Reassert the liberal centre with History's light: Guha

If you take a keen interest in the way India is shaping up as a democracy and a nation then the guest in this edition of CNBC-TV18's Beautiful People is no stranger to you. Ramachandra Guha, academician, writer, historian and social commentator has spent a considerable amount of time and energy contributing to contemporary public debate and attempts to ressert the liberal democratic centre in a new collection of essays- Patriots and Partisans.

Below is an edited transcript of the show on CNBC-TV18 Q: I have used many adjectives to describe you but I have left one out - intellectual. In fact I have heard you describe yourself as a public intellectual. Tell me what you see your role in society as?
A: My role essentially is to advance the search for knowledge. So I would in some ways rather call myself a historian than an intellectual. In that, most of the time I am writing books that are based on deep and serious research with each book taking four –to- five years of travel, research and writing. But living in a society as complex, fascinating and as interesting in India, I am compelled to use my knowledge of the past to illuminate the present. So I have become a public intellectual because I write in newspapers and I appear on television. But behind whatever I say in a newspaper is a lot of reflection and research. So I am not just a commentator, I am someone who is trying to use his detailed expert knowledge of our past to illuminate current debates. Q: What do you make of the quality of contemporary public debate in the media? What do you make of the nature of debate today about the idea of India?
A: It varies a lot. In some forums, it is of extremely high quality for example in the Economic And Political Weekly – a journal to which I pay tribute in my book- in some newspapers and in some cases of television reportage. But on the other hand, I have become increasingly disenchanted with talk shows.
I took a vow about six months ago that I will not appear in a panel with five people screaming at each other which begins with a BJP spokesman and a Congress spokesman screaming at one another. And some of the Delhi talk shows show the poverty of some aspects of our debate particularly because they don’t represent the diversity of the country. They don't have voices from the states and the regions.
And what I have tried to convey in my new book Patriots and Partisans is the experience and knowledge gained from many years of travelling across India. Not just to Bangalore or Delhi, but to go out of my comfort zone and find out the life and debate in different parts of the country are like. Q: I have been reading Patriots and Partisans and my sense is that you are calling out to the liberals and asking them to stand up and be counted, is that a fair assessment?
A: Yes I am speaking out against the extremes. I am speaking in favour of a plural inclusive idea of India. I also express the widespread dismay at the corruption of public institutions which safeguard our national unity and plural democracy. So in that sense, I am a liberal who believes in the reform of institutions, in free expression and in a plural multicultural, multi-religious society. Q: But do you think liberals haven't been contributing enough to the public debate or that they are not being listened to as closely as the extremists are?
A: You have to see it rather in a historical perspective. We had several generations of remarkable liberals from Ram Mohan Roy right up to BR Ambedkar and beyond. They sustained public debate and also built the institutions such as the Parliament and the judiciary.
Sometime in the '70s you had a kind of naxalite movement challenging liberalism from the left. Sometime in the '80s and '90s the liberal democratic faced challenges from extremism. So it was time I felt to reassert the liberal centre, since I grew up in the '80s and '90s.
Now the difference between the 1950's when the Constitution was drafted and the present, is that the Centre which is supposed to safeguard liberal plural values  has been corrupted. The Congress party is not the Congress party of Jawaharlal Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel. The Republican Party and the BSP are not the Dalit expression of Ambedkar. Q: So to be a liberal has become a bad word?
A: That's right. Q: Because the representative of liberalism you are saying has been corrupted.
A: Exactly. A party colonised by a single family and Mayawati speaking for the oppressed but building millions of statues to herself  has certainly given liberal democracy a bad meaing n and it is important now for us to restore and reclaim it. And it is heartening to see among the youth that there is disenchantment with the extremist violence of the Naxalites and the bigotry of the religious right. Though I express myself forcefully and vigorously, I think the young may find that what I am trying to say is not unappealing.