Talking in Passive Voice

with contemporary Indian intellectuals, to chart the fissures and hopes of Indian society, should have been deeply interesting.

But the results disappoint for a number of reasons. For one thing, the format of introducing 27 interviews in one volume backfires. None of the interviews really gets going, and almost all of them stop just when the conversation is warming up. It is perhaps not entirely a coincidence that one of the more satisfying conversations in the book with D.L. Sheth on caste is also one of the longest. The rest seldom move beyond a perfunctory statement of well-known positions. The second issue is frankly the selection. At one level the list is interesting: Ashis Nandy, T.N. Madan, Partha Chatterjee, Rajni Kothari, Madhup Mudgal, the Dalai Lama, Peter D’Souza, Soli Sorabjee, Vandana Shiva, Raj Rewal, Romila Thapar, etc. The topics covered are wide ranging as well: the nature of secularism, caste, constitutionalism, education, Christians in India, classical music, architecture, the difficulties of writing history, globalisation, democracy, etc.
However, at the end of the volume you get the sense that while the book serves as an introduction to interesting intellectual opinions around Rajpur Road, where the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies is housed, with a few other from the Left thrown in to compensate, it seems to miss many of the large and interesting questions about contemporary India.

What emerges is an undertone of anxiety and very little of the sense of profound churning, experimentation, energy and enterprise that constitute modern India. The country is undergoing a transformation, unprecedented in its scale and ramifications. We have no idea where all the chips will fall, what political possibilities will open up, what horizons will close, or how India will look 20 years from now. In fact, much of this change is already stretching and straining the limited vocabulary with which we understand India.
People like Nandy and Madan have been spectacular in punching holes in settled intellectual certainties, but many of the conversations skirt around the difficult issues. Thapar’s contribution, for instance, reiterates her well-known positions on the invention of traditions and the pitfalls of communalised history. But you repeatedly get the sense that these positions, at this juncture, are more of an obstacle to self-reflection and give very few tools to understand the evolving relationship between history and consciousness in modern India. Similarly, Amit Bhaduri’s contribution, the only one directly on the economy, will leave you more puzzled than enlightened about the character of economic growth in India. Jahanbegloo is also too much of a gentleman in the way he formulates his questions, and seldom pushes his interlocutors to go beyond a statement of their position, to confront them with alternative interpretations and lines of contention.

It is often said the Indian politicians are behind the curve in understanding the explosion of ambition, aspiration and self-confidence in Modern India. It is fair to say that for the most part, Indian intellectuals are further behind the curve, clinging on to simple frameworks that are being subverted by change every minute. India has always been a story of improvisation. The question of what values we will carry through our great transformation remains an open and important one. But these conversations will not quite help you get to the answers, despite Jahanbegloo’s refreshing idealism and hope.