 Romula, if we say that the government should stop the right-wing cohort, should stop calling people anti-national or seditious or creating these divisive issues, really what should the government, whether it's the state government or the central government or the political parties, really what should they be concentrating on today? As a historian, as an intellectual, as a citizen, tell us. They should be concentrating on governing the system and ensuring that the rights are available and these rights will then lead citizens to perform their duties, which is to work for the state, to be loyal to the state and not be anti-national and so on. That will come naturally once you have the rights and you cease to do all this. But remember also that all these slogans of anti-national freedom is wrong, you can't talk about freedom and so on, these are all historically conditioned. I remember every time now I hear about people, ministers and others getting up and saying, you cannot shout Azadi, you cannot shout this and you're anti-national. I remember as a child of, I think I must have been five, and I was traveling with my mother by train from Lahore to Ferospur where my maternal grandparents lived. And we used to do this every year and on one occasion there was a group of people walking down a small platform in one way by wayside station handcuffed, surrounded by the police and this group was shouting in Kalab, Zindabad, Azadi, Leke Rahenge, Azadi. And I looked at them and looked at them and I turned to my mother and I said, what are they saying? She gave me a quick lesson in colonialism for what I understood kind of thing. And I remember over the years going to protest meetings, anti-colonial, as children from school, as teenagers and vigorously shouting Azadi and shouting in Kalab, Zindabad and so on. And then today you think of JNU and the meeting and when they shout Azadi they're described as anti-national. And I think to myself that really who is a national then? Surely those people who were shouting Azadi and in Kalab, Zindabad in those days were very national and these were slogans of nationalism. All right the situation has changed a little bit now but you can't then say that these slogans are anti-national. You have to find something more substantial to describe people as anti-national. Just slogan hearing is not enough. Perhaps those who divide the people could be described as anti-national. Indeed. Those are people who are giving themselves the right to call other people anti-national. No, I mean if you consider that what is nationalism after all is including everybody. It has to be, otherwise it's not nationalism. Otherwise then it becomes racial nationalism, religious nationalism, ethnic nationalism, linguistic. It becomes a qualified nationalism and there are many scholars who would say this is not nationalism. You cannot have something like religious nationalism is a contradiction in terms. You cannot identify nationalism by one identity. Nationalism is all inclusive. So there are issues of that kind which are very genuine issues and you can't dismiss them by making broadly political sloganistic shouting by simply saying oh this is anti-national. You have to define why it is anti-national. I mean if you're critical of a government you're not anti-national. You're critical of a government. The government is not the nation. You have to understand there's a distinction between the two. We've also seen in recent weeks and months the appropriation of what these freedom fighters actually wanted India to be, what they were communicating. So for instance we've been hearing about how really Gandhi wanted the CAA because he wanted us to rescue the persecuted Hindus in Pakistan. Would you as a historian respond to this kind of fabrication? As a novelist I can only call it a fabrication. Well you know as a historian I'm constantly struck by the fact that people that come to power often, more often than not, I mean they legitimize their power by other things but very often they legitimize their power by distorting history and we know that Hindutva is very good at that. And their hotline doesn't work with historians like you. No their hotline may not work. But nevertheless they're doing it all the time. So this appropriation in a sense doesn't surprise me, one expected it. But I'm intrigued by the people they pick up, Bhagat Singh. By their own definition he would be a terrorist, not even a revolutionary. Vallabhai Patel, by their own definition this is someone who is talking about the very basis on which power is to be organized and not just grabbing power. They did after all go around having treaties with the Indian princes. They didn't just grab. And Gandhi of course they suddenly realized that using his spectacles is not enough. So they're now trying to appropriate more than that and saying it is very much a case of legitimization from the past. You have a moral authority which is what Gandhi was respected by the Indian public. And so you try and drag him in and say he also approved of these laws, which is not so. Gandhi would have been the first to stand up and demand civil disobedience against these laws. I feel from my reading of Gandhi.