IS INDIA, the world’s largest democracy, a liberal democracy? This is the question that people both inside and outside of the country are increasingly asking. Since gaining power in 2014 and cementing it in elections last May, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has governed as if Hindus are the only real Indians.

Sagarika Ghose, a journalist and television anchor, offers an indictment of the current politics and a rallying cry for an alternative, with her book: “Why I Am a Liberal: A Manifesto for Indians Who Believe in Individual Freedom” (Penguin Random House, 2018).

As part of The Economist’s Open Future initiative, we asked Ms Ghose some questions about liberalism in India. After the interview we publish an excerpt from her book.

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The Economist: You wrote a 397-page book entitled "Why I Am a liberal". In a few sentences, please explain: why, in fact, are you a liberal?

Sagarika Ghose: I’m a liberal because I believe in the ideal that aims for greater social, political and economic freedom for the individual as against the massive, coercive powers of a centralised “Big State”. In 2014 the right-wing Hindu nationalist party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, as hardliners, won a full majority under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It returned to power this year with an even bigger majority and an even more belligerent, ideological agenda.

It has created an expansive government which intrudes into almost all aspects of citizens’ lives. In these aggressive populist-nationalist times, liberals are being targeted as “libtards”, “fiberals”, “traitors” and “anti-nationals” who are bent on breaking up “the nation”. Since it is so fashionable to bash liberals, I wrote “Why I Am a Liberal” to rescue the word and assert that liberal is not a term of abuse, but should be a badge of pride, because liberals fight for vital individual freedoms.

The Economist: In your book, you argue that traditional liberalism aligns with classical Indian values and history. Please explain.

Ms Ghose: Yes, I audaciously link liberal values to spiritual-religious traditions in India to argue that values of individual freedom can’t be dismissed as mere imitations of the West or part of the colonial hangover from the British Raj. It is wrong to demonise the quest for individual freedom as just the elitist creed of those whom nationalists’ attack as Macaulay-putras (or “children of Macaulay,” that is, western-educated Indian elites). This is because the Hindu religion—and the present regime calls itself a defender of Hindus—places a big emphasis on individual freedom.

The seeker seeks alone, there’s no single church, instead a dizzying variety of sects and rituals and almost nothing is taboo. Indian liberals believe that Gandhi, drawing on these traditions, was India’s greatest liberal because his political philosophy was centered entirely on the individual. So perhaps ancient Hindus were liberals long before classical liberalism emerged in the West in the 19th century!

The Economist: How is liberalism under assault in India?

Ms Ghose: Liberalism is under grave assault. Students and writers have been charged under antiquated sedition laws. In the guise of protecting cattle, lynch mobs are attacking Muslims with impunity. Cow-protecting vigilantes target Muslims as “cattle smugglers”. A citizens’ group which recently protested against these mob lynchings was viciously trolled on social media and trenchantly criticised by ruling-party politicians. When strongman politicians deploy violent speech in castigating dissenters and critics as “traitors”, street mobs become emboldened to carry out physical attacks.

Rationalist intellectuals who campaigned against orthodoxy, such as M.M. Kalburgi, Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Pansare, have been shot dead and their murders linked to certain ultra-Hindu outfits. My friend, the left-liberal journalist Gauri Lankesh, was shot and killed two years ago. Academics are often targeted by the student wing of the ruling party. Certain books and films are banned. Right-wing television channels—“Fox News on steroids”—regularly whip up public hatred against liberals.

The Economist: What can be done in India to overcome these challenges and support the liberal cause?

Ms Ghose: Liberals in India need to be really, really brave; be prepared for attacks and undertake collective action to push their cause. Perhaps a liberal revival can be created if liberals move out of their comfort zones and engage with people across the country on why freedom and liberty are important. It’s very difficult in India because the state—what I call the “Big State”—is so overbearing and intrusive that everyone is scrambling for pieces of the government pie.

Most are terrified to speak out even if their freedoms have been seriously curtailed. Liberals too have mistakenly sought state power to push their objectives and made the mistake of themselves becoming intolerant of dissent. As a path to revival, Indian liberals are now calling for a return to studying Gandhi. Little is popularly known about Gandhi’s fundamental affinity with individual freedom and his respect for dissent and difference.

The Economist: One of the most moving sections of your book is on feminism in India. How bad are things and what can be done to improve the situation?

Ms Ghose: Things are bad. Violence, harassment and discrimination against women are pretty rampant. The recently published sex ratio—number of females to every 1,000 males—is deeply worrying: the number of women declined to 896 in 2015-17 from 898 in 2014-16. Even rich, educated families opt for male children and secretly abort female fetuses. India is a sun-worshipping and son-worshipping culture.

There is a new “traditionalist” backlash against “modern” women, as a result of a moral panic about the loss of culture in the face of globalisation. “Modern” women are the Cultural Enemy No. 1. Village elders have issued bans on women wearing jeans or using mobiles. Huge numbers of women are dropping out of the workforce largely because of the absence of safe working conditions. The way out is noisy public protest and forming collectives. Many women are forging ahead, making the “traditionalists” ever more furious about westernised “feminazis”.

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Banned, Banned, Banned!

An excerpt from “Why I Am a Liberal” by Sagarika Ghose (Penguin Random House, 2018).

How many bans are there today anyway? How many aspects of our behaviour are policed?

Want to eat tenderloin in Maharashtra? Sorry, it’s banned.

Want to read Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses? Sorry, it’s banned.

Living in Gujarat and want to read the book Great Soul by Joseph Lelyveld? Sorry, it’s banned.

Want to see the movie Fifty Shades of Grey? Sorry, it hasn’t been cleared by the Central Board of Film Certification.

Living in Gujarat and want to see the film Fanaa? Sorry, that was also banned in Gujarat.

Want to see the play ‘Mi Nathuram Godse Boltoy’? Sorry, that was once banned too.

Does Priya Pillai of Greenpeace want to voice her views in London? Sorry, she was once banned from travelling.

Want to see India’s Daughter, a documentary on the Nirbhaya rape case? Sorry, that’s banned from TV telecast.

Bans are an entirely un-Hindu thing. Think about it, is anything banned in Hinduism? Almost nothing. What’s common between liberal democracy and Hindu philosophy? A constant search for answers, a quest for knowledge, a starting assumption that we don’t—we cannot—know everything. However, governments which are stubbornly convinced that they possess absolute knowledge implement policies through bans and diktats. People of goodwill may on occasion differ on answers and on specific public policies. Democracy provides a platform to legally and formally negotiate a common ground in a particular context, which is open to change as the context changes. Hindu philosophy is full of such debates and in these debates there is little absolute knowledge or any absolute certainty of truth.

The epics, particularly the Mahabharata, are tales of heroes (and some heroines) constantly plagued by self-doubt. They constantly debate the right course of action. The Gita is a treatise of Arjuna’s tryst with self-doubt. The Upanishads are question-and-answer sessions on philosophy. The Ramayana’s heroes are as flawed as they are noble.

Yet, those who believe in supreme government power believe they have all the answers and are the sole repositories of knowledge. They believe they have seen the light. Self-doubt does not trouble them. The Big State believes it has ultimate knowledge about what’s good for the people. The people have to simply be goaded and herded into obeying the mai-baap sarkar’s* wishes. Any questioning or disagreement is not only plain wrong or agenda-driven but equivalent to treason.

Is the strength of a so-called strong government to be defined by how brutally it demolishes citizens’ personal freedom, privacy and personal choices? Yes, the benefits of yoga are undeniable, but should the taxpayer’s money be spent on yoga events on a national scale? In 2016, in the aftermath of demonetisation, Prime Minister Modi praised a Surat couple who chose a low-cost wedding and managed to marry by paying only Rs 500.

Don’t citizens have the choice about whether they want meagre or extravagant weddings? Can citizens in a democracy be forced into austerity as a moral command? Why should citizens be instructed by the prime minister on their behavioural choices? It is as if only the government and the prime minister know what is in the best interests of over a billion mindless children who apparently believe they are citizens of India! It is an infantilising of an electorate empowered to vote!

[…]

Why We Should be Proud to be Liberal and Indian

The drive across the world is how to make governments more transparent and accountable to citizens. In sharp contrast today the reverse is true in India. It is citizens who are forced to be more and more transparent and accountable to governments. The animating spirit of this government seems to be: that citizens are by nature corrupt, they’re hiding personal information, they evade taxes, they’re slothful, lawless, don’t do enough yoga and must be reined in and made accountable to the government. The government in so-called “New India” is laying out a new ethical code for its citizens: ”Disclose everything if you have nothing to hide.” Yet at the same time the new code for the government is “disclose nothing” to citizens, since they are simply not worthy of trust. […]

Citizens of India, you are not guilty just because you lawfully exercise personal choices. Just because you happen to disagree with the government does not make you guilty. You are guilty only if you break the law, not if you offend the government’s ideological certainties or refuse to be a cheerleader of the government of the day.

The liberal view is the state exists to safeguard the individual. The individual is not a soldier of state power. The rights of the individual therefore become the supreme consideration because liberty is the supreme good. Those street mobs who are trying to take away this freedom are not protectors of identity, they are just terrorists peddling fear. […]

Defending personal freedom is also, in many ways, a defence of Indian traditions. Attacking personal freedoms is profoundly anti-Indian. […] The essence of Indian spiritual and cultural heritage is the ultimate individualistic pursuit of self-realisation. Recognition and respect for personal freedom in a modern polity is an extension of that age-old wisdom.

Those who are attacking the mainsprings of Indianness, who are hacking away at the deep roots of liberalism in our soil and flying in the face of generation upon generation of free thinkers and iconoclasts are ironically posing as the so-called defenders of “Indian” identity. It is the free minds who are being attacked by fearful minds.

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* paternalistic government

Excerpted from “Why I Am a Liberal: A Manifesto for Indians Who Believe in Individual Freedom.” Copyright © 2018 by Sagarika Ghose. Used with permission of Penguin Random House India. All rights reserved.