53: Shashi Tharoor | The CAA, Independent India, Hinduism, and Hindutva

12/13/19 • 34 min

Global Politics & Cultures (formerly Independent Thought & Freedom)

Welcome to the First Episode of Year 2 of Independent Thought and Freedom

India is the world's 3rd largest economy today, after the US and China, but it doesn't wield political and economic power in world affairs commensurate with its weight.

Compared to smaller economies Russia, Israel, Turkey, or even Iran, for instance, let alone China, India's influence pales in comparison.

At a time when the world is in turmoil from Hong Kong, to Iran to Syria to Venezuela, this is significant.

However, India has been undergoing a tremendous transformation domestically, with Narendra Modi and the BJP establishing its political dominance in a shift toward Hindutva nationalism.

This parallels shifting political paradigms all over the world from centrist liberalism to populist nationalism.

What role -- if any -- will India play in the current reshaping of the world that is occuring before our very eyes?

How will India reshape itself?

Today, my guest can perhaps answer this question better than anyone else.

I am honoured and pleased to welcome Dr. Shashi Tharoor, Member of Parliament of the Republic of India since 2009 and former Minister of State for External Affairs and Minister of Human Resource Development.

Before getting in politics, Dr. Tharoor had a most distinguished career as a diplomat at the United Nations, last serving as UnderSecretary-General. He came in second place to replace Kofi Annan, losing to Ban Ki-Moon after he was vetoed by the United States.

Dr. Tharoor is also an acclaimed writer, having authored 18 bestselling works of fiction and non-fiction since 1981, and has written hundreds of columns and articles in publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, TIME, Newsweek, and The Times of India.

Throughout his career, he has received too many awards to mention, but I will just note the Commonwealth Writer's Prize, the Global Leader of Tomorrow at the World Economic Forum in Davos, GQ's Inspiration of the Year Award, "New Age Politician of the Year" Award, Digital Person of the Year award, PETA's person of the year, and it goes on and on. And there will be more to come, I am certain.

We discuss

- The refugee bill and the discrimination against non-Hindus
- Should religion determine the basis of nationhood?
- Religious fundamentalism difference between Pakistan Independence and Indian Independence
- The rise of the "chauvinistic" BJP as a betrayal of the secular Indian Independence struggle
- Should India be a homeland for Hindu refugees?
- challenging discrimination against Indian Muslims by the BJP
- balancing a critique of the old liberal, Western system with a defense of the universal relevance of Western democracy and secularism
- the BJP's narrow interpret
- Swami Vivekananda's critique of "tolerance" and advocacy of "acceptance"
- Hinduism as Indian liberalism vs. Hindutva as illiberal Hinduism
- the changes in nationalism from the Indian Independence Movement
- George Orwell's differentiation between patriotism and nationalism
- the implications of these views for the place of India in the world
- his new book "New Word Disorder and the Indian Imperative"
- India's place in the new emerging world order

Welcome to the First Episode of Year 2 of Independent Thought and Freedom

India is the world's 3rd largest economy today, after the US and China, but it doesn't wield political and economic power in world affairs commensurate with its weight.

Compared to smaller economies Russia, Israel, Turkey, or even Iran, for instance, let alone China, India's influence pales in comparison.

At a time when the world is in turmoil from Hong Kong, to Iran to Syria to Venezuela, this is significant.

However, India has been undergoing a tremendous transformation domestically, with Narendra Modi and the BJP establishing its political dominance in a shift toward Hindutva nationalism.

This parallels shifting political paradigms all over the world from centrist liberalism to populist nationalism.

What role -- if any -- will India play in the current reshaping of the world that is occuring before our very eyes?

How will India reshape itself?

Today, my guest can perhaps answer this question better than anyone else.

We discuss

Previous Episode

52: Dennis Small | The US, China, and Latin American development

After over a decade of real progress being made in Latin America, a serious period of crisis appears to be upon us.

US-backed counter-coups appear to be installing neoliberal regimes, similar to what happened in the 1970s and 1980s. Bolivia appears to be on the brink of civil war, and this can have a spillover effect in Brazil and elsewhere.

It is one part of the world chaos that seems to be rising again and threatening development, prosperity for the majority of humanity, and peace.

Today my guest is Dennis Small, Ibero-America editor, of Executive Intelligence Review magazine. Through the LaRouche Movement, Dennis has been key in the decades-long fight for a just New World Economic Order (NWEO) based on North-South cooperation and development. He works throughout the Americas and has a great deal of knowledge about the region, and connection to some of its movers and shakers.

It's my pleasure to welcome Dennis to the show.

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Next Episode

54: Jacques Cheminade | The Revolution in France Is Not Being Televised

France has been experiencing protest action for over a year, continuously, with thousands of injuries of protesters and police.

It is a populist, grassroots political movement for economic justice that began in France in October 2018.

The protests have involved demonstrations and the blocking of roads and fuel depots, some of which developed into major riots, described as the most violent since those of May 1968. The police response has been brutal, resulting in multiple incidences of loss of limb.

This is at the same time a middle class movement and a radical movement, crossing political boundaries, from the far-right to the far-left, against the existing establishment.

That this has not been receiving the international press coverage and political analysis it deserves is a scandal of the highest order. Compared to the Hong Kong protests, there has been no support, no coverage. It is as if they are trying to "un-person" this movement, to deny its very reality.

To me, this only signifies its importance.

Today, I am pleased to have on my programme again Mr. Jacques Cheminade, President of the French party Solidarité et Progrès, three times candidate to the French presidential elections.

We discuss:

- majority support for the protests in France
- a revolt against the "social liberal system" and financial dictatorship of the City of London
- how the French revolt is part of a world movement
- How the French pension reforms are linked to the insurance companies
- the paralell protests of the Yellow Vests and the Trade Unions
- erosion of wages, strangulation by credit, the replacement of wages by low interest loans
- how the right/left divide is illusory, dividing the victims of the global financial system
- comparison with the Occupy Wall Street movement
- political-sociological description of the Yellow Vest movement
- revolt of the working poor and lower middle class, who are normally politically passive
- the role of violent Black Bloc (Antifa-type group)
- similarity and difference with the Occupy Wall Street movement
- radical environmentalism as tool of the financial oligarchs
- comparisons with the revolts of 1968
- the potential alliance between the Yellow Vests, the Trade Unions, and the banlieu (ethnic and immigrant suburbs)
- the possible solution that the Belt and Road Initiative could provide
- analysis of Emmanuel Macron and his contradictions
- The EU's Austerity in Europe compared to the IMF's Structural Adjustment in the Third World
- the violent brutality of the repression against the Yellow Vests