Githa Hariharan interview: ‘Lived diversity under threat, exclusion process has begun’

In this interview to The Federal, Hariharan — author of terrific novels such as When Dreams Travel and Fugitive Histories — underlines the growing attempts to homogenise India’s pluralistic fabric, warning against the increasing exclusion of marginalised communities and voices. She discusses how artists, writers, and musicians continue to push back against oppression even at a time of crackdown on dissent. She emphasises the importance of reclaiming secularism, cultivating meaningful solidarity across privilege gaps, and ensuring that cultural platforms remain spaces of debate and resistance. The fight for democracy and justice, she says, is ongoing, and literature, art, and activism must remain at the forefront of this struggle. Excerpts from the interview:

In your Introduction to This Too Is India, you write about the idea of India as a mosaic of diversity and resistance. How do you see this mosaic shifting in recent years?

We have always faced the challenge of reducing the distance between ‘official diversity’ — occasionally paraded like a pageant — and lived diversity, which is dynamic and complex. In recent years, this reality, this lived diversity, has been threatened with a straightjacket. What does this straightjacket do? It seeks to exclude people, crush difference and hybridity, and promote uniformity. The process of exclusion, of homogenisation, has begun. Already we can see the existing fault lines of community, caste, gender, class and region widening, manifesting in new ways.

In reality, diversity involves negotiation, and an ongoing attempt to recognise other parts of the mosaic, so as to include them in the mainstream. The mosaic cannot hold unless difference is respected and celebrated, and all its many pieces held together by the aspiration for equality. It is this aspiration, this right to equality, that fuels the resistance that is part of any system of lived diversity. And this is what the twenty conversations in This Too Is India illustrate in different ways.

Through your work with the Indian Writers Forum, you have engaged deeply with cultural politics. Given India’s rich tradition of artistic and intellectual dissent, how do you see writers, filmmakers, and musicians continuing to question power and resist oppressive narratives, even in an increasingly restrictive climate?

History shows us that people have not given up dissent, or resistance to a false or oppressive narrative, even if their voices may be ignored or muted by those in power. If some people are silenced, others speak up. Questioning is a process people will not let go of so easily. This is apparent in my conversation with a historian like Romila Thapar, a teacher we can all learn from. She would say that asking questions, raising doubts, seeking answers — all this is actually the daily business of learning. I could add that the cultural community chases knowledge in this way through their work.

The practitioners who made up the Indian Cultural Forum, and who I have had conversations with, insist that all art is political. All art addresses power structures, whether in visible, obvious ways, or in more subtle ways. In this collection I have edited, different voices articulate the political nature of artistic and cultural practice. These voices include writers in several languages and from different backgrounds; theatre persons such as Sunil Shanbag and Mangai; the musician T.M. Krishna and the scholar and critic Samik Bandyopadhyay.

Also read: Chandrika Tandon interview: ‘Music has a way of getting into your soul’

Let me sum it up this way: In a country like India, with such a multitude of voices that can speak poetry, sing, make films and art and stories in so many ways and in so many languages and in so many settings, is it possible that the cultural community will be completely silent, either onstage or in street corners?

The figures you have interviewed include voices that explore gendered perspectives on India's socio-political issues. How do you see women writers — especially those from marginalised communities — reshaping the discourse on democracy, citizenship, and resistance?

We need to see and hear more and more of all the writers who have been ‘invisiblised’ because of their gender or sexuality, or their caste or community, or the region they come from, or their language. The mainstream needs to be more crowded, more plural, more argumentative, for public discourse to grow more democratic.

In my conversation with publisher and writer Ritu Menon, she asks sharply, ‘Do women have a country?’ And she, as well as writers such as Bama and Volga and Shashi Deshpande, insist on women’s rights, not just in ‘personal’ spaces such as the family, but in public spaces, and in the larger political life of the nation.

Across these interviews, there’s a recurring focus on caste and its entanglement with India’s democracy. How do you think the caste system has been weaponised in contemporary India? How can literature help reclaim equality and justice in such a divided society?

The conversations reaffirmed that we need to go through a tremendous exercise of unlearning and relearning. By hearing Dalit voices from all over the country, by trying to understand their lives, both past and present, the more privileged castes can unlearn received prejudice in their day-to-day lives. And we can learn the critical expression of solidarity. This way, we have Dalit writers claiming equality and justice in their own voices, located in their own experience. And we have other writers following this lead, always in solidarity.

I feel the section on caste in the collection cannot be reduced to a homogenous Dalit narrative. The conversations enable us to hear a range of voices, from writers like Bama, Aravind Malagatti, Gurram Jashuva and Chinnaiah Jangam, to activists such as Martin Macwan and Eknath Awad. They give us an idea of how rich and varied the analysis of caste inequality is, at both individual and community levels. They also present us with multiple perspectives on resistance to this inequality, whether through the arts or through activism.

The Uniform Civil Code is being presented as a step toward equality, but in a diverse country like India, uniformity does not necessarily mean fairness. How should legal frameworks balance diversity in custom and practice with the constitutional promise of equality, without allowing one to override the other?

The idea of the Uniform Civil Code is being projected as a tool for equality but is seen by many as a threat to India’s pluralism. How should we balance uniformity with the rights and traditions of different communities?

Uniformity is not equality, especially in a diverse country, a mosaic like India. What we need to insist on is that law, in theory and practice, must allow for diversity of custom and practice, while ensuring that equality is never sacrificed. The principle of equality must hold diverse sections together; uniformity should not be allowed to crush diversity. So let different groups follow their practices — but not one of these should, in any way, compromise any of the rights promised by the Constitution to every single citizen.

In your Introduction, you also reflect on the “privilege gap” in conversations. How do you navigate these gaps when engaging with voices from oppressed communities? How should writers engage in meaningful solidarity?

I think we writers — at least the sensible ones — are acutely aware of our limitations, even our ignorance. This is useful, because it allows you to be honest and ask the questions we have about everything. So listening is an important guideline. Then there is the challenge of not assuming the voice of the expert, or the voice of the oppressed people you are writing about. This is not easy, whether you are a writer of fiction or an academic. I would say the starting point is self-awareness — that you are positioned as an outsider in terms of actual experience, but you are a keen student, a student driven by empathy and solidarity. In other words, you never forget that distance between your privilege and someone else’s deprivation. But you don’t let that distance stop you from working hard, with imagination and engagement, to write about what you see and understand.

Some of the interviews underline secularism as the cornerstone of India’s democracy. At a time when this ideal seems increasingly under attack, how can cultural platforms like the Indian Writers Forum reclaim and strengthen the secular imagination of India?

Democracy is not a fixed structure but an evolving conversation. It asks for participation, which includes the right — and courage — to question, and to redefine justice on terms that include all. Any forum that is open to discussion, debate, argument and that is safe for the young, for the dissenters, for mavericks even, can strengthen the values that a country like India is based on, and has to be based on, if it is to do justice to its citizens. Hounding, trolling, intimidation, lynching, draconian laws, political imprisonment: all these attack our democratic and secular values. Our cultures, past and present, have always allowed space — whether the establishment liked it or not — for reason as well as imagination.

Also read: Srikar Raghavan interview: ‘Impossible to destroy Karnataka’s richly inclusive legacy’

However hard it is, whatever the personal cost, there are enough people and groups and platforms from different constituencies who bravely carry on their work of reclaiming, or making, or re-making, their ideas of India. And a lot of these people are young, which is a cause for hope. This was our experience in the Indian Writers Forum as well. We older people learnt quite a bit from the young people who worked in the Forum, just as we learnt the practice of secularism and democracy from cultural practitioners and academics and activists in different parts of the country.

They also stress on the importance of multilingualism as an essential part of India’s identity. How do you see the push towards Hindi as a unifying language affecting regional languages and the cultural diversity they represent?

Again, unity and uniformity cannot be conflated. Languages and dialects have their own subcultures. Also, one of the amazing aspects of multilingualism as it is practised in our daily lives is hybridity. The desire for ‘purity’ seems to me a tool to exclude people. So many of us are multilingual in the sense that we speak mixtures of Indian languages. Language and dialect are diverse in practice, affected by hybridity, by region, and in our country, by caste and community.

In such a world, how can you impose a language as the Indian language? We are always going to have discussion and debate and disagreement about the languages associated with power in some way or the other — Sanskrit, Hindi, English. And this debate is a good thing for a multilingual country. Let me add that we must encourage translation from each of our languages to other languages, and not just English or Hindi. In fact, translation should be an intrinsic part of both school and college education.

Despite the divisions and inequalities highlighted in This Too Is India, these interviews are infused with a sense of aspiration and hope. Where do you personally find hope in contemporary India, and how do you envision the next generation carrying forward the fight for inclusion and diversity?

I could give you many examples: I think of the brave women and men I have spoken to in This Too Is India, and I feel hope. And these twenty conversations are just a few of the many I have been lucky enough to have had over the last decade. There are journalists, writers, teachers, lawyers and activists who have worked for the rights of citizens, and who have faced harassment or incarceration on trumped up charges.

I think of the students in different campuses who have protested against any clampdown on independent thinking, and I feel hope. I think of the numerous legacies we have of resistance from the past, including the recent past. For instance, think of that moment when writers, artists, and scientists returned awards to protest against the assassination of rationalists and the lynching of Akhlaq. In short, there is singing in the dark times. Without the hope that this singing gives us, how can we carry on?

Your own work consistently examines power structures, whether through caste, gender, or class. How do you view the role of fiction in interrogating these hierarchies, particularly in a time when dissent is increasingly under threat in India?

My work, fiction or non-fiction, and my life as a citizen, are intertwined. All my concerns as a citizen — equality, freedom of speech, the right to dissent — are there in my fiction as well, but obviously in the language and craft demanded by the form. Fiction goes backstage, and alerts us, both writers and readers, to probe the ways in which power plays out in real lives. But speaking about power always entails imagining resistance, imagining a better world than the one we have.