 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. I am Paranjoy Guha Thakurtha. I am sitting in the Nizamuddin East residence of Professor Ashish Nandi. He really needs no introduction. He is an eminent public intellectual, a political psychologist, a social theorist who is soon going to turn 84. Thank you so much, Professor Ashish Nandi, for giving us your time. It's 100 days since farmers, they are protesting on the outskirts of the national capital. But Prime Minister Narendra Modi is refusing to repeal the three controversial laws pertaining to farming and agriculture. And it seems that attitudes have hardened on both sides. Would you say that it's now almost seven years since Mr. Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister of India? This is the biggest challenge that he's facing. Mr. Modi claims and his sidekicks claim that it is for the benefit of the farmers. It's a gift to the farmers. Farmers believe, at least a sizable section of the farmers believe that it is a poison gift. Now, I don't know how you can insist on passing the laws in such a large number of farmers to reject it. I mean, if I want to give a gift to you and you refuse it, I will feel humiliated. But I will not force the gift on you. If they are so keen and if they believe that the larger number of farmers approve of the laws, which I doubt whether they do, really do, there are enough farmers in the BJP ruled states. They could deploy their new laws in these states and set an example to the farmers in other states. So, they are deduced to accept these laws after couple of years or maybe three years. But they have not done so. I feel there is something a touch of arrogance there. If these laws are only applied in the BJP rule states, I am sure that the farmers will give them the right answer there. If they like it very much and approve it, this news will circulate. Okay, let me interrupt you. Is it just arrogance or it is something more than arrogance? Authoritarianism, the way ordinances were first promulgated when the corona epidemic was at its peak. And then the laws were passed in parliament. But in the upper house of parliament, the opposition MPs claim they were not given an opportunity to air their views. Now, what we are seeing is, despite 11 rounds of negotiations with the farmers, it is a complete stalemate. Both sides are refusing to bunch. So, is it more than just arrogance on the part of the Prime Minister of India? Maybe. But I would suggest to you that somewhere there is, if there is a motive, it is that of corporatization of agriculture. And the fact that at one time even Congress supported it confirms that part of the story. And I think the farmers, they presume the farmers to be illiterate or semi-literate crowd. What I am trying to say is that this concept, this contempt for the farmers as only good for being industrial levers, blue-collar workers of corporations which own the farms and who specify what kind of crops should be grown and to what extent if the price should be modified, all this is decided by the corporations. And you only do the farming as employees, so virtually employees. This part of the story, the farmers have understood, the farmers protesting against it. And so, I would say this again teaches us a lesson that the farming community has a mind of its own, that they are not the knife, not a knife, blind force driven by historical processes, they have their own autonomy. There are three farming communities in the world which confirm to what I am saying. The Russian, the Chinese and the Indian, three great farming communities. Russian and Chinese farming community has already been reduced to the state in which they are today. Indian farming community is one of the few which is resting. So, you think there is any likelihood of this protests either fading away or a amicable settlement. I mentioned earlier, 11 rounds of talks, but the government has said we are willing to postpone the implementation of the laws for one and a half years. But the farmers are saying nothing short of complete repeal of the three laws. So, it seems on both sides there is a complete stalemate. Yes, I doubt whether the disgruntlement of farmers will ever end because the attempt to turn them into a kind of a working class, employees if not of the regime or at least as it was in the case of Soviet Union as that of corporate will go on as long as the farming community survives in its present form in some corners of India. That will not end and I think this question has been raised by farming communities many societies. In Japan, for example, the corporate farming has gone quite far, but not far enough because farmers suicide at one time rose up to a level as high as in India. I do not think the farming community is the last stand against the corporatization of all sectors of life. I think if you look at the Scheinbach protest, you will recognize many similarity between that protest and the farmers' protest. And I suspect that this new kind of protest resurrects the memories of Gandhi and later on Jayaprakash Narayan that it is fundamentally spontaneous, not in the sense whether they have some input from outside or not. But fundamentally in the sense that you have no control, there is no centralized leadership which control is sitting at one place. One minute. So you do not think this agitation is confined to so-called rich farmers of Punjab and parts of Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan that it has a certain resonance across the country? Yes, absolutely. I think it will have the resonance and has the resonance. And I will propose to you that this kind of agitations will proliferate whatever the present regime might do because a country as diverse of India refused to be steamrolled in a monotonous community to become a proper nation, speaking the same language, following the same ideology and doing the bidding of the state as it interferes in every sector of life through the total control of media. You made a number of points. Let me ask you, you're a political psychologist. Let me ask you to analyze the persona of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. I refer to what you've written, which is in the public domain, what you've written in the seminar magazine, what you've written in the Times of India. In 2002, after the communal riots in Gujarat and you studied psychology in Gujarat in the Gujarat University in Ahmedabad, you had met before that, 10 years before the communal riots in 1992 in the run-up to the demolition of the Babri Masjid. You had met Mr. Narendra Modi. He was just a pracharak of the Rashtriya Swamsevak sa. And you went with Achyut Yagnik ji and you had a long and what you see a rambling interview with him. Now, I'm quoting what you have written. It left me no doubt that here was a classic clinical case of a fascist. And then I quote you, I never used the term fascist as a term of abuse. To me it is a diagnostic category comprising not only one's ideological posture but also the personality traits and motivational patterns contextualizing the ideology. So you say that all the criteria that psychiatrists and psychoanalysts and psychologists use, the empirical work on authoritarian personality, he had the same mix and I quote you, puritanical rigidity, narrowing of emotional life, massive use of the ego defense of of the ego defense of projection, denial and fear of his own passions combined with fantasies or violence, all set within the matrix of a clear paranoia and obsessive personality traits. You talked about cases. In 2002, when you wrote an article for the Times of India, you said the Gujarat middle class has been communalized. A non-government organization took you to court. You appealed in the High Court in Delhi and then this case went all the way up to the Supreme Court and finally they granted bail and they say the police cannot take any action against you. But I'm asking you here, how do you analyze the development of the personality of Prime Minister Narendra Modi from the time you met him in 1992 till today? You should see what the international plays, sorry, internet newspapers and TV channels say about him to get a fair idea of what we have lost in terms of goodwill all over the world. I think in this process, the Indian corporate sector has shown no wisdom whatsoever. They were taken in by his promise to open up the economy more fully and they felt being in the rightist group ideologically that he will take the openness of the economy to its logical limits. Alas, he did not knew that this will push him towards, do this itself will be a push towards autocracy because they were charmed by the success stories of the Asian Tigers, so called Asian Tigers. Whole range of countries starting from South Korea on the top and forget Japan, but South Korea on the top, I'm talking of post World War II world, South Korea to Taiwan, to Thailand, to Malaysia, to Singapore, one by one each of these countries which made a fantastic success of the economies, they turned authoritarian. Again, I'm interrupting you. I want to take you back on two or three points that you made. One is you are saying yes, the corporates and the corporatization attempts to corporatize the Indian agriculture privatization of public sector, this is the dominant economic ideology. I'm not saying that it has become dominant, it wasn't at one time. But I'm saying you made a number of comments, I want you to take on something. Does Mr. Modi really, is he bothered that the international media or the international press is critical of him? Whether it be democratic institutions getting weakened, whether freedom of expression is being weakened and does it really bother the prime minister of India so long as he believes that his popularity not with the literate, but with the ordinary people remains intact? Yes, probably that is the case. Probably that is the case because Indian democracy is in the hands of, now what you might call, I've just now said this in another interview, in the hands of the loop and elements basically. Those who are kind of a, you might call the deprived lower middle class and the marginalized and excluded sector previously, which is a very good thing, think democratically. But the desperation of holding on to power, it's much stronger than the privileged sectors. So, fortunately the privileged sector is so small that it cannot rule without this sector. And therefore, a one way media exposure, a one way propaganda strategy was something that is easily available to you as a reigning monarch. And this is also the way the Asian Tigers turned undemocratic one by one I mean there is a this book on the how democracies die, which is mainly based on the Latin American data. I mean that gives you very detailed steps to autocracy in those countries. And when the Frida house calls India a partly free, it has in the mind all these cases. So, this was the inevitable destiny, I would say of India to become the last Asian, how should I put it, Asian economy trying to become an Asian Tiger. You are saying India is the last of the Asian countries where you wanted to economically develop with a broad democratic framework well in place and not move towards an authoritarian regime. Yes, even if some degree of economic success would take a little longer time, that would have made a lot of difference. Now, I want to move again to another topic. You have written a number of books, you have written so many essays that you are a scholar, you have written a lot on the subject and you are a public intellectual as well. You have always sought to draw clear distinction between Hinduism and Hindutva. You have said Hinduism could be a superstitious value of beliefs where there is tolerance for diversity whereas Hindutva is a rational, masculine and modern project more in line with European nationalism and this is what I am quoting you. Now, how do I mean I do you still hold these views? I mean you had told the Caravan magazine in 2019 that the idea of a masculine state has become the dominant mode of thinking of a large section of Indians and who do not distinguish between patriotism and nationalism between Hindu nationalism and nationalism. So, how do you see the so-called majority community in this country? How would you describe them? I mean is it that so-called right-wing Hindutvavadi Hindu nationalism is here to stay and has become stronger than ever before? Yes, it will take one generation or two to disillusion them. I am not pessimistic about it. Hindutva survived many such challenges and this challenge also will survive. Hindutva or Hinduism? Hinduism. Hindutva is an Indian translation from here on the head to the toes of European concept of a quartet of concepts nation, nation state, nationality and nationalism. You cannot opt for one of them and not for the other three. This is the quartet that together dominates and this comes not so much from RSS but from lighting of Savarkar. Savarkar himself made a clear distinction between Hinduism and Hindutva. Hindutva is a cultural category. It means nation, ethnicity of a kind, a new ethnicity of the kind to create so that you can have the nationality first. You cannot have a nationalism without nationality. So, you have to create the nationality and they decided to bit the hindu into a nationality and they did so though by a peculiar strategy which has been followed always by them namely that 82 percent of Indian population at that time it was little different earlier pre-independent it was little different after the partition that I am talking about partition. The 82 percent of Indians who call themselves Hindu behave like a minority and as a minority complex. They are constantly under siege. They are constantly trying to defend themselves. They are constantly fighting against internal enemies. These are all classical principles of mobilizing the majority against the majority. These were the European nation states like Germany and Italy. I mean they also came through a democratic process and this is what they do. This is not even the Nazi efficiency with it and they have not taken resort to extermination but it has taken the Muslimist model because that is most suited to the Indian conditions. You rule through local bullies and few national bullies. Thank you Professor Ashish Nandi. Let us hope your optimism about the resilience of Indian democracy is not misplaced. Thank you very much. You have just heard and watched Professor Ashish Nandi. He is a political psychologist. He is a social theorist. He is a public intellectual. He is written extensively and he has talked on a range of issues from the farmers agitation, its significance to the personality of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the future of democracy in this country. Thank you very much for being with us and do keep watching NewsClick.