[Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] conversations with Tyler is produced by the mercada center at George Mason University Bridging the Gap between academic ideas and real world problems learn more at arcades.in conversations withth tyler.com [Music] I'm honored here to be chatting with jatha in my view her book ants among elephants is one of the most important of this year let me start with a simple question of definition Define for us all
just very quickly dalit Untouchables and cheduled casts and hin all these words are untouch for words for Untouchable depending on the political era dalit is the latest politically correct term for Untouchable which is also accepted by Untouchables and is it correct to say that about one six of India is doit MHM now give us an example of segregation through the cast system as it would affect doit the word is Untouchables
that is the neutral matter of fact politically neutral word and uh it is all in the word uh they are not they're not to be touched if you touch them you're polluted and you have to cleanse yourself and so segregation is the most prominent issue for Untouchables they are not allowed to live inside the village actually all cast they have their own colonies they don't mingle but all of these colonies are inside the village
whereas Untouchables are outside of the village and they come into the village only to work so in terms of marrying or what job you might have or what job you might be allowed to have uh those would all be cases where there's significant segregation in Indian society today yeah well you know Untouchables are uh the main features are segregation and the inheritance of C cast cast is by birth you cannot acquire cast you're
untouchable if you're born to Untouchable family and this is maintained by andami that is marriage within one's own cast marriage outside of the cast is very very stigmatized and uh not allowed it's not allowed to the extent that parents themselves can kill uh the girl for marrying outside of the the cast now if I think back in time a bit people in the United States they're very familiar with the apartheid system
of South Africa and there was here a very strong protest movement against that there were boycotts people talked about it quite frequently with respect to the cast system in India you have many millions of people existing in a segregated existence segregated setup and hardly anyone here talks about it at all hardly anyone complains why is there this difference and why do we as Outsiders have such an apparently indifferent attitude Indian I think
first of all uh America is a big country with the most influential country in the world uh militarily and industrially the most advanced country so whatever happens here it's uh you know telecast and broadcast everywhere in the world so we come to know what happens in America not so much the other way around what happens in India is doesn't get necessarily around and the second thing is while practicing cast Indian cases
and rulers are very secretive very very secretive about cast they like to tell people that there is no such thing as cast and uh one of the things that reactions to my book is that uh why is she washing the dirty Linen in the public why is she telling everybody there is cast system what would the dollied critique of Gandhi be so often westerners think of Gandhi who is someone almost saintly yet a lot of the doit Dr redar would be the most obvious
example had a very strong debate with g over what well edar is the was the leader of the Untouchables he devoted his life for The Untouchables and he saw the people and he himself saw him as the Moses of The Untouchables that he was going to lead them out of uh you know emancipate them and Gandhi wanted to encroach on this leadership he wanted to claim leadership of all of the people in India including Untouchables and Muslims
so there is a tussle between edar and Gandhi who is the real representative of Untouchables in your view to what extent are the sexual harassment and rape problems in India in some way actually problems of cast well you know cast cast
as I said the endogamy marrying within own's cast One's Own cast and not allowed to marry outside the cast is really one of the features that you can say is the Crux of cast system and so uh because of the this there is a large of
restrictions on women's freedom because they don't want her to marry someone outside of the cast so although there is women's oppression is everywhere in in the world even in America as you know but the particular uh intensity of women's oppression stems out of cast restrictions from you know they are not allowed to marry from outside so because of how much value you put on the girl's Chastity that becomes a very valuable
thing for them like women's Chastity is a valuable thing for their community and for the family so if you want to insult someone and if you want to hurt someone the cruelest way is to rape somebody so it's the it's the uh other side of the coin that you put so much stress on the Chastity of the woman and violating it is the worst hurt you can uh inflict on somebody and so it all comes from cast if you if you want to insult somebody
like for example in partition of India into Pakistan the women's rap rape of women is like a major major feature now I come at this very much as an outsider but I tend to think of Indian cast as intersecting with at least a few different things let me mention them and maybe you can give us a framework for thinking about it cast and vegetarianism so doll eats are less likely to be vegetarian cast and one's philosophy of
interaction with dead bodies and also cast and Notions of defecation open defecation and cleaning up of open defecation what's your take on how all of that intersects with cast and the segregated Indian system well actually
you know people might uh mistakenly think not all Indians are vegetarians it's only the brahmins who are not allowed to eat meat or fish even that is not true of all the places in India like for biar they eat beef uh brahin and in
Kolkata they eat fish uh in our UHA areas they don't eat meat or eggs or anything like that and beef is a taboo for all of Hindus except dalits theit survived on carcass the dead animals that's what else did you want just handling of dead bodies and handling of defecation and sanitary issues how does that intersect with cast and jobs of different cast members cast is also about occupation it's an imposed occupation each cast has its own
occupation and the occupations that are given or forced on Untouchables or what are what Hindu Society deems uh you know unclean and menial so all of these things dead handling of the dead bodies and uh Tannery removing dead animals and uh cleaning lrin of course nobody else wants to do so it's um an occupation imposed on Untouchables so you're a Critic of this form of segregation but let's say you had a very intelligent
Indian here who is in some way a defender or apologist for the system or a Critic of you what is it they would say in response to you well first of all you know somewhat timid people will say there is no such thing as cast and some people will say cast is by your Merit it's not discriminatory on based on your cast whoever is intelligent can become brahmans that is like pure nonsense because cast is by birth and some people
actually like the person in your blog says that cast gives color to society you know like different cast make it interesting so why doesn't he want to be an Untouchable for a change if that's what he wants one person said to me tell
me if you agree or not cast mostly disappears when you move to an Indian city that is not true I mean cast is basically a village B based institution that's where it is most rigorously practiced but but when even when you
come to towns like my family did we lived in a segregated area and we were not allowed to rent houses in other areas at one time my father's friend agreed to take us in but when we went there with all our things the wife said no you can't have them here so let's say you belong to one of the lower casts and you and or your family you decide to convert to Christianity to Buddhism as Dr amidar did to Islam to sism what then
happens does cast go away no it doesn't you know there is a confusion introduced in the cast system because people think Hinduism is castism it's in a way right because Hinduism is a tailormade religion and as one uh Anthropologist said it's a mysticism but basically it's a system to prop up cast system it's it tells you the rules for Untouchables and for women that is that is all Hinduism is about Sha of Mystic it's prop for C
system and so C system is a social issue but the religion coincides with the social that's why it looks like it's a religious issue it's not actually a religious issue therefore when people convert to other religions hoping that they will not be Untouchables anymore they will be disappointed because there are there is castism in Christians and dalits and siks and any other religion in India it's a social issue does
Facebook make the cast system worse because maybe it's harder to move to another Village and pretend you don't know anyone from your old cast uh I can't comment on that very much but I mean it's a it's I don't think it makes it any more difficult it's already difficult enough you know how would you think analytically about the forces that keep the cast system in place as you know article 17 of the Indian constitution it at least nominally
Outlaws cast the Indian president not not the most important office says here but badal is president legally there's a system of reservations that's in some ways similar to our affirmative action to give doit preferential treatment for
some kinds of government jobs or posts in schools given those forces pushing against cast what is keeping cast segregation in place well cast is basically uh you know it stems out of uh economic system it stems out of
occupation it stems out of what job you do uh in the society so as long as the production is such organized in such a way that you want a certain group of people always be available to do venial work and do the hard work if the economic system requires that then the forces will try to keep Untouchables in their place so that they can be used uh as laborers so it it is not it does not go away unless the the system of uh the
economic system and system of production are radically changed so let's say you come to the United States as you did at age 20 6 and there are a large number of Indians in the United States including of course in New York New Jersey how much does the cast system persist here in this country amongst Indians very much I had bad experiences when I first came here because I knew nobody else but Indians and once I was able to make
friends with Americans I never never went back to Indian networks uh it's a very rabid system so immigrant associations ostensibly they are there to celebrate Indian culture and festivals but they're actually the cast
groups some hide behind you know culture but some others openly say that this is Brahman Americans Association and if you want to join the Facebook page you have to tell uh their shibolet like what's your gotra what's your this what's your
horoscope this that and we're not able to tell them because we don't know what uh you know and those are indicators of cast so in your view should cast based discrimination amongst Indians be recognized as a form of discrimination in American law with regard to race you know what is what what's going to happen if you recognize this as a a you know a legally objectionable thing nothing happens and I don't think uh any of such
thing can happen with cast uh you know and these people the brahmins are firmly entrenched in all high places in uh uh America if you look at TV anchors they're all brahin if you look at people who work in New York Times they're all brahin if you look at people who are in Trump's Administration they're all upper cast and they're never ever going to allow uh this thing thing to be recognized as a discrimination so here
in America we have this thing people call it identity politics and they mean many different things with that term I would say it's more prominent in the Democratic party than Republican though the Republican party has its own unnamed brand of white identity politics often but when you see the ways in which people are informally grouped into different categories here whether it be ethnicity or gender or sexual
orientation coming at this from Andre predes as a doit how do you perceive this institution of ours institution of our identity politics do you think oh the Americans have done it right do you think the Americans are crazy how do you feel about we do identity politics I'm against identity politics all together for sure yeah yeah uh and uh yeah I have seen bad bad things happen with identity politics with Untouchables as well I
mean they all they fight for his reservations reservations is based on your suffering of suffering of Untouchables in The Villages so if you want reservations then you are indirectly asking for discrimination to be continued on the basis of which you can gain a few seats in universities and political places so the system of reservation in in India which is a form of affirmative action for lower casts you think that's a bad idea it's not I
mean if I were there in the circumstances where that's being um you know implemented or written into Constitution I wouldn't have been fighting actively for reservations because reservations is like putting a Band-Aid on a bullet wound so I would not be fighting for that what I would be fighting for is equal access in all spheres of life but reservations are here whether I fought for it or not and attack on them is definitely a
reactionary thing to do and I would defend reservations from uh being attacked by upper cast people but reservations have done nothing much at all for Untouchables and there are a lot of downsides for reservations now I had some Indians write me emails I found this somewhat unusual and they asked well you need to find out about how she got a masters from a very good school starting off as a dolly from a village
yeah and they were very intent on knowing to what extent you had used reservations you don't have to tell us feel free to tell us what you want but how should we even is dying to know whether I got into University because of reservations my answer to them is go ahead and die you know yeah yeah so this is because this is going to be out in the public I'm not going to give them the satisfaction of knowing whether I got in because of reservations
or not but can tell you in private whether how I got into um Engineering in big institutes now I'd like to ask you some questions about your life yeah but I would just stress please if you don't want to answer anything feel free to just leave it aside and we'll move on but in India how and why were you arrested and at what age I was 19 years old I lived in a very poor neighborhood and it affected me a lot and also I must
say that Christianity had an effect on us in our your family is Christian we view Christianity as a a religion of kindness and compassion and so that is how we started then we moved into communism and uh so I always want I thought Christian Brotherly Love is the way to emancipation of all oppression in the world but when I grew up and I saw in churches people being discriminated rich people and poor people in church I
thought yeah I don't know what Jesus is going to do in the other world but nothing is happening now so to me uh what my uncle was doing seemed appealing at that time it was very highly Romantic Movement you know like young people from high cast and very wealthy PE young people people who had like great Futures uh s you know sacrificed that and they were fed into the M of State repression and I was one of them like I wanted to
do something for the people what was it like being in prison after you were arrested I really went blank you know after I got arrested I really went blank and things were happening to me things were being done to me but I really
really went blank and I uh accepted torture also in the same manner and uh I was in the jail and uh for three months and then I was released and my fervor has had a certainly calmed down in the sense that like I don't want to be
romantic by getting arrested and killed or something like that but I still held the views of equality and justice social justice and this experience made you more of a Christian less of a Christian no I I I ditched Christianity when I was 12 years old I never went back to it and you your views evolved into well I'm still I consider still myself a Marxist do you think your of yourself as a Marxist in the sense of being a radical
egalitarian or a Marxist in the sense of wanting the government to own all of the means of production at some point no I it's a world view I would say Marxism is a world view and Marxism uh looks at the world in terms of class like feminists look at world as men and women and the religious people look at the world as Christians and non-christians and marxists look at people as uh workers and uh capitalists and that is the
worldview I hold and I look at problems arising out of class difference and I look at solutions that could arise out of you know class action now at age 26 you left India you come to the United States how is it that happened obviously there may have been things you wanted to leave but we all know migration is often shaped by social networks there were especially at that time a relatively small number of dollits here in the
United States so you didn't have that Network so much to connect to you're from a village in India what sort of mentally emotionally brought you to coming to this country well everybody loves to be in America there are people who woke like mental about wanting to go to America so I'm not an exception um but my idea of coming here is to be more more free women are very very very repressed in India compared to here H
you know like I was the first people call me the first woman to be riding a bicycle in my town but I'm really not the first one all those there are two other girls but they like close their uh legs like this and like drive like pedal like that I I used to Pedal like a man and uh I I there is not much scope for people like me to be in India if you want to be free and nonchalant and you know Carefree like guys uh there's no
scope there so that my main thing is to be free and intellectually free and uh you know uh free to pursue culture and even reading books is like why is a woman reading books you know uh so for me com Coming to America means a lot of
uh social freedom and when you came here expecting some kind of Freedom what was your biggest surprise um biggest surprise because you hadn't visited before right you just came it was this huge decision with your life you're
staking this huge move on a notion of freedom and you come here this is of course not in every way a free country it's far from perfect I fear we may have disappointed you in some ways but what was your biggest surprise I can't I can't think of anything but I used to think all old people that are by themselves going around by themselves are like Beggars because old women don't go out by themselves so I used to give money to these rich
old yeah despite their like bres and yeah now you mentioned a moment ago you had broadly speaking a Marxist view as I'm sure you know there's a whole intellectual movement of pro capitalist alites Chandra Bon prad would be one of them and what do you think of them and where do you differ the particular person Chandra ban Prasad he makes me puke uh tell us why he was an ex he was in the same radical students union as I
was even though much older than me and uh he went to jnu which is like the highest uh University in in in India for humanities and he studied something or the other social sociology or something and the knowledge that he gained from
being in RSU radical students union and what he studied made him a good person to uh defect and you know be a become a mouth mouthpiece for you know delit entrepreneurship and delit capitalism yeah and dalit capitalist yeah there are
a few there were none before uh there are a few I think that it's a a kind of like they were given some kind of like I don't know perk to become capitalist so that people won't say oh how come you're so cist you don't have any dalit capitalist but dalit capitalists are very very very much lower uh compared to other PE other capitalists from other casts but if you think of yourself as a Marxist and you came to one of the most
capitalist societies for freedom is that in some way a contradiction in your worldview or you think it all makes sense no it's not as I said Marxism means class versus class not a Nation versus nation in India there are poor people and rich people and in America there are poor people and rich people and why is it a some sort of defection if I came here I I came here not to become a a capitalist you've had two jobs here at least two jobs one you
worked in the financial sector for the Bank of New York for a while I believe until 2009 and now you're a conductor of subway trains for the MTA in New York City which of those two jobs have you enjoyed more I would say uh MTA job because uh in Bank of New York I was making much more money even in 2009 I was making like almost three times what I made making MTA um and then I have like unlimited uh sick leave and
personal days and uh five weeks vacation and stock options and things like that but the people are really so boring and UNC cosmopol you know yeah they are such narrow-minded people that I had uh this figurine of Darwin on my desk and this guy was glaring at me because he's a Catholic Charles Darwin yeah yes and we're not like that in MTA we are very open and very passionate we are much more Cosmopolitan we discuss things
openly and uninhibitedly and yet at the same time we don't hurt each other and you wrote your book ants among elephants while you had this full-time job as a Subway conductor for the MTA and you wrote it during the evening or what kind of hours did you have when did you write how did you do it actually I didn't do it that's why it took 10 years 10 years and then uh I I grew up in a family where there always 25 people Milling
around in in the house so we were like sitting on the steps of the house trying to concentrate so I never sat at desk so now it is how I work I cannot work at a desk in silence and in my privacy and things like that I work while commuting on the train and I I used to work uh during breaks uh at at work like that and the break you're literally on the train right you're not in an office no no no no no um in the beginning the
beginners are called extra extra meaning that they're sitting there and if somebody got sick or they have to go home they will jump in and take their job so half the time we're just sitting around for 8 hours and going home and
half the time we're taking over for somebody else so I always used to carry a computer with me yes and one of the names I have is a computer girl apart from uh Hindu conductor okay yeah what is it about the MTA that attracts so
many interesting people it's very multi-racial Workforce not so much from uh Western Europe but uh all the other colored countries and easn Eastern Europe people they are there they bring in their own experience and they talk about it in crew rooms and uh it's just more entertaining and uh the for me the thing the thing is that I was working in B Bank of New York writing programs and I had no idea what it was I was writing
programs for I should have known but I I didn't really care but uh but now I know what I'm doing is how it's affecting we're taking people from point A to point B where they want to go I know for sure that what I'm doing is very useful yes and that makes me feel self-confident and what are the personal qualities you feel you have that make you a good MTA conductor um well you know it's a very very strict job it's like a run on
Military kind of uh you know lines if you have to be there at 2032 then you have to be there at 2032 it's all very difficult for me but I really like the I don't know I mean I'm um pleasant when I'm helping people and I'm conscientious to help people not say get away from me uh I don't know I mean yeah I I don't know I mean I I like to be a good coworker rather than a good conductor okay yeah in these interviews there's
always a segment in the middle called overrated versus underrated oh yeah I know yeah and I'm GNA toss out some some mentions and again you're free to pass if you don't want to comment on them but I'll say a few things and you tell us if
it's overrated or underrated okay in Manhattan the cluster of Indian restaurants at about Lexington and 28th Street overrated or underrated normally rated normally rated but I would say that all the all the restaurants on
Sixth Avenue like uh that same marks they're all trash they're I agree there's not one I would want to eat no yes and Jackson Heights and queens for Indian food overrated or underrated um underrated okay still you think yeah Bob Dylan underrated I like Bob Dylan I like him a lot yeah and why do you like him I don't know that's what we I grew up with um I mean we got all the music and movies 10 years after you have them so
even though I wasn't from the Beatles and Bob Dylan Times that's what we got and when I was growing up and it really fascinated me that someone who's singing nasally can be a popular writer sing yeah what is it from Bob Dylan what song what album what something uh had the most impact on you God I my memory fails me actually you know his post in his Christian era yes uh he has that name man gave name to all the animals I
love that song okay yeah now in ad music there's something called dapu music yeah and some of it uses leather it has a lot of percussion overrated or underrated underrated yes yeah and what's special about it the drum is used for uh calling people to a village uh meeting yes so it's uh the job of a particular Untouchable cast I don't know they play very well it's like U amazing I don't know you did of course leave India but
what for you about India is most underrated vegetables grown naturally and fruits gr naturally they're all disappearing now MH yeah the A train I don't mean the song Take the A Train I mean the A train it cuts through such an amazing swath of history of New York Manhattan Brooklyn different social classes different economic classes the A train overrated or underrated underrated underrated I agree the Indian scheme of biometric
identification uh that is a totally anti- people uh measure tell us why because uh you know it's like uh if somebody says that oh you know this chair I'm sitting in is uncomfortable it's like oh yeah I'll solve the problem
and kick the chair out from under the person who is sitting and complaining so people don't have very low literacy rates and how are they able to do these things people are just dying because they have to have minimum balance in the
bank and they don't they don't know how to open bank accounts and uh their money is taken away I'm sorry I'm I think I'm digressing but uh this whole technology yeah this whole technology thing is uh you know like it's uh under the thing of ostensibly it's like to streamline the system and to curb corruption and to bring everybody into the mainstream that is nonsense it's all about exploitation used to be like giving people low wages
but now the exploitation is taking back what they already have but let's say I'm a technocrat I look at Indian Aid to the poor a lot of it is in kind in the form of food a high percentage of the food rots and I say we're going to scan everyone's identity biometrically and just send them cash what will go wrong from doing that give cash to people instead of to their bank accounts electronically rather than giving them
in kind food Aid is that more efficient are you worried about the loss of privacy are you worried about some kind of autocratic control from having information very exact about everyone's identity privacy and all this this thing
is a big concern but the concern really is that all these measures are now there was one measure I think it's called demonetization yes uh it's they they scrapped 500 rupee bills and 1,000 bills and so all these uh smalltime uh
business people T vendors they're all like just overnight they lost all their money they keep their money in their houses there's a woman in our neighborhood she sold her house and she's going to live on her money and she kept all the money in $500 bills in the house and as soon as this thing was announced and it was told she was told that your money is nothing but paper she died of heart attack and it's not an
isolated incident like hundreds of people died of this demonetization so you're critical of the current regime in India yes yeah there they are uh they first uh stripped the farmers of their lands and let let them die so far 450,000 P Farmers kill themselves suicides and now they turned their focus on small business people and now they're popularized Williamsburg Brooklyn overrated or underrated overrated why because I don't really identify with
the crowd there uhuh yeah and I think you know hipsters is just in clothes and stuff but in not in attitude so they're conformists ultimately yeah and what's like a special cherished treasured part of New York for you that maybe not everyone knows about where I live Bay Ridge Bay Ridge and what makes that special there are different kinds of immigrant groups Arabs and bangladeshis and Spanish people and it used to be
Greek and Irish and now Indians and it's very safe place and we have like restaurants from you know different parts of the world um everything is closed by and things like that what is the hardest part about your job as an MTA conductor oh yeah the hardest part is like you cannot take days off you have to take you have to apply 20 days before to get a day off and there's limited sick leave presumably yeah what's the strangest use you've ever
heard of or seen for a New York subway car strangest use um no I can't can't think of anything right now is the L line the best Subway for getting to Brooklyn from Midtown uhhuh yes from where to be the L line say canari to 8th Avenue would you take the L line yes definitely absolutely it used to be called The Double L line when I was a kid I was shocked to learn it's now the L line I don't know why they did that uh for me that's very
[Laughter] confusing but I don't actually take this sub way much at all uh if you were to describe to us your take what's going on in India now so if I were to ask a neoliberal they would say something like well Modi he's trying to be a reformer maybe he doesn't have the will maybe the special interest groups are interfering he's not getting much reform done things are progressing and fits and starts but there's no great wonderful turnaround
but India is still growing this is a country we should be positive about that would be a normal sort of neoliberal take I would hear from a lot of people say in the investment Community but your overall take on where India is now and where it's headed how would you put your alternate version Well India it's not under uh Modi that this these bad things are happening they have been started by Congress the so-called Liberal Party
which I would compare to probably the Democratic party here uh they have started all these measures them themselves in 1991 uh after the market liberalization and and the Modi is uh shoving us shoving them down our throats and you know Congress probably had some kind of like you know hesitation in in imposing these measures but that's why India I guess needed somebody like a guy like Modi uh who can uh just terrorize people
into accepting these things and in India I don't know for whom it's uh uh develop developing but for the majority of PE uh people it's going down and I can say from my point of view there may be some ambanis and Adis that are profiting from it but everybody else is losing if you think of the Bengali intellectual class from India do you think of that itself as yet another cast creation like a cast Club yeah yeah Bengal is uh you know
Bengal is like the Renaissance of India and they consider themselves uh culturally Superior like the French think of themselves in Europe and uh yeah they very proud about that yeah if you think of by the way I I think that
like the French are still lying on the lals of French Revolution it's long gone and they have nothing else to show for it now if you think of the Indian Communist Party would you consider that to also be in some sense fundamentally a
cast creation oh yeah I mean it's not in the program of Communist party to be casst but all these leaders they came from Gandhi's party and all all they wanted is to be to for the nationalism to be militant like Gandhi says don't be violent uh and yet his idea is that we should get independence whereas Communists are like we want independence but we'll be breaking chairs and uh benches for getting it so that's the
only difference there's no programmatic difference these are the people who came from nationalist Indian Congress and join the Communist Communists and uh they bring along with them their cast attit Judes and why do you think the cast system has been and remain so strong in India compared to other countries what accounts for that I mean what other countries have untouchability I know that Japan and Yemen have it groups that are a much smaller
percentage of the population so if dalit are about a sixth of India even though there's no census it's going to be a very large number of people as a country it would be one of the larger countries in the world so to have untouchability on such a scale persisting for so long what is it about India that you think has led to that well you know I'm not a social scientist but I can only guess from what I read I think that there's
some special geological geographical climate climatic conditions that necessitated for uh some cast system to be there to division of labor because if land is everybody oh actually there's an example in Australia when people went from England to colonized people went there and some people were taken as the servants there and servants soon found land of their own and they were no longer servants so that's the case in
India so people had to be forced into a cast system some Indians have claimed to me that very often the intermediate classes oppress the lower classes more than the brahin do would you agree yeah I do there's also a series of claims
made even within untouchability that there are significant distinctions so many Indians will say well the malas oppress the mandas and that that's as bad an oppression problem as the problems are crosscast would you agree
with that no I don't because these divisions were uh created by we were not aware of I mean we there are cast divisions but we all considers ourselves ourselves as Untouchables we didn't think that we have to steal from them or deprive from them but this is you know reservations is there to give uh chances for Untouchables but there are so many things that under mind this so one of the things that they do is divide
Untouchables and make them fight over the common reserved seats now we've been talking a lot about some fairly General issues but most of your book actually is a very particular tale tale of your family tale of your uncle tale of your mother tale of other relatives you appear in the story toward the end as a young girl uh let me just ask you a few questions about that story it's not possible to recount the entire story
here but if you think back on your Uncle who is a a famous and very influential revolutionary what is your most touching memory of your uncle that you have well actually I didn't see my uncle until uh just before I came here I never saw him before touching moment um so I I can't say that but uh because he was in hiding right yeah he was in hiding so you were uncovering expost this long history of his and you barely knew him yeah yeah
your most touching memory of your mother I don't know I mean uh when was arrested uh she was very worried she said uh I wish I could take you back into my womb mhm so you know yeah and you have siblings right yeah are they in India do they live here uh my sister lives here in Long Island she is a physician yes and my brother is in Canada he's a chemical engineer uh he works for as a techn technology consultant for uh oil
companies so the the children in your family they've been very successful what is it in your upbringing that you would attribute that to that there's three of you you know doing great in different ways yeah uh what's the the ultimate source of that sucess I think that you know India provided narrow Windows of um opportunity for Untouchables and it's like we were driving in a car and all the lights were turning green just in time so the uh
missionaries were one such opportunities uh they came in my great grandmother's time so she was able to get educated because of missionaries and my parents generation they got educated because it's all the whole fervor of uh you know just got independence people are more uh liberal towards others and in my generation I had the benefit of two generations behind me uh in the tradition of Education I like the story very much in
the book where your mother is trying to feed you Corn Flakes and you're rebelling yeah how did she bring you all up what was her philosophy of parenting well she wanted us to go to school school and get educated they are against Humanities they think that if one day there will be a revolution you you're required to teach something else other than what is a fact like in history or something like that but if it's science
it's uh it's it's going to stay irrespective of what Society are in and as the years pass do you view your own thought as becoming more radical or more conservative and why more radical but you know I refrain from talking about Obama or um feminism uh black lives matter uh there are certain other certain things that I don't want to talk about because they sound like conservative views um but uh I am radical so you think that what we
here consider radical is actually conservative and this is like a a grand American illusion of some kind I'm sorry what well you said there are things you don't want to talk about yeah because I will alienate people you know people read this book and they think that oh she's automatically going to be a feminist she's automatically going to be a supporter of Democratic party she's automatically an admirer of uh Obama
which I'm not and what is that and and this will alienate people uh so that's why I'm afraid of like saying these things outside if you think about these aspects in American society that you're unhappy about what what would your
critique consist of so if you don't like Obama or you're unhappy with some parts of feminism or black lives matter how would you articulate your critique oh well you know the Democrats and the Republicans by and large they have the
same interests and uh the Democrats act like they're liberal they're they act like uh they are for women's rights they're for gay rights and things like that but on the whole they are the same and Obama here comes and he he's like pretending to be like uh you know such a great guy this guy wrote a book called we were in power for 8 years who is in power for 8 years I don't understand that and all these policies that the
Democrats have those are the same things that Trump is doing like Obamacare is his biggest thing what is it like he uh I mean without precondition I mean pre pre-existing uh condition insurance apart from that I don't see any benefit from it you know final question before I let all of you ask questions but after all the years now you've lived here are you optimistic about this country and if so why or why not you know when Trump uh
came to power people were all saying that oh my God we're doomed and stuff like that I thought maybe it's a chance for people to like really see what's going on here and uh no longer be silent about things so I was optimistic about that in that sense but I think that yeah things can happen to make um make uh you know this country better sutha thank you very much I'm a huge fan of you and your book Thank you thank
you we now move to questions again keep in mind this will be recorded and made public so artificial intelligence analyzing voice is a science that will progress in in that sense you're on the record but feel free to ask whatever you want hands yes so if if you as ath Cent were the prime minister of India or had s of a very large political influence over what India what is it that you would do to fight the cast system or to
fight against segregation you know like governments uh they Pride over a certain Society so even if I become the prime minister of India I can't do anything about cast system you know being in a government that rules the same kind of
society the society has to be changed not the government are qu yes Kate have you been to Washington DC uh no not really would you like to go to Washington DC yeah I suppose yeah we'd be happy to host you if you ever come
down okay yes it was just as a follow up to the question of if it isn't a government that can change the society what would you do if you had a societal influence do you think it's through charitable organizations or education or uh charitable organization and education they're all within the same framework uh I would have to say things that um I may be hesitant to say but uh the social structure has to be basically you
know smashed and rebuilt on a um collectivized basis everything should be run um you know agriculture should be collectivized and Industry should be uh under the state and foreign policy should be Monopoly of the state yes so when when people ask you where you're from how do you respond to that question if it foreigners ask me I will say I'm from India but if Indians ask me I have to say which state and what cast and
would an Indian you would meet say in Manhattan would that person know right away that you're an Untouchable one thing is that uh most of the untou most of the Christians except uh Syrian Christians and uh some Catholic Christians in Goa Untouchable Christians are Untouchable so immediately the lack of forehead dot tells them that I'm an Untouchable and also you know um there's a study like you know Indians are like
genetically like same but apparently you could tell when the endogamy began and so it's 1500 years ago people are different uh you know there is some extra genetic thing that we inherit from casts and I think that people's body
languages can language can easily uh tell which cast you are and when I came here people would always constantly ask me if if I'm walking on the street like why are you sad smile life is not that bad and things like that I I didn't
think that I was sad but everybody was saying that and other people used to think why are you so uh anxious just calm down and things like that you know so as far as Untouchables are concerned and brahmins are concerned you can tell from the body language itself who you are there's a Russian philosophy that if you walk around smiling you must be a fool next question yes uh I'm wondering if you think that uh your perception of
cast system might be affected by which cast you're from like if you're a bragman maybe you don't feel the effects of the system that much and would not be that's true yeah I mean brahin like cast system this guy on your blog was saying you know like castism is very very good and probably they should uh adopt it for American society wasn't he saying that I think he was implying it at least yeah next question yes so you don't think
very highly of Obama are there any American politicians who you admire or at least think you're doing something useful no if you had in in the room an American who had never been to India but was planning a trip to India just to learn discover also enjoy uh what advice would you give them for how they should do that trip I can go with the mundane things that don't eat anything that's not cooked and intellectual advice intellectual advice
for understanding it or what they should try to experience or where they should go or what they should see I mean it depends on the person's interest right uh sure so people who really want to see what uh 80% of India is like they should go to The Villages okay and if people want to see the beauty of India natur nature and all that kind of stuff they should go to Kerala if people want to see the Splendor of the rajas they
should go to Jaipur and uh if they want to see the squalor and all that stuff they should go to Kolkata and Banaras is the place for uh it's like the Mecha India uh because it's on the banks of Ganges and you can look at it in two different ways like Brahman will have like such ecstatic experience when they go there uh but at the same time other people people go there they will see the filth and the how polluted the river is
and you know uh so that's there if you go there and Goa is a place for um beaches and uh fun and drugs and things like that next question yes what what country do you think is doing things to your most ideal state right now um you know
I'm not uh you know a supporter of the regime in China or in Cuba but from all uh developmental indexes uh they're doing well right there is uh more literacy in China and more literacy in Cuba and less uh you know infant
mortality is better and even women's equality is better I know I mean it's not you know perfect but they're better in these two countries I don't know much about North Korea but yeah yes you mentioned that you're not a feminist what a difference was I mean feminists basically look as the world as divided between men and women um and I don't think that and feminists have you know like lately have become such a force for uh backwardness
in the sense that like for example the bka and the Muslim women in Europe they want to rip the bka off because bka is a you know uh a symbol of women's oppression but they don't see like you can't just do like that you know you know the the point is you give the choice to the people to wear the bka or not wear the burka but not like you forcibly take the burka off and that's one of the feminist thing things I don't
like and then this Nordic model that they have in uh Sweden and they're appropriating it in Germany is that and when you say Nordic model what do you mean the prostitution uh they're now arresting the people who seek prostitutes the customers the male customers yes yeah that is I think is Draconian I mean not all prostitutes are forced into it what do men do if they don't have any partner and uh it's livelihood for many women so I think
that in the guise of feminism people are really putting they are really putting restrictions on uh individual liberty mhm yes back what can America learn from India in terms of how some of the social problems India has dealt with that you mentioned and the problems that we're dealing with not much you know I mean I think that uh you know India is still uh is is one of the countries where communism is still a
popular thing not something that people will Sherk from uh but uh Indian communism is not that great uh so from that point of view there's nothing to learn from but Modi and Trump are seen as uh you know uh birds of the same
feather if they want to learn how uh to do uh bad things they can learn from each other yes what is your opinion of mother Tera you know the whole Christian Missionary thing uh it is part of uh White Man's Burden bring you know a a
prop for colonization but people who uh join those missionaries the white people who join those missionaries they are not all of them are like uh aware that yeah we're going there to uh get people's support for for our colonizers uh they are people who are sincerely there to help people and uh Mother Teresa I don't know what uh her grand scheme was but she really did a lot of good things in um India and she's the now a big Target
for Hindu uh hindutva people they say that she's a uh an agent of imperialism agent of colonialism uh she's someone who's uh spoiling Indian culture people trying to convert people into Christianity she's a devil and she doesn't deserve to be canonized and things like that Mother Teresa is a big Target for hinda people I don't have uh you know she did good things for us I mean she she may have some other ideas
but uh they are not uh perceived by us what we perceived is she did a lot of good things next question yes so you mentioned that one of the things that led you and your family um to sort of successfully um move out of where your CL where your cast was trying to place you was education yeah um to what extent do you think educ uh educ what role do you think education has in um refiguring the social system the cast system on a
larger scale or is it a thing that could only be possible for a few people you know um ambedkar's uh are uh slogan is educate organize and a agitate uh this is a big thing for Untouchables they think that uh uh their emancipation lies in uh getting educated but may be true but they they are after education they're not getting jobs uh what can they do with education if there are no jobs question over here you see cast in
the Indian film industry at all like do you see any film being made that talk about these issues you know in the beginning just after Independence when we were all filled with the fervor of you know uh Indians all equal brothers
sisters at that time there were a lot of movies talking about cast system where the hero who is a Brahman marries uh marries a an Untouchable woman and things like that but uh the politics and Society has changed uh now they no
longer talk about social issues anymore there used to be films about dowy system there there used to be films about uh laborers there used to be films about untouchability but now it's not that actually the film bahubali which uh probably you heard of right it's like highest grossing Indian film or something like that it's like through and through cast film you know it it talks as if like they say that like there are certain people born to rule
and certain people who are born to be ruled it's just outright cist film are there major Bollywood actors and actresses who are dollits no next question question Do your family members share your political views at this point like your family members who are in the United States and Canada actually the only relation I have with my family members is political views if we uh if we have to connect on uh familial links
we will always be fighting and killing each other all that we talk about with my mother is politics and untouchability and cast and Modi and things like that it's the same thing with my sister also this is where we connect um otherwise we are like enemies but uh uh my brother uh um we completely alienated from each other uh firstly because um uh he goes to church now you know we never used to go to church church before uh and uh he
he's into this uh you know like aoka is there a name aoka yeah leak coka the Chrysler former Chrysler chairman yeah he he reachs that kind of books management books yeah he's into that kind of stuff so I you don't no no he he read fre fre economics and he liked it yes I I don't uh relate to that stuff what would you say is the book in fiction that's influenced you most I liked uh certain books like uh independent people by halor Laxus he's
an Icelandic writer I like that book a lot it's really huge book and I think that they uh categorize it as social realism uh I liked it a lot and then um as for non-fiction I I read this book a Hindu holiday uh by Jr akerly uh he went to India in 1920s and spent some time there that's really hilarious and well- written book I like that as for comedy there is Amanda Philippi or philipak uh she wrote a book called love creps it's
really really hilarious book where the protagonist a woman she has everything that she wants and now she desires the she desires Desiring because she there's nothing else to desire for her she's like depressed now she's going she goes around looking for things that she can desire and not get uh that was a funny book I liked it Chester heims is a black writer uh he wrote uh black detectives and that that stuff is funny actually
I'm reading reading one right now a blind blind man with a pistol um and then um I don't know a lot of books I like fante I could finish that book yeah somebody else is like uh her book is supposed to be fictional realism I don't really know what this magical realism social realism fictional realism is uh if everything has to be categorized in this sense I'll call my book real realism and for for the future future is
there anything you could tell us about what you're thinking or what you're planning in terms of further writing or expressing your ideas more there is I mean you know that uh people with my kind of like views they don't get published in New York Times and things like that so that's out for me I don't like writing fiction uh I like writing non-fiction but only the kind of issues that I have which involves a enthusiastic uh storytellers like my
family and centered around an issue for example the forer suicide in India uh if we if we get some story tellers like that who are involved with that uh um issue then I I'd like to write but otherwise um I don't see any point to WR do you think there'll ever be a time where you write about life in the United States maybe yeah possible time for one more question yes have you traveled much in other countries and you have thoughts
about life I went to Mexico to a place called Porto warta it's actually a friend had a medical conference I tagged along and they were having this huge conference and I was sitting in the middle and typing away writing my book
you know yeah um I went to Mexico I didn't see much of it it's a beach uh place and then I went to recently I went to Czech Republic people are really like not that very interesting to talk to and interact with and for them Americans are
like really a huge deal like it's like some movie stars or something like that um and uh people are still uh you know missing things from uh the Socialist days uh how things were better I think that beggar there it's a new thing for people to beg so they didn't know they don't really know how to beg they just like supplicate entirely on the on the ground like they don't look up like they just like do do like this I found it
very strange you know and then um that's I Barcelona I went to Barcelona what do you think of that um it's good it's good yeah on that note sujata gidla thank you very [Applause] much thanks for listening to conversations with Tyler you can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes Stitcher or your favorite podcast app and if you like this podcast please consider rating it on iTunes and leaving a review this helps other people find the show