The Rise Of Bharat: S Gurumurthy on Podcast With Arnab (Transcript)

And Trump is playing on that sense of uncertainty when he talks about making America great again. By saying making America great again, isn’t he acknowledging that America is not great anymore? So it’s an acceptance of multipolarity in a way.

S GURUMURTHY: You see, I will go to the root of this problem. When communism collapsed and capitalism, or the market capitalism and free market and…

ARNAB GOSWAMI: Liberal.

S GURUMURTHY: Democracy emerged as the victor, Francis Fukuyama wrote that the West has finally won against the rest and the rest has to follow the West, otherwise the West will not grow. This was the theory he expounded in his book “The End of History and Last Man.” The West believed it.

In a euphoria, the West began to consider that it had become the victor and West meant America. And I don’t want to go deep into how it altered the American way of looking at finance. But in 1997, Alan Greenspan delivered a lecture, not in US Federal Reserve Board, but in Stanford, saying that we cannot measure the extent of dollar which is in circulation outside America. 66% of the printed dollar currency, particularly the hundred dollar notes, is outside. And so America cannot control the supply of dollar and control the inflation.

And so the best way of controlling the inflation is to allow cheaper imports into America and export dollars, because dollar became such an inevitable currency and that became the representative of the financial domination. And financial domination meant political domination, geopolitical domination, unchallenged military, diplomatic, geopolitical, financial power.

So all this evolved because one pole collapsed, the other pole became a reality. This is what now the European Union Commission says is collapsing and a multipolarity is emerging. So we are in a multipolar world and what Trump is doing is to understand that in euphoria, America had taken decisions which is killing America.

15 trillion dollars is the extent of imports over exports. Current account deficit America had incurred. This is an unsustainable thing. Their debt is 36 trillion dollars.

Can Trump Make America Great Again?

ARNAB GOSWAMI: 36, 37 trillion dollars. Do you think he can make America great again? You think Trump can make America great again? Or is it a lost cause?

S GURUMURTHY: You see, his MAGA is not only about finance and economics. His MAGA is because America, which had 87.5% non-Hispanic white population in 1960, has just 58% non-Hispanic white population. It is ceasing to be a white nation. That is why he is thrust against immigration, immigrants.

And so he is making America great again is partly racial and partly financial, but that is a long term project. But he has to deliver something in four years. And that is why he has caught on to the economic aspect of it. There also he has huge problems. For example, he says he asked the European Union, “You levy 100% tariff on China after you levy it? I will levy.”

ARNAB GOSWAMI: Because that’s also an acknowledgment of defeat. He’s saying that I can’t do it on my own. I can’t do it alone. I’m not having enough impact on my own. So that itself is not such…

S GURUMURTHY: Even you can’t do it.

ARNAB GOSWAMI: Even you can’t do. So he’s pushing, he’s at the margins where he realized, I can go this far and no further.

Bharat’s Position in the Multipolar World

Now, my question was we accept the broad thesis that we are living in a multipolar world and multipolarity is a reality. In your view, who are the poles in a multipolar world? And what is Bharat’s position in a multipolar world? Who are the other poles we’ll have to deal with? One would be China. Would China and Russia be separate? What would be the place of the European Union? What would be the place of Africa? Would it be able to operate as a unit? Is there a concept in reality not just as a theme, as a global south? Or is it more a romantic concept? Question is, where are we in a multipolar world in 2025?

The Civilizational Underpinning of Multipolarity

S GURUMURTHY: See, actually the multipolar world will not be just geopolitical, it will be civilizational. There is a civilizational underpinning to the contemporary developments in geopolitics.

For example, take China, which fought to destroy its ancient civilization in 1965 Cultural Revolution and it wanted to. It destroyed, demolished the statues of Confucius. Now it is celebrating Confucius and it has established over 470 new Confucian centers all over the world and made Confucius its brand ambassador.

And in 2020, 100th anniversary of the Communist Party, Xi Jinping declared that “5,000 year old Chinese civilization will guide us now and forever in future.” Civilizational China has emerged out of a communist China.

The Return to Civilizational Roots

ARNAB GOSWAMI: Why is that? Has Xi Jinping realized that you have to motivate the nation, you have to unite the nation and you have to give them an idea of a shared history? And has pride become a major factor?

Similarly, is Putin doing the same thing? I do not believe this annexation of parts of Ukraine is only territorial. I think it is about bringing back the ethos of Peter the Great, bringing back the idea of a Russian empire that had been beaten down. It is his own anger at the disintegration of the USSR. So both countries are in a way trying to reclaim a lost history and put it there in focus. Are they preparing for a bigger battle, Russia and China?

S GURUMURTHY: In that sense, I would first say that the ideologies which dominated the world post World War has failed. And that is the announcement of China that communist ideology has failed. So what is the alternative? You’ve got to go back to the Chinese past, its literature, its heroes, its lifestyle, its value systems.

ARNAB GOSWAMI: You really believe so, sir, that Xi Jinping is acknowledging that communist China has failed? The CCP is the dominant party. Are you saying that their approach to history has changed?

S GURUMURTHY: See what part of communism they have accepted is autocracy. The economic part of communism they have discarded.

ARNAB GOSWAMI: So this is not the same China which Henry Kissinger visited many years back when he was a diplomat. He was one of those who opened the doors to China. Are you saying this China and that China are completely different?

S GURUMURTHY: Yes, except in one respect.

ARNAB GOSWAMI: Which is what?

S GURUMURTHY: In fact you must read the conversation between Mao Zedong and…

ARNAB GOSWAMI: Kissinger.

Power: The Common Thread

S GURUMURTHY: Yes, Kissinger says “We like power.” Mao Zedong says, “We also like power.” So it is power that the revolution gave to them in the form of a state without opposition. Here it is a power which money gave and physical isolation gave to America.

If America had a 500 kilometer border with China or Afghanistan or Pakistan or India – India of course is learned to invade them – they will not be talking in the language in which they have been speaking for the last 70 years. They don’t have the experience. They of course they don’t have the philosophy to govern the world. They don’t have the experience to govern the world. They don’t know the pains of different countries.

I have discussed this with American diplomats that you are a laboratory. You have not experienced the world, you have no empirical understanding of the world. So the historical advantage they have and the inability of the enemies to reach them. In fact, I told them, Islam will reach you and it will hit you. In 1995, when the Kenyan embassy was bombed in America, which was…

ARNAB GOSWAMI: A moment when Americans were shaken up like never before.

The Globalization of Adversarial Ideas

S GURUMURTHY: No, no, no. They said only five Americans dead, rest of the locals. There was one Silberstein, whom I was talking in America. I said, “This is a borderless enemy. It will reach you, it will hit you. Because Islam hurts modernity more than it hates Hinduism, you will be the target.”

Of course, after the 9/11 attack, he contacted me also and said, “Now what you said seemed to be real.” Fact is, as you globalize the world, ideas also get globalized. Adversarial ideas also get globalized.

So my feeling is that America and China both are lovers of power. So they decided that the enemy to be eliminated is Russia. So they wanted to share power. That’s where America committed a historical mistake of promoting China. They never expected an illiterate China to grow as a highly literate techno power. That is where America really felt that it has not only lost, it has created.

America’s Strategic Miscalculation with China

ARNAB GOSWAMI: Why did they do that? Did they underestimate China? This entire boom that happened through late 80s, after the mutual visits, Kissinger before, but much later, Deng Xiaoping and the others, the opening up, the visits of the Chinese leaders to American factories, understanding of their processes, reverse engineering everything.

But it was followed by 20 years of capital dumping. When the American investment banks put hundreds of billions of dollars towards building China, did they feel that China will be their service center, will be a manufacturing base? Surely they did not expect political loyalty from the Chinese or did they underestimate the power of Chinese civilization?

Because it is also a view, isn’t it, Mr. Gurumurthy, that a civilization will always eventually stand up on its own feet and show its own prowess. So China was an ancient civilization. The Cultural Revolution had pushed the history of the Chinese away. The Americans put in capital and at the end of this entire process, when their economy began to start matching about half, half or more the American economy, they showed a level of geostrategic interest or clout or what you call the search for power that the Americans had not anticipated.

So the Americans even today, I believe, don’t know how to manage China. But why did the Americans make that mistake? Did they not have an awareness of history? Did they look at the world in historical terms, in financial terms alone? Has that been the mistake of the Americans that they have not really understood that they are dealing with ancient civilizations, whether Russia, not as ancient, but still a civilization. China and India.

S GURUMURTHY: When did America develop a civilizational consciousness? It didn’t have a civilization.

ARNAB GOSWAMI: I don’t think it has done so even now.

The West’s Civilizational Disconnect

S GURUMURTHY: It didn’t have a civilizational consciousness of its own. It is only Huntington who probed civilization and rooted it in a racial and religious concept which is very natural to Europe. So America did not have an idea about civilization, did not have an idea about diversity.

In fact, the American and of course communist directed United Nations did not have the word diversity in its dictionary. The first time it introduced was in 2001 cultural diversity convention. Diversity is the way of the world and India is the very representative of diversity. If you put India on the one side and the rest of the world on the other side, you will see more diversity here than the rest of the world put together.

So America, a laboratory, did not know the idea of civilization. And in fact the United Nations Measures for the development of underdeveloped nations which America conceptualized and wrote said “ancient philosophies have to be scrapped, old social institutions have to disintegrate if you have to progress.” This became the model for the world. It is anti civilization because the west had a civilizational disconnect.

The west regarded its past as dark. Its history began only with enlightenment. So it regarded enlightenment as the source of modernity. And it began telling the whole world that “we are the source of modernity followers.” That is why the rest of the world colonized through territorial acquisition and later through economic and military thrust, accepted this. So the civilizational consciousness went underground, whether it is in India or China or even Japan.

The Return of Civilizational Consciousness

ARNAB GOSWAMI: Now let’s cut to the present now.

S GURUMURTHY: Because the civilizational consciousness is rooted in the people, whereas the states run on short termist policies. Now the short termist policies have failed in the West. One of the reasons for the failure of America is short termism. One of the reasons for the success of China is long termism. So India is somewhere in between. So my feeling is that what is happening today, civilizational consciousness manifesting is the natural state in the world.

ARNAB GOSWAMI: Which are the major civilizations who you see as part of a multipolar world? I take you back to the previous question. In a multipolar world, who are the poles in your view?

Coexistence of Civilizations

S GURUMURTHY: You see, my feeling is civilization sans religion will coexist. That is how the world coexisted. Except Alexander’s invasion there has been no massive invasion of the world by anybody except during the colonization period when the church issued encyclical to go and conquer and convert the whole world. It is the religious thrust which gave the political thrust and which gave the economic power to the West.

In fact, Encyclopedia Britannica writes that Columbus set out to sail to India to remove the last obstacle for the return of Christ in the form of Hinduism. And he landed in America and began butchering people there. So this is how the world was sought to be turned into their way. And it is not civilizational. In fact they destroyed all the civilizations but they could not destroy despite their dominance in India for 300 years. Because civilization in India is bottom upwards whereas their nations are top down nations.

For example, take America, when it was declared as a republic, it had just 7.8 million population and with three times the size of India. And they began learning how to govern and things like that. And the huge land and resources gave them. And the Second World War, which was the period of America’s rise. They exchanged steel for gold and they built gold reserves of 18,000 tons which became the basis of the Bretton woods model of dollar being backed by gold. Dollar was equivalent to gold. And then gold was withdrawn and dollar was backed by oil. Then it became petrodollars. In 1990 the dollar was backed by the very idea of market economy. So this is how they have been sustaining this power.

But the fact is all this standing questioned where will America go back? It is only hunting the game. Who are we? He wrote that book in 1998. If I remember right. These are a white Anglo Saxon Protestant nation. But they can’t say it openly because this will go against all that they have been telling the rest of the world.

And Europe is almost a lost cause. European Union name itself means that they are a collection of nations and they have no common idea. There is no common feeling, there is no common thrust. And my feeling is liberalism has killed both America and Europe. And Wokism is finishing the whole idea of what they stand for because they stand for nothing.

But it is not so in the case of Egypt, in the case of any of even the Middle Eastern countries, then Asia as a whole in which Japan, Russia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, all of us have a civilizational approach which connects the people to the land.

India’s Transformation and the Role of Hinduism

ARNAB GOSWAMI: So there are couple of questions which emerge from here. One has always been a thought in my mind that I’ve always been suspicious of the Congress parties and its role. I believe that it was very closely attached to the British. It was a British construct. It was fundamentally against the Hindu civilizational ethos, at least the Nehruvian form of Hinduism of the congress, which took prominence in the late 30s onwards.

And it was. It described Hinduism in terms of ritualism. In fact, I find that this discomfort that Nehru had with the Sengol, which you had an important role in placing in Parliament, was reflecting that whole view that Hinduism is against rationalism. It created a sense of discomfort within large sections of so called Indian intellectuals with Hinduism per se.

Now cut to the present where we are seeing the RSS become more vocal, become more prominent. And the RSS emphasis is on shared civilizational values through practices like the Shaka system, through the promotion of Sanskrit, through our Hindu traditions, our Hindu festivals, and talking constantly about the role of Hinduism in uniting Bharat.

So we started by talking about multipolarity. I want you to cut to the present and just give me a response on how you think India has changed from say the 1950s and 60s when we were trying to industrialize. We had some concepts of Fabian socialism which were pushing us. We made a number of strategic errors. Nehru with China, with the rest of the world. He ended up being a frustrated man upon the time of his death.

Cut to the present now, when we are seeing a revival. I still remember what Mohan Bhagwat said. Winston Churchill’s prediction was that India will collapse after independence. And Mohan Bhagwat said that we proved him wrong. India stayed united and today England itself is facing divisions. You may have seen recently the far right protests that have happened following a lot of violence.

And therefore I want your sense of the history of the last 50 to 60 years and where we are placed. What is the role of the RSS? What is the role of Hinduism? Since you have used the word civilization so many times in your description so far.

The Roots of Indian Independence Movement

S GURUMURTHY: I’ll go back a little. And how the independence movement developed. All people, whether it is Varlal Nehru or Sardar Patel or Mahatma Gandhi or anybody, they considered that the seeds of the philosophy for independence came from Swami Vivekananda.

ARNAB GOSWAMI: Everybody, there is no doubt of that.

S GURUMURTHY: He was the origin of the idea of India in the sense in which our Rishis and saints saw it. He didn’t see.

ARNAB GOSWAMI: Do you think he gave it a political expression?

S GURUMURTHY: He did not ignore the political expression of Hinduism? I would put it that way. So everybody said it is Swami Vivekananda. Aurobindo endorsed it, that the Hindu nationalism and Sanatana Dharma. “If so long as they rise, India will rise. So long as they live, India will rise. If they are capable of perishing, India will perish.” This is how Aurobindo defined our idea of India.

ARNAB GOSWAMI: Yes.

S GURUMURTHY: Then Mahatma Gandhi said in his Hind Swaraj that what unites India is only these char Dhams, the reverence for rivers. This is what brings us together in the sense in which no two Englishmen are. And he did not change this Idea Even in 1940, in spite of all the opposition to what he had written in Hind Swaraj. So he also defined India in Hindu civilizational terms.

ARNAB GOSWAMI: Correct.

S GURUMURTHY: And in 1935, Jawaharlal Nehru himself said in his Glimpses of World History that Swami Vivekananda’s Hindu nationalism is not against anybody. And he preached it very extensively. So he had no differences with that.

Even Rajini Palm Dutt, a communist who established the communist movement in England, he wrote in India Today. This is the title of the book. He said that the British say that they taught us English and gave us the spirit of freedom. But even if the British had not taught us, we would have got the values and slogans for freedom from the Vedas and Upanishads. This was the discourse in India, cutting across all ideologies.

But everything changed when Jinnah asked for Pakistan. The entire national movement gave up the idea of Hindus, began discarding the word Hindu because that would mean justifying partition in the process. They could not avoid partition.

The British Role in Partition

ARNAB GOSWAMI: You really think Jinnah asked for Pakistan? Sir, can I stop you there or do you think that Jinnah was made to ask for Pakistan? Because there was a period when Jinnah was disgruntled and angry and I don’t know the exact period, but he went away to UK to practice. And when he came back, he came a transformed man.

S GURUMURTHY: Actually, in 1935, 35 attempts were made to bring back Jinnah.

ARNAB GOSWAMI: Yes.

S GURUMURTHY: Jinnah said he will not come back unless the British works with him. The British.

ARNAB GOSWAMI: So he became a British agent.

S GURUMURTHY: Absolutely. And the British also found him a very loyal agent. The first thing he insisted is to divide the Indian society into Muslims and Christians, which had never happened except in an abstract manner. He gave a concrete proposal.

ARNAB GOSWAMI: Muslims and Hindus.

The Sharia Act and Its Impact on Indian Unity

S GURUMURTHY: Muslims and Hindus. He said he wants an All India Sharia Act. The long title to the act says this act is being passed on the demand made by the All India Muslim League leader Mohammad Ali Jinnah. It said that the Muslims will henceforth be governed only by Sharia law in 15 states and regions of India.

The Muslims were governed by Hindu law except in respect of marriage. And from then on the idea that “we are Muslims. The government has recognized us Muslims. The government stands by us.” Unfortunately, the Congress could not take a stand against it. That ceded partition with result, the British and Muslims working together.

Mahatma Gandhi’s tough task became so difficult. You know, I am one of the admirers of Mahatma Gandhi. He was the only man struggling with the British, with the English educated Indians. Jawaharlal Nehru. You don’t know the kind of letter Jawaharlal Nehru wrote in 1978. “Mahatma Gandhi, you are much taller than your petty ideas. I don’t want your Rama Rajya back, nor do I consider it was great in the past.” This is the kind of letter Jawaharlal wrote to Gandhi.

The man was taking all the pains and stress. His BP never came down to less than 190. That is recorded.

ARNAB GOSWAMI: Is it?

S GURUMURTHY: Yes. One must study Mahatma Gandhi very deeply to understand this country.

ARNAB GOSWAMI: Why did he not? Why did he compromise?

S GURUMURTHY: What will he do? He was alone in 1942 when he wanted to launch the Quit India movement, including Patel. Everybody opposed it.

ARNAB GOSWAMI: You feel Nehru blackmailed Gandhi?

The British Colonial Strategy and Communist Alignment

S GURUMURTHY: No, the British. The British had made inroads into the Congress and the socialist movement helped it. The communist movement played a treacherous role so far as normalizing colonial ideas in India in the name of modernity.

In fact, Karl Marx wrote in 1853 in New York Herald Tribune, “The British are doing the painful, of course, the pleasurable job of destroying the Indian economy and the society. That is the only way to prepare India for revolution. Otherwise India will be changeless forever.”

So there was an alignment between communist ideology and British destruction of India. British role in India. So all this promoted an intellectual outlook in India. What Karl Marx wrote in 1853, “Hinduism is backward, that it is semi barbaric. People worship cows and monkeys.” This shaped the intellectual discourse in India, added by Nehru’s no Max Weber, who said any society will develop two societies cannot develop, India and China because they believe in karma and rebirth, which works against entrepreneurship, which is the foundation for capitalist development.

He could not have said this if Angus Madison research had come earlier to him or Paul Beiro research had come earlier to him. Because India and China were the most successful economies till the 18th century.

Because history also conspired in such a way that all intellectual development that took place after the 18th century which were in favor of India did not get recorded in the British understanding of India. Colonial understanding of India, like for instance Sanskrit, it was discovered in 1870, Thomas Machiavelli wrote that everywhere the colonizers went, they found an inferior language, a dialect, no grammar, no history. They understood India only in that sense.

But in 1870, when they discovered Sanskrit, the British were shocked. Thomas Machiavelli writes in his book “The Shape of Ancient Thought,” in which he says the Greek civilization was built by India and Socrates and Plato got their ideas from the laboratory, Vedic laboratories in India. He said that when they found the Sanskrit, they found “the language of the slave was the language of the master after all.” But by the time British had concluded India was a barbaric civilization.

The Period of Strategic Blunders (1935-1962)

ARNAB GOSWAMI: And then we had a downfall. I think this period, 1935, the return of Jinnah, the exit of Netaji from the Congress, then the period of the forties Quit India movement and the whole period when Nehru became center stage, 1947.

And then the period from 1947 right up to 1962, the failed experiment with China, where we were making strategic blunders with China while trying to woo the West. There was a period when neither was the west was with us. But Nehru, I believe, had an inferiority complex vis a vis the West. He wanted to be desperately accepted in Western and European capitals.

Because of his own cultural bias, he made mistakes. We recognized Tibet. We tried to do a swap between Aksai Chin and then NEFA. Then we got into a clash with the Chinese and then we messed up our entire foreign policy. We refused a UN Security Council seat.

So in a way, if you look at this whole period, I find that we were not a confident country. We didn’t have a confident leader. We were not sure of our civilization. We were underplaying ourselves. And I think there was a denialism about our Hindu history. And had we been more aware of our Hindu roots, Hindu history, been more assertive of it, or at least not try to be fake, secular post 1947, we would be living in a very different country today.

The Colonial Delegitimization of Indian Civilization

S GURUMURTHY: I agree with you. This happened for three reasons. One, the colonial rule did not permit the Indian civilization to acquire legitimacy in the mind of the Indians. So the entire education system was devised in such a way. First of all, I’ll tell you. First, when they found Sanskrit, they began saying it is the civilized Aryan, enlightened Aryans who came and civilized India.

ARNAB GOSWAMI: Yes.

S GURUMURTHY: Immediately after this Harappan discoveries took place, the Aryans turned into nomadic people who came and invaded India and destroyed the rich Dravidian culture. See, they always found a way to tell us that you are no great civilization and you are always invaded that you are not one people, that you didn’t have anything called oneness. This is what Mahatma Gandhi was fighting.

The watershed was Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination by which Jawaharlal took over the Congress. He turned anti Hindu, completely discounted Sardar Patel, who was identified with the Hindu thought and with the RSS. There began the intense struggle of Hindu civilization to survive. And the only force which could work to save Hindu civilization was RSS.

After 1948, the word Hindu had become so dirty, so rotten, so unacceptable. RSS it was lifted to the RSS to hold the ideals of Swami Vivekananda Aurobindo, Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru himself. In 1925-35, the word Hindu became a rotten word. That is how the Hindu civilizational consciousness hit the rock bottom. It is not because of socialism. It is because of Pandit Nehru’s antipathy to people within the Congress. Whether it is Sardar Patel or Balram Dastard, these are the people.

The Long Struggle for Hindu Assertion (1964-2014)

ARNAB GOSWAMI: But Nehru died in 1964. Am I right? 1964. Why has it taken so long for Hindus to be assertive or aware? What was the RSS’s role between 1964 and, say, 2014, which is a vast period of our history of 50 years? Was the RSS playing itself down? Was it because there were misconceptions about the RSS’s role? Or was the RSS always says, when I speak to RSS leaders, they say we are working on the ground. We don’t need to be visible. What was happening then?

S GURUMURTHY: Actually, Nehru himself changed in his last years. He called the RSS for Republic day parade in 1963. And in 1962 in the National Integration Council, he first spoke of assimilation of minorities into mainstream culture.

ARNAB GOSWAMI: What did he refer to as mainstream culture?

S GURUMURTHY: Hindu culture. Hindu culture, in fact.

ARNAB GOSWAMI: Are you saying Nehru last year has accepted that mainstream culture in Hindu?

S GURUMURTHY: What Mahatma Gandhi said in Hind Swaraj, that the advent of alien religions do not alter the character of a country and they must be assimilated into the mainline Hindu community. This is what Mahatma Gandhi said in Hind Swaraj. Jawaharlal Nehru repeated it before the National Integration Council and RSS chief Golwalkar wrote a letter congratulating him for that. But that was too late for Nehru.

And you know, you must remember, you can recall the letter with Nehru wrote to Kennedy after the when the war was going on, “Please save us. If you send us your aircrafts, we cannot operate it. Please send your pilots. Also” virtually asking the Americans to fight.

ARNAB GOSWAMI: But the Americans were too busy with the Cuban Missile Crisis, the aftermath, to care? Or was that an excuse that was.

The Chinese Lesson and Civilizational Revival

S GURUMURTHY: Being easy at all with all my dislike for China. China invaded India to teach a lesson to us and teach a lesson to Nehru and they withdrew. I don’t think anyone else did it. They would. In fact, Jawaharlal Nehru says in that letter to Kennedy, “We will lose the whole of East India. We will lose Tripura, we will lose Assam. We will lose everything. Please save us.” China did not want to conquer and rule those places. Of course they had a political mission because Nehru was called the Star of Asia and they couldn’t accept it.

So Nehru kept on committing blunders after blunders. He could neither befriend China nor befriend America. And so he had a series of mistakes. But coming to RSS, the RSS was discounted so much. Only the Twilight Zone was when Lal Bahadur Shastri was in power. But when Mrs. Gandhi came. I know the deeper history. I don’t want to tell how it happened.

But in 1969, when the Congress broke and the community entered into the congress, it was at that time Jawaharlal Nehru University was established and Nurul Hasan was made the education minister in charge. And it is he who created this anti Hindu, the secular viewpoint against the entire Indian Hindu civilization and RSS in particular. And no RSS was banned. You know all that happened.

It is the Ram Janmabhoomi movement which revived the civilizational consciousness of India. This struggles it had to undergo. A temple here and a temple in Japan are comparable. The two temples Japan civilizational consciousness became manifest and it became legitimate because of the Yasukuni temple which was banned, which was proscribed, which was discounted. Koizumi went and worshipped there in 2004. That was the starting point. The whole world abused him afterwards. Now Yasukuni Temple has become regularized at around the same time Ram Janmabhoomi movement was here. These are all the civilizational symbols of a nation’s rise. So now India is civilizationally a legitimate country.

The Question of Cultural Pride and Ancient Knowledge

ARNAB GOSWAMI: But do we have the pride? I find what you said very important. That Post World War II, both communism and capitalism have converged and that their convergence was over the fact that the past needs to be destroyed, history needs to be destroyed for a progressive revolution. That was the agreement in your view, between Marx and Weber. And the UN took this outlook that all old civilizations have to be scrapped and removed. The idea of destroying the past, that was the norm for westernization.

But now, Mr. Gurumurthy the past is coming back. And I saw your tweet recently, very fascinating. You said that Schrödinger and other Nobel scientists have referenced the Vedas and the Upanishads in this country. My generation has been brought up in schools believing that the past must be undermined. And you can go as far back as the Mughals, but no further. You don’t find much about Chandragupta Maurya Samudra Gupta and anything in our history books but for paragraph references. Now my question to you is this.

S GURUMURTHY: Whenever we talk about this, we are.

ARNAB GOSWAMI: Told you’re going back to outdated ideas. Youngsters. Gen Z says you need to look at the future, you need to look at AI. You don’t need to look at the Upanishads, you need to look at algorithms, you don’t need to look back at the Vedas.

Can you give me a broad construct for young people watching this podcast today? Why should we look back at the past? What is the knowledge? Everybody is a knowledge seeker today. What is the knowledge we will get? What is the and is it really true? Or is S. Gurumurthy a Hindu right wing ideologue who is trying to tell youngsters that Vedic concepts are accepted by modern scientists? Can you prove that we have an intellectual and cultural confidence in the past and how will it help a 20 year old today?

The Vedas and Modern Science

S GURUMURTHY: I’ll give you two examples. It is not that Schrödinger says that the Vedas and Upanishads contain the ideas about the creation and one universal consciousness that is there in the Vedas and Upanishads. And that has inspired me. But the more important thing is after Schrödinger, researches were done by people who are searching for the origin of universe.

And Stephen Hawking came up with this Big Bang theory. One millionth of an atom developed such heat and it expanded as the universe. And where did that one millionth of an atom come is still a question. And Roger Penrose who worked with him for 35 years, he got the Nobel Prize in 2020. He said one universal consciousness pre-existed and that is what created this one millionth of an atom.

So it is not the past. This is going to be the search for the future. If you have to search for the future of the origin future science which will go into the origin of what the universe sees, you have to look into the Vedas. Vedas is not a text, it is a sound. Through sound you connect with the universe. And we Vedas survived only because they were oral and it was a sound. All written texts have disappeared. Sound has survived for 5,000 years.

Now you have to look into hear the sound of the Vedas to find out how it connects with the universal forces. So it is not a matter of the past. This is one thing. So we are not looking into Vedas for the past. We are looking into Vedas to understand the secrets of the universe.

Take for instance our idea of Yugas. When we said Kali Yuga and 4.32 billion, 3.2 billion years, people laughed at us. But now Big Bang theory has established that this world was created 4.39 billion years ago which approximates to 4.32 billion years. 50 years back, hundred years back, everybody discounted our sense of time.

So to say that our Rishis were poets or as Romila Thapar would call “the blabberings of animists” is a matter of the past that we have ideas which have to be probed by science. This is what Roger Penrose says. Their Nobel laureate says. But when I address the IIT people in Bombay, they were not aware of it.

In fact we are trying to create Kamakoti IIT director in Chennai is trying to create a whole exhibition of how the west is looking into the Vedas and Upanishads for future researchers, not for the past. So we are suffering from such utter ignorance. And our history book still contains the reference of Romila Thapar about Vedas. So how will the Indians develop that enquiring mind?

The Challenge of Cultural Revival

ARNAB GOSWAMI: How do we change that? The moment we talk about it, phrases like “Hindu revivalism” are used. I said in my program, I think Hindu revivalism is a good thing because if Hinduism is revived in the hearts and minds of the people of the country, we will go through a cultural resurgence which is necessary for the future of this country.

How do we deal with it? Where do we change? As I said to you sir, between 1964 to 2014 has been a period where I believe, as you said, Hinduism has been described as a form of animism by some people like Romila Thapar or others. We need to do something fast. Every country, no country can be great, Mr. Gurumurthy, unless there is a great and strong awareness of the past.

How do we make our Gen Z come to terms with it and not look upon it as a Modi agenda or a BJP cultural agenda, or religious hegemonism. How do we do this?

S GURUMURTHY: First we must, first of all, do.

ARNAB GOSWAMI: We need to do it? Do we need to do it? Accelerate it?

S GURUMURTHY: You see, this is the phenomenon that is actually the foundation of India. The Hindu civilization is the foundation of India.

ARNAB GOSWAMI: How do you explain this to a non-Hindu?

America’s Crisis and India’s Strength

S GURUMURTHY: I’ll tell you. For example, America is going through a turmoil. It is the most advanced nation, democracy, most efficient, best market, everything. They built up this whole thing. America has got into a crisis. When Trump won happened a huge question arose in America whether America will be able to manage the political polarization. Political polarization with 60% of Democrats.

ARNAB GOSWAMI: Not marrying into Republicans tremendous dividend.

S GURUMURTHY: So the divide is in every family between father and son, husband and wife in society.

ARNAB GOSWAMI: You saw the killing recently of the 31 year old Charlie Kirk and they.

S GURUMURTHY: Have a country of 330 million people, has 390 million guns. The important point is in 2020 Pew Research went into it and said political polarization is common in all democracies. But in America the polarization is so deep to manage which there is no commonality among Americans.

What is the commonality they were talking about? My mind immediately went into what is the commonality that had built the nations. In Europe the only commonality is the church and the faith. For example, in Italy there are 30,000 canonized saints. This is what an article in the COVID page of Times said. In America just 31774 one lady was declared. In 2002 two ladies were declared.

There is no sacred person. There is no sacred mountain. There is no sacred river. There is no sacred person. America is a real estate. I was in Kumbh Mela. America was built from the top. 7.8 million people was the total population of America. When America declared itself as a republic with three and a half times the size of India, with all resources.

My mind went. I was In Kumbh Mela. 650-670 million people came. There is a consciousness, shared consciousness and it has gone on despite whatever the disturbances at the top were. And this is a bottom upwards nation, that is civilization, that is top down anti-civilizational that is in turmoil.

In 2022 September, five Chiefs of Staff, retired Chiefs of Staff and six Defense Secretaries wrote a letter to the Pentagon that if a Trump or Trump-like figure contests the 2024 election unlooses, there will be civil war in America and America will not maintain neutrality.

ARNAB GOSWAMI: Yes.

S GURUMURTHY: Tell me, is that a strong stable nation or India which 650 million people gather without any invitation? It is only the shared consciousness of thousands of years that is India. There is a disconnect between that India and the contemporary Indian discourse. This gap will be bridged. It’s only a matter of time.

Multiple Modernities and Civilizational Forces

And for that the west must cease to be the model for which there is a seed thought developing in the West. Professor Sebastian Konrad, who is a German scholar and historian has written a beautiful book “What is Global History?” You must read that book. He said the entire history written by the west is wrong. Globalization has proved that every country has its own history, its own model. And west as the single source of modernity is no more acceptable.

There are multiple modernities and each civilization modernizes according to its own model. Japan through Nihon Jindran, China now through Confucius, India now through Hindutva is inevitable. So this is a global level battle between civilizational forces and the so called “modern structures” erected by the elites who dominated and ruled the world and different countries including America.

I am very confident that this top down model will become weaker and weaker and weaker and ultimately it is the civilizational forces which will. For example, civilizationally there is no conflict between us and China. The conflict is political, economic.

ARNAB GOSWAMI: To some extent.

S GURUMURTHY: If you work out the civilizational underpinning, lot of problems can be solved. But Chinese state is still not civilizational, it is autocratic.

The Japanese Experience

I will tell you my experience with Japan if you permit. 2, 3 minutes. In 1997, one Kishi Moto who was in the opposite, he was then number two in MITI he met me and Govindacharya and he wanted to have a dialogue. He said that Japan today is not the Japan of our conception. When the post war generation comes to power, it will be a different Japan. It will be a nationalist Japan. Now we see BJP rising to power. It will be a nationalist India. So I want to share some of my thoughts with you.

What he told me completely shook me. He said “Mr. Gurumurthy, we are an important nation. We spent $58 billion for our defense issue a check to America. We don’t want a platoon of army. We have to rise as a nation. And we don’t find any other civilization worth cooperating and aligning except India because we have an ancient connection. India is the only country which will not dominate other countries. If we go near China, China will absorb absorbers. So we want to work with India.”

“What do you know about India?” He said “we have invested $2.5 billion on Indology in the Tokyo University. We know more about India than all the universities of India put together.” This is the interest of.

ARNAB GOSWAMI: Incredible, Incredible.

S GURUMURTHY: And I asked him, “have you turned from the Datsuya movement?” He was surprised when I knew about the Datsuya movement. That’s why movement commenced with Meiji restoration. When Asha Shumban wrote an editorial “Leave dirty Asia, failed Asia and join Europe.” And that is how they. “Are you going to reverse that?” He said, “when the post war generation comes to power, it will be reversed.”

And Koizumi came. He went to the Yasukuni temple. And in the first term Abe did not go. In the second term he went. By the time all the objections in the world about China, Japan legitimizing Yasukuni temple had abated. So Abe went there. He was asked, “what do you feel?” “I feel sorry I didn’t come in my first term. Every country has its soul in its own civilization, its faith in its history, in its forefathers.”

What is Yasukuni Temple? 2.8 million Japanese who died for Japan. Their names are written there. That is the atma of Japan. And America delegitimized it. They banned it. So they worked against civilization everywhere. But in India, they worked through education, through public discourse, through our leaders, through our government, through our media. Despite all that, our civilization is coming up.

Political Power and Civilizational Revival

ARNAB GOSWAMI: Is it? Is it coming up because of political reasons? Because BJP is in power?

S GURUMURTHY: No.

ARNAB GOSWAMI: What if BJP is not in power?

S GURUMURTHY: Still Kumbh Mela will take place. It took place when Muslims.

ARNAB GOSWAMI: But you are saying that the Japanese lost their cultural confidence and that is why they.

S GURUMURTHY: Pacifism. Pacifism damaged Japan. Secularism damaged India. Pacifism in Japan. Secularism in India undid the Indian civilization in Japan.

ARNAB GOSWAMI: Do we need to be more confident and remove the word secular from our constitution?

S GURUMURTHY: You see, secular. See the word secular.

ARNAB GOSWAMI: Because we have to take a dramatic turn. We have to make a. Have to come to a decisive moment in our history.

S GURUMURTHY: You see, for example, secularism, socialism is there in the constitution. Has it any meaning?

ARNAB GOSWAMI: No meaning today. Absolutely.

S GURUMURTHY: Reduce this secularism to that extent. My feeling is it is not that. What is secularism after all? It is an arrangement between the Christian state and the Christian church that we will have peace. It was an intra-religious affair. It is not an inter-religious platform. We transformed an intra-religious agreement into an inter-religious platform.

There is only one inter-religious platform in the world. That is Hinduism. So Hindutva. That is why Supreme Court ruled in the Hindutva judgment that Hindutva is not communal. It is the ethos. It is the culture. It is the way of life of India. Whatever legitimization you need. And the judgment was delivered. In 1995, three government of the entire three attempts were made by the UPA.

Regional Identities vs Cultural Unity

ARNAB GOSWAMI: In an era of over federalization, over federalism, where thoughts such as the one you’ve been fighting, this idea of a Dravidian identity as opposed to a Hindu identity are taking form. There’s a North versus south debate which is being stoked deliberately.

My question to you is isn’t going back to our cultural roots, our Hindu roots, our Hindu civilizational history cementing the idea of a united India held together by a proud and confident Hindutva going to be more difficult in a country with so many languages, so many states and so many union territories that we have divided our country politically up to a point where it becomes difficult where ultra regional identities are sometimes held to be more important and religious unification or religious revival is seen to be a threat to political, religious, political regional identities.

So there is going to be that clash in India which is. I also in my newsroom put nation first, sir. But I worry sometimes that these multiple identities of language and region and regional unity will be at the expense of our cultural revival.

S GURUMURTHY: No, I have a different view.

ARNAB GOSWAMI: You think differently, sir.

S GURUMURTHY: For example, I lived through the worst days of the Dravidian separatism in Tamil Nadu. We fought it. I have been beaten on the road.

ARNAB GOSWAMI: I am aware of it. That’s why I was in the Congress Party.

The Failure of Dravidian Ideology

S GURUMURTHY: The Congress Party did not fight Dravidianism. In fact, Dravidian ideology is a fake ideology. It is a racial ideology. It is not cultural. It is like white, black that has no quality. It is only color. Likewise Dravidians and Aryans – they said we are dark and they are white. This is how they began saying that we are four southern states.

They abused Tamil. They said Tamil literature is Sanatana Dharma. E.V. Ramasamy Naicker was the only honest thinker I came across. He said the Tamil literature is full of Sanatana Dharma. “Varnadharma Tirukkural is human waste kept on a golden plate.” This was the policy of the DMK which was formed in 1948-49. Only because C.N. Annadurai married a woman and they separated. We have no other disagreement with him. That he has got married is my only thing. And we are keeping the president post vacant. Whenever he can come, he can occupy. And Annadurai became the general secretary.

Until 1963, they did not deviate from this position. They never uttered one word of pride about Tamil. It is the anti-Hindi agitation which gave them opportunity to embrace Tamil. Annadurai wrote 220 books. He never wrote one book on Tamil literature or Tirukkural. Karunanidhi wrote his first book on Tirukkural in 1996. He stole Tamil. The entire Tamil literature, the modern Tamil literature was built by nationalists and Congress people. The Congress just handed over the Tamil platform to the DMK. Dravidianism is a bankrupt ideology.

ARNAB GOSWAMI: But they came to power.

S GURUMURTHY: They came because of the Congress inadequacy. The Congress handed over Tamil Nadu to DMK.

ARNAB GOSWAMI: But they came to power.

S GURUMURTHY: That’s the reason.

ARNAB GOSWAMI: And their politics now has become totally anti-Hindu.

The Disconnect Between Society and Politics

S GURUMURTHY: No, you see, I will tell you. There was a time when politics and the society were one and the same. Anti-Hindu society, anti-Hindu politics.

ARNAB GOSWAMI: Correct.

S GURUMURTHY: Now the entire society is Hindu. You see, the only place where people gather in millions are the temples and the politicians. The DMK leaders put their posters along with God’s photographs because they are not able to get crowds without paying money. This is the only place where people gather and the temples are under their control.

Dravidian anti-Hinduism is dead. It is only – who is going to ensure that the division between the society and politics, despite which the anti-Hindu politics is surviving. How are we going to align politics to the society which is pro-Hindu? This is the test before the beginning.

Federalism and Hindu Unity

ARNAB GOSWAMI: So my question, which I want to wrap up this conversation with – do you believe there is over-federalization, too many divisions? And since we believe that Hindu unity is important for national unity, does over-regionalization, over-federalization come in the way of that?

S GURUMURTHY: I don’t think so.

ARNAB GOSWAMI: What would be the primary identity of an individual in any state, whether it be Bengal or Karnataka, Assam or Tamil Nadu? Would it be that of being a Hindu? Beyond, of course, the primary identity would be that you’re an Indian citizen. After that, would the primary identity be by religion or by language?

S GURUMURTHY: You see, for that we have to understand the role of the state in this society. The state in India never dominated the society ever. Whether in the times of Chandragupta Maurya or Rajendra Chola, Rajaraja Chola or later.

ARNAB GOSWAMI: Muslims, even the Mughals, nobody could.

S GURUMURTHY: The society is what kept the country together. Now the state had a quarrel with the society. Always state was in conflict with the society. And that conflict was at its peak in the last century. That conflict has abated. Now even the Supreme Court has recognized Hindutva as the legitimate philosophy of India. This never happened. For example, I, who fought for Hindutva, never felt that such a legitimization would take place in India.

So far as federalism is concerned, federalism gives local people an opportunity to participate in politics which is very necessary. For example, today nearly 3 million people are representatives in different levels from Panchayat onwards up to Lok Sabha. So many people have developed stake in the state. So I am not worried about the political federalism. So long as the society is broadly Hindu civilizational, this federalism is not going to affect us because the politicians can never remain united. People will remain united.

Hindu Civilization and Non-Hindus

ARNAB GOSWAMI: And will a Hindu civilizational state or a Hindu civilizational country or a Hindu civilizational Rashtra weaken or threaten non-Hindus in India?

S GURUMURTHY: It cannot. Because Hinduism is the only philosophy. It’s philosophy, it’s not an ideology. It doesn’t say only it is right, the other person is wrong. So it is not in clash with any other system of thinking. For example, Hinduism itself has – there are six darshanas of Hinduism in which three of them do not recognize God. They recognize only self. So they are called Nirishwara. They are godless philosophies. So we have all kinds of approach to life.

And we have people who go and give goat as a sacrifice from the temple, others who cannot even see it, but they go and worship in the same temple. For example, I am from a village in the border Kali temple. We will go and offer coconut and banana. That night that same God will turn into taking booze. And this diversity is inclusive.

ARNAB GOSWAMI: I understand.

S GURUMURTHY: So these cannot conflict. If others conflict, then we have to tell them that I have no conflict with you, you may have conflict with us.

ARNAB GOSWAMI: That’s so amazing.

The Hindu Way as Global Solution

S GURUMURTHY: So my feeling is this is going to be the future direction of the world. If the world is to have multiple modernities and it is to have multipolar global order, the only way is the Hindu way – to accept differences as natural, diversities as the way of life. In fact, I remember one Swiss scholar, he came and addressed Vivekananda International Foundation. He also wrote an article in the Globalist magazine on 30th March 2006 where he said “Hinduism has taught how to worship many gods.” That you could live with different gods is a wonder which Hinduism taught. That is why it is going to be the only way for a globalized world.

Civilizational Confidence

ARNAB GOSWAMI: Well, I think that’s a wonderful note to end on. When you are saying “the only way is the Hindu way,” and viewers, when Dr. Gurumurthy says “the only way is the Hindu way,” he’s talking about a cultural direction. He’s not talking only about a pure ritualistic or a Hindu identity. See, he’s saying the only way is a Hindu way in the sense that Hinduism has been through so many movements, so many reforms, so many periods, and today it is at the core of our heritage.

I think this has been a very interesting conversation because I think what we’ve covered is a broad theme. I think what we’ve covered, Mr. Gurumurthy, is why we need to feel a civilizational confidence. And as a nation, if we feel a civilizational confidence is there in our heart, I think every aspect of our society, our politics, our entrepreneurship, our industry, our media, everything will change.

So I’m going to try my best to make sure this message reaches as many people. And I also call upon you to spread your knowledge among Gen Z. So we’ll do a series with you where you talk about civilizational confidence for young Indians. And I look forward to starting that project with you. It has been a total honor to speak to you, sir. And I think we’ve covered a lot of ground. I would have covered a lot more ground, but we’ll have to close it here. Thank you so much, sir.

S GURUMURTHY: Thank you.

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