In this episode of The Unofficial Seminar, Professor Makarand R. Paranjape (formerly of IIT, Delhi, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla) and the very eminent author of numerous books on Gandhi, Sri Aurobindo, Swami Vivekananda, among others, and most recently the book, Hindutva and Hind Swaraj (Penguin 2025) joins Dr. Arup K. Chatterjee to discuss his thought-provoking ideas on how Gandhi and Savarkar have come to represent two distinct intellectual epochs and terrains in Indian public life.
Arup K. Chatterjee: Ladies and gentlemen, I’m Arup K. Chatterjee, and you are watching the Unofficial Seminar, and I’m joined by a very special guest today, Professor Makarand R. Paranjape, all the way from the United States of America — Florida, if I’m not mistaken. Professor Makarand Paranjape, among his several other distinctions, has been a very longtime professor at the Indian Institute of Technology at New Delhi and at Jawaharlal Nehru University, and then he went on to have a presiding role in the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies at Shimla. And Professor Makarand Paranjape is the author of numerous books, including, most recently, Hindutva and Hind Swaraj, which is an extremely — well, both prescient but at the same time controversial — take on certain recent political and intellectual phenomena of Indian history of the last fifty, or maybe seventy-five, odd years. I’ve also had the privilege of being Professor Makarand Paranjape’s student. Professor, thank you so much for giving me your precious time. How have you been?
Makarand R. Paranjape: I’ve been well. Thank you so much for inviting me, Professor Arup K. Chatterjee. I must say, very proud to be on your show — very proud that you are an esteemed professor and a fellow author and intellectual, very promising, of a generation slightly younger than mine, if I may say so. And, wonderful — we always say in our Indian tradition that you want your students and your children to exceed you, and I see glimmers of that hope, or that confidence, in you. So I’m very, very proud of you, Arup, and your achievements. So thank you for having me on your show. Speaking of Hindutva and Hind Swaraj, I have a copy here — I want to hold it up, and even before you ask — before I ask you the first question, please note how the cover itself operates with these two towering, epoch-defining individuals — Mahatma Gandhi on one hand and Savarkar on the other — almost joined at the hip, but looking in two opposite directions, as it were. So that’s almost the online summary of the book— and the book attempts to actually bring them into the kind of dialogue which they never really had in real life. Though they met — they met three times, at least — but the book challenges them to enter into this deep engagement and conversation with one another, in a manner in which you might even say it’s a civilizational confrontation and dialogue.
Arup K. Chatterjee: Now, before you started writing Hindutva and Hind Swaraj, you have been, as many people already know, trying to interpret the life and the letters — by “letters” I mean the words, the ideas — of Gandhi, and you’ve done it for many, many decades. So I just wanted to ask you: what has been the afterlife of Gandhi since 1948, or maybe 1950, to be more precise, since the birth of the Republic? Have there been any trends in the way people have tried to understand Gandhi — have there been ten-year, twenty-five-year, or fifteen-year-long periods where new trends have come and gone? Have you observed anything like that?
Makarand R. Paranjape: Oh, absolutely. In fact, my last book on Gandhi — before this one — was actually called The Death and Afterlife of Mahatma Gandhi. The death and afterlife, because I feel — in fact, in that book I defined a Mahatma as somebody whose afterlife is greater than his life, like we say of Sri Ram, or Lord Ram, that the Ram Nam, the name, is greater than the person. So that’s who a Mahatma is. And, of course, Gandhi was, first of all, idealized or canonized — not by anybody else but by the British themselves. Though they treated him very badly in South Africa — the British, meaning the colonial administration — but when he returned to India, in retrospect they saw him as a less threatening and more useful opponent, though no less stubborn, no less inveterate than the revolutionaries, or than some of the other, more radical, you might even say, opponents of the Raj — including Sri Aurobindo, preaching Swaraj as early as 1908. So the British canonized Gandhi, and then, of course, the Congress — as I showed in my last book — used his martyrdom as a cache, you know, like the Catholic Church uses the martyrdom of saints, so to speak — no disrespect, but that’s what you do — you bank on, so to speak, the dharmakaya of a great soul to push your political agenda. So Gandhi ji became this big, saintly figure — first by the British, then by the government of India, Congress-led — and Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi, you know, makes him the saintly figure. Now, but I argued in my earlier book, and even prior to that, that everything he stood for was already being dismantled right at the time that he died. Just a year before that, the Congress had disowned him, etc., etc. And then I show how every section that he fought for, whose rights he fought for — the Muslims, the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, whom he called the Harijans, and then later they called themselves Dalits, women, etc. — all these so-called identity groups, they all disown him one by one, and he stands alone. In my last book I said he burns alone. But the dethroning, the systematic — you might say — demolishing of Gandhi, the abuse of his legacy and person, has never been as acute in the last ten, twelve, fifteen years as ever before, because they maintained that halo, though they went in the opposite direction. But I think there’s a systematic demonizing of Gandhi — they call him a Muslim appeaser, they call him — you know, he made Hindus into cowards, and all kinds of things, including a child abuser. So I think he’s been very thoroughly, as it were, defrocked, disenfranchised — call it what you will. Now, for me, I just want to say one very important thing: I was very taken by Gandhi for a very long time, and my own shift has not happened because of these changing perceptions, actually, but by my own engagement — very deep engagement — and I realized his limits, which I’ve talked about in my last book: the limits of ahimsa, the limits of moral force, and the limits of his kind of political engagement. And I actually talk about that in this book too — I actually say how his brand of resistance was not enough, had something lacking, and that’s why I bring in Savarkar — a figure I’ve, should I say, admired from a great distance rather than embraced, whereas I think I’ve embraced Gandhi ji. I really think of him as Bapu, and I still continue to admire him despite the worst kind of abuse, as I said, and I do see the limits, I do see the problems with his support of Khilafat — very important things which I brought out in this book, where I actually established, in my own way, how Savarkar had a really important role to play.
Arup K. Chatterjee: Yeah. So I just wanted to support — not that your point needs any support, because this is quite evident — that people have taken to Gandhi for all sorts of parasitic reasons, including many other intellectuals. We also equally take on to Hegel and Marx for similar opportunistic reasons, from time to time. So do we take up Socrates, or Hannah Arendt, or in the same breath Heidegger. But yeah, the point really is: there are instructors, there are intellectuals, who have in the past — the recent past — been extremely critical of somebody like Gandhi, and today they teach courses on Gandhi. And I’m not talking about one colleague or two colleagues, I’m talking about a global phenomenon, because Indians are Indians, and indeed South Asianists, are based worldwide. So I completely understand where you’re coming from, and indeed one hears the same political faction that once vituperatively wrote about Gandhi now embracing Gandhi whenever they require certain ideological brownie points. My question to you, however — in a similar light, but not about Gandhi, about Savarkar — would be: well, surely Gandhi is filling in certain intellectual holes, certain kinds of vacuum. Now, if you need a particular intellectual, epistemic, ideological purpose to be fulfilled, you turn to Gandhi. You’re feeling suddenly very altruistic, you turn to Gandhi. You’re feeling a little bit vegetarianish — sorry, I don’t mean to say that as a joke — but you feel like hugging trees and plants, then you turn to Gandhi. What do you turn to Savarkar for? Because Savarkar, I dare say, is not canonically loved. If somebody admires Savarkar, if somebody says that they love Savarkar, that is not a canonical statement — that is a perfectly welcome statement to make, and one should have the intellectual open-mindedness to listen to such a statement and understand where one is coming from. But surely that is not a canonical statement. So what are these epistemic plug holes, Professor, do you think Savarkar is filling in?
Makarand R. Paranjape: Oh, definitely. I’ll answer it quite directly by saying that Savarkar is, should I say, the father of the strategic understanding of how India — and more specifically, Hindus — can deal with their enemies. Now, having said that, I want to disagree with you a little by saying that Savarkar hasn’t been established as an icon the way Gandhi has.
Arup K. Chatterjee: That’s what I meant …
Makarand R. Paranjape: — and I also agree that he has never been accepted by the academic establishment, whether in India or abroad, because he’s been labeled a fascist and whatnot. But Savarkar is now almost the sort of putative father of the nation under the new regime — in other words, that NDA 2.0, or you might call it the BJP’s second term under Narendra Modi in power, and now it’s his third term as PM, has embraced Savarkar in a way in which, you know, Atal Bihari Vajpayee also didn’t — the earlier regime, though they named the airport in Port Blair after him. So what I’m trying to say is that Savarkar has now got his due as the ideologue, and Hindutva has been embraced. Hindutva is the book he wrote, the pamphlet he wrote, and Hind Swaraj is what Gandhi wrote in 1909. Gandhi wrote — but what I do in this book is bring in this other book, The Indian War of Independence, which was also written, in 1909, by Savarkar. So my book, in a way, is about the battle of two books, and the battle of two ideologies, which, in my contention, still continues. So why is Savarkar important? Savarkar is so important because these namby-pamby — partly cowardly, partly whatever, stupid, naive, so to speak — Hindus — again, all of these words are in inverted commas — were unable to understand the big threat that they were facing in the subcontinent, which is not just the threat which they had already faced, of British imperialism. It was no longer a threat, it was a noose around their neck. But the threat of Muslim separatism, of actually jihadism. So one of the main theses of this book is that the real fight is not between Swaraj and Hindutva, or Hind Swaraj and Hindutva, as our — whatever — left-liberal Hindus have been saying, that “the real — you have to dethrone Hindutva,” there are conferences on this, and many so-called Hindu intellectuals — again, so-called, because they don’t self-identify as Hindus — they all say that the big enemy is Hindutva. And in this book I say: no, the real fight in the subcontinent is between Swaraj and jihad. Jihad is a threat. Jihad means Muslim separatism, Muslim supremacism, is Islamist violence — theologically sanctioned violence, dominance, whatever you want to call it — Ghazwa-e-Hind — it’s still going on, by the way. Okay, let’s not be naive. And if you look at the West Bengal elections, one reason that the BJP won is because they saw what the Islamists did when Sheikh Hasina was thrown out — what they did in Bangladesh. And you’re from Bengal — you know what happened in the Bangladesh war. There was a genocide against Hindus, not only against Bengali, Bangladeshi Muslims. So I hit the nail on the head by saying: look, jihadism, or Islamist supremacism, separatism, violence, still threatens the world, and Savarkar realized this, and he realized this very early. This is my point. The breaking point, in fact, was Gandhi’s support of the Khilafat, which he saw as a lost cause, as a dead cause — which it was, because Kemal Atatürk actually was the nationalist who took over and dismantled the caliphate. So to re-establish the caliphate — which, by the way, they’re still trying to do, you know, somebody, ISIS or somebody else, is still trying to re-establish the caliphate, and sometimes, if you look at what the radical groups do, they have the disguise of democracy, but they still aspire for the caliphate. So please think about all this. And Savarkar realized this, and he said: look, you guys are foolish, you’re not seeing your threat, you’re not seeing the real threat. So I think this is the place where Savarkar has such an important role to play — whereas Gandhi, and then even, in fact, I would think that Gandhi was more pragmatic than his successor Jawaharlal Nehru, who said — and it’s documented — “what do Indians — why does India need a big army? We are nonviolent, we have no enemies.” And we had an invasion from across the border in 1947, in October, and we’re still bearing the brunt of that right now — Pahalgam happened, you know, just a little while back. So my point is, Savarkar fills that vacuum — that vacuum where spiritual Hindu civilization, regenerating itself, is unable to see the real threats it faces. And Savarkar, as it were, pinpoints these threats, and even gives you an approach to them. And I show in my book how Savarkar, like everybody else, in 1909 was all for Hindu-Muslim unity — you read passages from The Indian War of Independence and he’s exalting these — I would call them Ghazi type of people …
Arup K. Chatterjee: I’d like to come in here — it was people like William Dalrymple who helped me understand this, and I mean that in a very good way when I say people like William Dalrymple — it was around the time of the 150th commemoration of 1857 that a lot of people got to know, or got to think, that the 1857 uprising was not a concerted effort. And it is only then that at least somebody like me got to understand that it was the impact of Savarkar’s book — or the name of his book — The War of Independence, which renamed what was just a “sepoy mutiny” until then. 1909, Gandhi ji writes Hind Swaraj, about both the swaraj of Hindustan and the swaraj of the heart, the kingdom of heaven, as it were, and Savarkar, as you are again pointing out, is talking about Hindu-Muslim unity. Savarkar is not anti-Muslim, and I suppose you were not trying to imply that either. And Savarkar, probably by the end of his life, also is not anti-Muslim, although I’m not sure how people feel about it. Jihadism is something very separate. And Gandhi is accused repeatedly, by, dare I say, the Hindutvavadis, of being too namby-pamby, as you said, with a certain religious denomination, and he was too tolerant towards the idea of Pakistan. I mean, these are narratives. So neither Savarkar nor Gandhi are anti-Muslim in a xenophobic sense — Gandhi is probably even pro-Muslim in many of his choices — and neither of them, or perhaps both of them, are radically opposed to caste hierarchies. And Savarkar, at least after 1925, from what I have read — and see, also from your ideas, it seems like he has become quite anti-caste, and that is also part of his definition of Hindutva, that it does not allow for these various kinds of separations. My question is on caste, not on Muslims or Hindus. So why do you think that when critics talk about Savarkar and Gandhi — and maybe it’s the pro-Savarkar sources who are talking about Gandhi, or the Gandhians who are talking about Savarkarites, or other kinds of adversaries — that they club them as the “brahminical elites”? Now, Gandhi was anything but brahmanical, in my understanding of these words, but maybe you can explain what you mean by brahmanical, and do you actually agree with the usage of the word “brahminical” today, in the twenty-first century?
Makarand R. Paranjape: Exactly — it’s all rubbish, Arup. I’m no longer in the academy, I don’t need to appease any friends or opponents alike — I’ve disagreed with friends and opponents. This whole “brahminical” is a conspiracy — it was ideologically weaponized. We have a history of it — the Dravidian movement — many of these were created by the imperialists to divide and rule. And actually the word “brahminical” was used as a way to define the Vedic — or, more appropriately, the Upanishadic, so-called religion — which, in a sense, worshiped Brahman as the highest deity, they called it. So people like Max Müller and others, the Indologists of the nineteenth century, called that “brahminical” as opposed to Buddhism, which worships the Buddha. And then these caste warriors and crusaders actually said “brahmin” means the rule of brahmins, which nobody ever said, ever, in the history — that brahmins will rule, or there’s some rule — and then they made it “Manuwad” and all, in Hindi. So all this is a matter of what I would call negative Ambedkarism. All right, Ambedkar was a great critic of Hindu texts, but he was very orientalist in his outlook, in my view. So I’m saying that these words have no meaning, at least to me. And there’s such a pushback against, you know, some — I would say — created notion of caste hierarchy — created, because I don’t think India ever worked in the way in which people allege it worked in the past. Otherwise we would never have achieved anything, we would never have built a bridge, we would never have built a temple, we’d never have had irrigation canals — it all required different professions cooperating, okay? So there was a system of cooperation, not only oppression, okay? So I’m saying that these are straw men — brahminism is a straw man, and we are constantly now investing in it because, obviously, there is a politics of reservation, entitlement, reverse discrimination, redistribution, and it’s got so deeply politicized. So it has very little intellectual, I would say, validity. But speaking again of Gandhi and Savarkar, both were absolutely anti-caste, or anti-caste-hierarchy, if you will, in any considered understanding of what these hierarchies meant. Therefore, I mean, Savarkar had sort of instituted inter-caste people eating together.
Arup K. Chatterjee: Yes.
Makarand R. Paranjape: In fact, even before Gandhi — and Gandhi, towards the end of his life, insisted on so-called inter-caste marriages, endogamy — breaking that endogamy taboo and promoting exogamy, saying “I will only bless marriages between different castes and communities.” So I think we shouldn’t get sidetracked by these debates, and really look at deeper issues. For example, if one really wanted to open this Pandora’s box — the term “caste” itself is so inaccurate, it comes from the Portuguese casta, right, whereas we had traditionally a varna and jati system, and by the way, both were flexible — you descend and ascend. And we have seen a tremendous ascent in India of the so-called middle classes, or castes — OBC, Other Backward Classes, not castes — you know, they own land. If you look at Ranajit Guha’s definitions of subalterns, they are not subalterns by any stretch of the imagination, because they are neither deprived at the center nor in the peripheries, nor in the regions. In fact, whether it’s Jats or Yadavs, or Kammas or Reddys or Marathas or Vokkaligas — you can name them — Nairs, Gounders — I’m naming these communities because they are the dominant communities wherever you go in different parts of India — and now, etc., etc., they are being considered backward. And this whole — so I think it’s a politics of weaponizing and dividing Hindu society, which both Gandhi and Savarkar were totally against. They wanted Hindu society to unite. And a person like Ambedkar doesn’t see that Dayananda Saraswati, the “back to the Vedas” man, had no use for caste of the kind — by birth, jana, he said — rubbish, it’s only karma.
Arup K. Chatterjee: Yeah. So, on a very similar note — do you think any of your ideas expressed about Gandhi, and now Gandhi and Savarkar, have been misrepresented, on especially these very contentious issues? Or is there a question that you wish you had been asked, but you weren’t asked?
Makarand R. Paranjape: I’m glad you’re asking this — you’re a professor. I want to say that people don’t know how to read — they’ve forgotten the art of reading — and I want people to engage with the book. And you see what happens is, I’ve had many discussions on this book, and it’s not on the book itself — it’s about other ideas, like we just got into this brahminical issue. This is what is happening. Whereas my book, I want to again say, is not just about Gandhi and Savarkar, or about a clash of ideologies — it’s actually a way of thinking. It’s trying to understand, in a global gurukul, outside the brick-and-mortar university, how to think critically, how to interrogate settled positions, how to discover the joy of ideas, the life of the—
Arup K. Chatterjee: Is that what you call intermediatial hermeneutics?
Makarand R. Paranjape: Absolutely — I mean, anveshiki — this is a book about how to think our way through very complex problems. And especially — now that you’ve mentioned intermedial hermeneutics, it’s a kind of term I’ve coined, and I’ve mentioned its sources as well — it’s about resisting these simplistic, diametrically opposing polarities, and almost invariably they are wrong. Like, “Gandhi or Savarkar” is really a very wrong way of posing a question. It’s usually a little bit of this and a little bit of that. And it’s not because you’re hedging your bets — it’s really to find that path in which you are not compelled, or locked, into these positions, and then you spend your lifetime defending them. You know, I feel, Arup, human beings are eminently programmable — as programmable as computers are, as AI is. And we are being programmed, as it were, to oppose each other, to fight with each other. And I’m deeply distressed by the capacity of ideologies to weaponize us. And that’s why, as I said, you need not be against any tradition at all, or any religion at all — but you have to be very conscious of how certain aspects of that tradition, or that religion — its holy books, or its sayings, or whatever its traditions — can be weaponized and cause so much violence. And this book is a way to awaken people, to try and figure this out — and especially not to have young people become foot soldiers of ideologies, crying themselves hoarse for a pittance sometimes, or patronage — a pittance or a job, even, whatever it may be — not to get weaponized and divided, and think for themselves, because swaraj is the foundation of democracy, and it requires an enlightened citizenry, and not narrative control. It really requires deep thinking, especially on the part of the intelligentsia, and not being shepherded and corralled into some political bandwagon or the other.
Arup K. Chatterjee: Yeah. In my defense — or maybe against me, as you see it — just last week I interviewed a professor, an intellectual, and they gave me the complete opposite definition of Brahminism and “brahmanical” than what you have given, and I sat through that definition as earnestly, as sincerely, as curiously, I hope, as I sat through yours. And I’m sorry to say to the public at large, to the angry sections of the public, that I enjoyed both definitions. So I don’t know if that makes sense — some people find this very nihilistic — but I don’t know, Professor, I found your definitions as believable as — but it’s more than verifying the truth or not of it, it’s where you are coming from, or it’s where somebody like Gandhi and his various antagonists are coming from. So that is what interests me more nowadays, rather than verifying very narrow aspects of truth and falsehood. My last question to you, Professor: what are you writing? What should we write, if we are writing? What books should we read in this area, if we want to read?
Makarand R. Paranjape: Nobody should tell you what to read, and certainly, definitely not what to write. In fact — you know exactly what are the key issues that we should be writing on — not the views that we should have, but — basically, whatever really incenses you, concerns you, provokes you. But, you know, this whole trying to understand India has been my lifetime’s ambition, or aspiration, or passion, and then, through India, to understand the world. And I think that we do need conceptual or intellectual muscularity in India — we are facing the closing of the Indian mind. I’m deeply interested in mentoring, or at least discussing with younger people, ideas that really bother them. And the point I wanted to make, in a way, sort of endorsing what you said — especially as a host, you must — you know, you must allow, invite, and appreciate many different ideas jostling together in your own podcast, or space, so that viewers come up with their own conclusions, rather than, once again, offering advice or direction. I mean, the worst thing I want to ever be is an influencer — I don’t want to influence anybody, and I want to warn everybody against being influenced. Do not be influenced. Find out for yourself what works, what is true, and don’t get fixated, let alone fixed, on an idea, right? Keep moving. Language is dynamic, consciousness is fluid. So don’t get, as it were, trapped into a position. And by the way, if you’re using ideas and ideologies for your profit and benefit, please have the courtesy — and, should I say, integrity — to know it, and don’t pretend to really believe in bogus stuff. You should know that you’re doing it to get a job, or you’re doing it to curry favor, or whatever it is — but please don’t think that it’s the truth.
Arup K. Chatterjee: All right. Thank you so much.
Makarand R. Paranjape: Thank you.
Arup K. Chatterjee: I have one last question for you, and I am deeply grateful for these remarks. I know you have another interview to attend, but just one last tiny question, Professor. How does India look from America — or Americans looking at Indians in America, and indeed Indians based in India?
Makarand R. Paranjape: This is a very, very big topic — we’ll need another conversation — but I always, whenever I look at India from near or afar, I always say “sare jahan se achha,” but I say it because of my deep love. But we have so many problems right now, and I only want to talk about one very briefly: our higher education system is going through one of its worst crises, and our government-supported institutions are going down. They have become, as it were, reserved for reservation, and no quality, or no quality control, or excellence, is being incentivized or rewarded. It’s all about — you know — fixing, etc. So it’s like a sinecure, it’s like the gravy train. And the private institutions, barring a few, such as your esteemed institution, are all for profit. And now the foreign entry is coming in. And I’m afraid the scenario looks not so encouraging. But here’s the silver lining, always — the silver lining is, we have such a large young population, our so-called demographic dividend, that we have enough to go around. Unfortunately, the crème de la crème is going to be skimmed off and is already on its way to greener pastures. So that worries me.
Arup K. Chatterjee: That is very, very sad indeed. I hope that is not the note that we start the next term on, and definitely not the one that we end on. But thank you for all the other very bright tunes and compositions you have — let us tune in on today, Professor. Thank you so much for giving me so much of your time. It’s been very valuable, and it’s been thoroughly enjoyable to listen to your very challenging, and quite stimulating and instigating, ideas. And, Professor, I hope you join me again with a new stream of ideas — on Gandhi, on Savarkar, on Hindutva and Swaraj, and many, many more such themes. Dear audience, thank you so much for logging in. Please like, share, and subscribe to the Unofficial Seminar, and until next time — thank you.
Makarand R. Paranjape: Thank you, Arup. All the best to you, and to your viewers.
Arup K. Chatterjee: Thank you.
Arup K. Chatterjee 