"The Middle Class Has Failed Us..."

Ashis Nandy in conversation with Kaveree Bamzai

Ashis Nandy converses with Kaveree Bamzai to reflect on the fading ethos of middle-class culture and the growing dangers of its moral decline, in an interview aligned with the discussion of his thought-provoking essay collection, Breakfast with Evil and Other Risky Ventures.

Kaveree Bamzai (KB): Hello and welcome, Ashis da. You are someone whose writing and thinking have inspired hope within us, over the years. You approach serious ideas with joy and irreverence, making the world of ideas feel accessible and alive. It's rare to meet someone who doesn't take themselves too seriously, especially in this dire world.

Ashis Nandy (AN): Thank you, you're very kind. But I believe ideas do matter. It bothers me when people think they don’t. Ideas are like seeds—they may not take root immediately, but they remain for the future to nurture and grow.  

KB: Absolutely. In your recent book, Breakfast with Evil which is a collection of some of your finest works over the years, you reflect on the state of our world today. You wrote, "I now converse more with myself, a lesser number of fellow academics, and a large number of ghosts from the past.” Why do you feel so alone and sorry? 

AN: Part of it is simply a matter of age. Many of my friends have passed away. When I began my intellectual journey, I worked with people much older than me and they were among the first to go. But it’s also about the lives we’ve lived. I sense that many of my contemporaries had to make compromises or endure tensions that left them unfulfilled, even unacknowledged. 

KB: Ashis da, as so many call you with affection, we live in peculiar times. On the one hand, there are sparks of hope—young voices like Disha Ravi, the growing farmers' protest, and activists like Nodeep Kaur. Yet, there is also a widespread presence of unhappiness and anxiety around us. If you were to diagnose the state of India today, what would you say we are suffering from?

AN: That's too large a question, because many of these issues we see around us today have been brewing for a long time. The current regime didn’t create these problems—it capitalised on them. We’ve been moving towards this moment for years. And, I suspect that, in this respect, the Indian middle class has betrayed us. It’s also not entirely their fault, because the middle class has expanded enormously since we gained independence. At that time, to start with, we had a middle-class population of around 50 million. Now, it is estimated to be about 300 million. So, you see, it has grown approximately sixfold.

But there’s a distinction here: I suspect that the older, established middle class—the ones who hold traditional middle-class values—have always participated in the transmission of culture and values. They have always weighed new knowledge and prepared society to adjust to it, or at least carried it forward in some form. That segment, which upheld cultural and ethical standards, has only doubled, from around 100 million to 150 million. The rest have only middle-class money and status but lack the values traditionally associated with the middle class.

I would say that here, Indian civilisation also plays a role, because of its concept of tolerance. Let me put it this way: Indian civilisation’s tolerance for hypocrisy helped preserve these values. For example, a Bengali middle-class family might own the complete works of Rabindranath Tagore, even if none of them had read them.

KB: And, Swami Vivekananda?

AN: Vivekananda, yes, but Tagore was more universal. Perhaps even Saratchandra Chatterjee. So, they may not have read these works, but at least they passed on the values to the next generation. Similarly, they might not listen to Indian classical music, but they would have recordings by Ravi Shankar, Vilayat Khan, Bade Gulam Ali Khan, or Amir Khan. But now, even this hypocrisy has vanished, and the next generation has very little access to these values. I'm not talking here about whether they specifically read Tagore, because the earlier generations may not have read him fully either. Partly, they had to read him in textbooks, but they might have only taken a quick glance at some of them. Similarly, they might not have heard the classical instrumentalists and vocalists, but they kept those records… otherwise, what would people think if you only kept film music on your shelves?

Now, that kind of hypocrisy is gone. We are living in times where the middle class’s role as critics of society and polity—people who decide who should be read, who should not, who is proper to read, and who can be avoided or dismissed as unworthy—has diminished. Nobody would consider you educated if you only read Agatha Christie and The Board House, as the earlier generations used to. Values, culture, and ethics are being eroded. Even the family is under stress because the older ties within the family have weakened, and a certain kind of individualism has set in. Violence, both within and outside families, is increasing. There are so many instances where the family is facing stress and dysfunction... they might just be staying together somehow.

I’m not pleading for the old-style joint family, but I am talking about how human relations have become thinner, more contractual, impersonal, and oriented towards self-interest. This is my suspicion, and we see signs of it everywhere. You see it in the increasing incidence of certain kinds of mental illnesses, particularly in urban India. These are all signs of a decaying middle class. Of course, exceptions exist—those 100-150 million still uphold some of these values.

Furthermore, even the politicians have taken advantage of this. Though everyone talks of an ideology, rarely do they practise it in their work. You can be a member of the CPM today, and after a 30-year record, suddenly switch to being a BJP supporter. From BJP, you could flip to Congress. You navigate politics according to your interests. Ideologies have become skin-deep now. I don’t give particular importance to political ideologies, as they are often so weak. You see, it is an old society that goes by other kinds of things that look to us like nepotism and corruption. These have become the means of withdrawing from the public sphere to some extent and not taking politics or social change seriously. Personal interests and calculations of profit and loss determine it.

I think this is the decay of the middle class, particularly the lower middle class, which we can now mark off as the lumpen-proletariat. Not being a Marxist myself, I can safely say that I will use the term now for the middle class, as it has a sizable section of the lumpen-proletariat. The middle class cannot be trusted to do anything right. Without passing judgment loosely, you really can’t trust their knowledge and ethics, and you can’t even rely on them to look after their children or their family's interests seriously.

KB: It's also because the 100 million that you talk of, the ones who perhaps still have those cultural values, they also seceded from India in a way. Didn't they become gated communities in a way, separating themselves from anything that was in the public domain? 

AN: Yes, I see your point. That is also a part of the story. 

KB:  Yeah. That is why the lower middle class don’t aspire to emulate them. Rather, they leap straight to becoming someone like Mukesh Ambani. 

AN: You know, that's the case with lumpen middle-classes too. Both dream of becoming Mukesh Ambani, not knowing the limits to which the Indian economy can carry. There can only be a certain number of billionaires, so to speak. Also, it is this middle class that has lost touch with the lower rungs of society. Their ultimate aim is to someday make sure that their children or grandchildren settle down in the United States. Previously, if you lived a good public life and were ethical about it, you dreamt of going to heaven. Now, the dream has changed to being able to settle in New York.

KB: Yeah, no wonder, that it's the pandemic capital of the world. Talking about the pandemic, do you think it changed anything in us? Again, it's a very broad question, but you know, just seeing hordes of migrant workers walking home, abandoned by the system, did it teach us anything? 

AN: Heartlessness, yeah. The heartlessness of our treatment of the migrants, who were seen to be walking down hundreds of miles, all over the world, to go back to their villages, definitely tells you something. That tells you not only about the heartlessness of the middle classes. Rather, our cities have become heartless too. They are no longer the old-style cities with a sense of community and some touch of cosmopolitanism, they once had. There is no generosity of heart and there is no tolerance of those who have lost out in the battle of life. 

KB:  As you say in one of your pieces, “If you're poor, it's your fault.”

AN:  Yes, poverty has two kinds of reasons. An earlier one was, that if you are poor, you feel that society will take care of you. To put it better, you expect people to take care of them, as society never took care of them in any case. Just at least they could depend on the generosity of people. Now, even that has declined. Surely, public philanthropy has grown in volume, but I doubt whether there is a philanthropy in the heart as much as it was, at one time. 

KB: Everything has become corporatised. Philanthropy has become CSR. So, now it has become a part of the whole corporate culture. So, you know, the small acts of philanthropy become these big grand gestures of building corporate toilets that nobody uses. 

AN:  That's right!

KB:  Then, may I just bring you to the whole idea of, you know that we talk about government control, we talk about government censorship, but, we don't talk enough about the corporatisation of our culture running around us.  

AN: Yes, it is now written into the charter of corporations. Corporations may have some responsibilities, and in some societies, they do respond to that. But with the pressing control they sense from charges being levied for critical comments they make, the whole thrust gets completely undermined. This has also drastically lowered the level of governance. You might have all the good intentions, but nevertheless, if you do not have trust in the regime, you're done for. To probe further, this is why nobody trusts any politician. Politics is a dangerous vocation in that sense. You enter it for obvious reasons, but you are aware that it’s a dangerous world, and you play according to the rules of the game there. A new set of rules has emerged. I am very saddened to see the same culture in the West too, in regimes like the United States and now China. Although there are people who are extremely critical and sceptical, they still find it very difficult to survive in that system.

KB: In fact, if you talk about this, I must say this, reading from what you’ve written: “...interviews are now invitations to illiterate trolls and semi-literate politicians to gate-crash. I'm not used to weighing my words or being dreadfully self-conscious even when in public.” Here, too, there’s a crushing of the soul in it. Isn’t there also a sense of feeling alone?

AN: Yeah, there’s no place for wit and sarcasm. I try to keep it in my writing. But, you know, after the Jaipur episode, when I was sued... well, that case is still ongoing.

KB:  It's still on? 

AN: Yes, it is open.

KB: That was 2013.

AN: Yes, 2013. But it’s still ongoing. Though it’s more of a moribund case, nonetheless, it’s still on. In that case, I sarcastically remarked that the CPM rule in Bengal had no corruption whatsoever because they had kept all the lists out of it. That was seen as a pure statement of fact. There was no difficulty with this joke among my colleagues, with whom I was discussing it. It was an open discussion, and they understood it perfectly. They smiled and laughed. Even the Left had reason to be angry with me because they caught the sarcasm, feeling they were the targets of it. But there were others, particularly enthusiastic people, who were very offended by the government.

KB: In fact, that brings me to another point. When you talk about West Bengal, you mention democracy currently living from election to election, from one divisive issue to another. And, we’re seeing these dynamics play out in West Bengal right now. We already see these issues unfolding daily, moving from one divisive topic to another. It has been intellectually your home for the longest time. You will always be a Calcutta boy, I think.

AN: You have a point there, yes.

KB: So, what do you think about what is going on in West Bengal currently?

AN: It is important, and I wish there were more clear-cut choices. It has become more complicated now. There remains zero attempt to find the kind of option that could enrich and deepen Indian democracy. Even if you say that Mamata Banerjee is not the ideal democrat, the fact remains that she is at most a local leader. She has very little control over the overall culture of politics in India. The BJP now has almost a monopoly control over that, and when this kind of regime opts for developmental authoritarianism—which is the technical term for it—the way the whole of East Asia got sucked into authoritarian regimes... In Korea, it started with Park Chung-hee, Taiwan began with Chiang Kai-shek and his followers...

KB: Indonesia.

AN: Yes, or Thailand, or Mahathir Mohamad in Malaysia, or Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore. In fact, Lee Kuan Yew was a hero in India.

KB: So was Mahathir Mohamad.

AN: Yes, now the so-called East Asian tigers. They were all man-eaters, and ultimately, they became our model, right? Well, China, of course, is the ultimate...

KB: It is the other that we want to be.

AN: Yeah, that is the ultimate example for us. We want to be like them. Don’t forget that we also want to be like Trump. I mean, don’t forget that Modi went to the United States and said, “Agli Bar Trump Sarkar.” Funnily enough, now he’s objecting to foreigners in a way—great foreigners like Greta—interfering in Indian elections.

KB: Even Rihanna was included in his list. So, the other point that struck me was when you said that the 20th century hadn't prepared you for the 21st century. A lot of people feel the same way. Could you explain why, in the 20th century, with all its values, with everything that we learned, we thought we were entering a new millennium with great hope? With the Y2K bug being solved by the whole of the Indian IT industry, there was tremendous hope. What happened then? Why were we not prepared for the 21st century?

AN: I think people like to depend on their own experiences to some extent, and those in the 20th century had memories of the two world wars. The very fact that they experienced those wars and then suffered from the consequences gave them a certain kind of reality. They became suspicious—rather, they could afford to be suspicious—of national security states. Now, that’s a distant story, and even if you launch an anti-nuclear movement in India, it will be seen as an anti-Indian movement. I feel this century is somewhat disjointed from the earlier centuries because of the nature of the media as well. Now, democracy runs, and democratic elections are run mainly on two or three factors. This includes the fact that you are known as a democratic country where multiple parties are contesting for power, although the leading party might actually have almost total control over the electoral machine. The BJP purchased almost ninety percent of the electoral bonds, and all the other bodies were confined to only ten percent. So, you're controlled by money and have control over all the media outlets. Also, with many of the new media coming late to India, people haven’t had enough time to become sceptical about what they hear in the media. They are not accustomed to carefully evaluating and assessing the messages that come in.

KB: Therefore, this whole WhatsApp University!

AN: Yes, and you know, then of course, there are the organised paid trolls who are always ready to jump in. Like, I don’t even see Facebook…

KB: Twitter?

AN: Twitter, Instagram, nothing. None of them.

KB: That's the best way to live.

AN: I don’t read them, so even if you abuse me, it doesn’t reach me, and it doesn’t bother me! But that’s not the way it goes for everybody, you know. You get sucked into it once you respond to it. I don’t think this media should be taken seriously because the trolls are paid. Those who already abuse you are doing their duty as officials of different parties or recruits of different parties, and so on. I feel this stops people from getting adequate feedback. The villages are slightly better because they still have some sense of community life. Not completely, but to some extent. There’s a slightly greater degree of mutual consultation. The villagers often meet, discuss, and decide as a group, or even as a community, whom they would vote for or not vote for. Otherwise, others—particularly urban Indians and the lower middle class, and what I am calling...

KB: Lumpen middle-class?

AN: Decultured middle-class. They are fully immersed in this media world. And you are expected to be happy in that media, as virtual reality serves as compensation for real life.

KB: That brings me to your other point about this happiness factory… you talked about us being forced to be happy, and we don’t even know that we’re being forced to be happy. Like, that is supposed to be your natural condition. So, anyone who looks remotely unhappy with the state of affairs, looks anxious or angsty, is immediately looked at with suspicion.

AN: Yes. That’s the situation, and you just have to negotiate through it. My friend, Ziauddin Sardar, who is a historian of science and a philosopher of Islam, tells me that the only remedy you can think of is to keep yourself confined to very small groups of like-minded people and wait for the time to become better. The reason is that even the allegiance of those who are shouting slogans for any particular party is very, very thin, and you do not know what path they might actually choose later. We are living in his words, “post-normal times.”

KB: Will better times come? What are the signs of hope that you see?

AN: Oh, there are many signs. First of all, if you’re talking of India, we are blessed by the fact that India is intrinsically, and enormously, diverse, and in this diversity, you cannot steamroll people into one particular way of thinking. Ultimately, there is a large sector of Indians who will think on their own. They will depend on their judgment and also have the community backing to give a certain edge to their thinking or their decision. So, though there has been an attempt in recent times to turn away or dissuade all mediating factors who mediate between the individual and the state, now all Indians, or almost all, stand face to face with their state alone.

KB: Yeah, they’re up against the brute power. You can be criminalised at any time!

AN: Yes, I mean, we have a caste society, at least. Caste intervened on your behalf. Now, even that is diminishing.

KB: Right, so what are the communities from which you see hope? Do you see hope in students, or farmers out in the street, or from the women of Shaheen Bagh?

AN: Yeah, I was going to add Shaheen Bagh in the beginning. You forgot to mention that. It was a fantastic experiment. Any government run by educated, sensitive people would have welcomed it—Muslim women coming and sitting in a dharna in public, making sure that politicians, intellectuals, poets, musicians, and artists come and talk to them.

KB: What joy!

AN: Yeah, and exchange. That was a real movement in Indian politics. I was so looking forward to it. Though it might seem like one instance of an event, I certainly believe that there’s still hope for it to become a tradition. It was totally peaceful and they never talked or encouraged violence.

KB: Not at all.

AN: But they had to break it because they knew it was all about power. Even the same thing is happening with the farmers. Now, first of all, it is very strange that if you are so concerned with the power, and every time you say these three laws propounded will do good for the farmers, you are actually doing it for your own good. At least find out what they are saying! They don’t want your good turn or your gift. They think it is a poisonous gift. So, just don’t impose it on them. You say that other farmers are not as vocal or articulate as some of the farmers in the northern states. But, it is never that. First of all, farmers were unhappy everywhere. The suicide of farmers accounted for around 3 lakh deaths over the last three decades, even in some of the most prosperous states. So, they were not happy. Now, to believe in you, you don’t impose these laws on all states. Rather, expose them in the BJP states and show us how good it is for the farmers. Then, let the farmers be seduced into that, if you are such a well-wisher for the farmers. But, you just want to make it an example for the farmers to teach them a lesson that this government doesn't bend. Sadly, I think that is not democracy. Rather, that is self-destructive, in some sense.

I think this farmers' movement, like Shaheen Bagh or the students articulating their dissent, is a different kind of dissent. They are the beginning of a different kind of dawn in Indian politics, and I wouldn't be surprised if this can't be contained beyond a point. Again, this also borrows from the technology of Gandhi and Jayaprakash Narayan. Namely, you just give a call, or someone gives a call, and people spontaneously organise. However much you try to convince us that the Khalistanis organised the farmers' protest, or that they were controlling Delhi, or the fact that people barged into the Red Fort because of them—nobody is going to be convinced.

KB: Or, the radical Islamist behind Shaheen Bagh or the extreme leftist behind the students of JNU. 

AN: Yes! 

KB: So this has always been the conspiracy theory—

AN: And, this conspiracy theory has now become an old hat. Nobody believes them.

KB: We have been hearing this since the time of Mrs. Gandhi, the first Mrs. Gandhi.

AN: That’s right. Mrs. Gandhi also said it during the Emergency. I mean, it was preparatory to an emergency, and she also had limits in her position. She didn’t try to break it this way. She tried to subvert it all because she was not a milksoppish woman, and she did want to break it—but even if she did, not so crudely. In any case, even the BJP joined that protest. So, you joined that, but now you are saying that you cannot protest against us, which is definitely a little bit of a betrayal of Indian democracy too. 

KB: One of the other points that strikes me is about this generation of politicians. That explains the absence of any sympathy towards farmers. They are urban; they don't come from the villages, while the earlier generation had that connection to the land.

AN: Yes, and it also began with Mrs. Gandhi. Don't forget that.

KB: Right!

AN: Mrs. Gandhi decided that the old machine, the electoral machine, had to be dismantled in order to break the power of the senior leaders of the Congress party because there were many of them.…

KB:  Who had permit links to other parts of the world? 

AN: Right, they had independent constituencies and bases. So, to destroy that, she launched a propaganda campaign of the kind we see all over India today. The propaganda was that this was dangerous for India, that we were living under siege, and we must take steps to fight it. That's how the Emergency was planned. Now, the same propaganda machine has been set up by the BJP, and it's doing the same thing. They think we, the people, do not elect us. We elect the politicians. We, the people, elect that one leader, and that supreme leader then selects the politicians. Mrs. Gandhi started this. The supreme leader chose the politicians and her cabinet, which meant the upper rungs of the Congress Party were filled with her supporters. These supporters were unelected, not just nominated. The same thing is happening here, of course, but it's even smaller and more narrow, becoming only a two-person show. It is also very vulnerable in that sense.

KB: Yeah, it really depends on that, which worries me a lot. There are two ways we can go forward: one is self-correction, and the other is that we become even more extreme, as we have seen in the progression of the BJP. One set of moderate leaders is replaced by more extreme leaders, who in turn are replaced by even more extreme leaders. Is that a problem? Could that be something that might happen, considering we have Yogi Adityanath as well?

AN: Yes, I was just going to say that. At one point, even the BJP found him difficult to accommodate. I can't imagine Vajpayee accommodating Yogi.

KB: Exactly, at one point even Advani was considered an extremist.

AN: But now he seems quite moderate.

KB: Yeah. So, the progression of the BJP is quite peculiar. Is it moving towards more extremism?

AN: Yes, because you see, the whole decision-making structure consists of only half a dozen people. At most, in a diverse country like India—housing 1,200 languages, it used to be 1,500, but now it's 1,200.

KB: Obviously, some languages have gotten lost.

AN: Yes, around 300 languages are probably extinct because they're smaller language groups that couldn't be captured in the survey. It was done by Ganesh Devi, a people survey. So, there's that part of the story too. Anyway, I don't think you can sustain it beyond a point.

KB: Let's end with a bit of entertainment. You know I've always read all your writings on Mumbai films, especially with great interest, as that's one of my passions as well. Do you think we'll ever see a time like when the three Khans dominated the Mumbai film industry for three decades? Will we ever get a time like that again?

AN: I doubt it. Now, even the three Khans can't take all the roles that were offered to them at one point, nor will they be given such roles again. I mean, there were several Ramleelas all over India where Muslims used to participate.

KB: In fact, Shah Rukh Khan used to play Hanuman in the local Ramleela.

AN: No more. Those days are certainly over. The Hindu-Muslim divide that has been forged is a very sad development, and there's no place for Muslims—not only in the BJP but, I would say, in the mainstream culture of politics. I will go as far as that.

KB: They will always be the "other."

AN: Now, they have been turned into permanent "others." But you know, that might change too because people make their own decisions. So, everyone has their favourite Muslim, but they won't admit it now. I mean, I don't think Shah Rukh's fan club has shrunk, or any of the Khans' fan clubs for that matter.

KB: Perhaps they’re just not as vocal as they used to be. So, Ashis Nandy, thank you very much for talking to us. It was a real pleasure. Please keep writing, keep thinking, and keep enabling us to think and retain the joy and pleasure of receiving new ideas or participating in them. Thank you very much.

AN: Thank you.

[Revised Transcription of a special edition of Tiffin Talks.]