 It is the faculty in the history department of Punjab University, I would list his academic credentials because they are quite vast and wide, he is on various advisory panel, he has done a lot of academic work papers, publications and things like that, he likes writing the texts to reach out to common audience also, not just to an academic audience and he has been on the editorial board of textbooks, history textbooks, I wish I had those history textbooks when I was young because the kind of history textbooks that we experienced when I was young was quite unfortunate, we discovered in months when I was on a walk and I discovered a young man that I had seen before and he turned out to be in my CS 101 class here and so one of his sons is in the computer science department here, second year now and I would like to welcome Mitha Rajivlotshan also who is secretary of the urban development department, so he moved in Mandalay Mahalpa, so without much ado I will let him introduce himself and his topic to us, the brief that we kind of gave him that everybody is making this big nuha about make in India and things like that, it would be nice to hear from a historian their own perspective on make in India, what did make in India mean throughout the ages and what does it mean to make in India, just because Modi government says we must make in India, it doesn't mean that tomorrow we will start making everything in India, it needs much more than that, it needs an enabling infrastructure, it needs an enabling quality, it needs administration, bureaucracy which can actually support all these activities, so if you go to Europe for instance you will see how much of a role, a proactive role the government is playing in kind of making innovations happen and bringing innovations to market, so make in India not just the question of saying that hey guy why not make in India, I will give you tax breaks, that is not enough, we need to create that kind of resource which can make in India from ground up, from the kind of exporter they have at school, college, upwards and then you create a very enabling kind of environment, so what has been the context for making in India previously in the past and what has changed over a period of time, so I thought that Professor Rajeev Lochand is a great guy to kind of give us a perspective on these things, now perhaps the guys at the back might want to come and come in, these six are free, they might try, how come they have been closer, I leave the floor to you sir. It's very nice of you to be here, very kind of Kavi Arya to invite me once again to address this kind of a young gathering, young engineers, I look forward to talking to engineers partly because of all the academic disciplines that I interact with, engineers are the only ones who actually seem to be doing something, chai wo padhai ke baare we ho, chai wo madhvarshiya karne ke baare we ho, you say Hamara University, it's got two engineering colleges associated and we all live on the same small campus and in that kind of a situation we can see the difference between students who are taking up engineering, students who are taking up sciences, laws, medicine and social sciences, humanities, cultural difference of type, so I look forward to having an interaction with engineers. This particular set of presentations, they're going to be a series of presentations, what I thought was, what I would do is this, I'll start off with a very general statement on rooting the Make in India project in Indian society and culture. After all, it's not possible for us to not root something here, think about the tremendous development that we have had in the IT industry, all of a sudden everything started growing and everything started happening very fast and when people started looking for explanations, kyun yeh aisa ho raha hai, to two explanations seem to be coming out, one was that this was an industry which was unregulated by the government, so if the government was not interfering with it, it would grow, but the second big thing was that this was a very bramanical industry, haath gande karne nahi parthe, kursi pe bad jao, demag ka istimal karte raho, observe karte raho and that was quite sufficient. Now, this kind of a thing where people's responses are going to be rooted in their society, culture, the society and culture flows through you. So what I thought was that we could start off by first talking about this general background, root the make in India idea within the culture and society of India in the hope that we may be able to find some ways out. Now, surely had we had answers ke hame aage kaise kadam bahane hai, kya karna hai, fir toh koi savali nahi tha, it is because this is an open-ended kind of a discussion, hence the importance of everyone joining in, everyone thinking about it, everyone making their suggestions and it's when these million suggestions come in, we keep our fingers crossed and hope ke kuch na kuch, something might click and something might change for the rest of us, make India a different country from what it already is. So it is with that background that I want to make this small presentation before you, it's a very small presentation today. There's not much information in it, so we'll keep it open-ended, please stop me wherever you feel like stopping me, ask questions wherever you want to ask questions. The various layers that go into the grand project of make in India, the absolutely basic layer is the layer of the nation, how to make a nation. This was a project which has been going on for the last, at least in a documented form for at least 100 years now. Is this project substantially complete? What happens to this project? What are the ups and downs in it? What are the kind of obstructions that come in? What are the kind of concerns that people express? How would you bring people together and ensure that no one feels left out, no one feels upset? Remember our politicians when they made those very corny statements, Indira Gandhi at one time made a statement, Garibi Hatau, everyone knows Garibi as a hatane sani hati, but the phrase Garibi Hatau clicked so well that it worked for Indira Gandhi and the Congress Party for the next 25 years. Modi came in and Modi is someone whom you people have experienced. You've seen his election campaign, you've seen the manner in which the government has functioned and Modi has been focusing on these corny statements and quite a few of them seem to click, people respond positively to them just as there's a whole bunch of people who respond negatively to them. You respond positively, you respond negatively, the basic thing is the audience has taken cognizance of what was being said is now actively interacting with that idea. So that is one basic idea, the idea of make a nation, make a citizen, making a nation is not sufficient. You need to have a citizen also, a citizen who thinks that the citizen has a connect with the nation. If there's a no connection between the citizen and the nation, the nation will not function. If the citizen exists but the nation doesn't exist, then also this dyad will not function. So you need both. Sati Sati, you need an economy, making an economy. How does one go about creating an economy which enables the citizen and the nation to move forward? Make a society that is productive, having an economy that is big, Bombay economy is massive, the Delhi economy is massive, but is it also productive? I really don't know. The Punjab economy is not massive, but is the Punjab economy productive? With due respect to the Orta Punjab people, Punjab kahini odhra, zameen pe khada hua hai. I am not a Punjabi, I come from Madhya Pradesh. I've been in Punjab 30 years. The one active, aggressive, constructive, meaningful state that I've seen in this country is Punjab. And now that I've been doing the history of 20th century Punjab very closely, I'm discovering how they have moved forward. One step after the other after the other. With all the Jagda Fassad that is going on in Punjab, they seem to be moving forward. Hopefully that book is going to be finished by the end of this year on Punjab. But an article is coming out in September in the Economic and Political Weekly on Governance in Punjab. All this is part of translating. Now this is a specific statement concerning this particular presentation. Translating individual achievements into collective achievements. My proposition is this, that in India you have a large number of very good people with great achievements. Individually Indians end up doing quite a lot of great things. It is when you put the Indians together collectively that they seem to falter, that there seems to be some kind of a problem coming up. Skills we have always had. If you think that making India is about skilling India, sorry to say we don't need skills. We already have the skills. Or if we don't have the skills, we know how to get those skills. And if we are not getting those skills, we are not getting those skills because we have decided that we don't want those skills. If you want to put the electricity on and we swear on that one day that we will not put an insulator. Then make me read a million that when you put the electricity on, then put an insulator on top. Because I have put that unknown swear on, I am not going to put any insulator on it. If it results in a fire in a 100-year-old building and 5000 people lose their livelihood, that's perfectly alright by me. Now that is the kind of thing which exists in India today. A man has the skills, knows how to obtain the skills. But the main thing is these skills per se are of very little value unless we somehow are able to root them in a knowledge society. Unless we are somehow able to ensure that these skills generate meta-knowledge, knowledge out of which more knowledge is generated. Knowledge per se is not sufficient. Knowledge has to be leveraged to a point where it starts helping the society generate new knowledge for itself. And that is something on which we have been lacking till now. As we proceed in the course of these lectures, we will pick up small bits and pieces of all these things and carry them forward. Today we recall some very, very basic points about what Indians are and what Indians have done. As I said earlier, India is a country which is characterized by extremely superior individual achievement. This is a picture of a young man, he is Rajendra Bisht, left-in-hand Rajendra Bisht, who won the sword of honour at the IMA yesterday. He is featured in all the newspapers today, in the Aplogat Bar-Partiv-Archkal. So you would have seen this particular picture. This is General Dalveer Singh Suhaag, he is the Chief of the Indian Army. This is a chemical engineer, Raghunand Anand Mashelkar. Till very recently, he was the head of the biggest science organization in the country. He was the man who determined what science policy in India would be. This is Sukhdev Thorat, he is an economist. He still heads a number of very important bodies in the country, knowledge generation bodies. He is a very powerful man in contemporary times. There is something very common about all these people. This young man, he is the son of the unit cook. He is the son of the unit cook. He has joined the IMA and he has demonstrated superior achievement in everything that you could possibly ask in an IMA candidate. Though one in the IMA said, he is part of the team, he is part of the group, he is competed against the best that could come up. And he has demonstrated that he is superior to the best. And he is able to do that because the system in which he is living, that system is only asking for how good are you. These are the parameters on which your performance is going to be evaluated. Are you able to come up and top these parameters? And this young man has said, yes, I can. This fellow, he is the son of a JCO, Sipahi Ka Beta. He has ended up being the chief of the Army staff. He is one of the top notch commandos in India. The previous commando that we had top notch was General V K Singh. He has demonstrated what Lieutenant Bist might demonstrate in the next 25, 30 years. That high performance is not just about performing once. High performance is about performing again and again and again. And coming up with ideas which are going to determine the strategic thinking for this nation. Make in India is not something which the politicians have told us. Make in India is something which the military tanks have told us. The military tanks have told us, if you don't start making in India, if you don't start creating something unique in India, something strong in India, the nation is going to be weak. So when a hyper nationalist government comes in, the hyper nationalist government picks it up and says, okay, here we go full blast on this project. This is not the first time that militaries have responded like this to people. The American Army, the American military had made a statement, a formal policy statement in the 1950s, which is one of the most important policy statements in the realm of education in which they said the defense of America lies in its universities. If the Russians have been able to send the Sputnik up, the only way that Americans can match the Russians is by strengthening their universities and strengthening their skills. So this kind of lateral thinking coming from the army types. This, please remember, this is fairly common across the world. In India, it came as a consequence of these men. V.K. Singh, Dalbir Singh Sohaag. Before this, there was a son of J.C.O. General VP Malik. He is the son of all the soldiers who are leading your country and are handling your country's security. Raghunath Anantama Shailkar, chemical engineering from the Bombay Chemical Engineering Department. The scheme was a barony. They don't consider it a baron at home. That's what she did. Didn't stop the young man from going out, becoming one of the top-notch scientists of India. Didn't stop him from becoming one of the top-notch science administrators in India. If it had been one or two years, it would have been 11 years. Consistently demonstrating that it's possible for him to head an organization and take Indian science forward. Sukhdev Thorat, son of a cobbler. And these are stories of success, not today. Today, we hear a lot of stories of success coming up. We keep on hearing these stories. These are stories coming up to us from the 1950s and the 1960s. At a time when India was still supposed to be considerably Dakshadruci, considerably conservative, and not a very liberated society. The small thing is this. In India, it's not just people who come from socially well-off backgrounds who have been able to do well. In India, anyone and everyone has been able to do well. Go back and have a look at your industrialists and businessmen and people who are extraordinarily rich. And you will discover that the number of people who are extraordinarily rich, whose father was also rich, you can actually count them on the hands of one finger. These are people. Most people who are millionaires and billionaires in India are people who have become millionaires and billionaires out of their own effort. In the recent past, don't get too carried away by the political rhetoric of crony capitalism and corruption and stuff like that. That is part of the game. You use any skill, any trick that is available for you to move forward. So why should you create a society in which you need these negative skills? How to bribe a tesildar? How to bribe a sarkari officer? Why have you created a system in which you need to learn this kind of a skill? So despite all the negativities and all the obstructions that have been in our country, these are people who have done rather well for themselves. Here is just a stray piece of information for you about the amount of gold that India has. These are figures coming from the World Gold Council, which is the tax body of handling gold in the world. They keep track of all such information. America has 8133 tons of gold, official gold holding. India has 557 tons of official gold holdings. In 2014, the demand for gold from India was one fourth of the demand that comes from the rest of the world. One fourth of the total world demand is coming from India for this precious metal, 842 tons. The total holdings of gold in private hands in India which was calculated in 2009, 15,000 tons. This is definitely not a country which is poor. People may be poor, individuals may be poor. But the country has no shortage of money. And if you think that the country has no shortage of money, look at all this tremendous start-up funding that is happening. This funding would not happen unless there was someone with surplus money. You come up, you say that I've got an idea and someone says okay, I've got the money for it. They're sitting on pots of money. And if your country does not provide for an opportunity to invest, they're going to take the money to Brazil. They're going to take the money to Ireland. They're going to take it to France. They're going to take it to England. They're going to take it to America. They're going to take it to Korea, which is what all your big companies have done. India has no shortage of individual skills. India has no shortage of capital. What India does have is a tremendous shortage of ability to use knowledge. This is the cartoonist's making fun of both Hanumanji and saying something positive about aims. But the thing is this, such organizations like AIMS in the end, the country has been able to produce only one. If it becomes a little more liberal, then maybe two. If it becomes a little more liberal, then maybe three. Now this is bad. It can't be one, two or three. There have to be at least 20 AIMS-like organizations in India. Not colleges which are called AIMS, which is what the previous government did, but colleges which actually perform like AIMS, where you can send Hanumanji and say, whatever disease it is, it can make a dead person alive. When I look back at all this, to me what occurs is that there was a key turning point in the history of our nation. That key turning point in the history of our nation seems to have impacted our thinking, the responses of this country, the responses of this state in various ways. And that perhaps was the partition of the country. The partition of the country that happened, that essentially disrupted the social ecosystem. It was not colonialism which did the disruption. It was not the ungrange which did it. It was the partition which did it. As we shall see in greater detail later, we'll talk about the ungrange period and see what did the ungrange people do. They created a lot of obstructions before us. But there were obstructions. There's a difference between having an obstruction and simply being like having your neck ringed. In 1947, it was as if it was the head of the Kumbh Bihar, which was done with the Indian society. And that seems to keep on hurting the society in a wide variety of ways. Around the same time that India was looking for independence and going to become independence in a very ghastly fashion, Jawaharlal Nehru was putting his mind to the idea about what is India? How can you make Indians work together? How can you have Indians together? And Jawaharlal Nehru came up with this grand idea which became one of the staples of all standard knowledge about India, the grand idea of unity and diversity. He writes about unity and diversity in the discovery of India. It's just a phrase. There's nothing more to it. But it's a phrase which captures the imagination of everyone because they can immediately see that this is precisely what India is. Everyone is different. Everyone comes from a different social background, different cultural background, different way of behavior, different way of thinking. And yet there is some kind of unity. What this unity is, no one seems to know. Nehru wanted to emphasize unity since the British had been emphasizing this unity among Indians in a big way. The British were emphasizing the disunity of Indians to the extent of saying that they did not exist in Indian nation. So if India did not exist as a nation then there was no point in having a national movement, there was no point in asking for freedom, there was no point in asking for independence. What's the point of having existed in the first place? That was the baseline for the modern world to be a nation, to be a nation which started from the borders of Afghanistan, Peshawar, Rawalpindi went down to Kanyakumari on this border from Burma, coming down to Kutch, Karachi. This was the big nation that everyone was looking for. There were some people who still suspected that we are not yet fully formed. Within the Congress there would be people, within the national movement there were people who kept on saying, India is a nation in the making. We need to work forward and make India into a nation. India is not a nation, India is separate entities, they need to be put together, the nation needs to be formed. And then of course the question is how do you form a nation? No one knows how to form a nation, no one has ever created a nation. So Mabla was the one who was left behind. For about 30-40 years I was also very confident in unity in diversity. Where as a professional historian I started looking at it in a professional way. And I said okay, this big question about unity in diversity of India. Now let me check out which are the countries of the world which are not diverse. Let's ask a different question. Let's not ask about which countries are united. Let's ask what are the diversities in countries? And suddenly it occurred to me there is a diversity in every village in the world. Wherever you have three people there is diversity. Two people you can say this is a couple, but the moment you add a third fellow it's diverse. And this diversity goes to the extent that the Canadians have been voting every 10 years or so should Canada remain united? But the Canadians don't say this is threatening to Canada. All that this is that if the francophones want to go out that's perfectly alright. The Spanish have a problem of terrorism because there's a bunch of people who say we want a separate nation for ourselves. The French have a province which says we want independence from France. The Germans have a province which says we want independence. The Turks have three provinces which want independence. The Russians, the USSR broke up in front of our eyes. So we know that that unity which the USSR demonstrated to the world did not exist. The Americans seem to be united, especially united in their hatred for communism, hatred for the USSR, hatred for the rest of the world, desire to make money, singular minded behavior of the Americans. So then I looked at the Americans a bit close and it turned out no, no, no, no, no, no. The Americans had even more problems that we ever had in India. The civil war about which we have heard, the civil war happened because there came a president who did not have much of an experience of being a politician. He was a naive fellow. Like when you go into American history you discover that Abraham Lincoln when he contests for presidency he's completely naive. He knows very little about politics. It is because he knows very little about politics that he makes those weird statements. Slaves liberate. You can't ask for a division of America. Everyone has the right to break away from America. Every 15 years in America there would be some state which would, the state legislature would pass a resolution saying we break away from America. We don't want to be part of the USA anymore. And that was just about alright. You want to break away? Fair enough. No one has heard you out too much. In 1812 the British attacked America. America has been independent since 1776. So 1812 quite a lot of time has elapsed. The British attack America and of all the states of America, 6th sea that is close to half the states of America. They say we support the British. We don't want the United States anymore. We want to go back to the British. That is the episode in which the British forces come down, occupy Washington, burn the White House. This new White House that we see was constructed after the war with Britain. The reason why those 6 states did not break away actually had nothing to do with politics. Imagine here is the Congress sitting in Washington planning to attack the British in the north. Canada has not been formed yet. These 6 states have a separate meeting in New York. They pass a resolution saying that we will supply arms and ammunition to the British. We will supply men to the British. We will support the British in this war. We will attack the Americans. And then they pass this resolution. They gave it to a Gorshawar and asked the Gorshawar to go to Washington or they came to the meeting. The horse died in the middle. The horse ran at a high speed. The horse died. So they had to wait for a second horse. That took some time. In the meanwhile, the American Congress has met and already declared war on against the British and the war takes place. So once the war has started, these 6 guys say fair enough. We won't participate in the war. In America, the division between people is to that extent. And then when Abraham Lincoln wins America, becomes the president, the same set of states but now 6 more have been added to it. 13 states say we don't want this person as president. You must have come across these phrases. Modi, your prime minister. Manmohan Singh, my prime minister. Sorry, sorry. Prime minister, if you have heard it once, then it's your turn. But people in positions of responsibility have been publicly known to make these statements. Your prime minister, your president, when Abraham Lincoln is elected as the president, these 13 states say they don't accept Abraham Lincoln as the president because he supports abolition of slavery. And on that point, they sit down and this time they pass a much more serious resolution to break away from America. Abraham Lincoln says, remember I told you doesn't have much experience of politics. He said, how can you pass such a resolution? You pass such a resolution, I'll send my army against you. The American army goes against South Carolina. The civil war starts. And as the civil war proceeds, the Americans, Congress passes a law which says no state has the right to secede from the United States. The law debarring people from breaking away is passed as late as that. When I liked Mr. Nehru's speech, I felt that he pushed us. He should have told us all this background about diversity. Countries, societies, people have routinely and regularly lived in diversity. Once in a while, in fact only once in the case of the US, did they say this diversity is going to result in a war between us. But most of the time they've simply said, fair enough everyone will live together. There's no problem. India is the only country in which we go on making such a hoohah about we have got unity in diversity. What unity in diversity? We presume we have to have unity. We presume that we have to have diversity. So why are we so upset about this whole idea? And why do we keep on, just say, mental problem hoohyao deshko? Constantly insisting, we are united. We are united. We are united. Hey Baba, you are united. Why are you insisting that you are united? You are part of a single whole. The rest of the world thinks that you are a single whole. You are the only one who keeps on saying you are different. And much of the reason for that is the British. The manner in which they interpreted India for us. This is a small table showing how the British wanted India to sit down and when India was making a constitution for herself. In this constitution, the principle was that every voice within the country should be heard. So how did they define voice? Who should be the every voice? Christians? They should have separate representation. Dalits? Doctors? Government officers? Hindus? Industrialists? Giants? Lawyers? Parsis? Teachers? Traders? Tribals? Sikho kesme representation, Nimila. Because the Sikhs said we don't want to participate in this kind of a nonsense exercise which everyone is being identified by their caste, class, culture, profession, etc. We presume this is the Akali Dal making a statement. Master Thara Singh. We presume the Sikhs say that we are part of India. Everyone is part of India and you do not need to sit down and make Indians divide up Indians in this particular fashion. When Master Thara Singh makes this statement, every other Sikh leader, whether they be in the Congress Party, whether they be in the Congress Party, they also support the Akali Dal and they say yes, this is a sensible thing to do. You cannot have divisions like this within the country. However, later on by April, the Sikhs also fall in line and they participate. Babasaheb Ambedkar who has not been able to participate for a variety of reasons, Babasaheb Ambedkar is especially brought into the Constituent Assembly and thus the Constituent Assembly of India is constituted in which each and every body of people is being represented. The thing is to notice this. The various ways, the various strategies being used to divide the people of India. This was one of the legacies which the British left us and we took it extremely seriously. Cast, creed, profession... The biggest division in India that people identified was about language. The British identified something like 3000 languages for India. The census of India currently identifies something like 300 languages for India. This is the list of 300. Many of these languages you may not even have heard about them. There is a language called Kannada. There is one language called Konicha, Kherwari, Kheeragan. Small bits of people talking to these languages. One day someone sat down and did an analysis of the British census reports. Indians speak 3000 operational languages. So how many speakers to these languages turned out that there were also a handful of languages which were spoken by one person. Who do you talk to? If you have a language which is being spoken by one person, is this even a language? Or what kind of criteria to use it to define it as a language? There is a whole lot of languages which were spoken by less than 20 people. Less than 20 people means this is a bunch of people which is less than an extended family. And yet it was presumed that each of these languages should be given equal representation in the various decision making processes that the country is going to have. When there is something, someone who is in an overwhelming position of power with the EU, people have a tendency, people across the world have a tendency to accept those norms, ideas, whatever is being done. In the case of India, it was not just the British and the colonial, it was also the language of the British and the colonial which we adopted. And soon after we became independent, we started saying that we don't want to follow this language. English should be removed. Intense debates took place in the Constituent Assembly. Equally intense debates took place in the Rajasabha and the Lok Sabha and we should not use the English language. And yet time after time it turned out that the English language was the only one which we could actually use across the country without raising hackles. We can speak Hindi people will understand across the country most of the time. We can speak Marathi and most people will understand across the country most of the time. We can speak Punjabi and most people will understand the language most of the time. And the only problem is that all that will also raise a tremendous amount of hackles everywhere. The only language which will not raise hackles till today is the English language. Why this happens? That's a different story altogether. The thing is we had at some point which seemed that we had accepted and adopted. We had internalized the definition about ourselves which the English had provided us. We had presumed that that is what we were. Were we really that? That is an open question and we shall talk about it later. Now all the ungrateful people were not saying bad things about India. There were some guys who were saying good things also. This is a statement which Mark Twain makes. Mark Twain has come on a visit to India. He has toured India extensively and he says, So far as I am able to judge, nothing has been left undone either by man or nature to make India the most extraordinary country that the sun visits on his rounds. Nothing seems to have been forgotten. Nothing overlooked. This is a statement which comes in 1899. This is a statement which is published in the newspapers, is written about in books. So this is not a private statement. This is a very public statement. So these statements are also in front of us. We have ignored these statements. The other negative statements were considered by the entire society. The whole society had decided that they will accept only that. Then we became independent and as we became independent everyone else decided that we also want to become independent. The independence movements within the country took a while to grow, to mature, to become articulate. But once they did become articulate, one of the first independence movement that the country faced was that of Nagaland. Formation of an independent Nagaland. Formation of an independent Nagaland also resulted in a war which went on for almost three decades. A proper war in which three divisions of the Indian army were being used. The Naga people were being targeted. Some fairly, some unfairly. We don't know what was happening in this war. But as a result of this war, the government of India came up with a new set of laws which is known as the AFSPA. It said that the Indian army has the right to shoot Indian civilians. Nowhere in the civilized world is the national army allowed to shoot its own citizens. When the American army shot one of the terrorist supporters in Syria, cases were lodged against the American army in America. Saying, how did you shoot an American? The government said, but the guy was a terrorist. They said, no, no, no, no, no. He was a terrorist means he should be tried in the law courts. You guys don't have the right to kill him. In India in contrast, we had people demanding independence right in the beginning. While the Nagas were busy demanding independence for themselves, came the Assamese who wanted independence for themselves. Separate flags, separate passports, separate currencies, separate taxation system. They set it up all. These are the criteria for being a sovereign nation. The Nagas, the Assamias, they set up sovereign nations for themselves or at least they claimed it and they followed all the basic rules of being a sovereign nation. At some point, the Sikhs decided, asi swatantra, they became independent. The Kalistan movement came up and the Kalistan movement spread rapidly and influenced the rest of the country. The Nagas and the Assamias were not influencing everyone. The Kalistan movement was influencing the entire country. And yet, each of them, one after the other, remember we are talking about a country which does not have a very strong army for suppression. And you forget the killer instincts of the army and the greatness of the Indian army. The Indian army simply does not have the wherewithal to suppress people. Despite having a police force which is reasonably ineffective, despite having an administration which does not do much administration, despite having a state which does not have adequate coercive power, if you want to run an independent movement, if you want to fight against the government, the government does not have the strength to easily suppress you. And yet, each one of them, one after the other, came back and joined the mainstream. Today, there are at least four MLAs in Punjab who are part of the active part of the Kalistan movement. Nagaland, there was a time when the entire government of Nagaland, the proper formal government of Nagaland was made up of former militants, people who had been participating in pitched battles against the Indian army. The same goes for Assam. The present government of Assam, the one which was defeated in the polls just a few weeks ago, each and every one of them had been part of this freedom struggle that the Assamese had. There was something going on which pushed people on the one side. They all said, yes, we want independence, we want to move away. But at the same time, there was something happening which pushed them back into the mainstream of the country. In the case of Nagaland, at least we have concrete evidence. The Nagar rebel leaders, after it became too hot for them in India, after the Chinese stopped helping them as much as they wanted to be helped, the Nagar leaders escaped to London and made London their base. In the 1980s, early 1990s, the discussions between the Nagar leaders and the government of India started. Now everyone should go back to normal and stop fighting with each other. In the course of those discussions, they gave out some public interviews. So those public interviews are available to us from the press. In one of the interviews, the Nagar leaders are asked by this journalist, look here, you people wanted an independent Nagaland. The Indian army was not too strong. It did not control you too much. You were in a terrain where it was possible for you to fight an effective guerrilla war against the army and throw it out. And then in 1962, the Chinese attacked Assam. The government of India shifted from Assam to Calcutta. Assam had effectively gone into the hands of the Chinese. The entire northeast was in the hands of the Chinese effectively. This was your golden chance to declare independence. You already were Chinese allies. You already were fighting a war with the help of Chinese weapons. You already had money coming from China. China had driven the government of India out of your territory. There was no Indian government 700 miles around you. So why did you not declare yourself to be independent? A rational, reasonable question to be asked from a rebel leader. And the rebel leader's answer was marvellous. He said, we did meet and discuss the issue of declaring independence. And then we decided we will remain within India and keep on opposing the government of India, rather than declare ourselves independent. The same statement was made by the people of Kalistaan. But there is a whole bunch of Kalistaans living in Punjab. They also say the same thing. We will remain in India, we will fight for our rights. At least for 7 years now, I am hoping the same would happen with the people of Kashmir. Not once have they said that they want independence from India. Once in a while they make a naraz about Pakistan-Pakistan. But they remain and create trouble for India within India. When there is a fight at home, it is the same. There is no need to leave the house. The thing is that we will be on your side. Until you start listening to me. The problem is, what is my problem? What is it that you really want? These are big movements. They vanished about 20 years ago. We haven't had a big political movement in 20 years. Your generation came up at a time when India had become peaceful. And India had become prosperous. So you haven't experienced any of this. And yet, when Kanhaiya came up and said, We want freedom across campuses. Across the campuses of India, people got up and said, He is speaking very well. He spoke so well. The question was, what freedom do we want? So he sat down and explained, We want freedom from casteism, freedom from regionalism. Then he made all those nice statements which a good Indian citizen is supposed to be making. The point is this. That the phrase, Just like the phrase, Just like those numerous catchphrases that Narendra Modi is dishing out to us. They catch people's fancy. So did the phrase, It caught our fancy. And we decided that this was a very nice thing to happen. Now, surely as a sentient being, It is important for us to understand, Why is this being said? What is being said? Because remember, you are not part of the Hypo-Loi. If you have statistical analysis, Who you are in this country, Where do you stand in this country? You will discover that you are in the top, So such a small sliver of existence, That you guys can only be deemed to be the serious elites of this society. You are some of the best that India has produced. You cannot be part of that group which goes in the Dharna and says, Azadhi, Azadhi, or Hai Hai Zindabad. Remember in any political movement, The people who say Zindabad-Murdabad, And the people who explain, What is Zindabad-Murdabad for? So when you are participating in public activities, You are the set of people who are thinkers, Who are thinking, You cannot be cannon fodder. Let's put it this way. The social elite has never been cannon fodder ever. The Azadhi thing in India, however, Is a very, very serious matter. I may not know what Kanhaiya is saying when he says, Azadhi chahiye, You may not know what he means when Azadhi chahiye, But in India, someone or the other has been saying, Azadhi chahiye for a very long time. One day I sat down and I made this table, And I am sharing this particular table with you. India was born out of an intense national movement, About that there is no doubt. Maybe that is what provided as the base paradigm For demanding independence and freedom for all of us. Once that was decided that there is a national movement, It is important. After that, everyone had their own definition of What a national movement would be, What independence would be, What freedom would be, What broad movements would be, And this is a broad list. You guys have done your history in your up till class 10th. You are familiar with this bit of history at least. 1905 Swadeshi movement chalu vata. Some historians say, People say 1905 is a national movement chalu vata. So if you count it from 1905, The 1905 to 1947, 42 years chala national movement. Some guys say that the national movement started in 1857, With the mutiny of 1857. So if you count it, 1857 is your baseline, Then the national movement lasted 90 years. Some people say that the national movement started With the conquest of Nagpur. When the Bhosle of Nagpur lost the war in 1818. This is the time which is known as the third Maratha war, The establishment of English paramounts in India, And the establishment of basic opposition to the British in India. So that is 1818. Some people say that Actually our freedom was taken when the Muslims came here. So if the Muslims came here, The freedom was taken. You count that. That puts the Dasta and the struggle for freedom to 1100. And from 1100 to 1947, It lasted 847 years. If you talk about caste, That caste is the big oppressive thing, And it's independence from caste that we want. In that case, the dominance of Brahmanwad. For the last 20 years at least, The idea that this nation is oppressed by the Brahmins Has been doing the rounds. So if you think about oppression of Brahmanwad, Then it comes to at least 2396 years. Approximately the time when Gautam Buddha comes into existence And becomes popular. That's when the first opposition to Brahmanwad comes in now. And of course there is Faiz Ahmad Faiz and other radical people Who say that they still haven't got freedom. We are still very oppressed people. Our mind is still oppressed. Someone is waking up the sleeping mind. This is how Faiz Ahmad Faiz writes in his poetry. The radical people think very well of all such ideas. So we are still free. Whatever the basic thing is, Our freedom is a big thing. Independence from something or the other is a very big thing. We may not know what is it that we want, But we definitely know that we are stuck in a hole And we really don't want to remain in this hole for too long. In the last 20 years, All this negativity about being suppressed, oppressed, Not being able to do enough, All this negativity got translated somehow into great creativity. The two areas where we saw a lot of creativity And individual, not just individual creativity, But also collective creativity Was the medical industry and the IT industry. Both seem to have grown dramatically all of a sudden And both seemed to be producing results which were The best in the world. In the medical industry, They generated world class medical facilities at one tenth the rate. And they are still very competitive. In the IT industry, They involved thousands of people, Invested millions of rupees And were able to generate a tremendous amount of creativity, Wealth, value for society. And this happened to such an extent That people who joined both these industries, The medical industry and the IT industry, They turned back and told the rest of the society, You people don't know how to work. Because the rest of the society was standing wherever it was And they turned back and they said, You don't know how to work to the extent That in the IT industry, When the communists went and said, Let's have a worker's movement, Let's have a labour union. The people said, No, we don't want a labour union. It was not the owners of capital who said that We won't allow you a union. It was the workers who said, We don't want a union. Now, it's a little different in Madras Because the HCL, They fired a man and he went to court And the court has said that The HCL people can have a union of their own. But I don't know what will come out of that kind of a thing. The thing was this, At least on two occasions in the last 20 years, We have demonstrated that It's possible for us to go forward and do something new. But while we are doing this something new, While we are trying to bring all that diversity together, While we are trying to bring all those different kinds of people in one place, Is it possible for this country to become greater than what those individual people are? Individually, we are great. In terms of capital, we have no shortage in the society. If you think that the banks don't have capital, Look at Baba Ramdev, he has capital. Look, Baba Ramdev is a scamster, some people say. Okay, okay, so then look at Baba Ramvraksh Yadav. Heard about Ramvraksh Yadav? Now Baba Ramvraksh Yadav recently was shot dead by the police Or maybe he killed himself in a blast. This was the Mathura episode in which 3,000 odd people occupied this place. He was a break of Baba from a big Baba movement. And the administration says that he has something like 1,400 crore rupees worth of wealth. Baba Ramvraksh Yadav close to being illiterate. His followers are all villagers of UP and Bihar in Madhya Pradesh. And he has been able to gardener that much wealth. Baba Ramvraksh Yadav broke away from a larger movement called the Jai Gurudev movement. You must have seen the posters of the Jai Gurudev movement if you travel by train. When you travel by train, when you reach some of the stations, Jai Gurudev, Jai Baba Gurudev, Gayi ki Hathya Mathura, aesthetic statements, they have been written for the last 30-40 years now. The government estimates that he has got wealth worth 14,000 crore rupees. He is the leader of poor Kishans of India. The more organized people, the Baba of Bihar, the Baba of Sirsa, if you haven't seen the films made by the Baba of Sirsa or not heard his songs, I strongly recommend that you please go to YouTube and watch both the songs and the film. They are hits. Don't laugh. People liked it, they said it was good. Every point for today is simply this. There is no lack of capital in this society. Because if there was a lack of capital, then the Baba wouldn't have it. There is no lack of intellect. The problem is how to get the akal out, how to get the capital out, and how to put them together close to each other in a fashion, that it transforms this society. We are in a hole about that, there is no doubt. It takes us out of this hole and puts us at a point where we can start clapping about India being really great, rather than clapping about India's greatness simply because we think that we should be nationalist and therefore we are clapping. So for the moment, this is about all that I would like to share with you, if you have any responses. Why only the medical industry and the IT industry? That is your question. Why is it that this quest for independence, quest for doing something results in the sudden spurt of the IT industry and the medical industry? Two possible answers. But to these questions which are still questions in the making, it is not possible to give a firm answer. So just open thoughts that I am sharing. It is possible that the medical industry grows up because traditionally, India has been very strong in the medical field. Traditionally, pre-19th century, pre-modern times, we will talk about this in greater detail in one of the later lectures, how the medical industry is actually very powerful in India. When the Prime Minister made that statement about Ganesh Jigasir Kalamkar Kailagadhyatha and it was a sign of plastic surgery, etc. and the rest of the country laughed and said, what a joke this guy doesn't know his history and his science. Excuse me, the guys who were laughing, they were wrong. Plastic surgery of the nose in the year has been going on in India at least for 2000 years now, documented 2000 years. We have the instruments that were in use. We have the procedures that were in use. We have all that written down. Whatever medical industry India had traditionally before the Muslims came, once the Muslims came in, it got strengthened with yet another stream of knowledge. That was the Yunani. This remained very strong and powerful right up till the 19th early 20th century. Late 19th early 20th century, these traditional bits of knowledge for India, they simply faltered completely and lost all legitimacy because they could not deal with one special disease which came up. This disease was called Plague. Why the disease is spread and why the knowledge could not cope with this disease is something which is to do with the history of medicine of those times. The second disease which came up was cholera. We didn't know how to handle cholera. Later on in the 1990s when a bunch of scholars went in to study the history of medicine in India and Egypt, they discovered that plague and cholera are not diseases that you should be curing. Plague and cholera are diseases that you should prevent. India was very good at preventing both plague and cholera. So we didn't have a plague of plague and a plague of cholera in India through history and it happened all of a sudden in the 19th century because of some dramatic changes that had happened in society at that time. The manner in which people lived, the manner in which people were being bunched together, etc. The point is this, when in the 1970s, 80s, 90s the modernization became firm and in the 1990s all of a sudden it became possible for Indian medical industry to expand and reach out to patients from abroad, the basic knowledge, the basic systems were already in place and therefore it was easy for something to be leveraged up and create this new reality in which we can say that the medical industries are very successful industries. The IT industry, my suspicion is I have often on shared it with professors of computer science. They seem to concur with it at least tentatively. India is also a very bramanical country. Anything which is going to dirty my hands, make me do something physical, Indians don't like that. The IT industry is a very bramanical industry in that sense. That you really have to just sit back and you produce results. That's a tentative kind of a thing. But some people also say that the IT industry grew because there was a boost that it got. Indian engineering colleges are seriously bad. I mean, with due respect to everyone around here. When you look at the world's categorization, comparing with the world, these colleges are very bad colleges. The knowledge here is very old. And then all of a sudden the world somehow got scared that what will happen to our computers in Y2K? Everyone else had upgraded their knowledge and become very proficient in C++ and C++ and God knows what. Indians were knowledgeable in Fortran and whatever those primitive languages of those times were. The only technicians who were available to deal with your Y2K problem were Indians. They were available in great quantities and they could come together and work hard at it. So you had a transformation happening. And of course, once they've got together and started doing things, then they became some of the best in the world very quickly. So that would be the tentative answer to why these two industries. I think there is a less investment. So everyone can try and understand ideas. So it can grow. In fact, that would work out both for the medical industry also. The question is, the comment is that the IT industry requires less investment, less capital. That's extremely possible. That this is an industry where you can produce great results without the input of too much capital. If you have to make a lot of capital, you have to make a lot of capital. But not for the IT industry, not for a hospital. A productive economy is an economy which allows everyone to be doing things that they feel like doing. This is Marx's old statement from the 19th century. You want to become a great guitar player. This economy should enable you to become a great guitar player and have your livelihood as a guitar player. You want to become a mathematician. There should be a possibility for you to do that. You want to become a historian. There should be a possibility for you to do that. When as shifted to history, you have to become a historian as a value of a profession. All the people around me seem to have a slightly heart attack. They continue to have a heart attack even when I say, look, my savings are pretty good actually. They are much better than their savings anywhere else. They say, let me give you a small comment. At any point, people seem to believe that you cannot do things in India. A productive economy is one in which people stop being made like that. It's nothing to do with the amount of money that you have. It doesn't have to do anything with the amount of food that you have, or the places, the amount of space that you have for living. In Europe, if you go, you people are living in the United States, you discover that in Europe, a normal hotel is like that. They charge you 100 euros for living in the room of that hotel. So just by just that, you cannot come running there. The linen is better. The linen is better. The linen is better. Sir, it's a society which stops bothering about how will people live. It is taken for granted that everyone would be able to live comfortably and live well. That is the society in which we say it's a productive economy now. Textiles is a complicated story. I thought that I'll keep medicine, textile and metallurgy for one of the later lectures because it would require going into a lot of details. And the textile story, because it is so common in India, we've heard about all these are stories which we've read in school, or at least our parents have told us or grandparents have told us. We need to go into this story a little in greater detail to understand how the Indian textile industry actually challenged the European textile industry, not just the British textile industry, and came out tops as early as 1920. And this was despite the government creating every obstruction that a government can possibly create. Tax obstructions, technological obstructions, manpower obstructions, and yet the Indian textile industry flourished. So how did it flourish then? And why did it collapse all of a sudden in the 1970s and 80s? Those of you who come from Bombay, you would have seen how the collapse happened in a span of five years. Acha Bhala Industries are huge production units and they simply shut down in a span of five years. All of them. That actually is a story about what happened with social justice gone wrong. Too much of a search for social justice can result in a total disaster also. The Indian textile industry is an example of that. What would you predict as the industry best posed for the next revolution, which would be the one of the industries which are likely to grow like these two did in the last? These two are unique. At the textile industry too is. Now the textile industry is completely automated and it is yarn production-wise we are cops in the world. For having any other industry too, we now need a mindset change in society. The barriers that come to our thinking, those barriers need to be removed. The barriers to do with cost, barriers to do with religion, barriers to do with Brahmanabad. This Brahmanabad business is a serious problem. The Brahmanabad in India is rooted so deeply that in Indian society there is a problem if you say from the Dainimala Kursi or Bailala Kursi. I mean you guys are fresh into the economy so you have to experience these problems. Who will enter the doorway first? Who will sit down first? Who will sit on the right side and who will sit on the left side? The problem starts from this. These problems, hierarchical issues, is a military setup I can fully understand. Military is a professional diplomat trying on this kind of hierarchy. But when it starts happening in civil society, there is a problem coming. When everyone tries to make out the superior beliefs without necessarily having the skills of the superior, then we say that the society is a problem. When people say that we will kill our daughters because our daughter is married, this is why our priority is basically the country. People say that if you offer a task, there will be a problem. Sorry, sorry, sorry, it's not an other task problem anymore. The upper task is not killing anyone anymore. It's the Jaks who are killing their daughters. It's the lower task Rajputs and Gujarat who are killing their daughters. The lower task Rajputs and Jaks say Rajasthan who are killing their daughters. So why are they doing it? Because they say that killing your daughter in the name of honour is honour to the family. Now this is no way of getting honour to any day. And any society which assumes that this is the right way of bringing in honour, that society needs that and examined. And therefore the importance of telling the society that you are doing the wrong thing and you should not be doing this and please change your behaviour. In Punjab's side, in Chandigarh, we have seen of people where the upper task, she is following in love with a brahmin boy. She marries the brahmin boy and the sweeper-classed family goes and kills the daughter and the son-in-law. Saying that the girl has brought this honour to the family. Now this completely goes against whatever we presumed about past hierarchy. These are the mind-values which exist with us. They have to do with religion, they have to do with caste, they have to do with this notion of unity and pollution. And then there is the big notion which Mahatma Gandhi used to struggle with. How to make people realise that working with your hands is a good thing. Mahatma Gandhi's answer to this was and this answer came to him in 1819, when he joined the military. Mahatma Gandhi participated in the Zulu war and Mahatma Gandhi said that the problem with Indians is that Indians don't respect a person who is working with his hands. You will have to start respecting a person who works with his hands. You will have to start respecting the person who is trying the riksha and you will have to say that this riksha polar is as good as you or I and it's possible for us to sit on the same table and eat food. Wherever I go to Pakistan, one of the big things that I be told in Pakistan is this. We won't start at Khanal here, we wait for the cooks to join us, we will wait for the driver to join us, we will wait for the chakrasi to join us, we will wait for the bearer to join us and then there will be this huge plate in the middle, food will be deep down there and everything will be from there. You are not doing your own thing. Indians who live in Pakistan, they have a very very difficult time. They will have to eat the same plate, they will have to eat the same plate, they will have to eat the same plate, their mother and son eat the same plate. You will have to say that I am the character of this. In Pakistan, they don't even think about it. They just do it. And when one of our friends has indicated that in India people have a problem, of course India will have a problem. India will have to start thinking of other human beings as long as human beings. So there must be some main questions. Somehow Pakistan, what about you? Pakistan may get out of the company. They got out of this food business. But in this food business, the Punjab is also out of the company. In Punjab today, when you sit down, you sit down in a samdha that you just eat food with by anyone. Don't get too different by those video clips which some people have posted on the YouTube saying how fast it exists in Punjab. Fast exists in Punjab, no doubt about that. But this is not the authentic taste. In Punjab, if people eat food with everyone else, they have a separate taste. But you eat the food cooked by anyone, you eat food with anyone, there are no restrictions about that. So you have to move with that mindset change. And it was not Islam which said that you should be put together. It was the gurus of the sects who said that you should be put together. The gurus came up in the 16th century with this question that food has to be corrected, food cannot be a breaking point, and you cannot have a mess which is a separate. The Indian armies that they used to go out in the field, at least the paahid will have his own chura. At least the paahid will have his own denji. And in this chura, and in this denji, at least the paahid will have his own chura. The sects were the first bunch of people who said that this business of everyone keeping their own denji and their own chura is out. There will be one den, and in this den everyone will put whatever they have. Vegetables, rice, rice, whatever you put in it, you put in beef, and that's why we took the chura and put it in a bowl, and we put it in the chura. That was the sect. And the Sikh gurus insisted, but one after the other, that you cannot make this distinction of food. Community as a distinction, that was the sects doing. The Pakistani students were adopted. Because remember Pakistan is as fast student today as India is. The Pakistanis adopted it because Islam didn't practice. It's generally influenced by Sikhism. Remember almost 3 words of Pakistanis actually in Punjabi. And they had been living in the Punjabi. Because they didn't want a partition. Because they didn't want a partition. They wanted a partition. But the Pakistanis didn't want a partition. They came from the same religion and followed it. And when it comes to interacting with us, Indians, then it also makes for a better political statement. And you have these three Indians sitting with you and all of us are one of the balks that eat from the plate. That's why we eat from the plate. That's why we eat from the plate. That's why we eat from the plate. And when you eat from the plate, then it becomes a good statement for them. For them it becomes a news which really forces like Pakistan is a greater and a better country than India is. Class distinctions in India has nothing to do with religion. It has nothing to do with class. It has nothing to do with the region. Across the regions this class distinctions has been there. People said that the tribal communities don't have class. People said that the poor are not open. The moment they become rich and powerful as in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, as in some parts of the Northeast, they promptly adopt all the leptas of caste. The leptas of caste, the parameters of caste hierarchy in which you can show that you are a greater person than I am simply because the manner in which you drink water or the manner in which you eat your rice or the manner in which you break your chapati these small signs seem to be giving so much pleasure to Indians that you just have to give them pleasure to be treasured by such things. This is not something which we should eat directly. And the way out to my mind at least is what Gandhi used to say start making all Indians work with their hands. Ensure that there is dignity of labour. This is the place that Gandhi used to use again and again. Divinity of labour. The moment the dignity of labour comes in, chances are that people will start respecting those who work because in the past hierarchy essentially the person who is lowered down is the person who is working with his hands. So whether you are working on a factory floor, whether you are working in an office, whether you are working at work, the person who works with their hands is lowered down in social hierarchy. This will have to go. So what are the strategies by which we can ensure that this goes? That is something that we should be talking about later. Definition where you go to. Such a method of definition is both data generated. A nation is any people who identify themselves as distinct from everyone else and who create markers for their distinctiveness. This is the historically accurate, ideal type definition of what a nation is. Expand there is no. A nation is a world designed from birthplace, where you are born, you have a special love, it is presumed. This love is the one which brings people who were born in the same place together. I was born in Jabalpur Victoria Hospital, room number 203. If you are born in Jabalpur Victoria Hospital, you will not even know. I have no connection with anyone else. So obviously that first bit of this definition is incorrect. You have got a special love for the place that you are born. The second bit is you should have someone whom you can collectively oppress, which is a very good way of defying the nation. All of us can get together and say that now we are going to oppress someone else. That is what the register is. Karl Marx said that when Karl Marx said that there is a basic distinction between people who are capitalists and people who were workers and the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, they are at your hands, the bourgeoisie is constantly exploiting the workers, the workers are going to rebel and think about the change that Karl Marx wanted. So he was waiting for a revolution to happen and he said what happened was the Germans said all workers can join the army. There is no distinction. We will create structures by which the workers can be promoted and become officers and generals. So the workers constantly join the army. Many of them became officers and generals also. And they all fought with other workers. That is the argument we made this statement. So the nation is not about being in a particular class position either. The nation then just made me. And this is something which I felt about Benedict Anderson's period. He was studying Indonesia. And the same problem that India faces, Indonesia was facing. And Benedict Anderson's answer was, nation is something in the mind. Once you have the idea of living together, it really doesn't matter how different you are from each other. You will be able to live together. And that is what the examples that I gave about that despite being so intensely hostile to each other, we still continue to live together. And hence we should take it as a sign of being part of the same nation. It's a state of mind. The question is, before the incident, we were divided into small state units. And therefore we were not a nation. My interjection to that is equally different. Basically what I am saying is, if after paying to all the definitions of a nation, all the explanations of a nation, all the understandings of a nation, provided that political scientists, lawyers and sociologists, after I have rejected all of them and I speak to the historian's definition of a nation, saying that nation is a state of mind, then those guys, the state of mind was the same. They all worked together. They all worked in harmony. There was no distinction between them. They were the same. There is something that people make a statement about that India was culturally united. Because it really did not matter. This is something that we should take up a little. In data media, when we meet the next time, it really did not matter whether you landed at the... or whether you landed at Pochi, or whether you landed at Visakhapatna. If you were a foreigner, you landed at these places and you said that I had come to India. If you were an Indian, when you went from the Aamon Kingdom in the northeast, Dasam area, you went to Kach. You still said that you were in Mahalakrishnan. These are official reports written up. So we know that people have an idea of what this Shastracharya fellow comes up in South India and he says that you should be moving around and talking to each other. So he sets up rules which say that you have to do 4 Dhamas. So you are born in Tamil Nadu and then one day you walk your bags, take all your things with you, take a few horses and oxen and you start moving northward. First you go to Kach, Bukhra. Then you move towards Punjab. Then you climb up the mountains, go to Kashmir. You come down by the mountains to Kamra. Cross over to Uttarakhand. You visit all those other places. You go further east. Then you start coming down the coast via Puri and you say Kura Mahalakrishnan. You are not Mahalakrishnan. This makes your identity free. This identity cannot happen in a political identity. We never had a problem with a legal identity idea. But why did we not have a political problem? Why did we not have a legal problem? And why did we not have a personal problem? Because after all the diet from Tamil Nadu was moving to Kach, I don't think that we knew the language. People pick when you are traveling does not pick up languages. But beyond picking up languages, you cannot be accomplished, communicated in a new language. So many people will come to know that this is a language. Many people will come to know that this is a language and yet it takes every Mahalakrishnan. So why is this unity coming up? This is something that we should be going to greater detail using maps. Because for that you see maps. You need to imagine the thing in front of you so that you can understand why. Because otherwise what happens is we got stuck with this legalistic definition of a nation. Legalistic definition of a nation is India is from the Sartoro reach to Kanyakumari. So what happens with Aksai chain? What happens with the Aksai Sartoro reach? What is bigot India? The law says yes, bigot is India. Is the Karakoram highway India? The law says yes, the Karakoram highway is India. And yet we know that we have to do, but there are a million rupees to find there. If there is a complete Karakoram highway, India is India. So how can they do that? Just to record it. How a region is defined? This is something to do with geography. Nations are defined, decided by geography. Kings are endless. Politicians, economists, markets get endless in front of geography. Geography determines what a region is. I think that how particular person can decide that this particular region is my India. Oh, how can a person decide that this particular area. I mean let's take the example of the Aham kingdom in the Balochistam area. And say this is India. So how does one say that this is all India? How can I, as a traveler, presume that this is all India? The answer to that lies in the geography of India. We should go into the details too. Hang on to that question. The next slide that we need, not the next slide, the time after that. We should be talking about it in later detail. Because that is something that we need to be clear about. That is the crux of what an Indian case is. Yes. So the three examples you gave us of the last question. The question is, what was it that made that come back to India? You can elaborate a little bit on that. And secondly, what was it that made them hesitate to leave India? The question is, what was it which made those all those rebels who were wrestling against India, hesitating in leaving India. And the question is, what was it which made those all those rebels who were wrestling against India, and the second thing is, what was it which made them come back to India? Both these questions require no answers, no explanations. The short answer to that is, which I can just share with you at the moment, India is a soft state. India is not a hard state like Abraham Lincoln's America. Abraham Lincoln said that these South Carolina guys who are attacking my realism, I'm going to send my army crushed it. In India that is never, ever happened. Once you get into service, you will be discriminated against. Once you are in service, please go ahead and do any answers to your boss that would feel like you. Your boss, and if you are in South Carolina but you are actually looking into any answers that you want to your boss, no one is ever going to ask. If you are in a private service, you will discover that your boss will feel such serious kinds of conscience in harming you. Your teachers may be a problem here, they are not giving you marks adequately. But most of the time here having these kinds of conscience here can be given to you, can be given to you. After that, your boss will send you to a very small country and you will get everything. People say, India is not a hard state. I don't think anyone would lack such a different state. But I do believe that in India, culturally speaking, we are a soft state. And the soft state is not about the state being useless or being powerful enough to crush people. But somehow, culturally, we do not like to take those strong positions which will harm people, which will crush people, which will destroy people. And we have not done that in any way. And hence there is a problem which comes out with things like communism. When we say, in Delhi, in some other places, when we say, in some other places, when we say, no more I know so many cases in which the majority go down. We say, caste, political oppression was there, then some other places where you need equity, others need to keep it. So, this small confusion in other societies, this confusion doesn't exist. And we need to just like have a story of America I have been sharing with you a story of Africa and Europe. Just to hear the comparison about what happens in India and how people deal with such issues in India. Is it pending for some time? If you go on and on, and as you can see, we are very provocative and very knowledgeable speaker here, I find it very interesting. I have never experienced history reading like a, almost a racing novel, whenever he comes and talks about it. And he gives us a very unique and very broad and deep perspective into what has happened in the past. You will agree that this is a very different kind of history lecture. Those who agree, please put the hands up, those who do. So, it gives us great delight to have him here with us. He was here with us last year we discovered it and because he was there again. And keep these things attractive. Put him on the mat, ask him difficult questions. We want to see how he performs then. And ask questions which mean things to you. You and us. My reason for having invited him here is that let's make it India. I am trying to get a feel for it. What is the genius of the Indian people? What are the industries that we should be looking at? What are the latent energies which might be there in this country which we could harness? Perhaps this is an attempt to understand ourselves better, understand the potential which are around us in this country better in a very different kind of way. So, see in that spirit. And we have to brainstorm, we have to ask questions. Because I am sure he is also getting stimulated also in the process. And we are hoping to make each of these talks a chapter in a book which I have written also here. Any interaction that you bring out will add to this. Right? Thank you again very much sir. Thank you sir.