor force. Then if you are in india thinking that you will have one day to life promise to you by everything around you, billboards in small towns, television, the internet, a house with two cars in the garage, that is not going to be the reality, the realized promise of most people in that country. So in one instance you have the fear of downward mobility that in other places where people have been taken out of extreme poverty, and now find themselves or find the path ahead blocked so that is a case of blocked mobility. And at some point the accumulated frustrations become politically toxic and that is what has happened i think in the last few years, that weve been promised a lot. Weve been promised a lot by the ideologies of progress which as i said our broadcast from all different directions. And we find that most of these promises are unfulfilling ball. They have certainly not been fulfilled and is quite likely they are unfulfilling ball, for one we have now environmental constraints. We only seen the political risks of the promises and i have some of the simple facts that the plant is not enough resources to bring billions of indians and chinese to the same level that a few people in europe and america have been on for a few decades. Then this anger is more general. Its not confined to people in the developing world, socalled, pornography that will to live to people who live in washington, d. C. It seems to run right up to the top where people in the middle and upper middle class in this country who are extravagantly well off by Global Standards are still prone to the same anger and resentment that you are also seen in nigeria and in india and indonesia. This is why its an age of anger, right . Absolutely. In a world which is run by or is supposed to run by this idl, by this reality of comparison, of constantly comparing yourself to the lives of other people, to the wellbeing and contentment of other people, and thinking that youre missing out, that you are lacking something what other people have. And also the fear that whatever you have my be taken away from you, that you might lose it. Those kinds of emotions are prevalent universally today because we live in a Global Society that is supposed to be driven by comparison, my status seeking, by wealth seeking. And when you find that actually this is an incredibly Unequal Society where opportunities are horribly unevenly distributed, and even then those who have at this point start to be victims to the same fears and anxieties as the havenots, and this is what we are seeing today. The house also have in addition to economic inequality they might also have other problems which is that even though they have money, they have wealth, but they dont have access to intellectual and Cultural Capital which is certainly the case with a bureaucratic president he was really incredibly neurotic it seems about the culture power possessed by manhattan liberals, for instance. And is constantly eating them and targeting the New York Times. So there are those kinds of resentments also at work where people feel that a tiny elite has monopolized intellectual and Cultural Capital. It was to me striking to see the middle of this argument. Most of the thinkers in the book are from the 18t 18th, 19th and first part of the 20 century. In europe and suddenly a frenchman who want of teaching at stanford and died on the last year contributed a key idea, the idea of can you explain that . Its really a notion that he landscaped for me. Gerard himself did not really extend his theory to say geopolitics or history, but this notion that what we desire is mediated through the desire of other people. That suddenly made me think about much of modern history as essentially an incredibly intense game of emulations, where small minority achieves extraordinary amounts of power and wealth and cultural sophistication, and then the rest want to catch up. They want those things for themselves. This process then spreads all around the world in a kind of escalated fashion. But it hasnt exits into basis which bring up very powerfully. Theres something thats more than the material want that people are after when the imitate others. The being that the other person seems to have. Very much so. Its on the peaceable existential in the and desire. This person seems more a life or more fulfilled or more participant in life and society that i am because that person has a better house or better car or better job or Better Real Estate and thats what i wante. Not just have better man, but to have more being. Certainly. Someone who then illustrated this syndrome perfectly i thought was russo in the late 18 century, when he identified rivalry as a source of a spiritual deformity. And as actually something that prevents individuals from enjoying inner freedom, so very early on as this commercial Society Vanity on imitation is coming to being, heres a man saying okay, there are some serious internal contradictions which will leave most human beings deeply unhappy and frustrated, because this particular desire to shine, to compete with others, to achieve more than other people is kind of on the peaceable. It is unfulfillable. What it will also do is make individuals feel happy when they dominate others, that domination would be, a kind of idea, secretly. So i think gerard and others identify certain poverty which have kind of a political response today. And again they had in the past and lead to all kinds of incredibly bloody competitive wars and conflicts. Now at least they are relatively controlled where still seeing them exploding within particular national context. We are not faced with a repeat of destructive wars that we saw in the first half of the 20 century, all driven by this competitive instinct to have what others have got. What is the history of germany, which is this fanatical desire to catch up with britain and france, to beat them at their own game, to accumulate the same kind of political, economic and military power that they seem to possess. At least today those kinds of things dont seem to be erupting into another major war. But nevertheless, the conflict we are faced with right now is serious in its own way. These passions, these emotions in this narrative that you set out take root again and again in this figure you call that of promise. The alienated young man who promised to appears in all modernized country speaks on behalf of the illiterate majority, the educated minority for himself. A self it turns out to be painfully divided. In all cases he articulates profound sense of inadequacy, tries to draw an ambitious blueprint to overcome it but this infamous program belief and action cannot be mass onto the classic asian like his movies of the broad the torn categories left and right, liberal and conservative that mediate our understanding of history and current affairs. Is this alienated young man a promise, a figure youve encountered in your reporting all over the world . Absolutely. And also since i started out as a novelist, my unit of analysis has always been this divided human being. And one reason why i specified very clearly that i did not really want to talk about my subject in these categories of left and right, liberal and conservative, or use the category of class to describe this broad span of history, i wanted to stay focused on the individual. And as i said i encounter this 19th century individual through fiction, through literature. And i wanted to show how this person is deeply, deeply internally divided pics of this is not a coherent being. We cannot simply take the claims that this person makes, whether its liberalism or socialism or nationalism at face value, that we have to examine what exactly this person is suffering from. And that is really what he wanted to do in this book. That is simply assuming this person on the left or on the right, this person is deliberately conservative base on what they say. About themselves and about their aims and about their intentions. Which meant that a lot of conventional history really in sort of the way i look at it, basically sets off these abstractions against each other, without ever taking into account this concrete human being with this existential fears and anxieties and desires. And i think in a way someone like gerard or russo really helped me. And although i think someone like dante was very alert to this particular divided figure, and he wrote a whole way of being in the world about doing politics on the basis of this divided human being. Still, i think in the way weve done history and we were done intellectual history we havent really taken on board the insights of literature into this human individual. This is a book that would be inconceivable without the help it has got from novelists and poets. You visited a couple years ago and i think of him as someone who has that same strong attention to the 19th century as prefiguring some of the patterns we see and the present. He will write a novel that makes an explicit reference but apply to the situation in russia then to the situation in turkey in recent times. Did you guys talk about this kind of thing with them . We did. We did. People from the socalled left behind nations get together, theres always a lot to discuss about these issues. Because you realize that in a very fundamental level there are a whole set of experiences that link us, the feeling of primer the feeling of being left behind or elites thinking that to catch up, we have to do something. And then of course the feeling of confronting this superior civilization and feeling intimidated by it, feeling scorned by it. He is in many ways both describes and enacts the syndrome in his fiction. You can think of any number of japanese novelists. In fact, before this, before start to write this book ive been taking notes for a book which is going to be primarily about left behind nations, trying to construct the kind of taxonomy of these countries and the peoples and their particular literatures who share certain, very important features, whether you are egyptian writer or an indian writer or a chinese writer. There are certain resemblances and recognitions. Depending on circumstances, these can arise in completely unexpected context, if the loss of power, the prospect of economic decline can induce those feelings and emotions in the richest and the most powerful country in the world. Host so you speak about talking about being belonging to these nation and yet, he has a nobel prize and you in london have a list of prizes long as lie arm. When you describe that man of promise and his division, sometimes speaking for the dispossessed, sometimes speaking for the elite, sometimes speaking for himself, it seems there is some side ways selfportrait there. Can you talk about your multiple social indication and how you identify yourself . I suppose since i did not really have access it whole set of experiences, that are, i suppose, taken for granted by people in power, wherever you are, whether youre in india or china, because i grew up in with really small places in india and belonged to its not quite accurate to call it normal, but somewhere there, somewhere in those levels, and so it was a very different experience in the world where some of the feelings i describe in the book were widely shared amongst people that i grew up with, people i went to college with. The kind of responses, for instance, mr. Modi had done in india. I grew up with that off the local anglophone elites who seemed to be feathering their nests, and people who had cultural or intellectual capital and scorned people who do not seem who did not have access to it. Modi has done that to great advantage, this particular version of class conflicts in india by railing against this, this corrupt and arrogant elite and he has found lots of people who believe that hes right. And he is right to a certain extent. So, it was easy for me to understand his appeal because i was one of those people who felt those emotions in the past and i certainly spent a lot of time with people who were who had felt those emotions and are feeling those emotions and that, i feel, has given me a kind of access to the alienated stranger, the prevention outsider who we tend to neglect in our intellectual journalistic discourses and who has become politically, extremely, extremely powerful with these recent elections, so of semi rural, semiurban inhabitant who did not feature much in our conversations, who had been, in a way, simmering with all kind of rage and frustration. And now we see this figure all around us. Books are being written about this figure. Journalists, new journalists, articles have been commissioned, but i think what it is pointing to, all of this new interest is this extraordinary absence in our kind of discourse all of this time. And i feel like we really need to pay more attention to the losers of the history. Weve been too obsessed with the winners. And in a way, this is an attempt to describe those losers of history and what they do when losing becomes intolerable. And losers of the history is written by the winners . Who was it . Its kind of a truism. Detached from its authority. Yeah. This is an attempt to write history with greater attention to seeming losers in this economic terms, anyway, the last 40, 50, 60 years. You look up Timothy Mcveigh and youssef, and different angry people in different cultures r is more in common than we might expect. Can you explain . Well, this is another way of talking about, you know, how the theories about the clash of civilizations or this idea that people belonging to different religious communities are bound to enter into conflict with each other and they dont really share much. Any number of examples historically and in the present make friendship with ramsey youssef is one example. So they were in adjoining cells in prison, the super max facility . The super max facility and discovered each other and became friends and realized they had a lot in common politically to the point where mcveigh said he believed in what youssef and ultimately what usama bin laden was doing and they were right to. Now, that kind of meeting of minds, that kind of intellectual, ideological affinity we see over and over again. We dont want to notice it, you know. One is fascinated by hindu fanatics and he wanted to get in alliance with hindu and last year, an iranian german, he was inspir inspired. And any number of such instances where these affinities crossing religious, National Borders and what theyre pointing to is a kind of shared temperament. Again, that sort of, you know, divided cells and driven by rage and frustration into extreme acts of violence, identifying certain tasks are targets, whether theyre multiculturists or liberals or states, or the american states. And i do think we have to, you know, going back to girard, think about the world today as constituted by sameness rather than difference, constituted by increasing similarity, off experience, of emotion, of ideas, rather than say, oh, no, no, this all began when christians started fighting muslims back during the crusades. This is all the residue of those ancient enmities and battles. We really have to sort of look at how these ideas and ideologies travel and are absorbed in different context and turn to different users. Host when we swapped emails last summer, one of us said to the other, we have to talk about pope francis and then i see him referenced in the book as the most influential in public today in ways where hes sign as lining up persuasively with some of your more important points. Can you explain that . Well, i think very superficially, this is a man with enormous moral authority, representing an institution thats the olde esest venerable institutions to dares to speak of charity in a time when people will become i include myself in that category, and individuals, not just people i dont agree with politically, but people become possessive and defining ourselves in exclusive ways with particular nations and particular ideologies. Here is a man who comes at the end of a really long phase of relative peace and stability and things are starting to fall apart and hes still talking about how charity is the way out, how so many of our foundational ideas and concept lie in tatters today and the only way in which we can escape this rampant destruction is through acts of charity and through acts of compassion. You know, the life in the way that its been institutionalized and professionalized has had very little space for this kind of discourse or this kind of conversation. All the time when there was a time when a religious motivated speaker was central to the culture, and one example of that, mlk, another one. But, we havent had that kind of figure who speaks that kind of who employs that kind of model, essentially model vocabulary. Otherwise, what is public intellectualism . Its become essentially regurgitated, the eyed ideology of the day and essentially these are broadly shared by the socalled public intellectuals and you know, we are struggling, all of us are struggling to make sense of what is happening today. I dont think pope francis is struggling to make sense of what is happening today. He has been warning about it for some time. Host what do you think, is there anything to be done . Its an age of anger, its global, things are getting worse. The anger that people feel is perfectly justified because society is unfair and getting worse in so many ways. What should we do . Well, i could suppose going to businesses with my indian background and you know, i think some personally, ive seen that as a writer all i can do is challenge myself more and more and just work harder, but you know, if i were to pry anything to other people, i would actually would say that, look, its actually these prescriptions that were supposed to work universally that have got us into this mess. And whatever solutions they work on. They have to be contingent on our particular circumstances wherever we are in the world today. There are certain broad principles, i think the fact that so many people have become politicized overnight in the last few weeks and have realized how high the stakes are, suddenly, for themselves, for the children, for their grandchildren and become engaged with politics, with you know, just everything thats happening around the world today. That in itself is a great sign. And i think, solutions would emerge from this experience of greater knowledge, greater solidarity and feelings of entrapment and compassion that has to come with these kinds of politics. Otherwise i think the days of broad, overarching solutions are over and quite rightly and i think that we should celebrate that in a way, that this crisis, this disaster around us is forcing us to ask hard questions and think again about the shape of our societies. The shape of our ideologies. That itself is sort of, you know, a way in which we can fumble, grasp our way to workable solutions. Amen to that. Its thrilling to have you here and hear your answers to questions that ive been forming as ive gone through the book. Now, i want to open things up to questions from members of the audience. The microphones are in the center and if you have a question, someone will give a microphone to you and direct it to pankaj. Thank you so much for just such an enlightening conversation. Im thinking when you were mentioning the medic rainfallry and this pursuit of happiness which of course is embedded even into the american declaration of independence, does that mean that theres a path logical flaw in our founding documents here which then perhaps augers this kind of rivalry, its sort of built into our bloodstream . I mean, so its really the a question that can be answered in all kinds of different ways. One is, of course, the contradiction that opens up in the individuals souls when you enter into this race for status and wealth. And end up rejoicing in the domination of other people or rejoicing in the humiliation and abjection of other people, thats a contradiction thats, you know, lots of people have talked about. The other contradiction is that the ideas of freedom are formulated by members of a minority who simply assumes that that freedom is not going to be available to people who are not like them, to slaves, for instance, to native americans. Same on the other side of the atlantic. People have already made assumptions who is human and who isnt. Who is deserving of freedom and who isnt. So, in many ways, we are looking at a civilization off a minority whose principles are formulated by a minority for themselves. How does how do they extend those ideas, admirable as they are, should a vast majority that wants to realize them, thats the question weve been struggling with since the event of the foreign world. That, of course, a modern history. Theres a russian writer who has been an influence, who i quote in the book saying after long experiences with europe. What hes seen there is a civilization of the minorities, where the marxes are uninvited guests, who are to be excluded by the press. And that in many ways, you know, remains at least the experience of a lot of people and, of course, you know, what youre seeing today are the feelings of rage that are generated by this experience of exclusion and suppression. Its quite profound of the problem. Id like you to talk a little more about about solutions, even in, you know, abstract termsment im struck by your talking about the pope and charity. Hes not a political person, but he is a political person, but not politicians. And some arent politicians, but have political and social movement. It seems that the problem that we have partly is about politics, bad politics, divisive politics. Im afraid without an overarching sense of movements and based on values that the more partial kinds of politics would take over. They are taking over, religion and aggressive nationalism and populism. So id just like to push you a little bit on that. What about politics to make it short . Well, i think people like Martin Luther king and ghandi are interesting figures in that they tried to marry spiritual projects, religious projects with political activism and what they realized is that whole range of needs and aspirations are not being met by politics as practiced. That politics have become, you know, too determined by certain pursuits that were deemed essential, the pursuit of happiness,the pursuit of happiness through the pursuit of wealth and pursuit of status and that caused deep divisions within society and thats caused people to think in hyper religious ways, community, a feeling of belonging to a particular group, and acting in unison with other people. All of these needs were being systematically neglected by modern politics and economy. And so, their attempt was to, you know, combine politics with spirituality in the way that those needs are met and at the same time a very distinct, very clearly defined political agenda is also advanced at the same time. And i think, when i think of solutions, maybe this is too antiintellectual of me, this is what i imagined. This is what i think, that we have to reconceive, in a way, solidarity or sense of community. Otherwise its the demagogue thats going to see and be aggrieved and disaffected, and try triumph and they say lets demonize a lot of people and that can become the basis of solidarity. So, in a way, you know, i think they have that a lot of people suffering today are actually in dire need of these communities, you know, what we call people or what we dismiss as people in echo chambers on in the communities, but this is a kind of forward expression of longing for communities, and a longing for identities, i think the left or liberals have been blind to. Dorothy day, founders of the worker, was against the new deal and the reason she was against the new deal is the catholic anarchist said it appropriated the state appropriated the doing of good work and systemized it and she thought that the caring of people one another, spontaneous and freely offered person to person and that idea sounds truly strange today and i think what youre suggesti suggesting. Thank you very much for an absolutely illuminating talk. I was really struck, i havent read the book yet and cant wait to get my hands on it, but i was really struck by the way in which religion seems to be haunted a lot of this project. Because its really about sacraficial violence and in that sense, thinking about those rival ris is deeply depressing because for him there is no catharsis, we will continue to scapegoat, and theres no end to the violence. I was thinking of another trajectory of the sacred, going back to people of ghandi, and his practice, a new form of practice or mlk or pope francis today. So, in thinking about the sort of debate that ghandi had, right, where relying on the noig noi notion that hes going to really transform soso society so that the vast majority, and the deep cynicism that that could be the case and that you have to rely on the legal processes to protect people. Are we back there . Are we rehashing the same problem . If so, how do we not fall into the same impasse . Yeah, i think for those of you who do not know about this great debates between he and ghandi, a shorthand version of that is that ghandi, as youve correctly characterized his position, part of this notion of devotion as creating the withins if which equality and the end to discrimination could be achieved. And i think at least in that phase at his life was a catholic modernist and thinking of the states. He was like all of us, he was a creature of his time. And then again, trusting in the state to enforce equality and there are examples of the state doing that, most notoriously in china, where womens rights were achieved by brutal dictate from about i think you know, that debate continues, that debate can be had, but the state is altered. The date is no longer the social democratic states that they simply assumed would be aroundment whether its there or europe and indeed here. So, we cant really expect too much, too much from the state. We cant expect too much from Political Parties, Political Parties which are completely dysfunctional, unable to harness any Political Energy and again, this is the case everywhere. We see that in europe and we see that hear. Although there are movements here and there. On the whole the institutionalized politics has been in a really depressing, depressing way. But ghandi, in his distrust of abstractions, theres a picture of ghandi, again, a very unlikely ghandi was an unlikely hero, also for dwight who said im not the man because he never gave big speeches about progress and freedom and liberty. He was focused on the everyday, the small things in life. Ghandi did not talk about these things because he saw them essentially as kind of bee guiling illusions and what he was focused on, you know, that basically these things are meaningless, these are meaningless slogans. And in the end you have to deal with fresh and blood human beings and he was looking at what was unleashed by the shattering of faith in these abstractions and we are seeing some of that today. Thats the substitute religion will fail and well before that happens, its best to introduce these ideas and these disciplines into politics. So, i think, you know, that was this project, not depending on the state, or not depending on conventional Political Parties or processes, but depending on individual transformation and individual situation and dial dialog. Hi, i had a question. So you talk a lot about how in the 19th century a lot of the books that you read when you were growing up were how you came to these ideas and how you understood them and a lot of scholars of nationalism recognize the real of capitalism, of literature in disseminating ideas of nationalism and sort of expressing what youre talking about. Do you see any parallels from the 19th century and that type of literature with the 21st century and with the internet and the way that a lot of different movements, of National Movements have moved online in a way that hasnt been looked at, how theyre using those platforms to sort of frame their movements . Thank you. Thank you. This is central to our culture to the novel that was central to the culture in europe. And thats where new communities are being formed and new solidarities are constructed. The speed with which this happens is quite staggering, in the days of the 19th century and the days of print books. Things happen relatively slowly, and still confined to the literate public. So, were talking about a small minority of people who are leading movements or defining the National Idea or the national community, how it can happen more or less overnight. So, 12th century in that sense. The 20th century fiction righter finds himself or herself in a very strange place because he or she is no longer central to the culture. That place has been taken. And its also true that the this is another discussion, but the first 45 novels, it would be hard pressed to draw from it the kind of historical lessons and philosophical insights you could draw from any sort of 19th century writers and its interesting to compare the two and see what happens, you know, what were the big psychological shifts to make this, you know, to make to render those 19th century novels, and the 21st century novels so marginal. But you you know, thats a different discussion. Are there exceptions. And 20th century novels, lacking in the power of its 19th century predecessors . Or are there people who are putting it together and its a classic 19th century novel. Written in 1888 and 1998. Its set in a different era altogether about the worrell we inhabit today which is being transformed so dramatically, so speedily that its really hard for anyone to keep up, let alone the novelist that works at it over minimum three or four years. Thats what they said in 1962. If thats the case, then no fiction of social consequence or whatever you want to call it has happened in our lifetime . Well, i think, no, i wouldnt go that far. I think what im saying is that fiction, 19th century fiction in the way is a guide and remains a guide through 19th century societies. Theyre pretty clear, politics, their attitudes. You can learn how the bear Stock Exchange works by reading balzak. And if youre interested in the debate, go to tolstoi and after a all so even philosophers are because philosophers are reading the novelists of the 19th century and stimulated by them, its hard to think of, i mean, also, i suppose because philosophy today has a very different role, its very marginal today. So, it wouldnt have the same kind of relationship with fiction, but its really hard to imagine a book as meaningful in all kinds of ways as, say, the brothers or i know these are unfair comparisons in many ways, but you could look at a small book like notes from the underground, which is featured a lot in this book and to take readings of particular psychologies, particular individual temperments, that did, that 12th century novelists did, im not sure if there was that in the fractured societies today. Lets take a novel that i know we both when biography of nightfall came out. We talked about it and you said rightly, its a decent book, but it didnt explain how the man ended up in the rivelle. So thats a novel, its not about the present, but its the past 25 years. Can you imagine someone looking back at the best of that and understanding the swirl of ideas in the culture at that time through the novel, the way we look back on dustsski . You would not think of that novel as breaking new ground philosophically. In many ways, bend of the river, you could argue, is an updated version of notes from the underground, youre talking about a man, a half educated man who minds r finds i am himself in this stance finding himself in africa and they fraught political context, which also, you can find in many other novels and sometimes much more acutely done, the local politics of it. But the existential acts of the novel are particularly unique. The bringing together of the setting and this particular this alienated stranger, an outsider, in this particular setting, that is interesting, thats something new, but im not sure whether that would stand as a panoramic account of that part of africa. I think two things, one is that that novel owes more to its predecessors. Its got a lot of and the novelist finished, the big noement was in the 19th century and he actually admits to theres a lack of origin originality, but theres a philosophical way that ideas are tossed and turned in the great 19th century novels in a way that were not used to. Where ivan will go on disvores about the odyssey or tolsto. Guest has his and georgea elliott has hers. The ideas are fresh in the 19th century. I think, we may have blamed the novelist today for not being alert and i think that many do. I think its sad because what the novelist in the 19th century was describing, a moment of transformation that he or show were actually tlifg there. Were intellectually a part of it and those experiences were happening to people. The experience of urbanization was happening for the first time. Now when novels are written about this in india, and you can you know, one the pleasures of reading fictions like that is the memory that constantly haunts you of the novels you read previously, set in the 19th century, thread of familiarity. Theres also the sense the 19th century novel was developing technically in the way that society was developing technical technically. Theres a look of art in this dimension, rail, local light and the novelist said we make our little leaps, but emphasis on little. Theres a smaller area of fiction. I have a question. First of all, great talk. I can its really articulate and logical supported by historical examples. But there are people who dont even know, like most of the words youve said today, like let alone understand them. So, like youve mentioned like earlier, you know, there are divided families, there are people that are lead by their emotions regardless of their circumstances. And i kind of feel that way sometimes where i am like im for example the New York Times and person im talking to is donald trump, and how do you forsee a dialog between people like that, like or with people like that . How do you dumb down this material or should you or does it lose something when you dumb down all of these really important arguments that youre making . Yeah. I dont know whether its my role to have, you know, to have a dialog, as it were with people on the other side and also, i dont think theyre on the other side. You know . We are, as i keep saying, we are all inhappening the same space. T the theyre simply mental, mental constructions, so, you know, i could talk about this book and its contents in a particular kind of language. So i go back to india to this place where theyve spent most my adult life. There is a different language to speak about these issues and i dont think i have to dumb down anything. Because these people who im speaking do has long experience of these realities im rieth writing about. Im plaguerizing their experiences and im the one guilty of that. And one of the ways in which we can transcend this sort of great conflicts and divisions of our time is by, you know, not really i mean, trying to examine trying to think of these divisions as simply constructions that we, ourselves, have created and then to recognize wisdom and experience in places far outside of our, you know, circles and our particular groups, and the ability to identify them to talk about them meaningfully. I feel like thats something, as we were discussing earlier, has been lacking in a lot of journalistic discourse, that its been too much. It has been about the witness winners, it has not talked about the losers. And we need to refocus attention on them. We have time for one more question. Is there another question . Im still trying to understand the limits that you put on the idea of progress. Youre talking about, if i understood it correctly, social progress and your skepticism about porsche social progress, i can understand. I have difficulty reconciling that with progress, in the way that weve been able to overcome such poverty in the 21st century, in many areas of the world. The fact that child birth now is a much less difficult much less fraught with the dangers that have been brought by modern medicine. So i guess what im asking, do you see the same type of skepticism in economic progress as you do in social . I think this, you know, its a minefield. Subject. Anyone whos had a who sat in the dentist chair and had local anesthetic applied, and then still must be grateful to modern medicine for the progress its made. The time not so long ago when anesthetic had not been invented and operations really serious, life threatening operations, been done without it. So, of course, theres progress of that kind. Economic progress, its much more complicated issue than it seems from these measures. You know, mortality, childbirth, people being lifted out of poverty. When they make those assessments, we dont often then see what happens to people when theyre lifted out of poverty and what is this poverty line, anyway . Quite apart from the fact, that measures are shifting, variable, certainly not solid, dependent, very much contingent who is making them at what time. I can speak from my owner experience, again, of individuals who ive seen leave the village where ive been most of my all the life, in search of those in big cities, classic move from the village to the big city. Where, they are certainly earning money of the kind that could have only previously dreamed of. So not only have they been lifted above on a statistical level of poverty, theyre almost in a kind of a lower income group, but their life has suffered a dramatic collapse in its actually living standard, the fact that theyre living in a highly polluted city, in a slum, whatever money theyre making does not entitle them to anything more than a roof, a roof above their head and sometimes, you know, they have to sleep in the open if youre doing job like taxi, taxi driver, that sort of thing. People sleep in the open with a ta tarpaulin roof. Youre working 14 hours a day, you cant afford to have your family there, you cant afford to start a family, youre away from your parents. Ive seen people come from their experience and come back, retreat below the poverty line again because a whole lot of things that were important to them that made the life meaningful was not available to them when they moved above the poverty line. What im saying is these measures theyve used for success are deceptive. Theyre leaving out a whole range of human nights that are important and vital and for many people you know, they think they dont want to be part of this particular adventure of economic progress. So many people i see are very much content to do their small businesses, a few errands, here and there and farm a little bit, and be generally idle. They dont want to be a part of endless growth and enormous there are all kinds of people who dont ascribe to our ideologies, people who have benefitted from progress, who are essentially the main beneficiaries of the modern worlds ideology. Many people dont want to be a part of it. And i think, you know, a society that honors these diverse modes of sis exsis tense, and not that theres only one way to be and go forward, which is the way of more growth and productivity and consumption and more work and so on and so forth. It sounds like what youre setting out could come out of that book you described about the left behind, and i hope you get a chance to write it because its mesmerizing about people who forget about progress, dont want to participate in the ideology of growth. This has been fantastic. Im so glad youre here and so glad youre still going to be here to talk with us during the reception and to sign books. If you have a book to be signed, come up to the aisle and pankaj is going to sign books here at the table, pens, in a moment. Thank you so much, its been a tremendous event and im so grateful to everybody who has been here especially right before break. Thanks for coming. And thank you, pankaj. [applause]