 I'll start with three apologies. Although this is about three years of Modi, I'll be talking about militarism and the suppression of dissent democracy in more general and universal terms, exemplified by what's happening in India. Second apology, feminist scholars have insisted and made a very important point that whenever you talk about militarism, it's connected to aggressive masculinity and the oppression of women. However, this is going to be an implied and sub-team when I take up the more general issue of the relationship of militarism to democracy and dissent. And the third apology is that my presentation will be very telegraphic. I'm going to make basically nine points. But short points. Point number one, almost all definitions, go up and look into dictionaries, almost all definitions of militarism connected to the nation state and nationalism. And what they're basically saying is that understanding militarism either as an attitude or a policy or a belief system and ideology is really emphasizing the great virtue of having a very strong capacity to exercise violence for the good of the nation. And insofar as you feel that this is important, then it means certain agencies like the state and other agencies in civil society have the responsibility to extend the virtues, as it were, to justify and defend these virtues. That's point number one. Point two, any justification for militarism must postulate an enemy, either internal or external or both. And any time you postulate a certain enemy or a strong opponent, it is going to lead to some degree of erosion of democratic rights, although the degree in terms of erosion will vary. Take, for example, the existing profoundly dishonest, distorted, selective and hypocritical discourse on terrorism carried out by agencies and states that are themselves guilty of terrorism, either domestic or external. And this has been used, of course, to justify the erosion of democratic rights and you have any number of liberal democratic states. Forget the others that on one way or the other, using this and other excuses, moving in the direction of a more surveillance state. That's your second point. Point three, the erosion of democracy is going to be greater when the enemy you postulate is internal rather than external. The United States has any number of enemies that it perceives, perceives enemies that are external, but the internal democratic structure of the United States is far stronger than that in Turkey, for example, for whom the Kurds are an internal enemy, and of course another country whose name is, oh yes, of course, India. So you have that, and of course it gets worse if the enemy is not just internal and external, you have both these enemies, and both are either the same or connected. And this brings us to point four. Doesn't India fit the bill? Because it has as its external enemy a Muslim-dominated Pakistan, and of course as the internal enemy in one form or the other, which is also culpable because of course what is the great message of the Sangh Pariwar and the BJP, which connects it to militarism, we are the force that can make India strong. Making India strong is of course that. And there is a fundamental militarism, because if you look at the intellectual godfather of Hindutva, Savarkar, in one sentence, as many of you know, he talks about Hinduizing all politics and militarizing Hinduism. Point five. The rise of the Sangh Pariwar and the BJP, today let us not fool ourselves, I agree with Atul that even as nationalism is always contested, there is one particular understanding which is increasingly becoming an expanding common sense. I won't say it's primary, but I'm saying it's gaining ground in relation to others. And that of course is Hindutva, and this is intimately connected to militarism. If you look at the last 25 years in which there's had the most dramatic growth of this force, and unlike liberals, there is a debate on the left which is very, very important about whether it's fascist, semi-fascist, etc. Because for liberals, the Sangh is, unfortunately, it's being too extreme, it's being too communal. But we don't have too many problems with this foreign policy or its economic policies, and it could moderate itself. This person is not so bad, maybe this or that, etc. But it's the left that recognizes that what we're dealing with is a far-right force. There may be differences about what it is, but it's a far-right force. And its growth over the last 25 years is intimately connected to three landmark events in India which are all expressions of violence, both practically and symbolically. 1992, Babri Masjid, and of course the riots and programs that took place. 1998, the explosion of the nuclear bomb. 2002, the Gujarat program. And they have benefited from this, and it has been accepted in a variety of ways. On the question of the nuclear bomb, what's very interesting is that you always had people who defended India going in for the bomb, but to recognize its fundamental immorality. Because the bomb is not like a tank or a gun in which the morality depends upon the uses that are put to it. You can use a tank and a gun for good purposes unless you're a complete pacifist. But nuclear weapons are fundamentally immoral in themselves. And those who justified it used to say, well, it's a necessary evil. But there were two countries which had the bomb out of the nine that had them, in which you had the kind of glorification by the public of having this necessary evil in a way that other countries did not have. That was India and that was Pakistan afterwards here. It's indicative, if you like, of the kind of mood, the kind of sense of acceptance of violence in various forms that we have in this situation. That's point five. Point six, if you criticize this kind of aggressive, belligerent militarism, aggressiveness, you are going to risk, and not just risk, you're going to be labeled anti-patriotic, anti-national. You'll be labeled anti-Hindu, anti-majority. And, of course, you'll be labeled anti-Hindu and anti-patriotic because, of course, you have Hindu nationalism. And it's very interesting, is that there are real problems with the phenomenon of nationalism and the phenomenon of religion. Both have a tendency towards near absolutism in the kind of loyalty they demand. And when you have a merger of these two things, you're having a merger of two phenomenons themselves having very strong tendencies to absolutism which can even merge and become even stronger. In other words, what religious nationalism does, not just Hindu nationalism, Buddhist nationalism, and Sri Lanka and Myanmar and Jewish nationalism, Islamic nationalism, Christian nationalism, all of it, what you do is that you sacralize nationalism. And when you sacralize something, you're putting it beyond the ken of criticism because if you're now going to criticize it, not only are you guilty of anti-nationalism, you're being blasphemous. And you can have a chief commissioner of Delhi police who talks about people who are JNU and others or who criticize the sedition law here as being blasphemous. This is now routine. You merge the two here. That's point six. Point seven. This atmosphere which now exists is also connected now to street violence of a kind that doesn't exist before. And not just street violence, street violence that is now allied to various processes of financial, legal, and media harassment, which of course is something that exists. Cut off the funds over here, put charges of sedition, etc. All kinds of media assaults that are taking place. And what does this do? It creates an environment of fear and greater caution, which of course leads to much greater self-censorship. And it also narrows the spectrum of what is considered to be acceptable public discourse. And this of course is happening here. Let's ask ourselves, in the United States of America, for all the criticism I have which are innumerable, you have Snoop Dogg. Snoop Dogg is a rapper who is the younger generation, perhaps knows, right? Who says that I don't want a dead president. I want a president dead. And Trump, very much annoyed by it, can't do anything because of the First Amendment. In Germany, you have groups which are allowed to propagate and say death to Germany. In the United States, you can have the burning of the flag. All of these things. In India, you have a charge of sedition, which it will tell me which of these countries has a more stable, confident, and stronger democracy. And one in which you can do these things, or one like India in which of course you're immediately assaulted in various ways. Point, this was point seven, right? Point eight. Does that mean that the freedom of dissent is without limits, that there should be no limits on that? No, there have to be limits. And there's freedom of dissent by speech, and there's freedom of dissent by action. What should be the limits for say freedom of dissent by action? And the general answer to this would be, of course, it must be within the bounds of the law and the Constitution provided, the provision is very provided, those laws and those constitutions, injunctions are themselves democratic and democratic by developing standards of decency and morality. Because democracy can be summed up in one word. It is always one sentence. It is always unfinished business. You have to move further and further, deeper and deeper, something that in fact is not happening. But my point here is that in India, if you have laws that actually can lead you with being charged for dissedition, then defying them is something that is necessary, that sedition law is a disgrace. It should have been thrown away a long time ago. But that's for action. What about the question of dissent by speech? Here the criteria that you can't indulge in hate speech in the name of freedom of speech. But what is the criteria used? And that criteria will always be contextual and must be connected to the existing pattern of distribution of social vulnerabilities. You have different criteria for different people. I was part of the anti-racist movement for 13 years in England. And you had a national front organization, a neo-Nazi organization, which wanted to come to South Hall and wanted to have a demonstration in March and then speak in the South Hall Hall, the community hall, about their filth about how black people, Asians, had to get out of the country and so on. And we protested that. And the counter-argument is that that's free speech. You have to let them do that. This is free speech. And the point we made is that, look, we have no problems with them going somewhere else, in the center of London, elsewhere, having a speech, saying they are filled, having a demonstration. But when they come to South Hall, the message that they are sending to us is that even in the places where you feel safest, we can threaten you and we can do what we like and we will have the backing of the forces behind us. So you have to be very careful. I don't want to expand because of the time limit on the question of Hebdo, but I think this point about social vulnerabilities is important. And if you like, there's one simple sentence that I would use to be, if you like, as a criteria for judging the question of sarcasm and all the rest of it in the public media. And that is, afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. I think that's a very, very important, simple phrase that you can use for that. There is a lot of hate speech in India. There's a lot of freedom of speech which is being attacked in the name of nationalism, anti-nationalism, and so on. There's a huge arena of hate speech which is there on the social media. Which is organized by a troll army of volunteers and paid people, especially by one political party and that force here. And unlike, again, in the United States. And I feel very terrible having to say nice things about the United States. I can assure you. Unlike in the United States where these actions are actionable and you can actually catch people here, what's going on over here? Nothing. Many more. So that, I think, is something here. Point number nine. The relationship between militarism and nationalism goes in the direction of changes and nationalism affect the changes in militarism. That's the direction. So if you want to move away from militarism, reduce it or whatever, it's a question of nationalism and how you change that. And there's an external dimension to this and there is an internal dimension. The external dimension, unless you're a complete pacifist, you will say, yes, we must have a military force. But then you can go in two directions. You can either go in the direction of saying that we must have a strong military force to defend our borders and to defend ourselves against invasion. And there will be disputes about how much you need in that particular case, but there will be narrower. Or you can power project. In which case, there is literally no limit to the amount of militarism we have. Among the countries that want to power project, and this is not connected to the size of a country in the sense that the bigger the country is going to have to power project or the smaller the country, it can't do that, no. Countries that want to power project, Russia, China, the United States, and of course, now India. But another country which has a territory much bigger than that of India, which has a per capita GDP, which is far superior, which has much more resources than India to build a power project, a military force, but doesn't want to do so, is Brazil. If you take a medium-sized country, you have England because of its continuing imperial hubris which wants to power project. Does anybody really care whether Britain has... No, but because of that. But you have another middle-sized country which, believe me, needs no lessons from any damn Indian or any American or anybody else in terms of their independence. And that country is Vietnam, which has a thousand-year history of conflict with the Chinese, but does not want to power project. And although it is easy for it, if it wants to, because it's quite easy to make a nuclear bomb, it has decided not to make the nuclear bomb and has joined the Southeast Asian nuclear weapons for its own. But that doesn't mean that it considers itself to have weakened itself in relation to others. It's a middle-sized country. What about a small country? You have a small country of 8 million population, 11 million population, Sweden, closer to the Soviet Union than Britain ever was in the 1960s. They had a debate and said we don't want the bomb, which has military conscription for one year, which is gender-neutral, for all citizens, and which has a very sophisticated armed forces, both for the guns, aircraft, et cetera, but does not want to power project. On the other side, you have the apartheid state of Israel, which wants to power project and rationalizes on the basis of this utterly dishonest myth of the perpetual victimhood of Israel. Let me come to the internal aspect, and then I'll be ending here on that internal aspect of militarism, the changes in nationalism to that. Again, with nationalism, you can go in two directions. You can either subscribe to what is called an essentialist definition of nationalism, which is profoundly dangerous, and that essential definition of nationalism goes like this. You, Mr. Hindu Minority in Bangladesh, you better understand that the essence of Bangladeshi nationalism is Islam. You, Mr. Muslim Rohingyas in Myanmar, understand that the essence is Buddhism. You, Mr. Ahmadiyya, must understand this is our essence. You, Mr. Muslim Minority, must understand that this is the essence here. You, Mr. Jew in Germany, or you, Mr. Asian, remember, our culture is being swamped here, or you, Mr. Black person. And if you don't understand that this is our essence, and if you don't participate in helping to build it, then you're guilty of weakening us, and we don't like it, we'll fix you. The concept of nationalism that the Sangh Parivar has is a sleeping beauty concept of nationalism. I hope some of you are familiar with the story of sleeping beauty. For the Sangh Parivar, the sleeping beauty is the essential Hinduness of India. And, of course, sleeping beauty was awoken by the kiss of Prince Charming. And the Indian Prince Charming are the forces of Hindutva which will give it the kiss of politics to waken it. Sleeping beauty was put to sleep, slumbered by the evil witch. And who is the evil witch in the Indian context? Is it Turks? Afghans? Persians? Mughals? No. It's Muslims. Because when you say Muslims, you integrate all of them, and you also include those in India itself, and they become compressive with it. And that is their concept. The alternative to this concept is much more democratic concept of nationalism which recognizes that there are different ways of being and feeling Indian. And there can only be different ways of being and feeling Indian if the Indian state and Indian society respects everybody, respects their language, respects their religion, respects their secular needs and all that here. That's the only way in which you can build it. And let me end with a little story which I'm very fond of saying. Just in Trudeau. Because one of the things about the United States is that there are different ways of being American to a much greater extent. You can have a Saddhar and be a Turbaner, you can be American, you can be this, that, etc. And Obama and Trudeau met at an industrial trade fair not so long ago. And in the corner there was this big machine which could predict the future 50 years from now. And of course, Trudeau said to Obama, why don't you find out what is going on now so Obama typed in, a big piece of paper came out and Trudeau said, please read it. And he read it and he said, America is very prosperous and it's very peaceful and the President of the United States America is Miguel Velázquez Sanchez and the Vice President and the Vice President of the United States is Chao Ho Fung and Chinese is now compulsory in all American schools. So then Obama turned around and said, now let's find out about Canada. So Trudeau typed in and a big piece of paper comes out and Obama says to Trudeau, read it and he says, how can I? It's in Punjabi. Anyway, thank you very much.