 Hi, this is the Vermont Institute of Community and International Involvement tonight, talking with our friend and scholar, Kurt Mehta, about India today. I want to talk a little bit about why I think this is such an important topic and why I hope people will either see us on CCTV, which is recording this event. And it will be shown later on Public Access Television, CCTV channel, used to be 17. I think it's now 317. It will be recorded and shown later. And the reason that we, the Vermont Institute of Community and International Involvement, or Vicky, have chosen this topic tonight. Number one is because our friend Kurt Mehta was born in India, and he just returned from a trip there. And so he probably will have a lot to say about India today. Second reason is that we have covered before the interesting idea that India is part of a group of nations called BRICS. And that's Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, which seems to be forming a block that's independent of both economic developments in the East and the West, particularly independent of the American system of finance and capitalism, which extends between the United States and especially the Western European powers. It seems that BRICS nations appear to be developing an independent block in order to escape the hegemony of the American dollar and the American and European capitalist system and form their own block and their own systems, many of which are probably going to be quite similar to a capitalist model. But we're here today to talk to this topic with Kurt Mehta. The other reason that I think India is incredibly important today is that I read, I believe in the New York Times, that India is going to exceed the population of China. And that might happen as early as April of this year, which means that India has become a regional yet global power that people are going to have to pay attention to. And the last reason I think this is important is that India and many of the other, we used to call it the third world. Now I think it's the developing nations in both Latin America, South America, Africa, and some of Asia, that these powers are beginning to challenge the idea that they have to choose either the Western alliance of NATO or the Russian and the Chinese alliance, particularly around the Ukraine war. India has kept itself vestidiously neutral in that struggle and has not chosen sides. And this is an increasing pattern that we see in the developing world of Latin America and in India, in particular in Africa. So anyway, this is Kurt Mehta who will comment on all these issues on India today and his return from a trip abroad. OK, so. Thanks for having me, Sandy. Thank you. Yeah. So I always enjoy doing our little stints for CCTV and the local community here in Berlin. And the world. And the world. And the world. Right. So I mean, as Sandy mentioned, I just came back. You were born there. I was born there, lived there for about 10 months. Then my family emigrated to the United States at the age of 10 months for me. So you weren't familiar with India at all, really? No, no. Had a short visit when I was three years old and then had a lengthier visit when I was 10 years old. And it's been a 40-year absence after that. I did not go back. Did not think I was ever going to go back. Why? Made a promise to my younger brother that we would never go back. Why? We did not have a good time in 1983. The culture shock was too great for us, for both of us. My brother's five years, my younger, and my brother was born here in the United States. And the patterns, the way things were done were just so different. It felt like an upside-down world. Infrastructure wasn't there. People were dressed differently. And for an 11-year-old immigrant who was just trying to fit in to American rock and roll culture of the early 1980s, it was just too honestly upsetting and disturbing. Why? Having grown up in Northern New Jersey, you saw people that were lower middle class. You didn't see abject poverty. Where were you at that point? A part of India. Oh, OK. So my family is from a state called Gujarat. The language spoken there is called Gujarati. That's my native language. More so than English, but not the English dominant. There's about 80 to 90 million speakers of that language. So just to give you an idea, that's more than the number of people that live in Great Britain and speak English. That's more than the number of people, I think, that can correct me, that speak French in France. And that's more than the number of people that speak Italian and Italy. Of course, French and English, once you go outside of them, their defined borders are much more present and spoken in the developing world as well as, you know, North America and Australia and New Zealand, with respect to English and that. But so it's a language that most people never heard of. Yet there are 90 million speakers. That particular state, province in India, also gave birth to Mahatma Gandhi on the flip side. The current Prime Minister Modi. And if you don't know anything about politics but know about the arts, the family of Freddie Mercury. Oh, really? From the Queen. From the Bohemian Rhapsody film. Bohemian Rhapsody and We Will Rock You and all those other great hits. So his family was originally from that state. So we probably shared a language. But you don't speak it. I do. It's my native language. You do speak it? It's my first language. My parents, I spoke with my parents. So you speak it fluently? Absolutely. Boy, I bet you could get into that with the UN. I can't read and write it though. It's a different alphabet. Not even a single letter, but I can speak it fluently. It's my first language. Well, I know the tower. English comes second. English is second. Right. But English is sort of a national language of all of India. So yes, partly the reason I was excited to go back, I mean, I was there on a wildlife safari trip. So I was there to track lions and leopards, which I got a chance to do. And that was wonderful. I exceeded my expectations as I'd just come back from Africa this past summer. And I didn't think that this was an inferior trip with respect to sighting animals. Had a good time. That being said, I was also excited to use my native language there and partly got to use it with the exception of a couple of, I do have a couple of relatives that are still there that I touch base with, some older ants that they're up there in age. And aside from that, I mostly spoke English on this trip. The younger people, people under the age of 40 did not want to speak the local language. Did they speak it at all or is it just? They spoke it at all, but if I would speak to them in their language, they responded back in English. And if I left that particular state and went out of the state, I would be as clueless as you would be or anyone else would be that is not from India because the language spoken was English. Wow. Is that, are those native languages disappearing, do you suppose? I think we're far, but it's two-fold. It's not because people are drawn to English because it's a unifier, but two things, Hollywood and then the local industry there is Bollywood. So if they spoke a second language, younger people wanted to speak the language that they watched their favorite TV shows and movies which is Hindi, I don't speak that language. And they're very different? Very different, even the alphabets are completely different. So even a non-native would notice the alphabets look different. That wouldn't be able to recognize anything. So spoke a lot of English there on the trip, wasn't expecting that. So English is in fact a unifier. I learned from a couple of relatives who were attorneys there, it's the language of all, it's language of the Supreme Court of the country. The constitution was written in English. There is a constitution. Yeah, it was based on the American constitution. Good, good for them. It was written by an untouchable in the caste system. And he was the author of the Indian constitution, largely based on, the constitution was written in 1950. The country was achieved independence in 1947, Great Britain, two years after the Second World War. But the constitution was ratified by the states in 1950. Well, of course they can't go to the English constitution for a model, because there is one. There is no such thing. There is no such thing, correct. So I'm glad they looked at it. And the language of the courts in the country, state courts, as well as the Supreme Court of the country, all arguments are done in English, all decisions are published in English. I met a young attorney on the Leopard Safari, he was about 22, 23 years old. And I was asking him the language that he was a student of Admiralty Law, that was gonna be his specialty. And I asked him the language of the Admiralty Courts and in India he said definitively English. And he was going to London to get his some advanced degree there. I wonder if that's true in the other colonialized countries? For instance, in French West Africa, I wonder if that is the lingua franca is French. Yeah, I mean, I know in a number of other former African colonies, English is predominant. And I think they're making attempts to try to reduce the role of English. In India, there was an attempt to do that. It doesn't seem successful, if anything, the influence of American, largely American pop culture has made English more appealing for the under 40 crowd and the educated crowd. I mean, that's critical to know. If people are not educated, there's a lesser likelihood that they're gonna speak English. But even those, a couple of family members that I had that were not terribly educated, they can string together a sentence by having watched enough Tom Cruise and Sylvester Stallone movies. And I was impressed by how they were able to string words of English together to form short sentences and actually communicate and understand the language, our language, language. We're looking at a map provided by Anna. Yeah, so yeah, I was on the northwest coast. Northwest coast over here. Point to it if you want me. Right here. Uh-huh, okay. So was that in a city? Yeah. Is it true that there's such a thing as an East, as an Indian standard of English? Just as there's British English and American English? Sure, I mean, you know, the, you know, when I was speaking there, you know, people had to kind of pay attention close to even amongst English speakers because they're not as used to an American English accent. You know, unless they're really big fans of, you know, I had a cousin who understood me fine and he insisted on speaking English with me, even though he's a little older than I am, because he's just a huge fan of Hollywood movies and pop music, American and English pop music. So certainly, Grant, there is an Indian English. The words are the same. You know, however, you know, the accents different. They have an easier time comprehending, you know, British people speaking English. Because, you know, they have a greater, a lower history with great Britain. So that English is, you know, it's easier for them to understand. They'll have to listen to me a little more closely or to an American a little more closely to get what they're saying. Except for the younger people who were, who were, you know, largely indoctrinated by Hollywood and American pop music will get, you know, I couldn't believe how much, you know, hip-hop and rap music I was hearing, American rap music. I don't think people knew some of, you know, the nasty language that was said during the songs, but they were singing about it. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I mean, that's on the language. But, you know, you mentioned an interesting point. In the month of April of the New York Times is predicting that India's population is going to exceed China's. And, you know, it's going to be that 1,500,000,000,000 child born there. And that will exceed the population of China at that point. So, you know, not in terms of concentrations that we're used to, but in the overall world picture, one out of every five people is from India. Not even South Asian I'm talking about, but India. If you take South Asian, they are probably talking about the other populations in Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh. That's an additional half of the billion people. Well, so those are now independent though. These are all independent. I do want to address somewhat of the history of India. Nepal, was Nepal part of India? No, it was never a part of India, proper. But there are Indian people living there. And the language. And religion, correct? Correct, the two religions in Nepal are Buddhism and Hinduism. They're both much better in India. Right, okay. So, getting back to, I guess, the historical past is what I would love to talk a little bit to you about. Okay, so, India was an independent kind of region or a kingdom until the British or to the East India. The East India Company got a charter from Queen Elizabeth I in 1600. 1600, that's what I thought. Yeah, 1600, 1601, the first contingent or shifts owned by the East India Company. Again, a private corporation, not different from Microsoft or Amazon or IBM. Yeah, very powerful. Well, Lockheed Martin. Well, Lockheed Martin, a powerful corporation that went to India to do business. In 1600. In 1600. Kind of the dawn of English and periods, imperialism. Really the dawn, very early. Right, well, they'd already gotten, I think, Scotland and Ireland. Yes, yeah, in terms of the United Kingdom. And of course, the United States. And, yeah, our 13 colonies here. The 13 colonies, right, right. The 13 colonies in North America. Right. Yeah. So, but it was a company rather than the government. Right, right. It's important to distinguish, you know, where our history here deviates from that of India's, was that the 13 colonies were administered by the British government. Right. Where India was doing business, the different regional kings and mobile emperors were doing business with the EIC, which is short for East India Corporation. Okay. Yeah. All right, and that was an English corporation. It was an English corporation. But it was militarized, didn't it have its own military? They had a security force. Uh-huh. Called the security force. Well, it was a security force. That was a long book. And that was allowed. I mean, there was, was there a central government which was... It wasn't a central government. Okay. It's not a central government. Central government. No, no, India, India. It wasn't a central government. So India in the 1200s was invaded from the West by Arabs. And they established a Islamic state in India. We kind of know it as the Mughal Empire. You know, they had their distinct, you know, viewable architecture and all of that. But they brought Islam to the Indian subcontinent. And different parts of India, presently Pakistan on the East side, Bangladesh, and then there are different pockets within India itself that have, you know, majority to large Islamic populations as a result of that Arab invasion in the 1200s. So the Arabs were, you know, the Muslim influence on India lasted for about 400 years up until the British came. But the British didn't come. It was the East India Company. It was the East India Company, right? Yeah, again, important that you read that statement. What did they do? Did they sort of conquer India then? They did not conquer. They were doing, they were doing business with the Mughal Emperor and the Mughal emperors. Their capital was Delhi, which now it's the capital of the country is New Delhi. But it was in that same region where they had most of their assets and controlled much of the Indians subcontinent, not all of it, but much of it from there. And they, the East India Company became more and more involved with getting different kinds of land grants from the Mughal emperors and also giving the Mughal emperors things that they wanted in terms of trade. And money. And money, yeah. But mostly it was about trade. It was about things that they could not get in India that were available through Europe and through the Middle East and that in turn the East India Company was able to get a lot of things that they couldn't get and that they were interested in acquiring from India. So little by little then they... Right. So the big land grab, so to speak was the originally in Europe it's known as the War of Austrian Succession. Uh-huh, that's right. Which in our country we know as the French Indian War. So India was involved in that. India was involved, but it was involved from the standpoint of competing colonial powers Right, always right. Had a fight. So who was involved? The French, the Dutch, the Portuguese, and the British. It was at the end of that war, the French and Indian War that we call here in the United States, you know our family father Jordan Washington was actively involved in. 1753. Right. Yeah. Not only did Great Britain acquire a domination over Canada by taking over Quebec and the French. And the United States. Right. But they also basically became regional hegemones in the subcontinent of India. Right. So many people called that war actually the First World War. You could look at it that way. Yeah, because it was all these global powers competing with each other over dominance in basically in the colonial world. Which includes, you know, our part of the world. Yes. And I think it's probably one of the wars that in American schools, I mean I can say my experience, that I knew the least amount. Exactly. You know, it focuses usually on the revolutionary war and the civil war. And of course the two world wars in the 20th century. But not so much. But that's an incredibly important. Incredibly important in terms of its impact on the history and the landscape of the world right now. Exactly. And power dynamics. Absolutely. And honestly the ascendancy of the language you and I are speaking for one another. Including to the north of us in Quebec. Because that's where Quebec was defeated by, essentially by Ottawa in a lot of ways. And that's when Canada began to have all its problems in a way between the English speakers. Yeah. And then Quebec. And had that war turned out differently, you know, the language that we're speaking and right now could have been French. Of course Spanish. Yeah. Right. Right. Because of, you know, the two big combatants were the French and the British. Right. More so than the French and the British. Okay, so then India by that point is essentially conquered by. Essentially conquered by the East India Company. Not the government? Not the government. The government of Great Britain did not come in until 1857. So the East India Company, they dominated for a little over a century. And they were able to exact taxes on the population. They removed much, it was much of the wealth of the country in the form of golden diamonds and textiles. And they also created an incredible cottage industry for Great Britain. Right. In terms of. Textiles, right. Textiles. And exclusivity. So not only was, and I'm not limiting this to the population of the subcontinent of India, I'm sure to extend it to Africa. Right. Or some of their 13 colonies here. But products, raw materials were taken out of India, manufactured in Britain, and then sold back to India. Exactly. At a significant premium. And that was called, I believe, the mercantile system. That was the mercantile system. And it basically created a buttress for these industry upon industry, home industry in Great Britain. Which by the 1960s, Great Britain faced near economic collapse. Because at that point, not only had they lost their colonies in South Asia, most of their African colonies were gone. So these markets, that they dominated, had monopolies over, who are basically, you know, disappearing. Right. The interesting too is that they lost their empire, essentially after World War II. Yeah. With the colonies in Africa, in Asia, kind of declaring their own independence and beating the British. I mean, that happened. In part. You know, I mean, you know, you don't want to credit, you know, evil, but the damage that the Germans did, the Nazis did to Great Britain, made it impractical and unfeasible for Britain to have the size of the empire that they had. I guess they replaced it or tried to. Right. The United States, right, they stepped in. However, without the colonial, the actual physical colonial dominance that Great Britain had in terms of administering countries, the United States corporations had significant roles and they continued to have significant roles in Latin America and the economies of countries. However, you know, one can argue with the exception the entry of Iraq that the US government did not necessarily go in and run the show. The corporations. No, right, right, right, but the power of the United States made that feasible. And the United States came out of World War II really as the only victor in a lot of ways. And they kind of at least attempted to replace the old English empire. I remember Winston Churchill said he didn't, he was going, he saw himself as presiding over the demise of the English empire. And that was sort of not militarily so much replaced by the hegemony of the US. Yeah, the United States and the US dollar. Right, exactly. The US dollar and that continues today. And that continues today. But now let's, let me talk about one other thing in terms of Indian history that I don't think most Americans know anything about. And that is the partition movement which happened in the 40s right after, okay, so India becomes independent of Britain in 1947. Right, so it was that. What was this partition deal? There was a big article about partition in the New Yorker which was really excellent to me because I didn't know very much about it. Explaining how violent it was and how it split India basically in two, right? Yeah, go ahead, would you? The famous comment that Gandhi made when he, when partition was basically the news of partition was broken. What was this partition? Yeah, it was essentially the quote was, yeah, that my heart has been broken into two pieces. Yeah. So partition, there was an Indian independence movement that had started in the 1870s, 1880s. Against India. Against Great Britain's rule. Okay, right, okay, yeah. The independence movement was called the self-rule movement, translating in English. And the self-rule movement consisted of mostly men who were either Hindu or Muslim. And they got together and got along well. Their goals were the same. But as time went on, specifically the Muslim members of this political organization, all very learned men and some women too, but mostly men began thinking that Muslims needed their own homeland, that they did not have a place in a country that had an 80% Hindu majority, that they would be swallowed up. And there were also gonna be some acts of reprisal from the 400 years of Islamic domination of India between the years 1200 and 1600. And much of Indian culture was transformed during that timeframe, which I would probably argue continues to this day in large part. And their discomfort with being a minority. Muslims. Muslims being a minority, about 15 to 20% of the population. Yeah, or even less. I mean, there are Christians and Jews there too. There is still there. They were not gonna get a fair shake. And they lobbied heavily to the British government as it appeared by the end of the Second World War that Great Britain was now going to release. Absolutely, yeah. It was gonna, because they simply didn't have the manpower or woman power to preside over 400 million people in South Asia when people didn't have basic infrastructure in Britain because of the German bombing of cities there. They simply didn't have the resources or the labor power. At that point, they were being lobbied heavily by the Islamic contingent in this independence movement to divide the country and give us our own homeland from which Pakistan was created. Okay, but wait a minute, let's talk. So the British granted that? Essentially. Why? They carved up the subcontinent. And is that really what the Indians, both Muslim and Hindu wanted? Hindus did not want that. Certain Muslims, and again, out of fear. But the Hindus did not. No, they wanted to keep a unified. And what was the relation between those two religions? Was it nasty and hostile and violent even? I mean, the history is not different than Yugoslavia, if anyone knows that. People lived together. However, there would be rioting and there were resentments over time because the culture and the country was changed during the 400 years of Islamic domination where there were a lot of forced conversions, society changed, women were made to be more modest in dress. The Muslim. Correct. Yeah, in line with a lot of the other modest aspects and a lot of culture, homosexuality was largely crowned upon, which was not the case before. By Muslims? By Muslims and then further exacerbated by Victorian Britain. But not by the Hindus. Not originally. I mean, there was also a movement that is not to completely go off the track here, but transgender people. But I saw that there was an article about that in the nation. So it wasn't until about 1840 that the British Penal Code that was administered in India specifically made a ban on homosexuality, as well as people that were transgender. And that ban was not lifted until about five years ago by the Supreme Court. OK, but so it's curious to me that there are partitions. There are partitions in the British Empire specifically. Yeah, so I mean, not to sound conspiratorial, but I'm going to give you the conspiratorial saying that. Look, all a conspiracy is an agreement to do something illegal. It happens all the time. So whether you look at Rwanda, which was administered by the French, the local populations view, educated populations view, is that they left us in a situation where we're going to be fighting with one another in perpetuity, and we're never going to get ahead. That happened in Rwanda. The seeds that were planted by the French in Rwanda between the Hutus and the Tutsis resulted in the genocide in the 1990s. OK, so I'm similarly in Britain with respect to British administration. And again, I'm giving you the conspiracy view, not saying that this is the gospel. But the idea was you're going to keep India, Pakistan, and East Pakistan, which later became Bangladesh, fighting with one another, which is the case for decades. And these countries are going to be permanently kept down because of the inordinate amount of defense expenses that they face, because the partition boundaries, whether it's Rwanda, whether it's other places in Africa and the Indian subcontinent, were unsustainable boundaries, which were going to lead to fighting and led to about a million people in the partition killing one another. OK, so if we could get that map, perhaps I'm not certain of here if you hear me. But so the partition was what? What became what? So it was the partition. Yeah, so if it were a matter of creating an India and Pakistan, two states, and then also Burma, the Far East. Yeah, so Burma becomes a state then, too. That's correct. About two years later, after India and Pakistan achieved their independence in 1947, Burma, Myanmar now, achieved its independence, all originally part of this wide Indian subcontinent at Sri Lanka, the island to the south of India. OK, and that's that. I knew about this first from you as well. I never knew that Burma was part of the Raj, I guess. Right, right. Until we read that book together, George Orwell's Burmese days, which was rat-treating that now, right? Oh, OK, OK. OK, so this partition, however, was quite violent. Quite violent. Were there forced population exchanges or what? There certainly were, Sandy. And I think that's what the violence, you know. Yeah, I mean, it seemed horrendous. I'm not certain why people don't know about it. Yeah, I mean, the violence was horrific. Why? Because people were moved. People were moved. People were forced to move. And people were given short periods of time. And again, you're talking about a country at that point that a subcontinent that had been largely rendered poor? By what? I remember this was an interesting question. So I mean, colonialism in general, whether it was with respect to the 13 colonies, or in Africa or in India, it was essentially, it was a vacuum cleaner sucking all the wealth out of these places. That was an important question that you raised before in my thoughts. That was was India devastatingly poor prior to the British conquest? So good point. So in 1600, India's world GDP in terms of its proportion of GDP in 1600, was estimated at 26% of the world's GDP. When the British left in 1947, it was reduced to 4%. With a population of 400 million people. OK, but this to me is an important question. Then maybe we'll go on. But many native or indigenous peoples argue that being taken over by an advanced economic system who might mean progress, like capitalism, like imperialism, actually made their lives poorer. That in fact, indigenous economies perhaps provide more sustainability than modern economies. Right, that's what kind of you're saying. Well, there's partly that. And then there's partly, again, whether we're talking about making Iraqis purchase exxon oil that is explored and taken out, drilled from Iraq, or it's about purchasing tailor-made clothing where the cotton is from India and then sent to Great Britain and then sent back. Right, I wish it was. Yeah, which was, and then it's sold at a premium. Significant added premium to poor people. And taking away their industries in the process. That's what they try to do in the 13 colonies. In the 13 colonies. Our founding fathers here were very aware, believe it or not, it's not something that we learned about in school. They were very well aware of what was happening in India and what the East India Company was doing. And it's not the main reason for our American revolution. Well, it's a big one, though. It is a big one. Amongst the intellectuals of the time, the Hamilton's, the Jefferson's, the Franklins, they were very astute and very knowledgeable about what was transpiring. Well, that was the age of the Enlightenment, right? Right, right. OK, so all right, getting back then to partition. Yeah. Violent, however, these new states emerge, correct? Right, right. And so I guess to get us up to date, what happened then to India? What did it remain for between 1947, say, and present, right? Yeah. And but it has increased in your mind in becoming a real regional power or what's the deal? Right, so I mean, the country was extremely poor, after the partition, independence, whatever you want to call it. There's one no region that's still contested, correct? Casual? Correct, correct. So the lines, so again, going back into partition, the way it was done, there was a plebiscite everywhere around the country, the subcontinent. Which means a vote. A vote, right. People were allowed to vote and vote which way they wanted to go. Did they want to become part of this new Pakistan? Or did they want to remain with India? And you had intense, intense lobbying efforts by local regional leaders, stay with us. No, come over, stay with us. So what you had was a development, and I'm taking Burma out of the picture right now, is not just a Pakistan on the west and India on the east, but there was Pakistan, then there was East Pakistan on the other side. But they're separated. Separate by an enormous Indian heartland in the middle. And then there were also some moves to take certain parts of India in the south that had large Muslim contingents, large Islamic populations, and also had that as part of Pakistan. It did not prevail, the southern part of it. So that remains in India. That remained in India. Again, heavy, heavy lobbying by Hindu leaders giving the local Muslim clerics and the population's assurances that they would be given full free religious rights to practice and in bribes the local leaders to get their local population to vote a certain way. And they remained that way. But on the east and the west coasts of the country, they both decided to form a new country called Pakistan, East and West Pakistan. Okay, so. So that has resulted in an impact on India today because the province known as Kashmir, they had a great deal of difficulty deciding. And that's where the fighting happened, where the population is majority Muslim, but they had a Hindu king who appealed to the British as well as to religious wise the Hindu leadership in India for assistance, for military assistance because he did not wanna become part of Pakistan. Okay, so Kashmir is disputed. Kashmir is disputed and now at this point, both countries, India and Pakistan for quite some time now have had nuclear weapons. So it's a flash point. Kashmir is a flash point. I know of so many people in the process. Okay, so. The country too. What about India today? Okay, it's led by a man named Modi. Right, so. Is he the prime minister? Yeah, so Modi is a Hindu. He is a Hindu and he belongs to a political party that I guess, I'm trying to use a bland, neutral language, but it appeals heavily to the populist sentiment of 80% of the population, 80% of the population is Hindu. And he tries, I mean to give people an idea of what it's sort of like is in the United States with I would say probably an 80% Christian population, maybe higher, making issues out of things and I'm using an analogy, the war on Christmas, telling 80% of the population that they're being attacked, they're being attacked, they're being attacked. So he's been kind of labeled in the Trump camp, correct? Yeah, yeah, however, after having been there on the ground, at the same time, this populism has also on the side note for people that are not really that interested in the polemics, there's been a tremendous amount of infrastructure development that he's helped and people credit him specifically his administration with respect to building roads, access to clean water, access to clean bathrooms, fixing up the airport so that they don't look like developing world airports anymore, they look like- Shiny new ones. Shiny new ones, making the trains work. So I mean, it can be looked at as dangerous, I mean, using the old Mussolini example, having the strongman, but he made the trains work on time. And there's a certain beauty to that for a portion of the population as well as the visitors. Oh, okay, everything's working okay. So it remains to be seen how- But is he, I mean, I think he's also been labeled in the West as, I guess the word, used to be fascism, although I don't know what that really means, especially as it's applied to India. Right. I guess nationalist, militarist. Nationalist most certainly. I mean, again, I'm comparing my memories from that I had in 1983 to the present. I don't remember seeing too many Indian flags in 1983. I don't even think I saw one at the airport. And Indian flags are everywhere. No, yeah. Everywhere. You have motto, modos, modos on walls and murals. Clean India, modern India, new India, incredible visit India, all these. So he's instilling, now again, you can certainly interpret it that is- Yeah, okay. Is that 1933 Germany or is it just, he's trying to instill pride in a very divided country that has 78 languages, 13 of which are official languages and the unspoken language of communication is English, a foreign language. Well, not, essentially it's almost not a foreign language anymore, right? Oh, no, no, foreign in terms of its origins. It's origin, yeah, yeah. Okay, so tell us then, you were there last in the 80s, is that what you said? I was there in 1983. Okay, which you hated, you said. Yeah, I mean, the infrastructure, the lack of a visible middle class was shocking, yeah, when you're coming from a country that prides in our middle class, unfortunately it's also shrinking here too. That's right, right. But what I noticed was, I would probably say 30 to 40% of the people were still quite poor, but there was a great deal of affluence and a very solid middle class. This time. This time, traveling domestically on planes, on first class trains, car ownership, which was largely reserved for the wealthy in that country in 1983, is something that the middle class can aspire to, having their own car. Okay, so you liked it better first of all, right? Well, how about the women? It was more comfortable. So the male-female relationships that I saw there in terms of how the two genders interact, women seemed a lot more independent. There were many more female business owners. There were women in commerce, women younger than the age of 40. Now, I'm not calling this progress, but from a standpoint of choice, I think it's progress. They were dressing the way they wanted to dress, which was Western, jeans, short skirts, heels. And if they wanted to for religious ceremonies, or cultural ceremonies, they wore traditional clothing, but it was something that was in large part relegated to special occasions where the clothing of the day, a fair number of older women were wearing what we would call comfortable Western clothing. We probably should, I would welcome any questions or comments from our audience if they are some. Otherwise, I did want to ask Kurt a couple of more of your impressions, including what is the situation with poverty that you saw, but also, is India kind of on the rise? What's going on in terms of global super-powered politics? What's going on? Yeah, so I think one of the points when you started out the conversation was India being a member of this loose confederacy called the BRICS, the RICS. Which is Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, which seems to be, as you said, a rather loose confederation of nations, which are really challenging the economic dominance of the West. Of the West, specifically the United States and the United Kingdom. Right, here you go, yeah, right. And one on each continent, which I find interesting. Right, yeah, there's a potential, right. With none in North America. None in North America, right, right. That's it, yeah. So the, now, two of the five members of BRICS are, certainly they have an adversarial, unfortunately, but they have an adversarial relationship being Indian-Chinese. So whether or not both nuclear powers and both have an adversarial relationship because there's- On the borders. On the borders. And the close relationship that China has with India's main adversary, military adversary, which is Pakistan. They've had a strong relationship for close to 60 years, China and Pakistan. So whether or not BRICS is really able to get off the ground and really, if it's able to replicate the unity that the European Union and the United States has, that's questionable because China and India are in this pack. But there's certainly a different point of view expressed on the ground in India that I found with respect to the war in Ukraine. Right, right. What was that? The conversations that I had with more educated people, a couple of people in my family was that, and I'm giving you an unfiltered comment, Ukraine is part of Russia. And so in a sense- End of sentence. Right, right, I'm sorry. So in a sense it was the same finding as our colleague Erickon Nero found in Africa that there's more favorability toward Russia than you might guess here, certainly. Certainly, certainly. And again, to give people a full picture in addition to this natural affinity that comes from Cold War alliances that people in India have towards Russia. Favorable. Favorable, yeah. The other part of it is that Russia has negotiated some fairly attractive petroleum oil. Deals. Deals with India to keep a loose group of countries as part of its oil market. So when I was in India, doing the conversion from their currency there, they're called rupees to US dollars and they use the metric system as opposed to the English common system that we use with respect to weights and measurements, trying to figure out how much a gallon of gas costs. So I was able to basically come to a conversion of about 550 a gallon, which in the United States that would probably lead to the change of political administration at the White House, but that was considered a good price in a country that's still more. And from what I understand before the Russians cut some of these sweet deals with the Indian government and Indian oil producers, the price of gasoline, as we call it, was closer to eight dollars a gallon there. Yeah, so I mean, I was given a couple of rides by some relatives and I was looking at the gas station pumps and all that and doing the conversion and thinking, boy, some of these new people that were just getting keys to cars in that country. Yeah, thinking, how would they pay eight dollars a gallon on incomes that are significantly lower? Nice photo op of three BRICS members. Which is? I'm not sure we have... No Putin's not, oh yes it is, yes, of course. We have Vladimir Putin from Russia, Modi in the middle and the Render Modi in the middle, the Xi Jinping of China. Well, again, like I said, nice photo op, but I don't know that the two guys on the right get along that well. It's a strange, yeah. Well, I don't know if Russia gets along with China either. Yeah. However, they've had their hostilities. But the thing that's so interesting to me, one of the reasons I think is my offices is here in this building called the African Association. The Association of Africans Living in Vermont is getting a different view on, for instance, the war in Ukraine because the colonized nations in Latin America, in Africa, and in India, and in Asia some really have a different view about Russia and China than what we do. Look, I mean, there's an allegation that, I mean, Pakistan, which was always firmly during the Cold War in the US. Yes, right. And the US used Pakistan as a launching base during the Soviet-Afghan War successfully, which may have led to the Soviet empire, basically. Falling apart. Bankrupt. Yeah, right. The prior prime minister of Pakistan, his name was Imran Khan, had some old cricket player who became prime minister of the country. There were allegations that when he, for the first time, warmed up to Putin and Russia, that the United States had something to do with his ouster. Of course. And he is no longer the prime minister. Yeah, that's not a surprise. Yeah, because they, you know, he did the unthinkable for Pakistan, which was solidly in the US camp for a long time. Since John Foster Dell has first visited Pakistan in the early 1950s during Eisenhower's administration, that the Pakistan and Russia don't have anything to do with one another. They don't have anything good to say about one another. When Prime Minister Khan of Pakistan entertained Putin coming to Islamabad, their capital, the next thing he knew, he was out of a job. Well, that happens everywhere. Yeah. If you think about it, any nation which appears to be leaning toward specifically Russia, not so much China, but Russia. Yeah. The United States always tries to overthrow and get regime change in those countries. Really, essentially, I think that's really probably what happened in Ukraine too. Yeah. In 2014, when the kind of the pro-Russian, Ukrainian president was chased out to be replaced by a president that was favorable to the EU, to NATO, and to the United States. I mean, this is part of the Cold War. But the other thing I find more and more interesting because it sort of has a lot transformed my thinking is that after World War II, when these colonial nations were seeking independence and seeking other modes of economy, other than dependence on the white European powers, Russia actually helped them. Yes. And so that's why they're not gonna be anti-Russia now. I don't think. I might be wrong. I guess I'm asking your opinion on that. But they seem to be... Yeah, Russia not only provided them economic assistance and military assistance, they also provided them with an economic model, which many countries... Yes, exactly. Exactly. And I use the term south. Yeah, the developing world. The developing world that it appeared to the leaders in those countries, the more populous leaders in those countries, that the system of capitalism that was espoused by Western Europe and the United States was not a feasible system for countries that had poverty levels that exceeded 50%. Yeah, right, right, right, right. And that trickle down theory. That's true, too. Yeah, trickle down theory of acquisition of wealth was simply not acceptable and was not quick enough in terms of developing, providing sustainable economic results for people. People needed food. People needed medical care, not notions about freedom and other types of more concepts, abstract concepts. And the system that Russia was offering was something that was a little bit more practical. And also appealing, yeah. And appealing, especially for countries that had excessive numbers. I'll try one other thing, and then maybe we should ask for questions before we wrap up. It was not appealing to those countries which had been colonized by the white European capitalist powers, the main ones, France, England, Holland to a certain extent, Portugal. Portugal, Belgium. Right, those countries had, according to those colonized countries, had been exploited. So they're not gonna turn to them, those countries for assistance as they gain independence. Not without a great assault, yeah. In terms of the advice that they put on. So their view is enormously different, I suppose, than the views of the West. And honestly, because, regardless of our disagreements with China about different things, China has made tremendous inroads in Africa. Exactly, also as Russia, too. Yeah, but China doesn't have a history of colonializing these powers. And so there's no negative racial baggage that China has. There's no slave trade, as you pointed out. There's no slave trade, there's no slave trade, and there's no real racial baggage that China has when they show up in Uganda to build roads. And Russia doesn't really either. And Russia did not either. They did not have colonies in the developing world where apartheid-type systems were implemented for a ruling class at a... So India is then on the rise, wouldn't you say? It appears that way. I think they have significant hurdles to overcome. Their expenditures in areas of defense are quite debilitating. Yeah, however, fortunately we are in a wealthy country. At this point, right? Yeah, but we are a rich country, if not the richest. And India is not. So having a large military defense budget of having to buy extremely sophisticated fighter planes and keeping the nuclear arsenal up to snuff is a huge cost. And it's often, it comes down to guns or butter. Yes, right, according to my economics college handbook. Right, whether or not you're gonna provide the population with certain social benefits, which are practically non-existent in India, or do you keep the country safe from actual land armies and or proxies through terrorist actions, you know, in quotes. However, it does seem to be, in your opinion, a power to watch on the global. If not for any other reason, the fact that the population is gonna exceed that of China's in two months from the date of this show. Okay, are there any questions or comments from our audience or are we gonna say good night for now, I guess? And I just want to announce what we are also doing next week for the Vermont Institute of Community and International Involvement, or Vicki. Next week, we will be interviewing and with an in-person hybrid audience, Jean Bergman, are you Jean Bergman, who is a city counselor in Burlington from Ward 2, who is going to speak about the resolution that's going to be placed on our town meeting ballot. That ballot item is, people are gonna be asked to approve whether there should be a citizen's oversight committee, some sort of a commission over the police, over the mayor, and over the police commission, which will have the power to fire a police chief and maybe fire individual police officers for their elections of duties. This is a citizen's commission. I don't exactly know how that citizen's commission would be elected or appointed. However, it is a very important ballot item. We will be interviewing one of his chief proponents next week, counselor Bergman. And I'm hoping to have both an in-person audience here at AALB at 20 Allen Street on the third floor and also join us on Zoom. On the 15th, we will have the opponent of that same resolution, city counselor Ben Traverse and he will be here to speak against it. So join us either in person on Zoom. I thank Kurt Mada for being with us tonight to talk about this very important to me anyway, different India that is emerging in the current years. So thanks, Kurt, and thanks. Thank you, Sandra. Thank you, Eric Añero for all his technological skills and putting this forward. We'll see you in a week or so. Thank you.