Transcript: Suhel Seth Interview – WTF Is Going On With India? – Azzallure Podcast

You may be educated, you may go to school, you may go to college, but that’s education. Knowledge comes out of readership, it comes out of scholarly affection, it comes from an inquiring mind. I’ve told people, I’m 63, I read one book a day. Now, I’m not expecting people to read one book a day, but at least read one book a month. People don’t read. And the jokers will tell you, oh, we don’t have time. They will have time to Instagram, they will have time to meet some ridiculously unintelligent people, but they won’t have time for self-enrichment.

I was born and raised in Calcutta. In Calcutta, you were taught 2 things. Number one, the ability to assimilate, and number two, the ability to disseminate. If you cannot assimilate, you can’t disseminate. If you can’t disseminate, then you’re like a ship in the night. A ship also sails at night, but no one sees it.

A Book for Gayatri — and for India

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:06:48 – 00:06:56): Oh my gosh, this is brilliant. You’ve written 4 books and we’re talking about “WTF.” You’ve written this book for your daughter Gayatri?

SUHEL SETH: (00:06:56 – 00:07:40): No, I’ve written this book for India. Only the tribute, or what should I say, the foreword is for Gayatri. Why? Gayatri is going to be 7 in November 2026. She’s going to grow up into a great country. Unlike America or the UAE or any other country, we are a civilizational legacy. We’re not a republic. Please understand, 200 years of British subjugation. Before that, India was amongst the world’s top 2 richest countries. Yes, the British rascals looted the country. They plundered the country. They destroyed the soul of India.

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:07:40 – 00:07:41): You’ve said it so well.

Partition and the British

SUHEL SETH: (00:07:41 – 00:09:12): And so India has recovered and recovering. Also remember, partition was not supposed to happen at the time it did. This was a conspiracy by the 2 scoundrels at that time, Clement Attlee, the Prime Minister, and Mountbatten, the Governor General. Let’s go back into the history of India. It’s very important for me to tell you and your viewers this.

In 1942, Mahatma Gandhi gave the call for Quit India, after which 2 things happened. The interim cabinet was formed, and it was very clear that India and Pakistan would be created in June of 1948. It was never meant to be August 1947. Okay, Cyril Radcliffe by the British, sent by the British, comes and draws a line of partition in the most heinous manner. All partitions across the world have been done on the lines of only 3 things: ethnicity, religion, and language.

Now, here’s the irony. Lahore had 61% Hindus. Amritsar had 37% Muslims, and you divided these 2 nations. In fact, the tragedy is it was billed as the largest human exodus ever.

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:09:12 – 00:09:15): Ever. But was this intentionally done, or was it an inadvertent—

SUHEL SETH: (00:09:15 – 00:11:59): The British are scoundrels. Can you imagine a putrid little island state controlling the world only because they had process and they had passion and they had guile. There was no reason. I mean, look at what they did to Indian textiles. Look at what they did to Bengal in 1929 with the famine. So Churchill, all these people were absolute rogues.

And I have said this even last year in the House of Lords, because the fun is you must go where they are and then kill them with kindness. I said in the House of Lords when they invited me to speak, I said, “I’m so glad to be here because I’m surrounded by everything you’ve stolen from us.” So that is the reality.

And what happened was because of the left liberal cabal from 1947, and Nehru was a liberal, but Nehru was very, very myopic in his worldview as well. He was an anglicized Indian. He was not an Indian who spoke English. So Nehru, in his worldview, believed that, oh, India must embrace the West. We had no business to be part of the Non-Aligned Movement. We had no business to p*** off America at that point in time.

So all said and done, Narendra Modi was elected in May 2014. And a lot of changes happened. Has our foreign policy become more muscular? Of course it has. But please remember that until 2014, for the second term of Dr. Manmohan Singh, who I adored, we were known for scandals and scams— the Commonwealth Games scams, the 2G telephone scam. So it takes a lot to steer a ship like India. There are enough people who are critical of Modi and more part of their elbow. But the point is, India has traveled well.

Is the journey complete? No journey of any country is complete. Nations always go through cycles of great crisis and great resilience and great regrouping. All countries. You saw what happened in the UAE on the 28th of February, a conflict not of the UAE’s making. A conflict thrust upon the UAE because of a stupid foreign policy by Donald J. Trump. And the whole world is in a tizzy because of one man’s deranged idea of controlling the world. So that’s how histories of countries evolve, because they are not in the middle, but they are collateral damage.

Is There an Alternative to Democracy?

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:12:02 – 00:12:17): Okay, now you say democracy. Democracy is a double-edged sword. Have you in your head— I’m that kind of a person— have you in your head envisaged or come up with a plan? Is there an alternative form of running a country?

SUHEL SETH: (00:12:17 – 00:12:19): Dictators shoot at sight, kill the people.

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:12:20 – 00:12:21): That’s a monarchy.

SUHEL SETH: (00:12:21 – 00:13:12): No, it’s just a dictatorship. No, I’m just joking. But I would never be elected. I mean, if my mother were alive, even she wouldn’t have voted for me. So I’m not the target. But if I were running this country, I mean any country, not that I ever will, I would make 2 things happen. Genuinely kill people who are corrupt, like Xi Jinping is doing. But Xi Jinping has his own dilemmas. And I would make accountability in the same way as Lee Kuan Yew did.

Remember, there was an incident when the pilots of Singapore Airlines went on a flash strike when Lee Kuan Yew was Prime Minister. Lee Kuan Yew addressed all the pilots. He said, “I give you 24 hours, after which I will summon pilots from other airlines of the world and I will shut down Singapore Airlines.” Wow. So you have to have courage.

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:13:12 – 00:13:12): Courage.

Modi, the Congress and Plugging the Leakages

SUHEL SETH: (00:13:13 – 00:15:10): But that courage you can show when you’re not a democracy. Now look at Narendra Modi. When he took over, the leakage in the direct benefit transfer— so suppose you’re poor, and you’re getting a direct benefit transfer, so some of money from the government to you. There was leakages. Rajiv Gandhi famously said, of every ₹1, 85 paisa is stolen, only 15 paisa goes to the intended beneficiary. Narendra Modi plugged a leakage of ₹4,40,000 crores using digitization.

Who created the Aadhaar card? The Congress. Who created MGNREGA, which is a national benefit scheme? The Congress. Who implemented it? Modi. Why did the Congress not do it? Because they are stupid people. They are unintelligent. And the Congress was a hotbed of corruption.

Today people say, oh, but Modi has become very powerful. Of course he’s become powerful. He’s been elected. He wasn’t nominated or placed on the chair like Sonia Gandhi placed Manmohan Singh. A, B, true. Please remember, Narendra Modi is an elected Prime Minister. In October, he completes 25 years of elected office— 13 as Chief Minister, 12 as Prime Minister. That’s called experience. That’s called running a country.

And it is a damn difficult country to run because we have linguistic issues, we have identity issues, we have a very, very unfriendly terrain in most parts. We are surrounded by nations who we have benefited but continue to be inimical to our interests, whether it’s Bangladesh, Sri Lanka. Who sent the Indian Peace Keeping Force in 1988 or ’89 under Rajiv Gandhi? India. Who saved Nepal?

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:15:10 – 00:15:11): India.

SUHEL SETH: (00:15:12 – 00:15:16): Who liberated Bangladesh? From East Pakistan, India.

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:15:16 – 00:15:16): India.

SUHEL SETH: (00:15:17 – 00:15:44): And yet these jokers are inimical to us. So they say, oh, but India is a bully. Sorry, we will not allow our neighbors to become hotbeds of terrorism. Pakistan is a failed rogue state. America loves to be in bed, but America should know through your viewers, never go to bed with an elephant. You never know when it rolls over and the pleasure turns into pain.

What India Needs in the Next 10 Years

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:15:45 – 00:15:57): Okay, very well said. So what do you think needs to be implemented in India for the next 10 years when Gayatri is 18? Will she be, or 17? 17.

SUHEL SETH: (00:15:58 – 00:16:25): So I think they need to obviously up the infrastructure, which will happen, but we need to have quality infrastructure. There is no point having a road which crumbles at the sight of every monsoon. There is no point of having sewage which spills the sewage system back onto the streets. We need to make people who are executing public projects more accountable. If they can’t be accountable, then execute them.

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:16:26 – 00:16:28): How do we do this? Through privatization?

SUHEL SETH: (00:16:28 – 00:18:25): Absolutely. Private-public partnership. Look at what’s happening with airports. Wherever there’s public-private partnership, the airports are working fine. Where there is none, they are miserable. Look at Chennai. It’s a damn shame. Look at Calcutta. Damn shame.

But look, this is it. We have a robust judiciary. In India, most people want to be litigious. The government is the largest litigant in India. Of all the cases in the High Court and the Supreme Court, 49% of those cases have been filed by the government against the citizen for whatever reason. Okay, I mean, there has to be some— you’ve got a fantastic— I mean, no matter what people might say, in Chief Justice Surya Kant, who’s the Chief Justice of India, you’ve got a good human being. He has made the Supreme Court in the last, what, 4 or 5 months, the court for commoners. He’s done a lot. But the media is obviously taking potshots because the liberal media wants control.

Justice Surya Kant has cocked a snook at very senior counsels by saying, if you take a date, you better be there. You can’t say, oh, I’m handling another matter, so please give me another adjournment. So there are people we need to celebrate. Justice Surya Kant, about 10 days ago, maybe 2 weeks ago, issued a gender sensitization document which helps both genders in terms of the usage, the wordage that you will use in courts of law, qua men and women and children. These are great steps forward.

But in India, like in most places, I’m reminded of what William Shakespeare said in Julius Caesar: “The good is oft interred with their bones, the evil lives after them.” We never celebrate the good. We only remember the evil.

Growing Up in Calcutta, Theater and Khushwant Singh

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:18:26 – 00:18:28): You’re a polymath. You’ve done so much.

SUHEL SETH: (00:18:28 – 00:19:40): Yeah. So I was born in Calcutta. At that point in time, I was born in 1963. And in 1965, the United Democratic Front government came to power. Bunch of scoundrels. And they then created, for all the right reasons, the Naxalite movement, which turned very violent. My grandfather decided to send me to boarding school. So I went to Nainital, came back to Calcutta.

The beauty about Calcutta, Naina, was I met some of the brightest people. I would spend afternoons at the British Council. I would read. I would carry back 4 books because you were given 4 books to carry at the most for about 4 or 5 days. They had to return the books. And I started doing theater. But I was also doing a lot of debating, a lot of elocution, a lot of just a minute.

And one thing led to another. I worked with Mrinal Sen. I worked with Ashoke Viswanathan. I played the role of Bhutto, for which I.S. Johar auditioned me. Mrs. Gandhi banned the play. I went to Jyoti Basu, who was the chief minister, very, very well-known politician in India. And he says, “Who the hell is she to ban?” I said, “Exactly my point.”

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:19:40 – 00:19:41): Why did she want to ban?

SUHEL SETH: (00:19:41 – 00:20:18): Because there’s a line when Zia-ul-Haq tells Bhutto in the play that, “Why are you worried about me? Even India is a dictatorship. Indira Gandhi is nothing but a dictator.” So Indira Gandhi banned the play. Anyway, we got the ban lifted. The play did about 170 or 180 shows.

That’s how I met Khushwant Singh. Khushwant Singh and I became lifelong friends. And Khushwant Singh and my age gap was about 50 years. Khushwant Singh says, “What else do you want to do?” I said, “I want to write a book on Calcutta.” So he and I co-authored a book called “Kalighat to Calcutta.” And then he says—

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:20:19 – 00:20:20): I said, but I’ve read that book.

SUHEL SETH: (00:20:20 – 00:20:27): He says, “Let’s get someone to do the images.” That’s how I became friendly with R.K. Laxman, the venerable cartoonist.

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:20:27 – 00:20:27): Okay. Yeah.

SUHEL SETH: (00:20:27 – 00:20:43): So it’s not about who you know, it’s about how you know them. A, B, it’s about them respecting you and you respecting them. And C, it’s about you never taking advantage. There’s no quid pro quo.

“I Don’t Want to Be Good. I Want to Be Right.”

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:20:44 – 00:20:59): Absolutely. How— when was that pivotal moment when you realized that you do not want to settle and your standards— you speak about standards in your book. When did you realize? When was there a switch that happened, or was it a gradual—

SUHEL SETH: (00:20:59 – 00:21:02): No, it’s just I’ve never changed.

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:21:02 – 00:21:03): You’ve always been there.

SUHEL SETH: (00:21:03 – 00:21:06): If people say, oh, you’re very rude, I love being rude.

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:21:06 – 00:21:07): Were you always like that?

SUHEL SETH: (00:21:07 – 00:21:44): Always. I didn’t give a s***. I abused my school principal because he was very unkind to some of the poorest students of our school. For that reason, my poor brother couldn’t get into that school, but that’s fine. Yeah, I’ve always called truth to power, called out truth to power, and I’m happy. See, I’m not interested in being popular. If you ask ten people, “Do you like Suhel?” Nine will say no, which is good because if nine people say they like you, you’re doing something wrong.

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:21:44 – 00:21:45): Something wrong. I believe that too.

SUHEL SETH: (00:21:45 – 00:22:02): Also, I’m a great believer mathematically in the highest common factor. The lowest common denominator everyone will love you. “ये बड़ा अच्छा इंसान है.” The last good person died on September 5, 1997, and her name was Mother Teresa. I don’t want to be good. I want to be right.

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:22:03 – 00:22:03): Difference?

SUHEL SETH: (00:22:03 – 00:22:51): No, I don’t want to make a difference. Someone the other day asked me, a journalist, “What will your legacy be?” I said, “Nothing.” “Why? You’ve done so much.” I said, “Let me tell you, I’m a Hindu. These Johnnies will remember me for 13 days after I’m dead. Why? They have to be vegetarian and they can’t drink alcohol. The day they turn non-vegetarian again and can drink alcohol, they’ll forget.”

See, P.G. Wodehouse brilliantly said of Lord Fauntleroy that whenever he looks in the mirror, he erects his own statue. I’m very realistic about, A, what I’ve achieved, and B, what I haven’t. I have no illusions. I don’t think I’m the next best thing to sliced bread, and I don’t want to be.

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:22:52 – 00:22:55): What’s the hardest thing you’ve worked for and you haven’t achieved?

SUHEL SETH: (00:22:56 – 00:23:13): I haven’t worked hard at all. That’s honest. I said that to a lady in CNBC, Anuradha Sengupta, who was doing a series on men or success and whatever it was. Hard work is for mules. I work smart. I’ve never worked hard.

Meeting Supermodel Lakshmi Menon

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:23:13 – 00:23:17): You’ve also married a supermodel. Tell us about that. How did that happen?

SUHEL SETH: (00:23:17 – 00:24:37): So there’s a friend of mine called Tina Brown, the famous Tina Brown, editor of Vanity Fair, Daily Beast, blah, blah, blah. So she told me, she says, in November 2015, “Darling, we’re having this Women of the World Summit.” So I said, “Yeah, great.” “And you have to be there.” I said, “For sure.”

I came nattily attired to this bloody summit. And as I enter, being the cocky guy that I am, I told Tina, I said, “Darling, which session am I speaking in?” “It’s for women. Learn to listen.” So I sat down in the hall, and one of the girls who was speaking was Lakshmi. I didn’t know who the hell she was, but she was stunning. But more importantly, she was bright.

And when she came off stage, being the wicked man I am, I clung on to her. I mean, not clung on, but we kept talking. And then I went to the loo, and she asks a common friend, Anaita Adajania, saying, “Who’s this chap?” She says, “You don’t know him? He’s Suhel.” “What does he do?” “I don’t know, he’s always on TV.” Then when she went to the loo, I asked Anaita. I said, “Who’s this?”

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:24:38 – 00:24:39): I think you guys need to get to know each other now.

SUHEL SETH: (00:24:39 – 00:25:10): “Who is she?” No. “Who is she? You don’t know? She’s a supermodel.” I said, “How the hell do I know? I don’t even watch fashion shows.” But she was bright. That evening there was a dinner for the same summit, but I clung on to her all day except I sleep in the afternoons. So when I went up to sleep, she obviously got rid of me and said, “Thank God.” In the evening when she was coming into the dinner, she saw me and was about to escape when I said, “Lakshmi!” I made a sit.

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:25:10 – 00:25:11): About to escape.

SUHEL SETH: (00:25:12 – 00:25:41): And that’s it. That was November 2015. We got married on December 25, 2018, because it’s also the birthday of Jesus Christ. So I made a different kind of sacrifice. And we had Gayatri on November 26, 2019. And when Lakshmi was pregnant, we decided that Lakshmi and Gayatri will live in Goa. Because of the pollution and the AQI levels in Delhi.

Delhi’s Pollution and Stubble Burning

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:25:41 – 00:25:47): I always thought that when I wanted to move back to India, Goa would be the place I’d live in.

SUHEL SETH: (00:25:47 – 00:25:48): It would suit you.

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:25:48 – 00:26:08): I went to Goa and I did not want to live there. You’re talking about pollution. So you say, I’ve noticed Delhi has the most pollution that there is. It’s off the charts. And you wrote about stubble burning. This is something that keeps coming up in your book. I did a little deep dive into stubble burning and I’ve realized we haven’t found a solution to that.

SUHEL SETH: (00:26:08 – 00:26:09): No, we have a solution.

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:26:09 – 00:26:10): Why aren’t we implementing it?

SUHEL SETH: (00:26:10 – 00:26:49): Because we have a bunch of jokers. So if a solution has to be found, it has to be found. But they haven’t bothered to find it. It’s very simple. Why does stubble burning happen? You’re changing your crops. There could be mechanized ways of revalidating the soil. Yeah, but they don’t do it. They just burn. And please remember, Delhi is in a bowl. So with the cross currents of air, it all gets trapped. So the entire NCR region is screwed. My point is, and I’ve written in the book, that I totally empathize with issues qua the farmer.

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:26:50 – 00:26:51): Totally, totally.

SUHEL SETH: (00:26:51 – 00:27:46): But the government has to do something because the cost of pollution is far greater. And let me give you an example. You have a PM 2.5, which is near fatal. Any infant born in India at that level of PM is at 90% risk of lung infection for life. But here’s the thing, the rich will have air purifiers. What about the poor? We’re all breathing the same air. So are you going to create ghettos where the rich will have access and the poor won’t.

Which is why I say democracy therefore is a failed institution. Because if it is about equality, then it must be equality of purpose, it must be equality of opportunity, it must be equality of health. You can’t segregate levels of equality which only suit you and actually screw the rest.

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:27:46 – 00:27:50): Very true. But then do we have a solution? Is there a solution to all of this?

SUHEL SETH: (00:27:50 – 00:28:21): Of course! There is. IIT Delhi has worked in partnership with the state government. They have said these are the things you need to do. There are cash incentives for the farmers, but there’s no communication. No communication because no one is interested. See, in our country, sadly, we— and this is where I agree again with Modi about one nation, one election— it is important for a country like ours not to be in election mode every time.

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:28:21 – 00:28:21): So true.

SUHEL SETH: (00:28:21 – 00:28:33): The day you’re in election mode, you don’t give a rat’s a** about what’s happening. You’re concerned about elections. And therein, which I mentioned in the book, the citizen is equally to blame.

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:28:34 – 00:28:34): Very true.

Gurugram: “A Smart City Run by the Most Unsmart People”

SUHEL SETH: (00:28:34 – 00:30:21): We have elected a BJP government in Haryana for the last maybe 15 years. It’s a shame. They don’t deserve to be there. But we elect them. They don’t care about Gurugram, although Gurugram contributes the largest amount of revenue, because that’s not the voting base. So it is a catch-22. Joseph Heller wrote this fabulous book called “Catch-22.” We’re living catch-22 every day. So this is the situation. So you do, you’re damned. You don’t, you’re dead. So how do you move the wheels?

Which is why I was attending an Indian Express event last year, and the 2 speakers were Vinai Kumar Saxena, the then Lieutenant Governor of Delhi, and a guy called Amitabh Kant, outstanding bureaucrat. And I was not even supposed to speak, and in those days I used to drink, so I couldn’t be bothered. And one of the ladies said, “Oh, you must ask a question.” I said, “I have no question to ask these people. But I have a comment.”

And that’s where I said, “It’s an absolute shame what you people have done to Gurugram.” I said, “It’s a smart city run by the most unsmart people.” I took the name of the chief minister. Screwed them. That went viral. That created a whole movement. Then I started getting messages, calls saying, please look at Alibaug, please look at Faridabad, please look at Coimbatore.

I am not an activist. I’m not a crusader. I’m a communicator. I will use communication and the power of communication that I have to try and instill change. But you won’t catch me going to some protest site or marching with flags. Not my scene.

Diagnosis Before Treatment: The Art of Indifference

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:30:21 – 00:30:27): But Suhel, is this communication— is this the answer for us as Indians?

SUHEL SETH: (00:30:27 – 00:31:38): It’s the first step. If you’re in denial about what is wrong, how will your diagnostics be right? If you go to a doctor and the doctor doesn’t diagnose you right, the treatment that follows will also be screwed up. So, we must be able to park the diagnostics, which is why if you look at the first 5 or 6 chapters, I’ve outlined the issues under each. When I’m talking about rivers or water, I’m talking about this. Bridges, air, citizen rights, law and order. And then I’ve given solutions. So it’s not as if it’s a book written out of rage with no purpose.

Because see, anger is a negative emotion. A. B, anger is self-destructive. Anger always eats your insides. You don’t need to be angry. I’ve mastered the art of indifference. So people can either like you or hate you, or you can like people or hate people. But if you’re indifferent to them, that’s the biggest insult. You walk around as if they don’t exist. That they can’t handle.

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:31:38 – 00:31:40): Not even an insult, it’s peaceful for you.

SUHEL SETH: (00:31:41 – 00:31:45): I don’t want to be surrounded by toxic people. Yeah, not interested. Simple.

Can India’s Youth Drive Change?

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:31:46 – 00:31:54): Okay, now, do you think the youth can do what you envisage?

SUHEL SETH: (00:31:54 – 00:31:58): Absolutely. I was doing a live podcast yesterday.

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:31:58 – 00:31:58): Why do you think?

SUHEL SETH: (00:31:58 – 00:32:14): In Delhi. I think the youth of India is more engaged now than ever before. A, B, remember one thing, all movements of change across the world have start— have been started by students, have been started by the youth.

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:32:14 – 00:32:15): Like Nepal.

SUHEL SETH: (00:32:15 – 00:33:02): Everything. Forget Nepal, look at Kosovo. Yes, look at all change agents here. It’s always Black Right Movement, Black Lives Matter. Students have always— there’s a reason now why they say these battles were fought on the playing fields of Eton, or the Naxalite movement began on the playing fields of Presidency College. There’s a reason, because ideology must be fueled by academic context. You must have academic context as to why you’re doing this.

So I believe, yes, the youth is more engaged with the idea of India and the idea of a better India. Number 2, the youth today have more access to tools that do not have government control.

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:33:03 – 00:33:04): Give me some examples.

You Cannot Control Intellectual Freedom

SUHEL SETH: (00:33:04 – 00:34:35): I can use social media to criticize. I can use anonymity to criticize. I’m not using prescribed known tools of communication which can be controlled. So in an uncontrolled environment, you could actually bring about greater change because there is no regulation. I mean, if let’s say I ban all newspapers from carrying what you’re saying, I ban all television channels, what the hell will you say?

Go back into history. Sahir Ludhianvi was one of India’s finest lyricists, Guru Dutt India’s finest filmmaker. Guru Dutt made “Pyaasa,” he acted with Waheeda Rehman. It was 1958, Nehru was Prime Minister. Listen to the lyrics of “Pyaasa.” Sing it. I’ll no. [Recites lines from the “Pyaasa” song “Jinhe Naaz Hai Hind Par”]

So he was basically criticizing the fact that even after freedom people are still entrapped in poverty, in bondage, in poor and squalid living conditions. Sahir Ludhianvi was banned by Nehru who we also “यार बड़ा liberal था, बड़ा liberal था.” What did Mrs. Gandhi do with Kishore Kumar? Banned. So please understand, you cannot control intellectual freedom.

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:34:35 – 00:34:36): You cannot.

SUHEL SETH: (00:34:36 – 00:35:34): I’m a great believer that disagree by all means without being disagreeable. I think it was Lord Buckner, the famous judge, who said your freedom ends when your hand is only a centimeter away from someone’s nose. So you don’t have to hit someone, but you can take a stand. You can have a view.

Problem is, all of us want to be popular. You don’t want to upset your social scene. Oh yeah, I don’t. I mean, why? What we are therefore doing is, A, we are living a life of deceit. We are lying to ourselves every day. When you go to a party and you hate that bloody person there, and yet you’re smiling, you’re actually lying, being untrue to yourself. Why? That person doesn’t give a s***. You don’t give a s***. Why be nice?

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:35:34 – 00:35:37): Doing it, you think it’s normal, but it’s not. It’s absolutely not.

SUHEL SETH: (00:35:37 – 00:35:47): Because we are chasing the next invitation. Everyone will b**** you out, no matter whether you’re popular, nice, sweet, hot. They’ll still b**** you out.

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:35:47 – 00:35:48): Absolutely.

SUHEL SETH: (00:35:48 – 00:35:56): So you might as well live the way you should, honesty to yourself, rather than worry about adapting to what the world wants you to be.

Knowledge, Memory and Parenting Gayatri

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:35:57 – 00:36:14): Well said. Okay, but how do you retain— you have so much of knowledge, you can spout and spew verbatim phrases. How do you do this?

SUHEL SETH: (00:36:15 – 00:36:17): It’s called knowledge. Try it.

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:36:17 – 00:36:17): How does it—

SUHEL SETH: (00:36:17 – 00:36:19): I’m just— I’m a year old now.

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:36:19 – 00:36:27): How do you retain it? Was it innate? Was it a special gift, a little superpower that you had? Or was it something that you honed? Was it a skill that you—

SUHEL SETH: (00:36:27 – 00:36:30): You can’t hone this skill. You either have it or you don’t.

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:36:30 – 00:36:31): You don’t have it. So you were—

SUHEL SETH: (00:36:31 – 00:37:11): This is what I think. When I see Gayatri, not because I’m her dad, I mean, I’m not bothered about that aspect, but even Gayatri is super sharp. Lakshmi is super sharp. And we have decided, in a manner of speaking, Lakshmi and I, that we will never interfere with Gayatri’s mental faculties, in her ability to think, in her ability to form an opinion.

And now I’m going to tell you something which is totally contrary to what people say about parenting. Parents must argue in front of their children without being rude. Tell you why. The child must know that in this house there can be two opinions.

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:37:12 – 00:37:12): Wow!

SUHEL SETH: (00:37:13 – 00:38:26): There shouldn’t be one opinion which is either patriarchal or matriarchal, which is foisted upon the child. Number two, the child must be encouraged to be fond of nature because if they are fond of nature, they will respect the environment. “ये नहीं कि भी आप प्लास्टिक मत यूज़ करो।” Obvious s*** like that doesn’t work. Third, the child must know to respect serving staff. There is no Ravinder, there is no Mohan, there is no Bimla. It’s Bimla Didi, it’s Mohan Bhaiya.

And that is what— plus the interesting thing as far as we are concerned, at least Lakshmi and I, is because Lakshmi travels, I travel insanely, Gayatri spends a lot of time with her grandparents. And I’ve always said grandparents are the finest storytellers. And they give you anchoring. They give you anecdotal reference. The other thing is that Gayatri, one of our staff members, Bimla, who’s— so we have our staff living on the premises in Goa. Bimla has a daughter called Asma. Gayatri calls Asma Asma Didi.

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:38:27 – 00:38:27): Of course.

SUHEL SETH: (00:38:28 – 00:38:46): If I buy anything for Gayatri, I buy it in pairs and I give it to Gayatri that now give this to Asma. It’s the same thing. Why? You must inculcate the habit of giving back. This whole thing of hoarding everything has to stop.

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:38:46 – 00:38:46): True.

Ratan Tata and Being Powered by Knowledge

SUHEL SETH: (00:38:47 – 00:40:28): And one has been blessed, and I’ve worked with some of the finest human beings. I mean, Ratan Tata, people see him as an industrialist, people see him as a great human, as a brilliant mind, but he was a decent man. Goodness has a kind of premium that you and I can’t imagine.

What did Mark Antony say about Brutus, who, by the way, in the middle of the play, he hated? Julius Caesar does not end with “Friends, Romans, countrymen” like some idiots believe. It ends when Mark Antony is standing over the body of Brutus and he looks at the crowd and he says, “He was the noblest Roman of them all. The elements so mixed in him that nature might stand up and say to all the world, ‘This was a man.'”

Elements must be mixed in human beings. You must have the ability to discuss art, you must have the ability to discuss culture, you must have the ability to discuss where it intersects, where culture intersects with industry, and still be your own person. Absolutely. Which is why you need to be powered by knowledge, not by wealth. They can take away your money, they can take away your house, they can even take away your spouse if you’re not offering your spouse in any case. But they can’t take away your knowledge. They can’t take away your belief system. They might try and color the belief system, but if the belief system is anchored in knowledge, they can’t screw it up.

A Message for the Viewers

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:40:29 – 00:40:33): That is it. Is there one thing you want to say to my viewers?

SUHEL SETH: (00:40:34 – 00:41:28): Have a great life. Read, read, read till you die. Encourage people around you to read. Encourage people around you to dissent. Encourage people around you to debate. We’re not a single-track train. We are human beings. We must have the ability to distinguish between right and wrong, good and evil, and we will only do that when we are powered by context, and that context can only come from academia. It can only come from a historical perspective, and it will only come with the blessings of your parents.

So, wow, all said and done, keep your parents closer than God, because God you’ll never see, and your parents, if they are with you, you see them, and if they’re not, you’re going to miss them.

India in Five Years

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:41:28 – 00:41:35): 5 years from now, if we were to have this conversation with respect to your book, what do you think would be different?

SUHEL SETH: (00:41:36 – 00:41:51): I think we will improve. I’m a great optimist. We will improve in our infrastructure. I’m certain we will improve in accountability. I believe a lot of that accountability will be fired by the mechanisms of control engagement by the youth.

The NEET Controversy: “We Are the System”

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:41:51 – 00:42:01): I’m a great believer that I want to talk about the cockroach movement and the NEET exams. Did all of that just— No, so here’s the thing. Explain that. How do you think that happened?

SUHEL SETH: (00:42:01 – 00:43:32): It is unfair to blame the NEET issue on any one minister or any one government. It is an Indian malaise. We have a system where the rich will try and bugger up any system which they can through money. Where, to my mind, the government went wrong was when on June 28th, the movement kind of took shape. It took them till July 20 to ask for the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan. Dharmendra Pradhan was the sitting education minister.

But let’s not forget, and I’ve said this publicly in India on national television, we’ve had a string of education ministers who were disastrous even though they were well-intentioned. I can remember Syed Nurul Hasan from 1975 to ’78. He was also vice chancellor, JNU, if I remember right. Disaster. Kapil Sibal, brilliant man, high on integrity. He was the HRD minister. He created the Right to Education Bill, but he couldn’t change the syllabus. He couldn’t change the system. Smriti Irani, Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi in Vajpayee’s government.

So it is unfair to say, “भई अब ये हो रहा है। ये भी” Who cheats? Not someone from Iceland. We. There is some rich Indian who is trying to screw the system with money. So please don’t say, oh, the system is bad. We are the system.

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:43:33 – 00:43:35): Totally. But I was in school when my papers leaked.

SUHEL SETH: (00:43:36 – 00:43:36): There you are.

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:43:37 – 00:43:39): But it just happened. And every year papers get leaked.

The Impoverishment of Opportunities

SUHEL SETH: (00:43:39 – 00:44:21): So point is, many years ago, I was delivering a lecture in New York. And one cocky American says, “Oh, how does it feel for India to be so poor?” I said, “No. Every country is poor. The problem we are facing, or we have faced and hopefully will be sorted, is the impoverishment of opportunities.” Let’s imagine I’m born poor. If I’m deprived of education, of primary health, of safety, then you have throttled my chances of a good life, a decent life at birth.

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:44:22 – 00:44:22): True.

SUHEL SETH: (00:44:23 – 00:45:41): If you’ve provided me these opportunities and I screw up, that’s up to me. I’ve always said that India has choked the opportunity basket, which it needs to untangle. We need, as Tagore brilliantly said, you need an unfettered mind in order to work in life. You need a mind, and you need a head that you can hold high, and only then can you walk into that heaven of freedom.

Because freedom and all are nice concepts. Ask the poor person who can’t file a first information report at a police station, what is his freedom? Ask the poor whose child falls into a manhole, what is his freedom? Ask women who have been forced to suffer infanticide, what is their freedom?

So please don’t look at freedom as an absolute concept. It must be looked at from the prism of humanity, from the prism of human engagement, and from the prism of human survival. When you look at it from these 3 perspectives, your worldview will change and your attitude will change, and you will start implementing the things you’ve ignored all these years.

AZZALLURE CHOTANI: (00:45:43 – 00:45:46): Thank you. This is very deep.

SUHEL SETH: (00:45:47 – 00:45:51): Thank you so much. We are deep people. Thank you.

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