 Mae'n gymhwyl tim harpar. Gweithio ymchwil yng Nghymaintys ac Social Sciences yw'r unig. A mae'n edrych yn fflaesiaid o fe fathodd yr event yn ysgolio'r rhaglen yma. Yn ymwysgwn Yndyr ar 75, yn ymgyrch oedd ymddangosol yma yng ngyrsgol a'r ysgolio'r Rhaglen Cymru. India at 75 is one of which I hope will be a number of occasions where we take time, take the opportunity to reflect on India's past, present and future. And with this in mind, it's my very great honour to welcome our distinguished guest, Mr Rahul Gandhi. Mr Gandhi, of course, is a leading parliamentarian of India. He's the elected representative of Ayunad in Kerala since 2019, a national leader of the Congress party since 2004, and a central voice in current debates on the state of India's democracy, on economic development and social justice and India's place in the world. In conversation with him this evening is Dr Shruti Kapila, a university associate professor in Indian history and author of Violent Fraternity, India's political thought in the global age, which speaks very directly to some of these themes. It will be no surprise to anybody that tickets for this event went in record time. I'm delighted to welcome you all and delighted that Mr Gandhi took time out from his really busy schedule to spend some time with us today, and without further ado, I give the floor to Dr Kapila. Thank you, Tim, and a very warm welcome. It's a total pleasure and joy to welcome Mr Rahul Gandhi to Cambridge, to his own old home, but also my home here, away from home in India. It's particularly nice that he chose London and Cambridge to break the fasting that has gone in mobility during Covid, so it's great that you're here. I'm not going to give a longer introduction because everyone knows who he is and it's a real honour to get the chance to speak with you on some of the most pressing issues, not just facing India, because India is certainly facing a turning point in its identity. But also globally, I think this is a moment of identity crisis, not just mere crisis because of Ukraine, because of China, and of course, post-Covid. So let me actually say that if we look at 75, 1947 is a landmark event of course in world history, because India is of course the first country to be decolonised from the empire since America, so that in itself is a landmark event. But also, the time was, if you look at Nehru, the old alarm here, the great Nehru, who is synonymous with modern India, the idea of freedom and optimism really captivated Indians, despite, as it were, the legacy of partition, the violent legacy of partition. I think 75 years down the road, I think India looks quite different. I don't mean simply in terms of optimism or pessimism. Freedom certainly seems to be in short supply in an everyday sense in India, but also I think it's not really a secret that in a way India seems to be preparing for a new identity to anoint a different kind of India, perhaps in the centenary year of the formation of the RSS in 2025, which is to say that since the arrival of Prime Minister Modi, certainly in the second mandate, we've seen an aggressive recasting of India's legal and cultural institutions to redefine its compact, not just with its own citizens, but also in the world at large, its own identity in foreign policy terms. So let's break all of this down, but first ask you how you would describe the state of play in India at the moment. Why don't you come over here? So this is not that. You have to move the chair closer, I'm afraid. Thank you. So if you look at the constitution, and I said this in a speech in Parliament some time back, India is not described as a nation, it's described as a union of states. The exact line is India, that is Bharat, is a union of states. And the implication of that is that there is an ongoing negotiation between this union of states. So in the Congress party, we view India as a negotiation between its people. The RSS views India as a geographical entity. So that's the big difference. For us, India comes alive when India speaks. And India dies when India goes silent. And what I see is going on is a systematic attack on the institutions that allow India to speak. Parliament, the election system, the democratic system, the basic structure of democracy is being captured by one organisation. And as the conversation is being stamped out, the deep state is entering those spaces and redefining the way that conversation is held. And you can see the impact of this in different parts of the country. You can see this in the type of policies that are being implemented as well. So for example, if you look at the way GST was implemented, instead of having a detailed negotiation with the states. That's a national taxation programme. The GST is the tax. Instead of having a long conversation, detailed conversation with the states, it's just decided that on so and so date at midnight you're going to do GST. So what I see is the big problem is the stamping out of the voice of a billion plus people. And that I am absolutely convinced is going to have repercussions. Okay, so I'm considered to be a tough supervisor, so I'm not going to let you go off so easily on that one. Because some people would say that actually Modi is very popular. This has a huge amount of social mandate in India. And that the victory of Modi in several regional elections, some setbacks are there, that actually this is popularly mandated that perhaps Indians have changed not so much the idea of India. A democratic contest depends on certain structures. It depends on an election system that is free. It depends on a judiciary that is completely independent. It depends on a press that is fair. And very importantly it depends on the type of money that different political formations have. So if we are fighting an electoral contest and we are fighting the institutional structure of India, we have taken things to the election commission and we get no response. You can see the press in India. If you look at the television in India, there is one gentleman who is on it all the time, nobody else. I mean, you see one gentleman there and he is the only gentleman who occupies that space. Now in a sort of 21st century environment where your means of communication is media, where your means of communication is social media and they have total dominance over those, of course it will affect the mandate. So you think that in a way the story of Hindu nationalism how would you want to assess the ascendancy of the idea of Hindu nationalism in relation to say Nehru in India, or what Congress stood for, which was a multi-religious social compact. So don't you see that contest is much more about this is not unique to India, you are seeing such exclusive forms of neo-nationalism across the world. So how would you want to make a plea now for the older idea of India, is it sort of worn out, does it need... I'm not going to make a plea for it. That idea exists in India and that idea is going to fight back. Now the question is, how is it going to fight back? That's right. You can't impose one ideology on a place that is as complicated as India and you can see it. So as they push this sort of centralising ideology you can see the result in states like Tamil Nadu, you can see the results in states like Punjab, you can see the results in the northeast. So you are putting pressure on the union on the conversation and it's going to react. If you think that it's not going to react, well you're in for a surprise. So then to speak, put this on the kind of democratic map or the political map of India, do you think that this poses a particular challenge to the Indian National Congress? Because one of the things that struck me because I teach a course in Indian democracy here, it struck me is that India is unique from other mass democracies say like America or Britain which have always had a two-party system. You have the Tories and you have the Labour Party and India you've always had one national party and lots of regional parties and that was the story for the Congress and now do you think it's a change of hands or something else is going on? That's I think the wrong characterisation if I might say so. If you look at again, view India as a union of states. Now tell me which state has more than two parties. Tamil Nadu has two parties, UP has broadly two parties so Madhya Pradesh has two parties, Rajasthan has two parties. I meant it at the national level. No, in our system, if you're going to compare a United Kingdom, think of India much more like Europe than you think than like England. India is much closer to Europe than it is to England. How many languages are spoken in England? Don't shame the English now. Don't shame the English. We grew up with three, they grew up with half. No, but we have to get this right because if we're going to understand it properly we have to get it right. It's much more accurate to think of India like Europe and think of a Europe that is politically and economically united. That's what India achieved 70 years ago. By the way Europe hasn't achieved yet. No, it's a federation and broken again. And it's under pressure. So what was achieved 70 years ago was quite a powerful unique thing. But it requires conversation between these states. Now where does the question of the Congress party in the BJP come in? The national party is the party that stitches up the Congress. That's right. So actually I don't see it as a real challenge for the Congress party. I see it as a huge opportunity for the Congress party if the Congress party reacts to it properly. All political formations go through transitions. If you look at the record of the Congress party everybody gets excited that we are now not in power for seven years but in power for seven years. We have played a significant role in developing the country and bringing India to where it is. Of course we need to reinvent ourselves. That's right. We need to rethink what our role is. We need to rethink how we interact with the people. So what would be the first thing you would think requires a rethink? The first thing that requires a rethink is opening the doors of the Congress party and bringing in millions and millions of youngsters into the party. So a new... That's the first millennium. Now you're clapping but this is not so easy. This is what I see when I was your age. I was like that thing is easy to do. But after a while it's not so easy to do. It can be done, it takes time, but it's not so easy to do. The second thing is that there's an ideological fight going on in India. There are two visions. One vision that says, essentially the BJP vision, RSS vision says the social order needs to be protected. India should progress but people shouldn't move up and down the social order. And what we are saying is that one man, one vote, everyone should have equal opportunity, everyone should have equal access. This is a contest. No, I get that and that takes me straight to the question of the economy because of course the UPA government in particular and just years preceding to that was the high moment of India, both in the global stage but also the liberalisation of the Indian economy, the rise of big tech in India and of course the most ambitious and largest welfare programs in the world such as the Manrega, the minimum employment guarantee scheme. Now the question really is that sort of model, in the sense you had high growth, high private investment, high liberalisation, high interaction with the global economy but also high public spending in India. That's on the UPA and that seems to me and again, correct me if I'm wrong, that model doesn't seem to be a Modi's model because he has very targeted welfare schemes as a whole. In a way the economic kind of basis, economic policies also that the UPA laid down, your government laid down, seem to be changing. So where do you see the kind of economic scenario at a time actually it coincides also with de-globalisation. So UPA was part of the global moment of accelerated connectivity in the world and now for the last 10 years, 12 years after financial crisis, there's a kind of slow de-globalisation which is accelerated it seems after COVID and men like Modi seem to have gained under such conditions. So how would you do that? On the sort of Hindutva side and on the exclusion side, Modi is different than the Congress. Of course. But on the economic side, Modi is taking what was sort of our middle of the road balanced ideas to an extreme, right? Same. We were trying to balance the rural and the urban for example. We were trying to balance big business and farmers and labourers. He's not really interested in that balance. His idea is, I mean, I get the sense he thinks of the career model where you have large big sort of chebol, right? They monopolise and then I think he thinks he can give a sort of pay off to large numbers of people and let these people concentrate power and wealth. In my view that won't work in India. You'll get a huge backlash, right? You'll get a backlash that you will not know what's hit you. The other point is that view these things as a continuum, right? Don't view them as UPI did something and now Modi is doing something. They feed into each other. So what do I mean by that? We did Narega, right? Most people think Narega is a handout to poor people. No, I don't, but yeah. If you ask most Indian people, what is this Narega? They'll say, well, you know, why are you making people lazy? Why are you giving them money in their pocket, etc. Actually, Narega was a labour market intervention, right? And Narega created a massive reaction in Indian farmers. It was a very powerful move, but it created a particular reaction. And then that reaction feeds in to what comes after. What I'm saying is don't think that good policies carried out now won't later create a backlash that gets you something that doesn't look anything like what you were doing. For example, Aadhaar. We had a totally different vision for Aadhaar. So let me just say Aadhaar is universal identification in India, which was brought in. Your government had thought about it, had piloted it, but it became a standard procedure now in India. So we put in Aadhaar, which is sort of a unique identity. And in our wildest dreams, we didn't imagine what Aadhaar would be used for. So that sense has to be there. You have to have a sense that something that you do right now looks very good can suddenly take another turn under another administration. So you mean it's more about surveillance rather than about... Today? Yeah. Aadhaar has become a weapon. It's become a political weapon. So that actually takes me to the question on actually big tech. This is Cambridge. This is the place where a lot of the tech happens for Britain. And of course there was Cambridge Analytica, as you know, from here on misinformation, in which actually several Indian elections were involved, as you know, quite apart from Brexit and what happened on the international stage. So you mentioned monopolies also as well. So the two related questions and you might want to take them separately. But even Biden is facing the question of monopolies, particularly around big tech. And it's going to be a big story about his presidency, whether that's going to be regulated or not. And so I'm just... So there's the problem of kind of information around elections, campaigning around say Facebook and WhatsApp and other big tech. And then there's a related question of monopolies, which in India is not a tech monopoly. In America it's a tech monopoly that they need to be broken. How do you sort of see the new architecture of this kind of digital economy? Why do you say it's not a tech monopoly in India? There's other ones too. It's a multiple. It's not simply tech monopolies. It's a kind of... As you know, from airports to... You were saying the other day. So what I'm trying to say is that it seems to me that the world of de-globalisation is leading to the rise of monopolies both in America and India, for instance. And in India it's kind of a couple of places, but in America it's much more about tech, as you know, and these are also related to politics. Because how are we now going to conduct elections? I'll tell you my personal experience. I don't believe that the large social media companies are neutral. I just don't believe that. At least my experience in Indian politics. I can give you examples. I'll give you one personal example where on my Twitter account I was getting 40,000 new users a day. And then I went to a girl who was raped in Delhi. A little Dalit girl. And I went there and I did a protest. And magically my Twitter users went to zero. They went from 40,000 a day to zero. We wrote to Twitter and said, what's going on? Please explain this to us. No answer. They said we don't have the data. We don't understand this. We are checking. Three months later we decided to get in touch with the Wall Street Journal. And we told the Wall Street Journal this. And a day before the Wall Street Journal article was coming out, it went back to 40,000. That's interesting. That's my experience. Now it's the same with WhatsApp. I don't believe that these are neutral platforms. So what is to be done about that? For example, the head of Facebook has never met an Indian opposition leader. Yes. He comes, he meets the Prime Minister, goes home. I think the CEO of Facebook was a BJP person. In Delhi, yes. So why are we imagining that this thing is a neutral entity? It's not. I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that to you. So the tech monopoly, if you look at the way Indian elections are being fought, they're essentially being fought on these platforms. They're important WhatsApp, they're being fought not so much on Twitter, but on WhatsApp and Facebook. Tiktok. Tiktok's gone. Gone, yes I know. They were very important the last time. No, but this is very important. Tiktok's gone. Why is Tiktok gone? So the first level of monopoly is the media monopoly. I think what someone said, 140, 160 media entities owned by one person. Yes. So you have a media monopoly and then you have multiple monopolies, business monopolies, that provide finance to the BJP. So that's what we're facing. So how would you maneuver this? It's so hegemonic and so all-encompassing in the description. The only way to face it is by going directly to the people, which is what the Congress party did before independence. That's the only way to face this. So back to Gandhi. Back to Gandhi. Social movement, protest movement, massive movement. Yes, and there's a lot of appetite for that. There's a lot of atmosphere for that. And the Congress party needs to redesign itself to absorb that energy and use that energy to create a new vision for the country. I'm going to move you on a little bit and move you to the international scene because a lot of people were sort of, we talked a little bit about America, a little bit about tech companies, but we haven't really said anything about China. China really is this big story for India. And I think that hasn't really been appreciated in the international press at all. I mean, I've been on several panels, and people are kind of always asking me fundamental questions as to why, why, for instance, India takes positions that it does currently, but we'll talk about Ukraine in a second. But there isn't enough appreciation of the Indo-Chinese issue at the moment. So tell me what you think about China as a rising global power and in relation to particularly its neighbourhood and India. So I think there are two competing visions now on the planet, right? One is the western India is a part of it, which is a maritime vision. And the other is a terrestrial vision, the Belt and Road, and a terrestrial planet where most of trade moves from China through the old Silk Road to Europe and China dominates that trade. That's the clash. And that's what China is building. And what China is offering to the countries around it is the idea of prosperity. So China is saying allow us to build your infrastructure, allow us to put in the communications backbone, allow us to put in 5G, allow us to put in all that stuff. We'll give you the money, you build your infrastructure, and then we will have prosperity together. That's what they offer it. And it's a very powerful thing to offer, but it's not in our interest. It's not in India's interest that China expands out like this. Why? Because we are on the way to Europe? Or just because we are physically there? Or is it a rivalry, a civilizational rivalry? I don't see it as a civilizational rivalry, but it will have severe consequences for India. It will have serious consequences for India. In terms of Chinese expansionism. So why do you think the international world is not fully aware of the stories always told in terms of America and China? Because those are the two poles. America defends one vision and China is placing another vision on the table. Now, where I have a problem is when the West speaks about China and when the United States speaks about China, they always talk about stopping China's rise. So they have a sense that you have to stop this. That's fine, but my question is, what alternative are you giving? If China is promising prosperity, you can't say to India that look, we will have a defence pact and we will fight with China without the prosperity part of it. So the Indian trade has to continue? So to me the real question is, if there is an alternative vision, that vision needs to actually create prosperity. It needs to create wealth. But Sri Lanka and the Chinese story hasn't really worked out? Of course, Sri Lanka has gone very wrong. The Chinese have put in a huge amount of money. A huge amount of that money has been stolen and it didn't pan up. But the idea that the Chinese are proposing is prosperity. They have given $100 billion to Pakistan. So they have a very clear vision about what they are trying to do. It's a powerful idea. It's not that it doesn't have a basis. But from our perspective, I think we need to have an idea that provides prosperity. Of course, there is a defence angle to it, but there has to be an economic angle to it. Currently, I don't see the economic angle to it. Our relationship with the United States, for example, is hugely about defence. That's right. It's moving that way. More and more. When we talk to the Americans and the Americans talk to us, we talk about defence. We don't talk about how do we jointly create prosperity and create a democratic model that can make people rich. Does that worry you? It does. On to Ukraine and then I'll come to a final question before I open it. The whole story of Ukraine, when India refused to take a position, spooked certainly the international media and strategic circles here. Precisely for the reasons you have just mentioned, that in the last 10 to 15 years, India has been seen to be going closer to the US, and then for not actually signing on to the UN amendment, the UN move to see what is India up to. The word that was used in India was that India doesn't really want this bipolarity. It's going to have a multi-polar world. How do you read this? Is this a continuation of Nehru's idea of non-alignment, which has been resurrected in certain perverse ways again? I don't think the government believes in Nehru's idea of non-alignment, but I think the government understood its constraints. It understood clearly what the constraints were, and I don't think they had much of a choice myself. But I think it's better to have a foreign policy that is strategically thought out, instead of a foreign policy where you take one decision with one event and then suddenly another decision with another event. I also don't think it's about being with America or against America. I think it's more nuanced than that. I think India is a big country, and India has multiple relationships, and India has to deal with the complexity of its own reality. I'm going to ask a slightly semi-personal question, and then I'm going to open the floor, which is because obviously 75 years we can take small bite sizes into the last opening decades and now more recent decades. But actually there's a middle period, and you and I both belong to that middle period of that generation, which is that we are not midnight's children, we are born in the 70s, we don't have any of the optimism that our parents' generation had, and we of course also grew up with a lot of collective violence around us. I in Punjab, but I was not alone, there were people in the northeast, Kashmir, but also soon after that you had the Hindu-Muslim story flaring up with the Babri Masjid mobilisation and caste violence as well. So violence has been a big feature of people of our generation, and in your case it's all too personal. So we've just had a recent anniversary of your father's assassination this weekend. So my question really is about actually a kind of Gandhian question about violence and how to live with it, and in your case it's also personal. And so could you sort of say a little bit on your own personal resilience on it, but also how you envision the compact between violence and non-violence in Indian society? I think, I mean, the word that comes to mind is forgiveness, right? It's not precisely the most accurate. It's, you realise, I think you realise, right? No, because you... I didn't mean to stump you, but it's a very obvious question. But no one's asked you, I'm surprised. No, no, they've asked you. Have they? Why don't you have the answer? I'm going to go deeper in the answer. Okay, let's do this. So I think in life you will always, especially if you're in places where large energies are moving, right? You will always get hurt. It's not... If you do what I do, you will get hurt. It's not a possibility, it's a certainty. Because it's like swimming in an ocean with big waves. You are going to go under. It's not that you're not. So then when you go under, you learn how to react properly. So when you... So loss is productive. The single biggest learning experience of my life was my father's death. There is no bigger experience than that, right? Now, I can look at it and say, the person who or the force that killed my father caused me tremendous pain. Sure, it's correct. As a son I lost my father, many of you would have. And that's very painful. But then I can't get away from the fact that that same event also made me learn things that I would have never ever learnt otherwise, right? So as long as you're ready to learn, it doesn't matter how nasty people are, or how evil people are, as long as you're ready to learn. If I turn around and Mr Modi attacks me and I say, oh my God, he's so vicious, he's attacking me, that's one way of looking at it and the other way of looking at it, say, great, I just learned something from him. Give me some more. Very Gandhian. But you come to this, right? When you're facing an attack, you come to this. There is no other realisation possible. It's like that there's a poem, I don't remember the name. It's written by, I think it's a Palestinian person who's been put in jail. I'll send it to you. He's talking to the jailer. He says to the jailer, look from the small window of my cell, I can see your big cell. So everyone's in jail. And you've got to be able to see that properly. And if you see that properly, then you can figure out ways to deal with it, or ways to get out. Thank you very much.