Special transfer discussion:

The Vice-Rector for Transfer, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Anke Kahl, meets the essayist, literary critic, writer and second holder of the "Dr Jörg Mittelsten Scheid Guest Professorship" Pankaj Mishra for a transfer discussion on 11 June 2018 at the Klingenmuseum in Solingen.

 

We have forgotten that our society was built on the pursuit of ideals such as equality and justice." (Pankaj Mishra)

K: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Anke Kahl
M: Pankaj Mishra

 

K: Mr Mishra, do you see yourself as a "historian of the present"?

M: To put it in one sentence: History holds the view that the present has its origins in the past because it has been shaped by particular experiences. This interest, shaped by our own particular experiences in the present, will change a lot because our experiences will also change.

So a historian or a writer has to pay close attention to the changes in our own political, social and economic climate and try to understand how they came about in order to really understand why we need to engage with the present.

K: In your book "From the Ruins of Empire", you consider a united Europe to be an obsolete model. Why is that?

M: I think that the European Union in its current composition - my book deals with the 19th and 20th centuries - is a remarkable political achievement that is obviously struggling with many problems, both economic and political. Look at what has happened in Hungary and Poland and now in Italy, where anti-European forces have been elevated to power by the electorate. So there are a lot of problems, but it is a political achievement in the sense that it has brought peace to the continent after centuries of war between its two most important countries, Germany and France. And today this peace, this partnership between the two countries, is even more important when we see that the United States of America is becoming more and more volatile.

K: In your book, you quote the Ottoman politician Ahmed Riza, who warned against the influence of Europeans at the beginning of the 20th century and propagated the better development of a people through isolation. Do you think that renewal through isolation is still possible and sensible today, in the age of digitalisation?

M: I don't think isolation has a chance, even if it were desirable. We don't live in a world where you can simply isolate yourself from the rest of the world. There are very few countries that try to do this and there are very negative examples of isolation, for example North Korea. These are countries that can only isolate themselves by subjugating and oppressing their population in various ways.

So isolation is no longer normal these days. I think we have to learn to live in a hyper-digitalised world and make the best of it.

K: You describe the awakening of Asia in the 20th century as the central event. And this development is leading to an ongoing transformation of the world from the imagination of the once subaltern peoples. In which direction do you think this other world could develop?

M: You know, first of all it's important to understand what this central event of the 20th century was, and that was the separation of large parts of Asia and Africa from European imperialism, including two countries that were at times more economically powerful than any other country in Europe. I am talking here about India and China. When they became independent, became republics in the 1940s, in the late 1940s, it was a huge event in history and of tremendous significance.

So what does this transformation consist of? What does it mean for us today when we think about the future? That is an open question at the moment and I think we have to fear that this kind of conflict that we have seen in Europe and especially in Germany could happen again in Asia.

Conflict, tension and antagonism and the rise of authoritarian movements is something that we cannot rule out at this point in time. So we have to be very concerned about this transformation of the world, this shift of power from West to East, because it in no way guarantees stability of life and prosperity for the millions of people who aspire to that life. On the contrary, it promises a lot of conflicts and it remains to be seen what kind of conflicts they will be and whether they can still be averted.

K: Napoleon said in 1798 that great glory can only be achieved in the Orient, Europe is too small for that. Does this realisation still hold true today?

M: Well, this certainly applies to a Western brand name, luxury brand names, not just brand names but also to other consumer-oriented companies who know that the biggest sales market is in countries like India and China, who have obviously opened large designer outlets in these countries, but have also outsourced their factories and their production companies to this part of Asia because they have realised that the European market, the Western market, is simply too small to grow as quickly as they would like. So you could say that the Orient is still a place where profits can be made very quickly.

K: The Chinese philosopher Liang Qichao wrote in 1901: I fear that intellectual education will become more and more important, while moral education will decay. Where do we stand today in times of Putin and Trump?

M: I think that's right, he feared that this kind of technically instrumentalised education would become more important than the sense of morality, the sense of what is right and what is wrong. Our education system has in many ways cast a technical, a mechanical angle on the virtues and values of citizens, citizens who are compassionate, attentive and empathetic to the suffering of other citizens and aware of their responsibilities and duties and not just their rights. I fear that Putin and Trump have risen in a moral climate in which we have lost sight of these fundamental ideas of a political community.

K: If the Turks already felt oppressed by the Europeans in the 19th century, why do they still want to join the EU in the 21st century? Isn't that schizophrenic?

M: Not really. You know, 19th century Ottoman Turkey was an empire that was confronted with European imperialism. Today's Turkey is a nation state and the European Union is very different from the European empire of the past. Therefore, we are looking at two completely different conditions and circumstances. Of course, Turks want to join the European Union because they would benefit a lot in terms of visa procedures, freedom of movement and foreign investment.

K: Most acts of war in history have always been initiated by men. In this context, I read an article you wrote in the Guardian on 17 March entitled "The crisis of modern masculinity". In it, you say that "masculinity has become a source of great suffering, for men as well as women." How come?

M: Of course, I think that's right. The idea of masculinity makes all sorts of demands and rules that are simply difficult for many men to realise and enforce.

Frustration causes them to become increasingly angry and often, as we have already seen, extremely violent.

There is the view of Trump, Putin, Duterte, Modi and others. The men who feel left behind, who feel marginalised by women going into world politics. I think it stems from the fact that they see themselves as so much more privileged, so much more powerful and so much more entitled than women and other minorities. That's why they fail, why they struggle. So I think all this portrayal of masculinity as something desirable has become deeply destructive for many men in the world. So I think it's important to escape this trap that propagates masculinity, power and the urge to dominate and develop other more important virtues like compassion, camaraderie and solidarity. I think in many ways we are caught in a trap created by the over-emphasis on masculine ideals.

K: In your opinion, is Modi also a trigger for this "age of anger", to use the title of your latest book?

M: Exactly. In fact, this was my original motivation to understand what was happening in India, which was once known as a democracy and suddenly elects as Prime Minister a man who is involved in mass killings, in all kinds of horrible crimes and atrocities. I thought that to understand this crisis both politically and morally, I had to understand the historical background events in history and find events in history where similar things have happened. The demonisation of minorities, the exclusion of certain population groups from the political community, obviously emerged from the late 19th century and under the pressure of state-building.

In the late 19th century, people came to power who told the masses which groups in the population were responsible for the failure of the nation to achieve greatness. The same thing is happening in India today. These people should be identified and prosecuted.

This kind of danger, which we first saw in Europe, has spread to other parts of the world. We are seeing this in India, in Myanmar, where again a community that is in no way responsible for the problems many people face today is being identified and persecuted as the source of the problems.

This is what I wanted to highlight with my research on India and the more I looked at the examples from India, the more I realised that in India we are living through a repeat of the sad and frightening events in Europe.

K: In your book, you describe the anger of those who feel socially left behind and predict the downfall of democratic societies if this anger is met with rationality alone. How do you think the world should react to this unspeakable rage, this immense anger?

M: I think we need to reintroduce ideals such as equality and justice into our respective societies. In the last 2-3 decades, we have invested too much in the ideas of economic growth, prosperity, self-expansion and enlightenment. We have forgotten that our society was built on the pursuit of ideals such as equality and justice. Namely, on the fact that people in a society should see themselves as equals and that there should be social justice and that there should be no great differences in income and opportunities within classes, within population groups. We have lost sight of these fundamental values over the last few decades and I fear as a result many people, seeing themselves isolated and left behind by what they see as a small minority, will become very angry and join extreme right wing parties and demagogues. As long as their experience of radical change, destructive change, of being uprooted without any support, without any real support, is not addressed, we will unfortunately see more and more of this kind of anger. Today we see it in this country, tomorrow in that one and this anger will spread from one country to another.

Instead, we say, "Oh, we have to pursue our individual self-interest in a competitive market." I think that kind of thinking is totally inappropriate today. The political parties of the states have to look after the welfare of their citizens. They cannot simply rest on their responsibility to the market or to investors. I am thinking here of the simple conditions that prevailed in Europe after the war, when there was considerable welfare. People in Asia and Africa also tried to set up state welfare systems and we set up fundraising programmes. I think we need to reactivate this effort. On the other hand, if we look at the world as a market, I fear that competition will become more and more fierce and more and more people will feel left behind and become more radical.

K: You write that "billions of people are trapped in a social Darwinist nightmare" What do you mean by that?

M: Let's look at the world as a market and society as organised on the fringes of this market. Everyone is an individual entrepreneur and you either swim or sink and fight for survival. This is what I call a social Darwinist nightmare, where only the strongest survive and everyone else perishes. This is an incredibly frightening, bleak vision of society and yet this vision is central to many societies around the world, perhaps not so much in Germany, but in the UK, in America and even in countries like India. This idea of the individual struggling to survive has become deeply internalised and I think until we get rid of that idea, until we think of greater solidarity or welfare, we will remain trapped in that particular nightmare.

K: Let me quote you again: "There are far more aspirations than can be legitimately realised in the age of freedom and entrepreneurship." Can we humans not handle our freedom?

M: You know, I think the world has trouble dealing with freedom after we stopped believing in God, stopped going to church, or gave up our faith in any kind of transcendental power. Since the beginning of the modern age, individual freedom has been experienced as a burden to be endured in one way or another. This has always remained a problem and I think as society becomes more and more fragmented, people will feel more and more isolated, making this burden unbearable. If you can't rely on the sense of community, on the solidarity of your fellow citizens, then you feel more and more isolated, deprived and abandoned. And I think that political anger today is driven by the individual feeling that you are free in the theoretical sense, but you don't really know what to do with this freedom because the options are very limited. These possibilities, and here I mean both social-economic and political possibilities, are the reason why there are so many incredibly frustrated people out there. We may be free from traditional shackles, from the caste system and strict traditions, but what do we do in a world that offers us no stability, no security or what makes life meaningful? What use is freedom to you then?

K: In an interview with the Züricher Zeitung this year, you expressed hope for Europe through the younger generation. What leads you to this assessment?

M: Well, I think that the younger generation, as we have already seen in many countries, is much more politically aware, and has to be because it is living through a crisis. They are confronted with the possibility that their lives are worse than those of their parents or grandparents. This is a radical change, but it is encouraging that many young people are deciding to become politically active because of this rather bleak outlook. So in that sense it is not a depoliticised generation as we have seen in recent decades. This generation, now in their late teens or early twenties, recognises that collective action is needed to confront the problems we face today, political problems, environmental problems, for which there is no magic formula and which the market will not do for us. The dogmas here at this point are too dysfunctional to think about them now. So there is a political and intellectual ferment within the younger generation and that is a hopeful sign for me.

K: They say children are the future. I have a daughter and I know you have a child too. What kind of world do you think our children will be living in 30 years from now and what will they have to prepare for?

M: Well, we haven't left our children a wonderful world. So they have to work harder to, let's say, avert disaster. It's not about making the world a better place, but we have to deal with the question "can we prevent large-scale environmental disasters and escalation of violence?", and these questions can only be answered by the generation that is now in their late teens or early twenties. It is up to them, it is tragic, but it is indeed up to them to make wise choices to confront these problems.

Unfortunately, we were the generation that did not foresee these problems, we were too complacent, too convinced that this would go on forever and that we could leave our children and grandchildren a safe world in which we ourselves had grown up and lived. But this was not the case and we had better be prepared.

K: This is a big challenge for the younger generation.

M: Indeed it is.

K: I think what we can agree on is that only communication can lead to reasonably positive compromises. Communication... and food! We are here in the Blade Museum, with a very large collection of weapons and the world's largest collection of cutlery. So what could be more natural than to invite you, dear Pankaj Mishra, for a meal to round off our conversation? Thank you very much for the interview and I wish you a wonderful time here with us in the Bergisches Land.

M: Thank you very much!

(Transfer interview from 11 June 2018)

Translation of the transfer interview by Sandra Hens M.A., Career Service, University of Wuppertal

Pankaj Mishra was born in 1969 in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. He studied economics with a bachelor's degree at Allahabad University. He obtained a Master of Arts in English Literature from Jawarharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. Mishra was a visiting professor at Wellesley College in 2001, 2004 and 2006 and received a scholarship from the New York Public Library in 2004/05. In 2007/08, he was a visiting lecturer in English literature at University College London. In 2014, he received the Leipzig Book Prize for European Understanding for his novel "From the Ruins of Empire". The essayist, literary critic and writer lives in London and India.