The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) was founded in 1925 by Keshav Baliram Hedgewar in Nagpur, with the aim of promoting unity and discipline among Hindus and fostering a sense of national identity. As the RSS commemorates its centenary this year, marking 100 years since its founding, it stands as one of the world's largest voluntary organisations.
"Well, first of all, to complete 100 years for any organisation is a great achievement. There are very few organisations of that kind, at least, that can say that they have remained the same for one full century," stated Christophe Jaffrelot, Professor at King’s College London, in a conversation with Outlook’s Editor Chinki Sinha.
Professor Jaffrelot has conducted extensive research on themes such as nationalism, federalism, and the relationship between Hindutva and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). His remarks come at a significant historical moment, as the RSS completed its 100 years in October 2025.
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"Well, first of all, to complete 100 years for any organisation is a great achievement. There are very few organisations of that kind, at least, that can say that they have remained the same for one full century," stated Christophe Jaffrelot, Professor at King’s College London, in a conversation with Outlook’s Editor Chinki Sinha.
Professor Jaffrelot has conducted extensive research on themes such as nationalism, federalism, and the relationship between Hindutva and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). His remarks come at a significant historical moment, as the RSS completed its 100 years in October 2025.
Editor: Sudhanshu
Follow us:
Website: https://www.outlookindia.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Outlookindia
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/outlookindia/
X: https://twitter.com/Outlookindia
Whatsapp: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaNrF3v0AgWLA6OnJH0R
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@OutlookMagazine
Dailymotion: https://www.dailymotion.com/outlookindia
#RSS #RashtriyaSwayamsevakSangh #MohanBhagwat #Hindu #Hindutva #HinduRashtra #SanghParivar #Sangh
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NewsTranscript
00:00What have Indians earned from RSS in socio-economic terms? Nothing. It's not an instrument of
00:12development. It's not an instrument of modernization. It's not an instrument of
00:17industrialization. Nothing.
00:19Hi, welcome to Outlook Talks. Today, we are with Professor Christophe Jaffernog. He is a professor
00:31at King's College. His research is based out of India and on Indian politics and
00:37kinds of topics like nationalism, federalism, everything. This issue, we are talking about
00:43RSS 100 years. They complete 100 years this year on the Shehra. They were established in
00:491925. And this is 2025, so 100 years. And we are here with Professor Christophe to talk about
00:56how the RSS has changed over the years and their adaptability thing and what is going to go on
01:03moving forward. Welcome, Christophe. And we can start with your views. You've written a lot about
01:12the Hindutva and the RSS and the relationship. So if you could talk a little bit about the
01:19100 years and what's going on and how they have changed in a way that given the political
01:25situation in India right now. Well, first of all, to complete 100 years for any organization is a
01:33great achievement. There are very few organizations of that kind, at least, that can say that they have
01:43remained the same for one full century. In the mid-1920s, when RSS was formed, there were many European
01:57movements of the same kind. None of them have survived. So you have something very special there,
02:05very specific. You can explain this resilience, first of all, by pointing out that this movement has
02:17always been very cautious, very prudent. They have not taken risks under the British in the first place.
02:28They did not take part in the freedom movement. And then after independence, well, they tried to
02:35remain below the radar. They made promises. They made concessions. They made friends among the ruling
02:42Congress party. I remember the letters Devras wrote to Indira Gandhi during the emergency saying,
02:50well, please let us be legal again and we'll support you. So you have this explanation, number one, that
03:01they are not taking risks. The priority is to continue to expand, to survive. Another explanation is, of course,
03:12related to their ability to penetrate society. You know, this organization is not power oriented. I mean,
03:25what you call power is not a priority. Of course, it matters. First of all, it matters because power can
03:34object, can suppress, can repress them. So, at least for this reason, it matters. But to capture
03:42power is not a priority. What is a priority is to capture society. And this is why that makes them
03:49much more resilient, because they penetrate society gradually, slowly, persistently.
03:57They've done that, first of all, by developing the Shaka network. You have now probably something like
04:0770,000 shakas, maybe 80,000 shakas and upshakas across the country. But not only that, beyond that,
04:19they have started offshoots, unions, first of all, ABVP, student union, then BMS, labor union,
04:31then BKS, peasant union, you know, they have gradually started to penetrate different milieus,
04:40different social milieus, different socioeconomic milieus. You know, there is hardly any
04:46social-economic milieus without some RSS-related branch of shoots. You know, the ex-Servicemen, the judiciary,
05:00everyone. Thirdly, they've been very effective because of the role of religion in the Indian society.
05:12You know, in a secularized society, it's much more difficult to keep people
05:23adhering to an ethno-nationalist agenda that does not deliver socioeconomically. You know,
05:35what have Indians earned from RSS in socioeconomic terms? Nothing. It's not an instrument of
05:44development. It's not an instrument of modernization. It's not an instrument of
05:49industrialization. Nothing. But it is a movement that brings together the Hindus.
05:59And when you believe in Hinduism, when you think that Hinduism is your religion, that it needs to be
06:08respected, that it needs to be promoted, well, you may mistake Indudva for Hinduism. You know, they have
06:16succeeded in making people believe that their version of religion, Indudva, was Hinduism. And they have mobilized
06:30people on this. Of course, the most successful movement there has been the Ayodhya movement that
06:39has peaked in 1992 with the demolition of the Babri Masjid on the 6th of December. And then in January 2024,
06:48in the inauguration of the temple. So that's, of course, something that would not have happened
06:53had secularization made dense inroads in the Indian society. I think these are some of the very
07:04important reasons explaining the resilience and progress of what can be seen as a successor story.
07:13Of course, it's a successor story for them. It's another story so far as India is concerned because
07:18they have divided India like never ever before anybody had done. Divided India on religious grounds, clearly.
07:26The Hindu-Muslim relations, even the Hindu-Christian relations have probably never been so bad.
07:33Then you have another division between the North and the South because of their promotion of
07:38Hindi and also their resentment vis-a-vis the very successful economic policies of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka.
07:47Now they're also dividing, to some extent, South Asia because India has hardly ever been
07:54that isolated in its region, if you look at history. So they have succeeded so far as their,
08:03I mean, own agenda was concerned. But the cost of this success is very high.
08:12And it's interesting you bring up the letters that were written during the emergency and Deora's wrote
08:21to Indira Gandhi saying that RSS would support you if you let us off the hook in the sense that they
08:26were present. Vinubha Bhavetra kind of, he was going to meet Indira Gandhi and then he wrote another letter
08:32saying pledging support. So, I mean, you have also talked about the double-faced approach of the RSS, which is
08:38also to say that they were very cautious in the beginning. And in the beginning, when they were
08:43founded, they were completely cultural. And then I think in the 1936 or something around that time,
08:48they also founded their women's wing, which was the Sevika Samiti. So we wanted to also ask you about
08:55the different wings, you know, and the politics of dignity that they kind of, which you have also
09:00written about, which they kind of employed in terms of giving the Ayodhya movement a lot of strength,
09:07you know, this othering that they kind of did. And then how the BJP came, and I think it was from
09:12Deora's time that they started becoming way more political. So if you could talk about the various,
09:19like the women's wing, you know, this double-edged kind of thing that they have done always, which
09:26obviously kind of talks about their resilience as well, and how they've gone on. And you mentioned
09:32several other ABVP, the Bhartiye Majdursang, all of these. And then there were the other fringe
09:37organizations like the Bajrang Dal, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, and there are a lot of these other loosely
09:42affiliated ones like Sanatan Sanstha in Goa, which were also accused in the Dabunkar and
09:49Gauri Lankesh murder cases. So how does it spread? How has it spread in terms of different demographics,
09:56caste, gender, and, you know, class, obviously? Mohan Bhagwat made a few comments in the lecture series
10:05marking the 100th years recently, and he talked about caste and religion again, and kind of population
10:12as well, three children. But if you could talk about this gender, how have they adapted in terms of
10:19gender and caste? Well, these are key issues, and the vision of these would be the third one,
10:28because it's very important. Well, Rashra Sevika Samiti was a very traditional organization,
10:40where women were seen as mothers in the first place. And in terms of places, they were supposed to stay at
10:50home and do what a good spouse and a good mother is supposed to do. Now, in parallel, or subsequently,
11:01they have also developed the Durga Vaini. Yeah. And it's a very important way to see the ambivalence
11:10of the movement. Because Durga Vaini added one dimension to their gender policy, so to speak.
11:19They made it legitimate for women to be in the street, to demonstrate, to fight, because it was in
11:27the name of a secret cause. It was in the name of the Ram Temple in the first place. So yes, this kind of
11:37variations are one of their assets. They adapt, according to the generation, also to the age of the
11:53targets or the groups they target in order to to prosper and absorb or at least reach out everyone.
12:02Well, you could say the same thing regarding caste. They try hard, and again, since Balaseb Devras,
12:11to attract non-Savarns, people who could be seen as low caste, even Dalits. That's something Devras was
12:22very particular about. In some ways, he criticised, at least implicitly, what Golvalkar and even Dindaya
12:32Lupadyai had said before in the 50s and 60s. Because for these two ideologues, the Varna-Vyavasta
12:43was the model. A kind of organic vision of a hierarchical society. Yes, the discourse has changed since
12:55Devras. How far has it resulted in concrete achievements remains to be seen. Number one,
13:03you have a few patraks coming from the lower caste. And when you read autobiographies of Dalits who have
13:14been in the RSS, like Megvanchi's autobiographies, you realise that the stigma of untouchability remains
13:24very strong on the chakra. Well, they may be together on the chakra. They will not eat together easily. So,
13:37that's still there. And when you have, number two, low caste Swayam Sevaks,
13:45most of the time, they are there for Sanskritisation and they are Sanskritised.
13:51So, there is no pride in what we could call popular Hinduism. Now, the cults have to be
14:04Brahminical. The style has to be Brahminical. The deities, the gods and goddesses you worship
14:12have to be part of the high tradition. And this is why some of the Dalits and OBC Swayam Sevaks go to
14:21the Shaka. To get prestige, to get recognition, to join this movement to be a good Hindu. And that's
14:33one of the reasons why it will be very difficult for them to attract Dalits in large numbers.
14:39They may face this difficulty. Now, the third point you refer to are the vigilante groups. And that's
14:48very important. Because in continuation to my first response, I would say these vigilante groups,
14:56including Badrang Dal, are very much rooted in society now, have deep roots in society,
15:06crisscross society, control society. And they make sure that Muslims will not try to
15:16and succeed in buying a flat in mixed neighbourhoods. They'll make sure that Muslim boys do not marry
15:27into girls. They will patrol the highways to see whether Muslim farmers are not taking cows to the
15:37slaughterhouse. In other words, they are exerting cultural policy on society.
15:48And this is very important because even if BJP loses power in 2029, that will remain.
15:57You know, you can't get rid of these groups easily. We saw what happened in Pakistan. They prospered
16:07under Zia because they had political protection. And they imposed their own views, the anti-blasphemy law,
16:15so many other red lines. Who is in a position today to reform, to amend the blasphemy law in Pakistan? No one.
16:26How do you undo something that is so sacred? Well, similarly, how will you tell the vigilantes
16:36you're not supposed to protect the cow the way you do? No one will dare to do it. So this is why
16:46the sang parivore needs to be seen as what I call a deeper state.
16:54How do you do it? It goes very deep, and government may change. It will be very difficult to undo what
17:04they have achieved on that front. And in fact, in some states that Congress has reconquered, like
17:12Karnataka, they are not undoing some of the things BJP had done before. Which is,
17:18to my mind, a symptom of this point of no return.
17:24Even on Ayodhya, the stance has been very unclear from the very beginning. So if you have that ambiguous
17:30approach, and I think now they're trying to kind of take it head on, but it's very difficult because,
17:35you know, there is this Hindu block of votes, which everybody is kind of afraid of that they will go
17:41against or for, or I don't know how. But that's what we have been seeing. And, you know, on the matter of
17:47caste, you talked about the RSS thing, and Ram Madhav actually reviewed his book. And in that he also
17:54talks about caste, any kinds of upholds the discrimination, you know, kind of that Varna
17:59system that was there. How do you make sense of that in the current situation where you have all
18:04kinds of forces, you know, you have capitalism, you have aspiration, you have, you know, disposable
18:10incomes have become higher, you know, caste itself. I mean, people are challenging it, but there are two
18:16movements there also. One is to take pride in your own caste, one is to kind of integrate and kind of
18:21demolish or abolish caste. How does the RSS adapt there? Because the Mandal and the Kamandal in
18:27India have always been kind of at loggerheads. And I was talking to Anand Teltunde and, you know,
18:35he's a columnist with Outlook and he said that caste multiplies like amoeba. You know, we created many
18:42castes like the OBCs and stuff like that. How does that work? Because, you know, from the looks of it
18:47or from the surface of it, you would say that RSS is very Brahminical, you know, in terms of what they
18:52uphold, the ways that they are kind of going about it. Even the Sevika Samiti, for instance,
18:58Mal Trithwa and there were two other things that you said were women were supposed to be good mothers
19:03and but then, you know, things have changed. So, you know, we have Bihar elections coming up
19:09this year in November. Now, Bihar is a great example and I'm from there
19:12with the caste and religion kind of like fighting it out. Well, we have clearly two repertoires
19:24in competition in India's politics for 50 years. It started in Gujarat. It started with Solanki,
19:36the Calm Coalition, the Calm Coalition, reservations in 1980, 1985 and of course it continued with Mandel.
19:48Well, the rise of the OBCs was what RSS and its supporters feared the most because it meant
20:00a kind of silent revolution. This is the word, this is the title of one of my books,
20:08Silent Revolution. You dislodge from positions of power elite groups in control for centuries,
20:19if not millennia. What could be the antidote? Ndudva. Ndudva was the antidote because
20:27they could say, look, upper caste are not your main enemy because you're Hindu. The main enemy are the
20:37Muslims. And that's what they did in the 1985 riot in Gujarat, when Narendra Modi was, by the way,
20:45the Pran Pracharak and the Sangatan Mantri of BJP. And that's what they did, of course,
20:53with the Ratt Yatra in 1990. And of course, the demolition of the Borei Masjid and the Ayodhya
20:59movement at large. At the same time, this caste-based repertoire remained, especially because
21:11inequalities have increased massively. India is the most unequal country in the world today. If you go by
21:20the metrics of the inequality lab, that is fascinating. To fall back on the caste repertoire
21:30is what the opposition had to do and did. Asking for the caste census. Brilliant. Let's see
21:40how inequality this society has become. How represented in the corridors of power,
21:45to use V.P. Singh's phrase, are today the OBSs. Very difficult to resist a demand like that one.
21:55How can you say, no, no, we don't want to know. Caste doesn't exist. How can you say that in BR or
22:04elsewhere? Especially when Mohan Bhagwat himself has to say caste is a problem. Well, if caste is a problem,
22:10let's measure it. Let's see how deep is this problem. So at the end of the day, they had to
22:17accept caste census. And for me, this is not only a victory for the opposition, but it may well be
22:24the turning point because the moment you open this Pandora box again, as Anantel Tumbe says,
22:34all the caste groups will say, why not me? Why not me? Why am I so low in the representation among the IAS,
22:46among the IPS, among the IFS, among, of course, all the public sector employees? At a time, by the way,
22:56when this sector is shrinking, at a time when reservations are not doing their job anymore,
23:01because the public sector is shrinking, because you have the economically weaker sections getting
23:07a 10% quota. So for many reasons, the discourse will shift. And it will not be on Hindu versus Muslim
23:21only, but on upper caste versus lower caste again. And that may well be the main themes of the 2029
23:33elections. This year is quite interesting, actually, 2025, because we have the 100 years of left, 100 years
23:40of the Dravidian movement, and 100 years of the RSS. And all of them kind of intersect in various ways,
23:47kind of challenging. And all of them, I think are, it's my personal view, are going through kind of
23:52identity turnover, in the sense that they don't know which way to go. Because we have now the Gen Z
23:59coming in, and how they are reacting to things. And especially in the South, you know, we were in
24:04Coimbatore for the election coverage. And how do you say, they opened a portal in Coimbatore,
24:10with again, the old textbook situation with the reference to the riots that have happened there,
24:16and all of that. I mean, there was a significant momentum. But again, the citadel of the Dravidian
24:23thing, they were not entirely able to break. But they're also kind of, you know, a fixture because
24:27of the... So I wanted you to also kind of, there were three points that I had noted down. One was
24:33the difference between Hinduism and Hindutva. And then you say the populism of Mr. Modi, our Prime Minister,
24:39it's also because it was the gift of RSS. And how they kind of, so if you could elaborate on that,
24:48this populism that is coming in from Modi's time in Gujarat, the model that he espoused,
24:54the three things were the dignity, the Hindu situation, you know, socioeconomic development,
25:01all of these things, how they combined. And kind of this Gujarat model was promoted everywhere. Now,
25:06what was the Gujarat model? How did it work? But first, like the Hindutva thing. And you've often
25:14kind of talked about this Zionist parallel as well. What is Hindutva? And who's a Hindu?
25:22Well, Indutva is an ideology that has been codified by Savarkar in 1923 in Indutva, who is a Hindu.
25:36And this ideology is not true to Hinduism and has not even tried.
25:44Because if you read Savarkar, you realize that for him, Hindus are a people. Hindus
25:56are not believers of Hinduism. Hindus are the people in whose veins runs the blood of their ancestors,
26:08of their Vedic fathers. So, res. And he uses the word. He uses the word all the time, res. And he says, res jati.
26:21Because jati means spacey. And by the way, this is a book that needs to be read again.
26:29So, res is the number one criterion. The number two criterion is territory.
26:42You believe in your matrubhumi because it's a secret site. It's a punyabhumi.
26:50Race and a secret territory. Well, this is indeed the two ingredients of Zionism. You go back to your
27:03secret territory as the descendants of a people. And religion in this does not matter that much.
27:15And to go to the temple is not so important.
27:21In fact, this is exactly what Savarkar said and did, in fact. He was not temple guru. Many of them are not temple gurus.
27:34So, this is why Hinduism differs. There are many other reasons, but that's a major one. Now, you asked about the
27:42Gujarat model and how it crystallized and how it became almost nationalized.
27:50Well, the Gujarat model is, I repeat, a response to the reservations policy.
27:56You know, you see elite groups shifting to BJP to protect their interest in the 90s.
28:07The Patel's shifting from Congress to BJP. Number two, it's economically connected
28:20to big money, to big capital. And of course, Gujarat is the crucible of this brand of capitalism,
28:29crony capitalism. Now, crony capitalism is a major ingredient of the Gujarat model,
28:36which goes with the third component, that is the populist leader.
28:44Now, you have to resist the lower caste.
28:49You have to make progress economically by getting more, more land, more advantage, more ACZs.
29:01Well, these elite groups need someone for achieving this miracle. And the man
29:08has to have the right ideology. And Indudva is the perfect ideology because it transcends caste
29:16and it transcends classes, social classes. So the third ingredient of this is, well, Narendra Modi
29:23inventing a style nobody had referred to before in BJP. Advani did it somewhat with the Ratchatra.
29:34You know, the Ratchatra is probably the blueprint of the Modi style. But Advani was in tandem with
29:45Vajpai. He could not be alone. And you need to be alone. You know, you need the leader. You need one
29:55leader because you need personality cut. He will make that gel. And he will make that gel with the money
30:01of the cronies. Because that helps him to saturate the public sphere, the public space. When you look at
30:11the 2007, well, 2002, 2007, 2012 election campaigns in Gujarat, it's really the launch pad
30:22for what we see today, including the holograms, something that is very costly. You know, you can't
30:29do holograms without big money, serious money behind you. But not only holograms, social media,
30:35all the things we now know, but he was a pioneer. He was really, he was the one who could saturate the
30:43public space with his discourse and image, of course. But he could do that even more effectively
30:54because he could say, I am from the people. No, I am the people because I am from the people.
31:03And the myth of the Chayvala, the myth of the OBC leader who has climbed the ladder without any help,
31:11without any reservation, the self-made man par excellence. You know, the upper-class elite,
31:16middle-class love that. You know, you don't need reservations. Look, he could do it.
31:20So this myth was, of course, made popular because of this use of solid resources, financial resources.
31:35And of course, they could buy opposition leaders as well. And if there is one party where everyone,
31:41every man has a price, it is Congress, especially in Gujarat. It's not so difficult to break opposition
31:47parties if you have enough financial resources. And that's what they did also to emasculate the opposition.
31:59The natural conclusion is you can win power that way. And the next step is what do you do with power?
32:09And the Gujarat model is also authoritarian. The Gujarat model means state capture.
32:18And the first institution to capture is the police. And the second is the judiciary.
32:24When you have neutralized the police and the judiciary and the opposition has been also emasculated,
32:33you can go on.
32:34I think for the artist's education and culture, you know, the way of our, I mean, you can see the kind of
32:44footprints. I don't know because the one thing that you said is very interesting.
32:48This is very important. The other institution you need to capture is the education system.
32:54All the VCs of all the Gujarati universities have been changed, all of them. And we can, we could see
33:03see this in the MSU in Baroda. We can see this everywhere, even in the IIM of Ahmedabad now.
33:11And the other thing I wanted to, I mean, you've made a very interesting point about
33:14conic capitalism and the middle classes and the upper elite, kind of like dismissing reservation
33:20in terms of being needed. Because I had this conversation with a friend in Bombay and he was
33:24like, you know, caste doesn't exist in Bombay because capitalism has taken care of that.
33:28But in Bombay, my argument was that every time I come out of a neighborhood,
33:33I see an Ambedkar Nagar. If that's not caste, what is caste? So how do you think RSS is going to adapt
33:41now with this kind of a situation in caste one? The other, one thing I wanted to ask was about
33:47the Adivasi community, which they've been calling the Vanvasis. And now there is a research in terms
33:54of him and Sorain, kind of taking it up with Adivasi divas and all kinds. I mean,
34:00we have covered Jharkhand quite a bit with the Sarna flag, which is for the Adivasi religion.
34:05You know, they call it the Sarna code, which is pending with the president, hasn't been passed yet.
34:10And their expansion there, because in 1952, I think they said that the original inhabitants,
34:17of India are the Hindus, which means the Adivasi term itself kind of becomes a bit
34:23this thing because then it predates organized religion. Now that's one. And the third thing,
34:28I think it's all interrelated is the glory in the past. You know, we continuously keep seeing this
34:34glorified situations of the past. And with the Ram Mandir, it was the Ram Rajya. And does Ram matter now?
34:41Because the South is posing some kind of challenge and the consecration happened and it's great and all of that.
34:48But does it work now?
34:50Cast, tribe and past. And then I'll have to leave you because I have to teach.
34:56Well, caste is, I repeat, the very social institution, the most complicated one to handle. As I said,
35:11there are two repertoires and they are in competition. They are very difficult to reconcile.
35:18RSS can try to continue to play on religion and persuade the Dalits that they are Hindu first,
35:34but it will be very difficult to make them acceptable to other Soyam Sevaks. And it may not be sufficient.
35:44It may not be sufficient because, you know, some Dalits believe in Ambedkar, Dr. Ambedkar. And if there is one
35:56thinker who is completely at odds with RSS, it's Dr. Ambedkar. To such an extent that he left Hinduism
36:10precisely because he thought that caste hierarchies were inherent in Hinduism.
36:17So caste will remain a challenge, especially when socioeconomic questions will come back. You know,
36:24joblessness, massive joblessness among the youth. Inequalities, rising inequalities,
36:32policies, the crisis in agriculture, the decline of manufacturing, you know,
36:41socioeconomic issues are bound to bounce back. And caste is only one of its dimensions.
36:49Now tribes, you can say the same thing, you know, they will continue to try to Hinduize the Adivasis.
36:57They don't want to call them Adivasis, they call them Vanavasis because
37:01Adi, there was nothing but Hindus. So the tribals are only those who live in the forest,
37:10not those who were there before. This is what they said as early as 1953 when they
37:16created the Vanavasi Kalyanashram. They can try to continue to build Anuman temples, you know,
37:23Anuman temples don't give you food. There is a limit to this kind of brainwashing.
37:35Let's see whether it finally results in a new political consciousness among tribals. But it may,
37:44as you said, there are other alternatives, there are other agendas, other repertoires again on the
37:51tribal side. The past, you know, this is very important. This is key, in fact, because when you
37:58look at Savarkar again, it's all about the past. All his books, Seven Epochs, it's all about the past,
38:11the Aryans, the antiquity, of course, Shivaji. They live in the past. Now this is something to…
38:20…Icons of other people, like, you know. And, you know, I just thought I'll intervene for a moment.
38:26And this thing I'm seeing everywhere. I was in Russia in March and then some guide was taking us
38:33to a tour and everything was like, this is where the czar sits, this is where this one sits. And I'm
38:39like, but hello, the politics and all of that also happened over here. But what is this strange
38:44phenomenon across the world? Yeah, it is national populism. You know, nationalism is historical,
38:50history-oriented. You can't be proud of your nation if you will not be proud of your past.
38:57The problem is what is this past telling you? You know, if this past is telling you that India has
39:05has invented surgery, has invented aeroplanes. Well, this is the recipe for obscurantism. This is the recipe
39:21for an anti-scientific mind, lack of critical minds also. How do you progress? How do you make progress
39:33progress if you go that far against what China is doing today, that is innovate constantly? And for the
39:42moment, we see a big problem there. When you look at only one figure, the percentage of research and
39:50development in India and the percentage of research and development in a country like China. And you see
39:58that India is lagging behind to such an extent that now it depends on China for its pharmaceutical
40:05industry, for its electronics, for its solar panels. So to live in the past is reasonable only if you also
40:13look forward and retain your scientific assets. So there is a big risk there. And the more you destroy
40:24universities, the more you shoot in your foot. Where do we go from here with this hundred years
40:32behind us? Look around you, look around you. What are the other countries doing in the neighborhood?
40:40Yeah. Except Pakistan. That's true. That's true. It's a strange time. But thank you so much for talking to us
40:52and I've been a big fan of your work. So it was a fan moment. Thank you. And please. But extremely delightful to talk to you.
41:00Thanks a lot.
41:02Thanks a lot.
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