Ep.036 DMSO - The True Medical Miracle

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Also, the part of well received South Asia in motion series, to briefly introduce our guest today, Professor Suruper Roy is a professor at the chair and chair of State and Democracy at the Center for Modern Indian Studies, CMEs, University of Gotting in. Her work, other scholarly work include, Sephiron Republic, Hindu Nationalism and State Power in India, with Thomas Blom Hanson, her current project explores theorizing the transversal politics of right wing decolonization. Very glad to have you, Professor Roy, in the new Books Network podcast, thank you for joining us. Thank you. And so, could you start by telling us about the intellectual journey and the personal journey that you had with the book and what sort of, you know, your personal kind of stories with writing the political outside and this particular project? Sure. Thank you. So again, for inviting me to be a part of this. So you know, this journey I think is the right word because it's been a very kind of long and meandering journey to writing this book, which I think has ended up benefiting certainly from my perspective, the research and the argument. So I started off, I mean, this is not at all the book that I planned right. I started off wanting to, you know, do research and maybe write something about what at that point, this is, you know, around, you know, 2008 also was, 2007 actually, was being talked about in terms of this, you know, media revolution, specifically the TV news revolution and what it had done to Indian democracy. And so it kind of began there with this very specific question about media, democracy, political and economic change, new India and the era of economic liberalization. From there it kind of transformed into, I started getting interested in the broader question of middle class, new middle class politics and what this means. And from there through a variety of different kind of detours, I ended up with this particular historical moment of the long 1970s, the emergency and the post emergency as a genealogy for the present. So, you know, it's been this, as I said, long and meandering journey, research as a journey, a kind of moving target which I think has been good because I've been able to follow the research, keep it open ended, keep the question open ended and that's how it brought me to a particular argument that I think I've been able to make. I've also, because it's been such slow research, I ended up moving across three continents during this very long period and that was also quite beneficial because every single time the topic of what I was working on, Indian democracy, the questions that were being raised in the three different academic environments of the US, India and Germany, which is where I'm at right now, were very different and so that again was quite beneficial. And I'll kind of end with this, the final thing that ended up happening over this period of kind of slow research is that this question of populism itself, terms of it being a real phenomenon in the world, that I was interested in, changed quite dramatically. So, when I began in the, you know, 2010s at that time, the name of the people was being associated with movements for democracy like the Arab uprisings, Gaisipark, etc. in India, we had the India against corruption movements, etc. So, there was a particular kind of political energy and charge to the concept of populism. By the time I finished writing the book, we are in the 2020s and the name of the people is being harnessed to the politics of the strong man, not just in India, but around the globe. So, because I was kind of following populism through this long period, I was able to think about and try to offer my argument about what if anything connects these two politics of the people, right? How do we think about the politics of populism around this particular political arc? Right. Yeah. I think, first thing about this slow research that you, I think highlight also in the introduction of the book. That's right. Yeah. And I think a lot of researchers will find peace that, you know, how their kind of central idea of their research emerges through that process and so that they don't get a kind of worried about, you know, the kind of resources time being put into there because you will, I think you will find something valuable book like the political outsider. Even if it takes a longer time, I think when I read, I found it that, you know, it takes a lot of time, a lot of detours, but even the end, you'll find a very valuable work. And that what I call, what other researchers have called it as this, you know, patchwork, ethnography, we doing this and sometimes you go to the bureaucracy, it doesn't work. And then it's somehow the data is sort of emerges. Thank you for that. And also about your personal journey, like growing in your, sort of, in your academic years when you're growing up, what are your, like, kind of influences? And, you know, how did that sort of, does it have a connection with how you end up writing this project? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so a couple of things I want to say. One is just, you know, in relation to what you just pointed out about slow research and keeping on coming back, I mean, I do want to point out that, I mean, I think there's an immense value in having what, you know, in a sense, we might call a backburner project, something that's always kind of bubbling, simmering at the back, and that you can keep coming back to while. you know, of course, for, you know, reasons of your, you know, other kinds of pressures that you have for publishing, for tenure, etc. I mean, obviously slow research is not, there's not the recommended format. And so if at all possible, if there's something, a question that you keep kind of coming back to and worrying and puzzling over, I think that, you know, eventually that that pays off in a certain kind of way, while you kind of, you know, continue with your other project. So I do want to flag that in terms of influences. You know, I think, I think I've been lucky in that, very lucky, in that I did, because I, in my graduate training, I didn't, my main advisors were not India or South Asia specialists at all. And I think that kind of pushed me towards both reading literature that was very different from South Asia focused literature. And also being able to ask questions or answer questions that would not have occurred to me as a South Asian or within the context of South Asia. So those in a sense, you know, influences from beyond the kind of South Asian field of scholarship. And again, also, I also benefited from being able to being in a department, a political science department, which was quite very unusual at the time. And I think even now, and my first job was also in such a kind of open political science department that encouraged us or didn't have a problem with people transgressing the disciplinary boundaries of what constitutes our, you know, our field. And so because of that, I've been able to read and learn from, you know, especially political anthropology, sociology, history, media, and that has not been a problem. And so I, you know, in that sense, I think the influences are too many and too varied to name, but it's been very eclectic and I think I'm really grateful for that. Yeah. Yeah. I think also apart from the academic influences, and also the kind of, a lot of kind of freedom that you get across disciplines to read and then reflect not in kind of also restricted political science manuals, so like, and that also helps. I feel, I think coming back to like kind of our discussion about the, you know, the key concept that is book is driven by the curative democracy and the key what the political outsider could you explain it for our listeners? What do you mean by the curative democracy and what is it sort of entails? Yeah. Sure. I'll be happy to do that. So, you know, to be really kind of almost reductive about it, I guess at some level, the question really is about how do we think about the politics of change, of democratic change, right? And, you know, if we say, again, very reductively that there are two ways in which we can think about political change and democratic change in, in particular, we can talk about the kind of revolutionary mode of change and this idea of reform. Talk a lot about revolution. What was interesting for me and the puzzle that really motivated me was how in a place like India where, of course, we know there's been the absence of revolution. I mean, very famously, you know, we, we are the kind of context of passive revolution. If, if you like, so then if we don't have revolution, what kind of change have we had and do we have how do we think about the kind of political meaning and configuration of reform, right? So, that was the question which, you know, curative democracy, if you like, is the answer to what are the contours of a reformist or a remedial view of politics when we say we want to cure democracy that this democracy, this political system of ours is sick. We need to fix it. There's some kind of a cure repair or fix of a broken and diseased system of democracy. What, what is this, what is this configuration all about? What are the politics behind thinking of democracy in terms of this model of disease and cure, right? And, you know, the questions this prompts also relate to thinking about the agent of cure. What does it mean to say democracy is diseased? Who gets to cure democracy? Who gets to imagine that they can cure democracy? What does it mean to say we are going to cure or repair or fix democracy as opposed to change it in a revolutionary fashion, right? So, this was, in a sense, the kind of main question of that curative democracy tries to answer. And so, this idea of the democratic cure and fix, I also, so at one level it was about trying to understand how this, what is today very common. What are the politics and the normative implications, the political implications of this idea of democracy? But there was a second kind of historical question behind this, which was the question of when and why did this particular political imagination of curative democracy emerge? Because I wanted to locate this in a particular historical moment in a particular conjuncture. And one of the arguments the book makes and this in part was prompted by my earlier work, which was about the Nehruvian nation-building project. That is what my first book was about the kind of politics of nation-building and the imagination of democracy in relation to nation-building. So, when did this shift from nation-building to democracy rebuilding take place? And this is, you know, the story of the around 1970s. So, there was, if you like, a normative question and a political question about what does curative democracy mean? And then there was a historical and genealogical question about when we came to this formation of curative democracy. So, those are the two aspects, yeah. Yeah, if I understand it correct, do you mean that the nation-building is somehow like the Indian state becoming consolidating into what we saw in the '60s, '50s and '70s. And the political change sort of that we first see as has this aspect of curative democracy in that. Or this is also the continuation of the nation-building in that way or like that. Yeah. So, it's a continuation in that I think if we put both of these as two different modes of political legitimation, right? So, in the '50s and '60s, you have nation-building as the way in which kind of the state and state citizens, state society relations. This is how political authority is legitimated through calls of nation-building. This is the project around which political authority is consolidated, right? The call to build the nation. By the time we get to and for a specific set of political reasons, from the 1970s onwards, the call of political legitimation is not to build the nation. It is to rebuild or fix or repair or cure democracy, right? Or that is the kind of shift. And as I said, these are both two modes of political legitimation. And I want to emphasize here that this is not something that is necessarily unique to India because, and this is arguments by people like Samuel Moin have pointed out how in this period of the long 1970s there is what Moin has called the sense of a loss of post-colonial utopia, right? There's a kind of political sense of disappointment, the failure of the post-colonial state and a new political culture and political project which in the Indian case I've called the project of fixing and curing a disease democracy that remains with us today. So that's the kind of, you know, repairing democracy as opposed to building and being the two modes. Does anyone else feel like August is the Sunday? summer. It's the perfect time to hit reset before the autumn rush and what better place to start and with your wardrobe. Quinn's proves you don't need a crowded closet to look incredible. You just need the right pieces. 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Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns, now available in Canada and the UK too. That's QU-IN-CE.com/newbooks. These are the moments that make Nordstrom, Nordstrom, bigger small. We're here for all of it. Celebrating 125 years with new moments still ad. Discover it all in Nordstrom stores and at Nordstrom.com. Botox on a botch alignem toxin A prevents headaches and adults with chronic migraine. Alerture doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue, and headache. Alerture reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms, and dizziness. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS Lugeric's disease, Myasthenia Gravis, or Lambert Eaton Syndrome, and medications, including botch alignem toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. Why wait? Ask your doctor. Visit botoxchronicmigraine.com, or call 1-800-44 Botox to learn more. And has a kind of a transnational similarity. And as you also mentioned, the post-colonial nations mostly go through these kind of theories. Yes, in different ways, I don't want to say I absolutely don't want to say it's the same thing, but there is a general kind of, you know, this kind of politics of dissolution, that in various contexts emerges differently. And I do think that there's something global, an interesting conjuncture of this long 1970s. You know, we can, you know, think about the beginning and the end point of this differently for different countries, but I do think there is something about this 1970s in, you know, the long 1970s. So going into the 80s, that is an interesting kind of global turning point, that just like we know a lot about the mid, you know, the mid-century, you know, 1945-47 is a turning point. The post-war turning point, we know a lot about, we also know about the kind of post-Cold War, which in Indian context is, you know, talked about in relation to post-liberalization. But I think again, in the Indian context, this is a very particular emergency and post-emergency turning point. That becomes very interesting. Think about, yeah. Yeah, and the political history has been, I think, is also makes that contribution there. And also, I also feel that the kind of the very nice job that book does is that, you know, it's relies on like different research materials across, you know, media, you know, political discourses archive. So like, how did you sort of manage to do, you know, this, the field works, the, what is your research process, what was like, how was, how did it look like, what are the challenges that you sort of faced in these, you know, while you are doing the field work and then going to write it and all that, just to have our audience know about what goes behind writings, you know, collecting so much material and stitching it together, yeah. So, you know, again, I want to come back to this idea of the long arc and the, and the, you know, researchers journey and literally following, following the research trail. So as I said, I began with the media project and it was, you know, an ethnography of television news production in, in this particular period. And of course, while I was doing my research or shortly after, what ended up happening were the India against corruption movements and the, which eventually led into the formation of the Amadmi party and, you know, the TV news journalists, of course, played a very important role in both of these several of the people were quite, quite prominently involved in both the IAC and then the Amadmi party, one of the journalists. In fact, the first interview that I ever did was with the journalist who then goes on to become one of the founding members of the art, right? So then that kind of, therefore naturally led me into doing research about this kind of Amadmi party and the, and this kind of new politics, which was a different facet of the different but related facet of this kind of television news attempt to create a new culture of what at that point was being called lean and new politics, right? And then again, from the Amadmi party, several of the people, I mean, the whole, a lot of the discourse was about, you know, the judiciary and needing to kind of litigate and produce new politics beyond the ballot box through forms of extra electoral interventions of various kinds by the judiciary, by civil society. So that kind of led me towards a public interest litigation, which then led me towards the emergency and the 70s. The media arc also led me to the 70s. So a lot of the different kind of contemporary arcs that I was following kept leading me to when I tried to figure out when all of this started, the genealogy of these individual topics would constantly lead me back to the emergency and the post-emergency period of so-called democratic restoration, which I started to look at seriously and realized that what we've thought about as a restoration, a return to democracy after a brief hiccup of the emergency was actually a reconfiguration or a politics and this is really where the Curative Project and this figure of the political outsider, which ended up being the title of the book, the idea that in order to fix democracy, we need extra electoral political agency, right? We need the outsider, someone who is outside the system of so-called diseased and dirty politics to come and help us fix things or institutions that are outside politics, help fix the political system, that's the process. And also what basically was as a researcher, as the challenge, because it seems very seamless for you as moving from medias to and the political interviews leading on to and then finding a comparative analysis of the emergencies and the contemporary politics, but when you sort of starting to synthesize everything, what are the kind of challenges in you are facing while doing while at it? I know I'm asking something, I don't know if you remember a lot of things may be very cold. No, no, I mean, you know, again, this is why it took as long as it did and I think in the book somewhere I describe the process as a zigzag process and I try to kind of preserve that zigzag structure by starting with the present, going to the 70s and then coming back to the present, pick in part to get away from the idea that there's a kind of smooth linear trajectory that we can create. I'm not at all thinking about this in terms of a set of continuities, but more, you know, as a set of lineages and consequences, right? And I also kept the structure the way I did, the zigzag, because that is, in a sense, how the process evolved for me. And I want to-- >> It's matured. >> Yeah. >> Very natural. It is. >> It is, you know, I started, you know, I started with, in a sense, media and the Ahmad, you know, the present research. That took me to the 70s and, you know, I started seeing all these things about the 70s, the long 70s. And then I wanted to use, because I'm a political scientist, I wanted to, and I was interested both, you know, analytically and also politically in trying to understand our present and, so, you know, what do I, how do, is there a way in which what I've learnt about the 70s allows me to think about the present. So again, it's not about continuities, but it's more about different moments and how they allow us to interpret and understand the present. >> Yeah. >> You know, that's the structure of the book. >> Yeah, that's right. And I also, I think you make a point about the genealogy, but also, now, just, we're speaking about it, you make a key distinction also that this genealogy is not a very linear process. I would like to explain it later, but before going there, I want to ask you, the prime focus that you have on the Shah Commission, and when you say that, you know, the, the valorization of this political, I outside it through, in recent times that we say, see, has a root to the Shah Commission. And could you briefly walk us through, like, how was the, how, why it's so important for you to, and then what was the content there? >> Sure. I'll do that. So this is, you know, just to kind of give a little bit of a background. So the book is divided into two parts. In the first part, elements, I map what the curative project and this idea of the political outsider, what it really means in the present as form of politics, right? So this is where I use my research on the art, the Ahmad mi party, and media to talk about the kind of contemporary politics of curative democracy. And then in the second part of the book, the lineages, which is what the second part is called, I say, okay, now, how, where does this come from? And this is where I go into the 1970s. And so the Shah Commission is one. I mean, it is important, but it, it's along with the other things that I talk about. So it's the Shah Commission. I talk about the invention of public interest litigation, and I also talk about the emergence of investigative journalism in the 19, in the post-emergency. So together, Shah Commission, PIL, investigative journalism, and what at that point emerges in relation to kind of civil society activism. All of these are these various kind of post-emergency democratic restoration efforts. So the Shah Commission is part of that project. And I, one of the arguments I make is this is really where this idea of the political outside gets consolidated and institutionalized this idea that in a sense, there's a kind of distinction between politics and morality. And this idea that there's a distinction between popular sovereignty, the people versus state or procedural sovereignty, right? And this is, you know, the Shah Commission, PIL, all of these other things play into this idea of the political outside as the zone where the people, the, the kind of moral power of the people resides in the zone that is outside politics somehow. And that's, so that's really the kind of context in which the, and what I do with the, and the reason why I think the Shah Commission story is important, not, it's important, not just, you know, as an illustration of this, but it's important because part of what I'm trying to do in the book, and I think in a, in a lot of my research, is to move away from any, even though I, in a sense, my, all my arguments are about political culture, cultural politics, but I don't, but they are not culturalist arguments. And so the Shah Commission story becomes very important because this idea of, you know, morality versus politics or the political outside is a very historically specific and conjunctural idea. And it's located in the particular context of the Shah Commission and the Shah Commission produces this idea of the political outside for very specific historical and political reasons. So in a, in a sense, that, that is why I think, for me, the Shah Commission story becomes important. There was nothing preordained, there was nothing cultural, I'm not making an argument about how India is inherently, you know, moralistic, moralizing, or something like that. Yeah. Does anyone else feel like August is the Sunday of summer? It's the perfect time to hit reset before the autumn rush. And what better place to start and with your wardrobe? Quinn specializes in effortless high quality essentials, like ultra soft organic cotton and premium Mongolian cashmere sweaters. Quinn's also has premium stretched denim, starting at just $50, with the kind of perfect fit structure and weight you'd expect from a luxury designer brand. Everything at Quinn's is priced 50 to 80 percent less than similar brands. They cut out the middlemen, so you're paying for quality, not brand markup. I'm always reaching for them to wear, because my other shirts don't come close to the comfort. Download the Quinn's app for app exclusive offers, or go to Quinn's.com/newbooks. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, now available in Canada and the UK too. That's q-u-i-n-c-e.com/newbooks. We're here for all of it, celebrating 125 years, with new moments still add. Botox on a botchaline mtoxin A prevents headaches and adults with chronic migraine. Alerture doctor right away is difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS Lou Gehrig's disease, myasthenia-gravis, or Lambert Eaton syndrome, and medications, including botchaline mtoxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. Why wait? Ask your doctor. Visit BotoxCronicMigraine.com or call 1-800-44 Botox to learn more. Yeah, and also just for our readers and our listeners and readers of your books, just to give them an idea about what is the Shaq Commission report and what is the context of emergency and how did it come about? Can you just tell us in two, three lines? What is the content? That's going to be so, you know, the kind of quick version of this is, as you all know, when we are taught history, we're told that okay, between 1970, you know, there's India's a democracy, there was just this brief little period for, you know, June 75 till March 77, when democracy was suspended, and then it came back on track, right? And part of what I was doing is along with what, I mean, I was fortunate enough that right around the time when I started to to think about this, some very, very, exciting and different new work came out about the Indian emergency by Jan Brakarsh and then there was a book by Christav Shafrello and Pratina Vannil and you know a few other articles by some people all of whom were trying in a certain way to to reject this idea of the emergency as just this little hiccup and to try to kind of locate it within the the arc of Indian politics and Indian democracy not to think of this as this deviation but to think of what happens when we kind of fold emergency into the story of Indian democracy. Now what was interesting about the work of people like Jan Brakarsh and Christav Shafrello and Pratina Vannil is that the way they embedded the emergency back into Indian democracy was by looking at the continuities between what preceded the emergency and the emergency itself right so there was this really wonderful archival work that they they've kind of put out there for for all of us and what I started to think about was okay what happens after the emergency right so this idea of so in a sense if you like it's the it's the second part of of this embedding which is that the story of what does it mean to bring democracy back on track if we if we kind of read look at this project of democratic restoration and we look at this as the invention of a new democratic normal so in a sense when democracy returns it will always carry with it the shadow of the emergency what what does it mean then and of course for me very directly the shadow of the emergency that gets carried over is this idea of curative democracy right because the emergency the suspension of Indian democracy is done by Indira Gandhi in the name of curing democracy by literally suspending politics so isn't it the ultimate irony of political history that when democracy is restored and all of these various kinds of you know justifiably celebrated efforts of public interest litigation investigative journalism civil society activism take off in the aftermath of the emergency they also take off in the name of extra political authority at the political outside so in a sense for me the political outside and the political outsider is what gets carried over and kind of allows democracy to be normalized in in this kind of unintended way right so that the political outsider is the legacy of the emergency in some way that we are living still today yeah absolutely yeah and and also to clarify just to clarify on that that political outside is not a single individual but a kind of an institutional way through a mechanism that's what you are trying to also it's yes it's definitely not I okay so so one a really important clarification I get us this often is an outsider is not a sociological reality it is a claim right so the argument is that at some point in Indian politics it became a way to gain political legitimacy is to claim that you are a political outsider right which at some level if you think about it is is really peculiar it's like the if you think of the equivalent in another profession outside politics if you think that the way somebody gets to claim legitimacy and authority in the field of medicine the way a doctor gets patients the way a cardiac surgeon gets patients is to say I have never held a scalpel before right or the way in which in any other profession the idea that you would get authority within that profession by or within that professional field by saying I've never done this before and that's why you need to vote for me that's why you need to trust me etc so that for me is the kind of oddness of this idea political outsider that in politics saying you have nothing to do with politics saying that you don't know anything about politics and you know I want to emphasize that this is again this is not about whether or not this is true in a in a sociological or factual way but this is the claim that people need to make yeah and and that that that's odd and I also want to highlight that this of course is not unique to India and this becomes one of the arguments in the last chapter of the book that I that I developed which which is that the idea of the strong man politician around the world today populism ends up authoritarian populism in particular ends up validating this construction of the political outsider so everybody from you know Trump and Berlusconi to Duterte you know we can go on are all figures who claim their outsiderness is what allows them to be the redeemers acting on behalf of the people so we never held office who never held office who are who are not going to be corrected by the system because they are outside it ironically of course it becomes a way to authorize billionaires in politics which is something in the book I mentioned this that Weber had had talked about you know how in a sense plutocrats become the the the kinds of figures who can actually claim that politics is is a true vocation for them because they don't need to make money of politics they are independently wealthy and you know you have that you know Trump I think exemplifies or a figure like husk getting into politics is a sick example of that when I was doing my research on the Ahmad mi party this was the argument that at that point she was a candidate for the Ahmad mi party Shazia ill me would use in her electoral speeches she would say you know I don't I don't I'm not corrupt because I'm rich yeah I don't need to I don't need to make money of politics I you know I have this huge I used to earn so much money I don't I don't need money so you need to trust me because I'm rich you know as it public of holding public offices to just make money that was the yeah yeah so it's it's a kind of like thing trust me because I'm rich you know I'm and therefore I'm not corrupt right which is a very I mean the implications of that are quite interesting right yeah and thank you for explaining all you know the concepts and the the historical geneology and how how did the research come about I just want us to discuss a little more about you know the outsider as a sorry I think my signal is getting a little funny yeah go ahead my direction yeah yeah it's okay yeah go ahead yeah so I just I just wanted us to discuss a little bit about when the political outsider and the curative democracy kind of as blips in the whole political history sort of comes again and again it re-emerges and it carries those roots of those those reformative politics that we find in the 70s and 80s but looking at looking back to the 2013 the Indian you know people who voted for a political outsider they would say think that oh that was probably we did the wrong thing maybe with the swayed away etc so how do you see do you think that is it necessarily democratizing this kind of populism or do you think that this is the natural course how a democracy sort of takes you know through this populist outbreaks so I I'm not sure I understand the question fully but so at some level and I think the discussion we were just having about you know plutocracy and outsiderness etc suggests that and I say this in the book you know the political outsider is usually a social insider of a particular kind right and so it's not everyone that can stick claim to being a political outsider and ironically you know the plutocracy argument is one aspect of it but you know on grounds of caste gender etc you often find that a lot of people who exercise this authority And this claim to fix democracy, there's a kind of hierarchy involved in this kind of politics. It's a politics that enables and extends a hierarchical claim, right? It's not everyone that says, "I'm going to fix democracy." There's a, in the book I talk about this as a pro-pritorial politics, right? Curative politics is a pro-pritorial politics, I mean, you know, you fix what you own, right? And not everybody can stand up there and say, "I, what I'm doing, I'm doing in the name of fixing and curing democracy," right? You have many types of political movements in India, all of them are not curative projects, right? So that's, I guess, the way I would answer the democratizing question. In relation to, of course, and then there's the second part of the question, perhaps, which is, how does curative democracy or the Curative Politics project link to the politics of, you know, the rise of Hindutva or the project of Hindutva, that's what the book ends up concluding with. And, you know, I don't want to spend much time on the details of the argument, but what I end up saying is that in order to understand the rise of the strong man, the rise, you know, the kind of project of Hindutva and how, you know, it gets consolidated after 2014, we need to look at the repertoires of political legitimacy in India that it draws upon. So, of course, we need to look at the kind of exceptional politics, the suffering politics of Hindutva, but following people like Thomas Hanson, I also am interested in this question of how the Hindutva project fits into and articulates with the existing politics of so-called Indian democracy as usual, right? So, instead of just thinking about the politics of Hindutva as a deviation, we also need to look at how it fits in, how it connects to, and therefore, what in the repertoires of quote unquote normal Indian democracy are being deployed and reused and re-bucked by the Hindutva project, and the curative idea is one of them, right? So, you definitely have in 2014, when, you know, the first Modi government comes to power, the call at that point is very similar to what, you know, the Amadmi Party, et cetera, was saying just a few years before this, you know, call to clean up, you know, the whole cleaning up politics, the politics of the broom, the archaic bin, there was a definite kind of policy, and of course, Modi positioning himself as the ultimate political outsider, that, you know, the T celler who is not like the corrupt nepotistic Latians elite and the Congress dynasty, all of this language is from the repertoire of outside of politics. Quinn's proves you don't need a crowded closet to look incredible, you just need the right pieces. Quinn specializes in effortless, high quality essentials, like ultra soft organic cotton and premium Mongolian cashmere letters. Quinn's also has premium stretch denim starting at just $50, with the kind of perfect fit, structure and weight you'd expect from a luxury designer brand. I wear their Pima cotton t's nearly every day. Upgrade your everyday. Download the Quinn's app for app exclusive offers or go to Quinn's dot com slash new books. That's QU-I-N-C-E dot com slash new books. For 125 years, Nordstrom has been part of your story. The stylist who found the perfect outfit for your big interview. The first pair of walking shoes for your one-year-old. The tomato soup you shared with your sister at the cafe. These are the moments that make Nordstrom, Nordstrom, bigger, small. Celebrating 125 years with new moments still add. It could be chronic migraine, 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting 4 hours or more. Alertive reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms, and dizziness. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions including ALS Lou Gehrig's disease, Myasthenia Gravis or Lambert Eaton syndrome and medications including botch alignem toxins as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. Why wait? Ask your doctor. Visit Botox Chronic Migraine.com or call 1-800-44 Botox to learn more. Yeah, thank you for that. And I think to just to last question that looking at like this present moment, how do you see this like kind of recent forms of outside of politics with CJP and rise of like figures and movements with Prashant Kishore and politics of TVK and Vijay? And it's a kind of a predictive model if we take curative democracy and political outs and how do you see the future to end in that? Yeah. Gosh, I mean this is, I'm not going to do any kind of, you know, prediction or anything like that. I'll just, you know, maybe say of just a few of my own thoughts on the present moment. So I guess for me, the idea has been that curative democracy is part of this repertoire of legitimation in Indian politics and that I think is being so it's going to be picked up and repurposed by and I don't see that changing. I see that continuing very much in the present. You have different political agents being turning to this idea of outside of politics, turning to this idea of curative democracy and using it in order to gain legitimacy. So I see it very much as part of the vocabulary of Indian politics and the idiom of legitimation. It's continuing to very different ends. So, you know, I think, you know, the Prashant Kishore or Vijay versions of outside of politics is one kind of repurposing of that. What I see very different about the politics of the cockroach protests, the CJP, I actually see that having a very different, so yes, at some level, these are very literally political outsiders. But what is interesting over here is the kind of politics that they are pursuing, I find very, very fascinating and I think also at a political level very hopeful because they are in a sense practicing and outside of politics without claiming moral purity and innocence even though arguably you might say that sociologically they come to the closest to the figure of the political outsider and yet this is absolutely not a self-righteous politics. This is not a behalfest politics. This is not a kind of solutionist politics. It's an open-ended, evolving, non-solutionist politics that doesn't, as we know from how much we've laughed over the last few weeks, it's a politics that does not take itself seriously and I think that is what makes it you know supremely demo. democratic or more democratic than other forms of politics that have come about in India, this kind of open-endedness, evolution, contingency to this politics. So I think this is very interesting. And in its spirit, I would say we have to kind of go with this evolving character of it and resist trying to predict or either to, you know, put too much optimism into what's happening and say that everything is going to change. Or do the opposite, which is to, you know, I roll and say this is going to be co-opted or this is going to fizzle out, I think. This is genuinely something new that's unfolding. And in that spirit of the, you know, being outside our kind of known political, new category to the outside. It is, it is, it is something new. And as I said, that what I really appreciate about this, and I think yesterday or two days ago, they've announced that they are not going to become a political party. They want to remain a political pressure group, which I find a very interesting, you know, position to take, which again is saying that they are not interested in curing or fixing democracy and coming up with the solution, the idea of being a pressure group is not about fixing or curing when you're a pressure group, right? So it's, yeah, those are my thoughts on it. Yeah. Thank you, Professor Srupa Roy for the fascinating conversation with me. And please tell our listeners where do they find the book to buy? How do they buy it in India? How do they? Sure. So thanks to the wonderful Navayan press, there's an Indian edition of the book. So it can be ordered and purchased through the Navayan edition. If you're based in India, otherwise, it's the Stanford University press has an edition of it that's also available outside India. Thank you for listening to this episode of the new books network. We are an academic podcast network with the mission of public education. 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