L'India divisa fra l'idea nazionalista e la spinta culturale per il pluralismo [India divided between the nationalist idea and the cultural push for pluralism]
Creators: name: Vecchia, Stefano
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2019

description: This article in this upload titled "L’India divisa fra l’idea nazionalista e la spinta culturale per il pluralismo" [India divided between the nationalist idea and the cultural drive for pluralism] is based on a conversation with an Indian author, social worker and journalist Pramod Ranjan.<br> <br> It was published in the Italian daily newspaper Avvenire on October 3, 2019.<br> <br> <br> <strong>The following is English translation </strong> <strong>Avvenire (English: Future), an Italian daily published from Milan dated October 3, 2019</strong><br> <br> Ravish Kumar, 44, an anchor and a journalist with the Indian television station NDTV, is among the winners of the Magsaysay Award, considered equivalent to the Nobel Peace Prize. The award was conferred on him at Milan on August 31. Ravish Kumar was born in a village in Bihar, one of the most populous and poorest states in the country. He runs a daily programme in Hindi, the Indian national language. Its critical tone has won it a large number of admirers. He and his network underline how mass media in India has been forced to abandon its role in democracy over the past years, especially with the rise of sectarianism, irrationality and discriminatory politics. Many of the country's free voices have been silenced. The award of the prize, certainly a prestigious recognition, has had a good resonance in India. But it will not protect the journalist from the pressure being mounted on him, like on many other journalists and human rights activists. In July, a statement signed by the leaders of four leading literary movements (Janwadi Lekhak Sangh, Progressive Writers’ Association, Jan Sanskriti Manch and Dalit Lekhak Sangh) said that after 210 writers and artists issued an appeal to boycott the sectarian forces led by the current Prime Minister Narendra Modi (leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party, BJP) during the elections last spring, a counter-appeal, signed by 600 almost unknown individuals, who called themselves 'writers and artists, was issued. Similarly, more recently, when 49 cultural personalities known in India and abroad (Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Mani Ratnam, Anurag Kashyap, Ashish Nandy, Aparna Sen, Sumit Sarkar, Shyam Benegal, Shubha Mudgal and others), addressed an open letter to the Prime Minister denouncing his silence on various social issues, they were countered by 62 pro-government "intellectuals". While the first initiative was intended to draw attention to the incidents of lynching of Muslims, Dalits and other innocent citizens and to request the highest authorities of the State to take exemplary action against those committing crimes in the name of religion, the reaction sought to deny discrimination using the typical language of extremist movements like the BJP and the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Movement for service to the nation, born in the early 20th century during the independence movement but characterized by a paramilitary structure and promotion of Hinduism). We asked Pramod Ranjan, coordinator of a forum of progressive writers and Managing Editor of 'Forward Press', a web portal that seeks to promote the cause of the deprived sections of society, to clarify what defines the country today, the 'alternative' culture and its relations with the 'nationalist government'. He says, "First of all, it should be pointed out that in the Indian context, given the multiplicity of cultures, traditions, ideologies and beliefs, we cannot speak of mainstream culture. Some of these traditions and cultures run in parallel; some intersect each other, and others end up converging. In recent years - continues Ranjan - many, including he himself, have developed the concept of 'Bahujan' to emphasize the traditions and aspirations of the marginalized majority, which, for them, is the true mainstream of India, opposed to culture, traditions and expressions of the 'Abhijan', the dominant minority. "European nations wrongly saw India from the perspective of the intellectuals of high castes, who mostly expressed themselves in English. To understand my country we must look at the modernity of tribal culture with its egalitarianism, at the Buddhist philosophy, traditions of farmers and artisans and the converted communities, not the official culture," he says. "Today we can observe two different trends in Indian culture, continues Ranjan -. First, the supremacist policies of the Modi government and intellectual apathy, both expressions of the traditional elites, who not want to share the political and social space and do not want social justice to take roots. Hence the indifference towards inequalities inherent in the persistence of the caste system that remains central to the nationalist propaganda. Other elements that aggravate the disagreement of some of the intellectuals with the current government are the pressure on left-wingers and pro-Congress (the Congress Party, ruling the country almost uninterruptedly since independence and now the opposition under the presidency of Sonia Gandhi) elements. The budget for universities is being shrunk. This is not something that can be ignored because Indian intellectuals have been into a symbiotic relationship with the universities and with the non-governmental organizations, from which they draw information and economic benefits," he argues.