WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.320 Good morning everyone, and it looks like we've got a full house again. 2 00:00:03.940 --> 00:00:08.900 My name is Rick Hosking, I teach at Flinders University where I'm the current head of the English department, 3 00:00:09.880 --> 00:00:13.120 and I also chair the Adelaide Festival Writers' Week Advisory Committee. 4 00:00:13.860 --> 00:00:20.180 I have a long-standing interest in the evolving relationship between India and Australia, especially in colonial times. 5 00:00:20.760 --> 00:00:25.060 And I've taught Australian literature at JNU in New Delhi. 6 00:00:26.440 --> 00:00:32.160 And I'm so used to doing this kind of job at Writers' Week, we usually ask people to turn off their mobile phones, 7 00:00:32.280 --> 00:00:35.480 but I've been assured that you've already all done that, so well done. 8 00:00:36.680 --> 00:00:41.400 Now our guest today, Professor Robin Jeffery, was educated in Canada and Britain, 9 00:00:41.600 --> 00:00:45.880 and then worked as a journalist before moving to North India to teach in Chandigarh. 10 00:00:46.820 --> 00:00:51.460 After completing his doctorate in Britain on modern Indian history at Sussex, 11 00:00:51.620 --> 00:00:54.620 he then worked at the Australian National University in Canberra, 12 00:00:54.620 --> 00:00:56.580 and later at La Trobe in Melbourne. 13 00:00:57.300 --> 00:01:02.040 These days Professor Jeffery is the director of the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies 14 00:01:02.040 --> 00:01:07.480 at the Australian National University, and convener of the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific. 15 00:01:08.020 --> 00:01:11.660 He sits on the advisory board of the Asia Education Foundation, 16 00:01:12.540 --> 00:01:14.860 and is a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 17 00:01:15.000 --> 00:01:17.620 and of the Academy of the Social Sciences of Australia. 18 00:01:18.880 --> 00:01:23.400 His interests, his special interests, are the modern history and politics of India, 19 00:01:23.580 --> 00:01:24.600 and his particular interest is in the history of the world. 20 00:01:24.620 --> 00:01:29.180 He is particularly interested in questions about ethnicity, nationalism, and identity, 21 00:01:30.320 --> 00:01:37.540 in the idea of India as a modern nation that, of course, this year celebrates its half-century plus ten since independence. 22 00:01:38.540 --> 00:01:43.660 Professor Jeffery's publications include The Decline of Naya Dominance and What's Happening to India. 23 00:01:44.480 --> 00:01:48.520 He's currently working on a book provisionally entitled Slices of India. 24 00:01:48.820 --> 00:01:54.220 He's also written recently on the remarkable phenomenon of the Indian mass media, 25 00:01:54.620 --> 00:01:55.960 an article I greatly enjoyed. 26 00:01:56.960 --> 00:02:02.520 Professor Jeffery's talk is called India at 150, 60, and a Turning Point. 27 00:02:02.700 --> 00:02:04.160 Please welcome Robin Jeffery. 28 00:02:06.880 --> 00:02:16.460 Thank you very much, Rick, for the kind introduction. 29 00:02:17.360 --> 00:02:19.260 It's an auspicious day. 30 00:02:19.360 --> 00:02:24.180 I've noted in the newspaper today that we're on the 7th of the 07th, 31 00:02:24.620 --> 00:02:27.260 and that's calculated to be particularly auspicious. 32 00:02:27.460 --> 00:02:32.060 You'll see from the title of this lecture that I'm proposing to talk about anniversaries 33 00:02:32.060 --> 00:02:34.960 and to try to make some comments and reflections on them. 34 00:02:35.420 --> 00:02:39.820 I've got three possible landmarks in my title. 35 00:02:39.920 --> 00:02:43.300 It's been pointed out to me since that we could have a fourth one in there, 36 00:02:43.400 --> 00:02:47.460 that we're celebrating, if that's the right word, or bemoaning this week, 37 00:02:47.520 --> 00:02:50.480 the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Plassey, 38 00:02:50.560 --> 00:02:54.600 when the British more or less took control of Northeastern India, 39 00:02:54.620 --> 00:02:58.520 and there are various sorts of obsequies being held in Northeastern India, 40 00:02:58.600 --> 00:03:01.580 even as we speak, according to the newspapers this morning. 41 00:03:01.740 --> 00:03:05.200 The three anniversaries, though, that I want to mark 42 00:03:05.200 --> 00:03:08.940 represent a contest between old and new. 43 00:03:09.040 --> 00:03:13.820 Each one of these anniversaries is, it seems to me, a marker of ruptures, 44 00:03:13.820 --> 00:03:18.840 the sorts of things that accompany profound change, that signal profound change. 45 00:03:19.500 --> 00:03:24.140 My three dates on the title of the lecture, 46 00:03:24.620 --> 00:03:28.740 the 150 years, of course, is 150 years right now, 47 00:03:28.840 --> 00:03:32.840 since the Great Rebellion, the First War of Independence, 48 00:03:33.340 --> 00:03:37.360 or as we who were brought up in the British Empire in the 1950s knew it, 49 00:03:37.400 --> 00:03:40.200 the Indian Mutiny, immortalized by G.A. Henty 50 00:03:40.200 --> 00:03:42.600 and the writer of Ripping Yarns for Small Boys 51 00:03:42.600 --> 00:03:46.920 that we were still reading in British Columbia in the 1950s 52 00:03:46.920 --> 00:03:50.520 when I was starting to read and was partial to Ripping Yarns. 53 00:03:50.540 --> 00:03:53.500 In India, of course, the nomenclature is important. 54 00:03:53.780 --> 00:03:54.600 The first war of independence, the first war of independence, 55 00:03:54.600 --> 00:03:59.560 would be disputed as a title by some Indian historians, 56 00:03:59.940 --> 00:04:02.480 but it's certainly been a very powerful term 57 00:04:02.480 --> 00:04:05.780 in the history of the Indian nation in the last hundred years, 58 00:04:05.900 --> 00:04:09.840 the notion that 1857, the revolt against the British, 59 00:04:10.020 --> 00:04:12.900 was the beginnings of an Indian national movement 60 00:04:12.900 --> 00:04:16.060 that's made what is the modern Indian state today. 61 00:04:16.320 --> 00:04:18.820 So that's the first of my landmarks. 62 00:04:18.840 --> 00:04:23.920 The second is the 60, and of course it's 60 years since Indian independence, 63 00:04:23.920 --> 00:04:28.700 three generations if you think of a generation as being 20 years long, 64 00:04:28.940 --> 00:04:33.380 three generations since India achieved independence from the British in 1947. 65 00:04:34.060 --> 00:04:38.360 And the third of my dates, the turning point if you like, 66 00:04:38.500 --> 00:04:40.100 is this year itself. 67 00:04:40.280 --> 00:04:44.200 In May of this year, an untouchable woman, 68 00:04:44.360 --> 00:04:50.060 an untouchable woman, led her political party to an absolute victory 69 00:04:50.060 --> 00:04:53.800 in an assembly of more than 400 seats, 70 00:04:53.800 --> 00:04:56.360 her political party won more than 200 seats, 71 00:04:56.520 --> 00:05:00.040 in the largest of the Indian states, Uttar Pradesh. 72 00:05:02.000 --> 00:05:05.620 She has been chief minister of this state three times before, 73 00:05:05.920 --> 00:05:08.920 has a population of nearly 190 million people, 74 00:05:09.060 --> 00:05:14.260 it's bigger than Japan, it would be I think the fourth or fifth largest state in the world 75 00:05:14.260 --> 00:05:15.540 if it were an independent state. 76 00:05:17.800 --> 00:05:19.760 Mayavati, which is this woman's name, 77 00:05:19.840 --> 00:05:22.540 and we'll talk about her a little bit more as I go along, 78 00:05:23.200 --> 00:05:27.220 Mayavati has been chief minister of this state three times before for short periods, 79 00:05:27.300 --> 00:05:30.980 she now has the opportunity to lead the state for five years. 80 00:05:31.720 --> 00:05:38.380 It's the most substantial signal we've had to date of the emergence in Indian politics of a new elite, 81 00:05:38.660 --> 00:05:40.660 in many ways a very unexpected one, 82 00:05:40.780 --> 00:05:44.620 an elite emerging from the so-called untouchables, 83 00:05:44.760 --> 00:05:51.080 the 15% of India's population who in the past were deemed to be, thought to be, held to be, 84 00:05:51.160 --> 00:05:52.520 so untouchable. 85 00:05:52.520 --> 00:05:55.760 Unclean, polluting, that they weren't even part of the caste system, 86 00:05:55.860 --> 00:05:58.640 they lay beyond it because of the occupations they had to perform, 87 00:05:58.900 --> 00:06:02.000 and the ritual status which they were held to have, 88 00:06:02.160 --> 00:06:06.100 which was so lowly that they were not worthy of being included in the larger system. 89 00:06:06.440 --> 00:06:11.220 Now, the emergence of Mayavati and her political party as a force 90 00:06:11.220 --> 00:06:14.940 marks I think a profound break in the political history of India. 91 00:06:15.180 --> 00:06:20.100 I want to reflect on these three anniversaries because of course they all interconnect, 92 00:06:20.460 --> 00:06:22.500 and the turning point that we're looking at, 93 00:06:22.520 --> 00:06:24.340 that we're seeing in India today in 2007, 94 00:06:24.820 --> 00:06:28.540 in some ways involves all three of the landmarks it seems to me, 95 00:06:28.600 --> 00:06:32.120 but let me try to convince you of that in the next 20 minutes or so. 96 00:06:33.700 --> 00:06:37.360 The three anniversaries, 1857 and 1947, 97 00:06:39.060 --> 00:06:43.240 mark the coming to power of new groups it seems to me, 98 00:06:43.300 --> 00:06:46.040 changes in the way in which India actually worked. 99 00:06:47.520 --> 00:06:50.540 And it's those that I'd like to turn to now. 100 00:06:50.540 --> 00:06:57.080 The 150 years, 1857, what happened in 1857 and why was that a particular marker? 101 00:06:57.560 --> 00:07:01.040 Well, if I were a 10 year old today now, 102 00:07:02.680 --> 00:07:07.340 1857 would be as distant from me, a 10 year old in Adelaide today, 103 00:07:07.520 --> 00:07:13.180 as the Battle of Trafalgar was from me when I was 10 in 1955. 104 00:07:13.760 --> 00:07:16.820 Now that's a long way away in my terms of thinking, 105 00:07:16.980 --> 00:07:20.400 and yet that event is still so powerful and potent, 106 00:07:20.400 --> 00:07:22.500 in the story of India, 107 00:07:22.660 --> 00:07:27.660 and also in the lessons for geopolitics that I think we might draw from it. 108 00:07:27.900 --> 00:07:29.440 Let me give you an example, 109 00:07:29.560 --> 00:07:32.700 and if my hand doesn't shake too badly I'll move to a slide here. 110 00:07:33.800 --> 00:07:35.300 Yes, I did get the one I wanted. 111 00:07:35.360 --> 00:07:36.080 Let me read from this. 112 00:07:36.180 --> 00:07:38.300 This was a letter written by Henry Lawrence, 113 00:07:38.620 --> 00:07:42.140 who tried to do his duty, it says on his tombstone. 114 00:07:42.940 --> 00:07:45.900 Henry Lawrence, one of the great British proconsuls in India, 115 00:07:46.020 --> 00:07:50.320 wrote on the night before the events of 1857 began, 116 00:07:50.400 --> 00:07:53.100 to the Viceroy, or then the Governor General, Lord Canning, 117 00:07:53.180 --> 00:07:56.300 last night I held a conversation with a Jemadar, 118 00:07:56.460 --> 00:07:58.500 an officer of the Oud Artillery, 119 00:07:58.720 --> 00:08:02.180 and was startled, this was an Indian officer in the British service, 120 00:08:02.500 --> 00:08:05.200 and was startled by the dogged persistence of the man, 121 00:08:05.340 --> 00:08:07.240 in the belief that for 10 years past, 122 00:08:07.560 --> 00:08:09.160 government, that is the British government, 123 00:08:09.400 --> 00:08:15.060 has been engaged in measures for the forcible or rather fraudulent conversion of all the natives. 124 00:08:15.360 --> 00:08:17.300 When I told him of our power in Europe, 125 00:08:17.460 --> 00:08:19.960 he replied, he knew we had plenty of men and money, 126 00:08:20.400 --> 00:08:21.940 but that Europeans were expensive, 127 00:08:22.160 --> 00:08:25.640 and that therefore we wished to take Hindus to sea, 128 00:08:25.800 --> 00:08:27.560 to conquer the world for us. 129 00:08:27.700 --> 00:08:29.740 You want us all to eat what you like, 130 00:08:29.900 --> 00:08:31.960 that we may be stronger and go anywhere. 131 00:08:32.200 --> 00:08:33.940 He gave us credit for nothing. 132 00:08:34.120 --> 00:08:38.100 He often repeated, I tell you what everybody says. 133 00:08:38.820 --> 00:08:45.060 The following day, British soldiers were murdered in Meerut, 134 00:08:45.160 --> 00:08:46.300 by Indian troops, 135 00:08:48.140 --> 00:08:50.380 depicted famously in the book, 136 00:08:50.380 --> 00:08:52.940 in woodcuts that went back to England, 137 00:08:53.860 --> 00:08:55.460 by the end of that year. 138 00:08:55.720 --> 00:08:57.520 Indian troops murdered their officers, 139 00:08:57.720 --> 00:08:59.160 and they marched on Delhi, 140 00:08:59.400 --> 00:09:03.140 where they proclaimed the elderly Mughal emperor, 141 00:09:06.220 --> 00:09:08.340 sorry, I'm not, 142 00:09:11.880 --> 00:09:12.760 that's what I want, 143 00:09:12.940 --> 00:09:14.580 the elderly Mughal emperor, 144 00:09:15.640 --> 00:09:17.880 Bahadur Shah, as their leader. 145 00:09:18.420 --> 00:09:20.360 William Dalrymple has written a splendid, 146 00:09:20.380 --> 00:09:22.160 book which came out earlier this year, 147 00:09:22.240 --> 00:09:23.340 called The Last Mughal, 148 00:09:23.340 --> 00:09:24.260 the jacket is there, 149 00:09:25.940 --> 00:09:27.240 about Bahadur Shah. 150 00:09:27.380 --> 00:09:30.660 This poor old man had the whole force of the rebellion, 151 00:09:30.720 --> 00:09:32.060 kind of imposed on him, 152 00:09:32.080 --> 00:09:33.920 and he coped with it rather badly, 153 00:09:34.060 --> 00:09:36.560 and was eventually exiled to Burma. 154 00:09:36.780 --> 00:09:42.200 The events that began on the 10th of May, 1857, 155 00:09:42.420 --> 00:09:45.100 very quickly spread across the whole of North India, 156 00:09:45.220 --> 00:09:46.660 and the so-called revolt, 157 00:09:46.900 --> 00:09:47.580 or the mutiny, 158 00:09:47.580 --> 00:09:48.440 or the war of independence, 159 00:09:48.440 --> 00:09:50.560 lasted two years. 160 00:09:50.800 --> 00:09:52.620 The British recaptured Delhi, 161 00:09:52.820 --> 00:09:55.680 which they'd lost in May of 1857, 162 00:09:55.940 --> 00:09:57.640 they'd recaptured it by September. 163 00:09:58.180 --> 00:10:00.260 Lucknow, where the famous siege, 164 00:10:00.480 --> 00:10:02.900 that again, young fellows in British Columbia, 165 00:10:03.080 --> 00:10:04.120 who read Ripping Yarns, 166 00:10:04.120 --> 00:10:05.660 read about in the 1950s, 167 00:10:05.700 --> 00:10:09.860 the Lucknow siege was raised in November 1857. 168 00:10:10.420 --> 00:10:13.440 Henry Lawrence, whose letter we just looked at, 169 00:10:13.500 --> 00:10:15.680 Henry Lawrence was killed in the course of that siege. 170 00:10:16.200 --> 00:10:17.820 But the revolt, as I say, 171 00:10:17.820 --> 00:10:19.100 spread across North India, 172 00:10:19.820 --> 00:10:21.640 took nearly two years to suppress. 173 00:10:22.020 --> 00:10:24.060 What's less well known about the revolt, 174 00:10:24.240 --> 00:10:26.160 and where we begin to get the changes 175 00:10:26.160 --> 00:10:28.100 that were overtaking India at this time, 176 00:10:28.220 --> 00:10:31.000 what's less well known are a couple of other factors. 177 00:10:31.200 --> 00:10:33.320 One is that in the same year as the revolt, 178 00:10:33.560 --> 00:10:35.740 the three great Indian universities, 179 00:10:36.000 --> 00:10:38.360 the first three Indian universities were founded. 180 00:10:38.780 --> 00:10:40.720 Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay. 181 00:10:40.960 --> 00:10:43.460 Roughly contemporaneous with the University of Sydney 182 00:10:43.460 --> 00:10:44.600 and the University of Melbourne. 183 00:10:44.840 --> 00:10:46.720 So even while the revolt was going on, 184 00:10:46.720 --> 00:10:51.840 a new elite coming out of an English-style education system 185 00:10:51.840 --> 00:10:54.740 was being created in this India. 186 00:10:54.800 --> 00:10:58.260 An elite, of course, that was later to take over the country. 187 00:10:58.580 --> 00:11:01.440 The second point about the 1857 events 188 00:11:01.440 --> 00:11:04.420 is that the revolt didn't touch these great port cities 189 00:11:04.420 --> 00:11:07.600 of Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras. 190 00:11:07.920 --> 00:11:13.300 We perhaps look at a map of modern India for now. 191 00:11:13.380 --> 00:11:14.820 It didn't touch the great port cities 192 00:11:14.820 --> 00:11:16.620 of Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras. 193 00:11:17.280 --> 00:11:20.680 In fact, it didn't touch the south very much either. 194 00:11:20.880 --> 00:11:22.600 It was a North Indian phenomenon. 195 00:11:22.880 --> 00:11:25.840 And in fact, the revolt was driven by old elites, 196 00:11:26.480 --> 00:11:28.200 angered by their loss of status, 197 00:11:28.400 --> 00:11:30.200 their loss of respect, their loss of land. 198 00:11:30.360 --> 00:11:32.020 By princes, by great landlords, 199 00:11:32.400 --> 00:11:34.980 by traditional religious leaders 200 00:11:34.980 --> 00:11:37.040 who had been bypassed and marginalized 201 00:11:37.040 --> 00:11:40.420 and not accorded sufficient respect by the British regime. 202 00:11:41.020 --> 00:11:42.860 I think the fact that it was an old, 203 00:11:42.900 --> 00:11:44.980 a revolt of old elites is illustrated 204 00:11:44.980 --> 00:11:46.340 by the way in which the, 205 00:11:48.100 --> 00:11:50.240 the insurgents, if we want to call them that, 206 00:11:50.340 --> 00:11:51.940 turned to the old Mughal emperor 207 00:11:51.940 --> 00:11:53.600 who still had some sort of authority 208 00:11:53.600 --> 00:11:56.220 in the minds of many hundreds of thousands of people, 209 00:11:56.380 --> 00:11:57.720 even though he'd been a pensioner 210 00:11:58.240 --> 00:12:00.460 and a puppet of the British for most of his life. 211 00:12:00.560 --> 00:12:02.160 But the fact that they turned to them illustrates 212 00:12:02.160 --> 00:12:03.760 this old elite quality. 213 00:12:04.160 --> 00:12:07.440 Yet within a generation of this moment, 214 00:12:08.800 --> 00:12:10.360 a new elite was emerging, 215 00:12:11.280 --> 00:12:13.060 which was to form what's today 216 00:12:13.060 --> 00:12:16.700 the oldest still working political party in Asia, 217 00:12:16.700 --> 00:12:18.300 the Indian National Congress. 218 00:12:18.500 --> 00:12:20.900 What you see here is the first meeting 219 00:12:20.900 --> 00:12:22.940 of that Congress in 1885. 220 00:12:23.300 --> 00:12:25.580 So 57, 67, 77, 221 00:12:25.620 --> 00:12:28.880 within 30, within 40 years of the end of the revolt, 222 00:12:29.060 --> 00:12:30.920 a new body was forming, 223 00:12:31.020 --> 00:12:32.680 which was going to take the British on 224 00:12:32.680 --> 00:12:34.100 in their own terms. 225 00:12:35.240 --> 00:12:38.780 Terms of constitutionalism, laws, courts, and so on. 226 00:12:38.920 --> 00:12:40.620 You can get a picture of that 227 00:12:40.620 --> 00:12:42.680 from the appearance of the men 228 00:12:42.680 --> 00:12:45.580 who formed the Congress in 1885 on the screen. 229 00:12:45.580 --> 00:12:47.640 The mixture of costumes, 230 00:12:47.980 --> 00:12:51.560 Indian dress but also British dress at the same time. 231 00:12:52.120 --> 00:12:54.480 That leads me to a big leap 232 00:12:54.480 --> 00:12:56.760 from 1857 to my second anniversary, 233 00:12:57.160 --> 00:12:59.500 90 years later, 1947. 234 00:13:00.200 --> 00:13:03.320 And of course the date that India's celebrating at the moment, 235 00:13:03.500 --> 00:13:04.900 60 years since independence, 236 00:13:05.340 --> 00:13:08.700 three generations since British rule ended. 237 00:13:09.040 --> 00:13:12.020 The descendants of this Congress meeting of 1885 238 00:13:12.580 --> 00:13:14.440 were the makers of the new India 239 00:13:14.440 --> 00:13:17.000 that came to power 60 years ago. 240 00:13:18.580 --> 00:13:22.160 If 1847, or 1857 was an old elite 241 00:13:22.160 --> 00:13:24.840 with its roots in the North Indian countryside, 242 00:13:25.380 --> 00:13:28.620 1947 was very much a new elite. 243 00:13:29.180 --> 00:13:32.340 An elite made up of, or led by, 244 00:13:32.440 --> 00:13:34.380 people like Jawaharlal Nehru, 245 00:13:34.500 --> 00:13:39.240 who you see here in a particularly revealing photograph. 246 00:13:39.260 --> 00:13:41.420 It's taken in the summer of 1947, 247 00:13:41.560 --> 00:13:44.420 just before the August Independence Day, 248 00:13:44.440 --> 00:13:46.820 at the left of the screen, 249 00:13:46.980 --> 00:13:49.360 on the outer, it seems to me very, 250 00:13:49.440 --> 00:13:51.460 the body language in this photo is wonderful, 251 00:13:51.620 --> 00:13:53.400 on the outer is Muhammad Ali Jinnah, 252 00:13:53.540 --> 00:13:56.980 who became the father of Pakistan six weeks later. 253 00:13:57.260 --> 00:14:01.080 And then the gentleman in the white dinner jacket, 254 00:14:01.100 --> 00:14:02.580 of course, is Louis Mountbatten, 255 00:14:02.780 --> 00:14:04.600 schmoozing with Jawaharlal Nehru, 256 00:14:04.760 --> 00:14:05.680 whispering in his ear. 257 00:14:05.780 --> 00:14:09.440 And Edwina, wife of Louis Mountbatten, 258 00:14:10.860 --> 00:14:12.780 friend of Jawaharlal Nehru, 259 00:14:12.900 --> 00:14:14.420 long-standing friend of Jawaharlal Nehru, 260 00:14:14.420 --> 00:14:20.000 again, the kind of courtly way in which Nehru, 261 00:14:20.200 --> 00:14:21.960 the future prime minister, 262 00:14:22.080 --> 00:14:23.740 the about-to-be prime minister of India, 263 00:14:23.880 --> 00:14:25.880 is mixing with the Europeans. 264 00:14:26.080 --> 00:14:27.060 It's not surprising. 265 00:14:27.320 --> 00:14:30.080 I mean, Nehru came from this sort of a pedigree. 266 00:14:30.440 --> 00:14:33.640 Sorry, my shaky hand bleeds me. 267 00:14:33.860 --> 00:14:36.620 I wanted to look at Nehru's father, Motilal, 268 00:14:36.780 --> 00:14:39.580 in all his fine read before the First World War. 269 00:14:39.800 --> 00:14:43.100 This is the new elite that emerged after 1857, 270 00:14:43.100 --> 00:14:44.800 that came out of the Indian universities. 271 00:14:45.340 --> 00:14:47.340 Motilal was a high-priced lawyer 272 00:14:47.340 --> 00:14:49.980 who was able to send his son to Harrow and to Cambridge, 273 00:14:50.080 --> 00:14:51.700 where Jawaharlal was educated. 274 00:14:53.880 --> 00:14:56.260 Jawaharlal Nehru brought to India, 275 00:14:56.340 --> 00:15:00.380 and the India that he led for nearly 17 years after 1947, 276 00:15:01.660 --> 00:15:03.880 doctrines that were, in his view, modern, 277 00:15:03.960 --> 00:15:07.240 doctrines of socialism and secularism, 278 00:15:07.280 --> 00:15:11.420 of the rule of law, of constitutionalism. 279 00:15:12.940 --> 00:15:16.420 He brought to India the notion that it had to be a modern state, 280 00:15:16.620 --> 00:15:18.240 it had to be an industrial state, 281 00:15:19.540 --> 00:15:24.540 and that that state should recognize no religious affiliations. 282 00:15:24.800 --> 00:15:27.280 The irony, of course, of all that, 283 00:15:27.380 --> 00:15:31.060 was that India, the India that was created in 1947, 284 00:15:31.880 --> 00:15:34.640 wasn't a united India, but it was a divided India, 285 00:15:34.760 --> 00:15:38.460 an India of Pakistan, which was to be a homeland for Muslims, 286 00:15:38.660 --> 00:15:40.180 led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah. 287 00:15:40.180 --> 00:15:44.520 And India, which was to be the secular state envisaged by Nehru, 288 00:15:44.680 --> 00:15:49.840 and to a certain extent by his mentor in some ways, Mahatma Gandhi. 289 00:15:52.360 --> 00:15:55.080 We get these sorts of images 290 00:15:55.840 --> 00:16:00.260 of the partition from a life photographer in 1947. 291 00:16:00.520 --> 00:16:03.760 The attempt to actually divide this colonial state 292 00:16:03.760 --> 00:16:06.140 that the British had taken more than 100 years to create 293 00:16:06.140 --> 00:16:07.840 had to be divided in six weeks, 294 00:16:08.020 --> 00:16:09.860 and it came down to things like this, 295 00:16:10.180 --> 00:16:11.280 which is one of the legislative libraries, 296 00:16:11.560 --> 00:16:14.260 where the story was that if there was an encyclopedia, 297 00:16:14.520 --> 00:16:17.140 India got volumes A and B, Pakistan got C, 298 00:16:17.340 --> 00:16:19.500 then India got D and E, Pakistan got F. 299 00:16:19.620 --> 00:16:22.840 All sorts of wonderfully absurd stories of the partition, 300 00:16:23.100 --> 00:16:25.780 and of course the dreadful stories of the transfer of population 301 00:16:25.780 --> 00:16:27.500 and the slaughter of the partition. 302 00:16:28.140 --> 00:16:32.480 Nehru's vision of socialism shaped India from 1947, 303 00:16:32.920 --> 00:16:34.920 and still shapes it even today. 304 00:16:35.320 --> 00:16:36.860 Though since 1991, 305 00:16:37.560 --> 00:16:39.720 the socialist vision has been 306 00:16:40.180 --> 00:16:41.460 progressively dismantled. 307 00:16:41.620 --> 00:16:43.900 Nehru's vision included industrialization, 308 00:16:44.240 --> 00:16:46.040 modernization, democracy, 309 00:16:46.340 --> 00:16:48.620 and of course foremost, a secular India, 310 00:16:48.720 --> 00:16:49.760 with no state religion, 311 00:16:49.960 --> 00:16:53.340 and with minorities, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, 312 00:16:53.340 --> 00:16:55.620 linguistic minorities, protected. 313 00:16:56.300 --> 00:16:58.300 Untouchability was outlawed. 314 00:16:59.180 --> 00:17:01.220 All of this was very fine constitutionally, 315 00:17:01.240 --> 00:17:02.220 but of course in practice, 316 00:17:02.360 --> 00:17:05.380 much harder to actually see come to fruition. 317 00:17:05.560 --> 00:17:09.420 The collision between the law and the custom is constant, 318 00:17:09.420 --> 00:17:11.680 and that's a collision that goes on even today. 319 00:17:12.480 --> 00:17:16.280 Nehru's India, the India that he helped to shape after 1947, 320 00:17:16.980 --> 00:17:19.820 didn't create red tape, it didn't invent it, 321 00:17:19.900 --> 00:17:21.380 the British had invented red tape, 322 00:17:21.560 --> 00:17:24.980 but what Nehru's India did was create a great many more packages 323 00:17:24.980 --> 00:17:27.400 around which you could wrap the red tape. 324 00:17:27.740 --> 00:17:31.940 The Nehruvian state tried to do a great many things, 325 00:17:32.080 --> 00:17:35.220 but they tried to do them within the constructs of a bureaucracy 326 00:17:35.220 --> 00:17:37.660 that created great mounds of paper, 327 00:17:37.800 --> 00:17:39.020 great blockages, 328 00:17:39.420 --> 00:17:41.020 to entrepreneurialism, 329 00:17:41.080 --> 00:17:43.240 to individual effort in some ways, 330 00:17:43.360 --> 00:17:44.880 and it's that Nehruvian state 331 00:17:44.880 --> 00:17:47.060 that Indian governments since 1991 332 00:17:47.060 --> 00:17:50.500 have been striving to disaggregate, 333 00:17:50.500 --> 00:17:52.800 to liberate, if you like. 334 00:17:53.320 --> 00:17:56.420 The government of India got involved in regulation, 335 00:17:56.860 --> 00:17:58.320 it got involved in production, 336 00:17:58.620 --> 00:18:01.520 and it's even today still trying to extricate itself 337 00:18:01.520 --> 00:18:03.220 from some of those activities. 338 00:18:03.660 --> 00:18:06.000 So that was my second anniversary, 339 00:18:06.420 --> 00:18:08.160 the 1947 one, 340 00:18:08.160 --> 00:18:09.720 where again there was a transfer, 341 00:18:09.840 --> 00:18:12.440 a transfer from a British elite to an Indian one, 342 00:18:13.160 --> 00:18:15.140 highly anglicized in the case of Nehru, 343 00:18:15.300 --> 00:18:19.440 with a great many Western ideas about secularism and industrialism. 344 00:18:20.560 --> 00:18:22.900 The third anniversary is the, 345 00:18:23.040 --> 00:18:25.340 I think, the one that should interest us most. 346 00:18:25.420 --> 00:18:27.100 That's the anniversary this year 347 00:18:27.100 --> 00:18:30.060 of the arrival in power in Uttar Pradesh 348 00:18:30.060 --> 00:18:32.700 of this woman, Mayavati. 349 00:18:34.400 --> 00:18:37.080 Down in the lower left hand corner you see her, 350 00:18:37.080 --> 00:18:39.680 her mentor in some ways, 351 00:18:39.700 --> 00:18:41.680 her guru at least, B. R. Ambedkar, 352 00:18:41.780 --> 00:18:42.720 who died in 1956, 353 00:18:43.140 --> 00:18:46.900 but the greatest untouchable leader of India to date. 354 00:18:47.320 --> 00:18:48.800 Mayavati would claim to be, 355 00:18:48.900 --> 00:18:50.140 at least in some ways, 356 00:18:50.160 --> 00:18:51.680 a descendant of Ambedkar. 357 00:18:52.160 --> 00:18:54.840 As I said earlier, her political party, 358 00:18:55.080 --> 00:18:56.140 the BSP, 359 00:18:56.320 --> 00:18:58.880 won office in Uttar Pradesh 360 00:18:58.880 --> 00:19:00.800 in elections in May of this year, 361 00:19:00.900 --> 00:19:02.740 and has a majority in its own right. 362 00:19:02.980 --> 00:19:05.620 That's the most substantial signal to date 363 00:19:05.620 --> 00:19:07.640 of the emergence of a new elite, 364 00:19:07.760 --> 00:19:09.500 mobilized very much from below. 365 00:19:09.760 --> 00:19:13.800 She's also very cleverly constructed an alliance 366 00:19:13.800 --> 00:19:16.480 which includes members of other castes. 367 00:19:16.540 --> 00:19:20.080 A large proportion of her 200 MLAs 368 00:19:20.080 --> 00:19:21.460 in the Uttar Pradesh assembly. 369 00:19:21.780 --> 00:19:24.760 Let me just look at the map of Uttar Pradesh. 370 00:19:26.260 --> 00:19:26.820 Sorry. 371 00:19:28.980 --> 00:19:29.540 Yeah. 372 00:19:30.220 --> 00:19:32.200 The two maps you see on the screen 373 00:19:32.200 --> 00:19:33.680 are the state of Uttar Pradesh, 374 00:19:33.800 --> 00:19:35.100 that's the big North Indian one, 375 00:19:35.620 --> 00:19:36.940 that was there on the earlier map. 376 00:19:37.120 --> 00:19:41.740 The smaller map is the state of the assembly in UP in 2002. 377 00:19:42.240 --> 00:19:44.920 The larger map is the current one, 2007. 378 00:19:45.460 --> 00:19:48.480 The dark blue areas are the areas won... 379 00:19:48.480 --> 00:19:50.540 These are territorial constituencies. 380 00:19:50.780 --> 00:19:54.520 The dark blue areas are those won by Mayavati's BSP party. 381 00:19:54.720 --> 00:19:57.200 As you can see, it's a spread across the whole of the state. 382 00:19:57.380 --> 00:19:59.180 It's a spread too of caste groups. 383 00:19:59.300 --> 00:20:01.120 She's got a significant number of Brahmins 384 00:20:01.120 --> 00:20:02.360 amongst the people elected. 385 00:20:02.580 --> 00:20:04.360 Even though her party up till now 386 00:20:04.360 --> 00:20:06.300 has been based on untouchables, 387 00:20:06.300 --> 00:20:07.640 so-called Dalits. 388 00:20:08.060 --> 00:20:12.500 It's perhaps useful to look at some of the terminology here. 389 00:20:12.920 --> 00:20:17.280 Dalit is the accepted term today for the oppressed, 390 00:20:17.580 --> 00:20:20.920 but it's also a synonym for scheduled caste, 391 00:20:21.200 --> 00:20:22.200 for untouchable, 392 00:20:22.300 --> 00:20:26.100 which of course is a word that isn't thought well of in India. 393 00:20:26.160 --> 00:20:28.500 We don't talk about untouchables in India. 394 00:20:28.580 --> 00:20:30.260 We might talk about ex-untouchables. 395 00:20:31.060 --> 00:20:33.640 Various words to describe the same body of people. 396 00:20:33.640 --> 00:20:36.720 Mayavati would say she represents Dalits. 397 00:20:36.840 --> 00:20:39.360 What she's done is to create a party 398 00:20:39.360 --> 00:20:42.260 which is capable of winning control 399 00:20:42.260 --> 00:20:44.280 of the largest state in India, 400 00:20:44.360 --> 00:20:46.080 the state from which Jawaharlal Nehru 401 00:20:46.080 --> 00:20:48.180