Dr. Arup K. Chatterjee sat down with the author and poet, Professor Ashwani Kumar, Professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, and currently a visiting professor at Indiana. It begins with a brief introduction of Kumar as a visiting professor in Indiana. Chatterjee recalls an earlier exchange between them while Chatterjee was writing an article on the history of caste during the Indian independence period, for The Indian Express. The conversation moves between literature, politics, and social history without shifting into formal lecture style.
A major section of the talk focuses on Kumar’s views on war and the relevance of Dharamvir Bharati’s play, Andha Yug. Kumar explains that blindness here works as a metaphor for moral and political failure. He connects the image to present conflicts, including the war in Ukraine and violence in the Middle East. He also refers to many smaller wars across the world. The discussion treats war not only as a military event, but also as a social and ethical condition. Kumar repeatedly returns to the idea that modern societies have difficulty confronting war directly.
The discussion then turns to moral crisis and the scale of contemporary violence. Kumar speaks of war as an industrial form of slaughter, and he links this to a wider cultural inability to respond. Chatterjee describes the present as a period marked by ethical numbness and collective indifference. The conversation also touches on the role of writing, especially war poetry, in addressing this condition. Kumar says that such writing cannot remain at the level of national blame or political partisanship. It must engage with the larger civilizational question. He also refers to guilt, confession, and the failure of societies to process violence honestly. The exchange presents war as a condition that disturbs moral language itself.
Chatterjee asks about Bharati’s interpretation after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Kumar responds by placing the epic in a wider civilizational frame. He does not treat the Mahabharat as a simple conflict between winners and losers. Instead, he argues that the text contains ambiguity and moral loss on all sides. He points to Yudhishthira’s recognition that the war has brought loss rather than clear victory. He also notes that Bharati’s version shifts the epic toward the aftermath of destruction. The discussion then broadens into comparisons between eastern and western civilizational histories.
The role of Gandhari receives special attention in the next section. Kumar describes Bharati’s use of her voice as a feminist intervention in the play. He focuses on the final moments after the war, where Gandhari’s speech becomes severe and direct. Her words are treated as part of the play’s moral structure, not as decorative language. The discussion then moves to Ashwatthama, who becomes a symbol of ongoing wound and unresolved violence. Kumar presents him as a figure of permanent injury, not a closed mythological character. He connects this image to the history of nuclear war and to South Asian political memory. The talk suggests that the burden of violence continues across generations.
Kumar also speaks about South Asia as a region shaped by repeated violence and difficult memory. He refers to partition, nuclear fear, and the persistence of war in cultural imagination. He says that many people have grown used to these conditions. At the same time, he insists that writers and poets must keep the memory of violence active. This section includes references to his own poems and his continuing interest in the language of loss. The conversation does not move towards resolution. Instead, it returns again and again to the problem of collective injury.
The final part of the conversation shifts from war and epic to Bihar and caste politics. Chatterjee raises questions about the caste census, women’s reservation, and Bihar’s political future. Kumar describes Bihar as a state with a strong caste consciousness and a long history of social movement. He links it to socialism, peasant politics, and social justice traditions. He does not treat governance as a simple or stable category. Instead, he suggests that Bihar should be read through its deeper political and moral history. He also places the state within a wider intellectual and cultural geography. This includes references to Buddha, Mahavira, old learning centres, roads, and historical places. Bihar appears here as a region with layered histories rather than a single political label.
The discussion ends with a corrective to narrow views of Bihar. Kumar notes that the state is often reduced to stories of crime, mafia, and decline. He argues that such accounts ignore its intellectual and civilizational heritage. He mentions figures and routes associated with learning, empire, and modern communication. He also speaks of Bihar as a centre from which important ideas and histories have circulated. The conversation as a whole moves from literature to politics, and from public memory to regional history. It remains descriptive, reflective, and heavily concerned with the relation between text and historical experience.
Arup K. Chatterjee 