 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we have with us Professor Vinay Lal, a very well known historian, is with UCLA as well as with Delhi University in the past and now dividing his time between Delhi and California. Vinay, good to have you with us. Thank you for having me here. You have been writing a lot on Gandhi and contemporary politics, also a certain kind of critiques of different kind of movements that are taking place. How do you look at the current moment, particularly that you have movements spanning very different kinds of societies, very different kind of countries from United States to Egypt to all over the place. Do you see this as something which is a new moment in our history in terms of the kind of movements we are seeing? Yes, I mean I think that this particular juncture is I think in my view a very significant moment in contemporary history. Let's look at it I think this way that you've had in the Arab world for about a year now a considerable amount of descent unrest which has brought down a number of regimes, long-standing regimes with links largely to the American administration. A couple of years before that we had a movement in Iran and there have been manifestations of that movement in fact this year as well so I'm referring here to the so-called green movement which commenced in June of 2009. You've had substantial number of people gathering together in places like Israel. There have been demonstrations on a very large scale obviously in parts of Europe where we have a different set of so-called crises. I say so-called because there's always a crisis it seems to be somewhere around somewhere right and I'm not quite sure how meaningful that word is anymore frankly in the English language but nevertheless there have been large demonstrations in Athens in Madrid in Barcelona and then of course we've had the Occupy Wall Street you know which has now branched off in the US into 100 different movements right. I mean perhaps all rivulets feeding into one stream I think that that also remains to be seen whether that's the case because I think very very often what happens with movements of this kind is that they're different agendas I mean so we can say that in the case of the US so let's look just for a moment at the US and then we'll go back to the Middle East or to West Asia right but if you look at the US I think that it would be correct to say that yes there has been one kind of rhetoricals drive that seems to unify all of these different movements some of them have taken place on university campuses of course on wall street some of them in cities such as Oakland right and and that divide has been usually represented as a divide between the 99 percent and the 1 percent right so that might be perhaps common to all of them but but I'm absolutely certain because I think that's the nature of social movements that once you go deep down into a study of each of these you'll find that they might also be driven by agendas that might not be completely congruent with each other right so there may be different agendas in different cities which may nonetheless share something in common right now if you go back to the to the to West Asia and I think that that's where we really ought to be focusing our attention on for many for many reasons one of those reasons being that I think the West has always thought that it was the the motor of history right that you know the West would sort of dictate what would happen or that if there were revolutions occurring elsewhere in the world they would emulate what had happened in the West I think here we have actually a reversal I mean you've got the green movement which commenced in Iran in June 2009 and I think that this is an extraordinarily significant movement I think the ramifications of which have not been clearly understood whether in India or in the US or indeed elsewhere partly because I think it would be impossible to say that this was driven by external agents but one point could also be considered common in the sense that there is a very large degree of alienation from the kind of neoliberal economic policy and the consequence of the politics has become in some sense bypassed that countries no longer control the politics of their countries because economics is not in their hands yes now in that sense isn't it in that sense isn't there a common crisis of the neoliberal order which manifests itself as a political crisis that's one way to look at it you know although I suspect that that kind of paradigm has been available for us to think through for a very long period of time in other words I think that you know that when you look at these political disturbances we would have to ask well were there forms of economic injustice that had driven these political agendas right I mean so let if you if you look let's say just for a moment okay let's supposing you look at the at the time that the Cold War ended you know the fall of the Soviet Union the fall of the Berlin Wall the breakup of the Warsaw Pact all of that now clearly I think I mean that you know you could read it purely as a political okay set of events but clearly there is some aspiration and maybe the left may not want to hear it in that way frankly but there was some aspiration for economic justice as well because if you're living on the other side of the wall and you're seeing what's happening in West Germany I mean you can see the clear divide between yourself and the people over there you can see the divide in the standard of living so over then so on sure the difference of standards of living obviously was a driver in the fall of the absolutely but I think that you're you're right on target here when you're suggesting that that one of the things that perhaps is common to all of these movements whether they are in West Asia or in Europe or the US you know whether in fact for a moment just hypothetically we could put something like the movement in India the so-called an azare movement in that camp which some people would say well it's some kind of manifestation of popular unrest but I think if you leave that aside and you look at certainly what's happened in Israel Europe West Asia and so on in the US I think you're right that there is a deepening sense of anguish okay and unrest about the aggravation of economic injustice under neoliberal regimes right and the fact that whoever you elect seem to be completely powerless to control what is happening so in that sense if you see that whoever each of the countries have seen for instance one set of incumbents go out another set come in but the policies haven't really changed and that is the deeper anger against a political system per se in the case of Egypt of course Mubarak there was not even a change of guard in that sense earlier for 40 years you were the same people yes yeah but but you know I think by the same token we would have to understand that I mean there have been critiques of this neoliberal regime they've been critiques of the WTO I mean what was Chiapas all about for example I mean Chiapas was the one of the first rebellions really of this kind in a way and it broke out right after NAFTA North American free trade agreement so I think if you if you look at you know the long trajectory of this I think clearly there have been movements of this kind over the course of the last two decades what is what is significant and perhaps different is the fact that now they seem to be occurring in many places around the world but they signify not only a sense of deepening economic injustice and the sense of grievance that one might have about it but I think they signify also something about the fact that politics as we understand it is perhaps a different game now than it has been before by which I mean a number of different things one is that I think that there is a peculiar way in which politics has been evacuated of any real meaning so if you look at the US I mean for 150 years the US has been magisterially successful in masquerading as a country with two significantly different political parties in point of fact there is no real significant difference between these two parties I mean it's basically tweedle d and tweedle dump the point here simply is this that I think in the US it's very clear that we've really not had an opportunity to understand politics in any significant sense other than party politics okay now I think the ground reality let's say in India let's shift to India for a moment and then we'll shift to the to west asia I think in India the same argument might be made by some people who'll say that well there's no substantive difference between let's say the BJP and the CPM and the congress with respect to policies on neoliberalization now of course I mean one could argue that you know but if you certainly look at the way in which direct foreign investment is being welcomed in in West Bengal okay when it was under the CPM in the last few years to some would indicate the fact that there is no significant difference on the other hand clearly the ground realities of how the CPM worked I think are very different in fact actually right I think there's still actually significant differences in how one significant differences not simply between political parties but between parties and what might one might describe as other kinds of political interests which have a significant impact on how politics is run in this country and the obvious example would be obviously you know the so-called maxels who have political representation to some degree but they're also those who don't have political representation right so what I'm trying to suggest is this that I think one of the most unfortunate things about our times and I think this is where I think there's a glimmer of hope now in what we see happening in West Asia and in the US and elsewhere one of the most unfortunate things is that politics has really been evacuated of most of its meaning okay and so what you're seeing now particularly in West Asia is the resuscitation of a kind of politics which really does allow people some kind of voice where people say that they're going to take things into their own hands now one might add some caveats to it because then one might say that okay let's look at what's happened in Egypt where okay Mubarak was overthrown and yet the situation seems to be fairly dire even today right but I think that we have to measure these things not in not with respect to how they unfold over a course of three months or six months or one year but I think over the course of how they unfold over the course of several years maybe decade or two decades then I think that's a very important point to make that I think that one of it is that the crisis of politics that even you had the right to elect your leaders yes India whether it's India whether it's the United States or Europe yeah and you changed them didn't make a difference to exact the policies of the ground particularly economic policies that's one part of it the second as you said that particularly to like West Asia the ability of the people to change the policies by being able to come on the streets and raising issues raising demands and directly influencing politics now the problem of course there is that ultimately even today the only instrument of politics finally that we really see is still the nation state yes so effectively whatever you may do on the street yeah if it does not translate into politics of the nation state you still do not get the politics you want and Egypt could be an example of that kind yeah so where do you think does it mean that how do you really think that street can influence ultimately the politics of nations yeah without being an electoral or a political player in that sense yeah well that's a very difficult question I mean it's a very difficult question because you know you've put your finger on what is a critical problem with the nature of modern political movements which is that you see we are all captive to the idea of the nation state the nation state seems to be this seems to represent the apotheosis of political possibilities right I mean what is it that the Palestinians want at the end of the day they want a nation state but the fact of the matter is at least from the poll from the political point of view that I am firmly convinced about namely that the nation state is in fact in most respects and in most places the most severe oppressor of human rights so all your aspirations are geared towards this I mean this is what the Palestinians want this is what the Basques wanted right this is what separatist movements want they eventually want their own nation state and then the nation state in turn becomes the vehicle of forms of oppression which cannot be managed in any sense of the term right and managed is not the right word because I don't because we don't certainly want to manage them in the way in which nation state have managed their conflicts right so I think that this problem will persist namely that you know for the last two centuries the only game in town effectively has been the nation state right so each freedom movement its culmination is something called the nation state and so the way that I would pose a question you're asking I mean if I had to rephrase it would be you know what are the real possibilities political possibilities what are the possibilities for emancipation for economic justice so long as what we are working with is something called the nation state right now I think that that as I said is a very difficult question because in a sense the nation state is a fate a complete I mean that's what we have so what we would then have to think about is well are there different ways to forge notions of political community you know right and does West Asia for example promise us something in this respect at the moment the answer would be no because what's interesting is that you know that you've got these rebellions that have broken out obviously in Egypt Tunisia Libya Bahrain right and so on and so forth but it's not clear that the people involved in these are really thinking about the transgression of boundaries and borders right