RT — India Russia and the World
20260806 193000 UTC
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[00:00:18] of
[00:00:29] of
[00:00:32] of He's been a journalist, a
[00:00:36] of political commentator, a political strategist, senior
[00:00:40] advisor to the Indian ministry of information and broadcasting, Kanchan
[00:00:43] Gupta. Welcome to India, Russia and the world. Thank you. You're
[00:00:47] actually the first guest on my
[00:00:49] in podcast since the end
[00:00:51] of the cockroach protest that led to the resignation of India's
[00:00:55] education minister. Purely from an optics
[00:00:59] perspective. what kind of message did these
[00:01:02] protests send out to the
[00:01:04] of world? there is no doubt
[00:01:07] that the protest by
[00:01:10] itself was not
[00:01:13] unexpected, but the the manner in in
[00:01:17] which it unfolded 20th July
[00:01:20] onwards,
[00:01:22] of that took the government by surprise because that kind of share
[00:01:25] violence against the police, the
[00:01:29] police...
[00:01:31] of using force to push back the protesters, that
[00:01:34] made the situation very sticky for
[00:01:38] government, and you couldn't turn your eyes away,
[00:01:42] now you said which led to the resignation
[00:01:47] of of the education minister, technically the education minister resigned
[00:01:50] to ensure
[00:01:53] of that the situation wouldn't get worse, and
[00:01:57] if you read his resignation, he gives the
[00:02:01] reasons why he resigned, so I wouldn't say
[00:02:05] that it's because these people held
[00:02:08] of a gun to the government's head that the education
[00:02:12] minister resigned, but
[00:02:15] whatever be the interpretation, the
[00:02:19] fact is that there was a protest
[00:02:23] and for the first time there was a
[00:02:26] glimpse into the world view
[00:02:29] of the minds escape of what i call the
[00:02:33] gen z generation,
[00:02:36] so what, what do these kids think about, how do they
[00:02:40] look at life, what are their many
[00:02:43] of angsts, what do they, what do they worry
[00:02:47] of about, and what angers them,
[00:02:50] perhaps none of us, whether in government or not
[00:02:54] in government, we never looked at them very
[00:02:57] closely, you know what I really want to. ask you the genzy
[00:03:01] protest in India, do you think that there were any parallels with what it
[00:03:05] happened say
[00:03:06] in a Bangladesh or Nepal? no, I will very quickly explain to
[00:03:09] you why, our politics has been of
[00:03:12] a different variety, our politics has been of
[00:03:16] accomodative nature, our politicians are very
[00:03:20] sharp, don't forget that
[00:03:23] Mohandas Gandhi was one
[00:03:25] of the sharpest politicians India has produced, back
[00:03:29] of their mind,
[00:03:30] they always have the more serious and the more informed among
[00:03:34] them, they
[00:03:34] a have Gandhi in their back in the back
[00:03:36] of their minds, they know when to step forward, they know when to stand
[00:03:40] still and they know when
[00:03:40] of to step back. number two, we have very layered
[00:03:44] society, so
[00:03:45] in a layered society like us, that kind of
[00:03:49] change
[00:03:50] of doesn't happen.
[00:03:51] our young
[00:03:52] are politically
[00:03:54] too diverse, they are culturally too
[00:03:57] diverse, they are...
[00:04:01] linguistically to diverse and
[00:04:04] of definitely in there is no single religion holding them
[00:04:07] together, but what is there in common
[00:04:11] to those who believe in this is the
[00:04:15] of civilizational inheritance which they have, and that is of being
[00:04:19] a people who are accommodative, who
[00:04:23] are inclusive and who are not
[00:04:26] of exclusionary,
[00:04:27] of okay, so whether you see in Bangladesh, Nepal. Sri
[00:04:30] Lanka, wherever this has happened, the Arab countries, the
[00:04:34] so-called Arab spring, it is
[00:04:36] of because
[00:04:36] of the
[00:04:37] of the exclusionism
[00:04:39] of the elite
[00:04:40] of the ruling classes, it is because
[00:04:44] of the in your face corruption, even corruption in
[00:04:48] India is very layered, so it's a different thing, I
[00:04:51] mean right, so it it won't work over here, what about
[00:04:55] the media coverage
[00:04:57] of the cockroach genzi protests in India? on one hand,
[00:05:01] the local media was being criticized for being too soft, the
[00:05:05] western media for being too
[00:05:07] of celebratory, what is your take? well, there was nothing called
[00:05:10] a local media. Yeah, I, I find it aborent
[00:05:14] that there should have been an attempt to
[00:05:18] malign mainstream media in such a
[00:05:22] gross manner as we saw happening over there at janta
[00:05:25] manta. You mean the journalist getting hackled, journalist getting
[00:05:29] hackled, then this whole use the term godi media, now
[00:05:32] such terms were never hurled at the media earlier, but
[00:05:36] you don't think the media is it fault here? No, listen, I mean, I, I
[00:05:40] may agree with. "the
[00:05:44] editorial policy of media house, I may disagree with
[00:05:47] it, I may agree with individuals, I may disagree with
[00:05:51] them, but I wouldn't ever go to the
[00:05:54] extent of labeling anybody
[00:05:57] godhi or, like for instance, I never use the
[00:06:01] term anti-national, because I i don't
[00:06:05] think I have enough intelligence to
[00:06:08] judge someone's nationalist or
[00:06:11] non-nationalist. entials: so this kind
[00:06:14] of labelling and this kind of
[00:06:17] demonizing is bad. the so-called digital media
[00:06:21] took over the space over
[00:06:25] there. television comes under some amount of accountability.
[00:06:28] print definitely comes under lot of
[00:06:31] accountability, and but the digital media, there is no
[00:06:35] accountability
[00:06:36] at all, and that i think is not a very happy
[00:06:39] situation, and
[00:06:41] I am okay with... editorial perceptions or
[00:06:44] editorial interpretations, even okay with
[00:06:47] agenda, but so long as that agenda is known to
[00:06:51] be agenda and not as some great journalism as
[00:06:55] it is being made out to be. what about the western media's
[00:06:58] coverage these
[00:06:59] of protests? it's been gastly as usual.
[00:07:03] someone today actually pointed
[00:07:05] out to that the New York
[00:07:09] Times has till now carried only one
[00:07:12] story on the enormous protests happening
[00:07:16] in Pakistan occupied Kashmir where more than
[00:07:20] 40 protesters have been killed by the Pakistani Army
[00:07:24] and they have carried 16 stories till now
[00:07:28] on the jantar manter protest various aspects of it of
[00:07:31] course so this is something which always
[00:07:34] intrigues me that there
[00:07:37] is some kind of a
[00:07:41] system in place. which rewards
[00:07:44] the the monsterization of
[00:07:48] India and we saw this happening during the second phase of
[00:07:52] covid if you remember
[00:07:54] when that we burn our dead
[00:07:58] is not some great secret which was
[00:08:01] kept locked away from the world all these years only if you don't know India enough
[00:08:05] you would so yes
[00:08:08] we were dead so there were actually drown videos of
[00:08:12] of. bodies being burned that were cited as how
[00:08:15] gustly the situation is that you have to burn and
[00:08:19] get rid of bodies and all these people were then
[00:08:23] rewarded with the police, but that's how it rolls, I
[00:08:26] mean you can get away with it in India, but you
[00:08:30] cannot, there's a price to be paid, but is that India's
[00:08:34] fault, why, why would this happen in
[00:08:37] India, meaning the covid example you were giving, people
[00:08:41] were dying. over the world, but the
[00:08:45] western media, the western journalists, they would just
[00:08:49] hop around hospitals, inside hospitals, indian hospitals, precisely,
[00:08:53] there is there's there's a disbalance between the way they look at the
[00:08:57] world, like they wouldn't ever
[00:09:00] show photos their dead, the
[00:09:04] they could wouldn't even mention that they have run out of space to
[00:09:08] bury their dead, at least we were burning our dead, and they did...
[00:09:12] didn't have space to bury their dead and they were just stacking them up in
[00:09:16] meat trucks. mean, how is it that we were worse
[00:09:20] off? now, having said that, this
[00:09:24] is not something which is entirely new,
[00:09:27] and this is India has faced this problem
[00:09:31] again and again, India faced this problem with the
[00:09:34] guardian, India faced this problem with the BBC,
[00:09:38] BBC had to be shut down over here, the guardian corresponded.
[00:09:42] was frock marched to what was then Savd Jang
[00:09:46] airport and put on the first flight out. I mean, you just could
[00:09:50] not deal with them because they were so intransigent in
[00:09:54] their operations over here. Why does the western media hate
[00:09:58] India? You know, during the cold war,
[00:10:02] new information order emerged in the world, and
[00:10:06] all these media houses, whether they
[00:10:09] were public broadcasters or... or private
[00:10:13] media, they became instruments of
[00:10:17] governments and all these
[00:10:20] institutions which were earlier set up, mean DW
[00:10:24] was set up to cater to Germans, not to
[00:10:28] Indians, similarly BBC was meant for
[00:10:32] Britain
[00:10:33] and it was meant for British subjects or British
[00:10:36] citizens abroad, but during
[00:10:40] the cold war they chose to become instruments of state
[00:10:44] policy and their audience therefore
[00:10:48] changed and from domestic it became
[00:10:50] international and now of course the...
[00:10:55] story goes that because the
[00:10:58] domestic demand and audience and market is
[00:11:01] shrinking then you they need new ones, money is
[00:11:05] tied so they are looking at India as a market etc etc.
[00:11:09] but that's really that's i mean it's
[00:11:13] fine with me, mean i don't care, but i think at
[00:11:17] some point foreign media needs to also
[00:11:20] revisit its
[00:11:22] own. ethical standards,
[00:11:26] it's, I won't say morals, but at least ethical standards
[00:11:29] and how each day they violate
[00:11:33] them, and how it ultimately hurts their own
[00:11:37] credibility, even back home, nobody takes the New York Times
[00:11:40] seriously, nobody takes BBC seriously,
[00:11:44] nobody takes the Washington Post seriously, look at where are these
[00:11:47] papers, we have RT as an alt media, now
[00:11:51] I have a question there, India's long complain
[00:11:55] about the coverage it gets in in the western
[00:11:59] media, so the UK
[00:12:03] has a BBC, Russia has RT,
[00:12:06] Australia has ABC, why
[00:12:10] doesn't India have a platform, of course there is DD,
[00:12:13] but not to level where India's voice can be
[00:12:17] heard a global stage,
[00:12:19] Doordarshan Prasad Bharti is an
[00:12:23] autonomous body to be f functioning its own,
[00:12:27] but the fact that it is a state
[00:12:30] broadcaster remains a
[00:12:33] reality. in our idea of concept of a
[00:12:37] state broadcaster, the purposes of state
[00:12:41] broadcasting, the ideal audience for state
[00:12:44] broadcasting and how to use
[00:12:47] these instruments remain
[00:12:50] defined in a certain manner, those
[00:12:54] definitions. are the traditional conservative
[00:12:57] definitions of of any state
[00:13:00] broadcaster, but as I said, during the cold
[00:13:04] war, government started using their state
[00:13:07] broadcasters, all these people then became a
[00:13:11] part the cold war
[00:13:14] information system, and therefore their audience
[00:13:18] changed from the local to the
[00:13:21] foreign, and increasingly they started... focusing
[00:13:25] on that because there was greater
[00:13:28] individual interest in that, it was much more
[00:13:32] fun going and doing a story on on the Vatican
[00:13:36] city by by by by
[00:13:39] placing condomes over there and saying see this is the
[00:13:43] real,
[00:13:44] and then you get found out and you have egg on your face, but nothing
[00:13:47] happens. I don't think Doordarshan would ever want to do it, should it
[00:13:51] be doing it? I think yes, Doordarshan. and all
[00:13:55] India radio should should break free
[00:13:59] of those traditions. when operations sindur happen,
[00:14:03] India had to send delegations to different parts the world to just
[00:14:07] conway what India's perspective and point
[00:14:11] of you was, if there was dd around the world and if people could just switch
[00:14:14] on and heard India's perspective,
[00:14:18] would that not make things like much easier? yes,
[00:14:22] but also no. my journey begins. 1982 and
[00:14:26] I have seen the fashioning and refashioning the
[00:14:30] world information order on how the white
[00:14:33] west controls the information order
[00:14:37] and there is inbuilt bias
[00:14:41] in it, a white man's paper
[00:14:45] will always carry greater cloud than a black
[00:14:48] man's paper or a brown man's paper, that's a
[00:14:52] fact even today, even today it would get.
[00:14:57] That's my question,
[00:14:58] why doesn't India do something about it? I think I think it is happening
[00:15:02] now, and I
[00:15:04] think younger journalists are
[00:15:08] now, they feel more confident, maybe my generation
[00:15:12] was not that confident of of being able to take them
[00:15:15] on, but today they are, you think the gensies will
[00:15:19] take them on? No, no, not even genzies, I
[00:15:22] mean, "you are
[00:15:26] there, everything doesn't have to devolve
[00:15:29] to gens, to gens, I get it, I mean, they will at best be reinventing the
[00:15:33] wheel, but the wheel is being invented right
[00:15:37] now, the kind of
[00:15:40] stuff which you are doing, the kind of stuff
[00:15:44] which other journalists are doing, and
[00:15:48] I think young women have
[00:15:52] shown greater courage in doing
[00:15:55] this, but what about the other side, journalists in India, they
[00:15:59] face UAPA, YouTubers have faced
[00:16:03] Firs, then there are x accounts being withheld on government
[00:16:07] order. was do you think that criticism the
[00:16:10] government is increasingly being mistaken for being
[00:16:14] anti-national? this is a common
[00:16:17] misperception.
[00:16:20] a, i don't think you can show
[00:16:24] me buring the odd case where
[00:16:28] the union government, the central
[00:16:31] government has actually filed cases
[00:16:35] against journalists.
[00:16:38] whether under any part the law,
[00:16:42] everybody says that, oh, there is
[00:16:46] a squeeze on free press, there is a squeeze
[00:16:49] on free speech that that the press
[00:16:53] is being throttled, expression is
[00:16:57] being throttled, speech is being throttled, and you are saying
[00:17:01] all that sitting here in Delhi or in
[00:17:05] India fearlessly with... without any fear
[00:17:08] of any government action
[00:17:12] for saying this, man, you don't know what it meant,
[00:17:16] what what censorship means under Indian law,
[00:17:19] yeah, under Indian law, under Indian
[00:17:23] constitution, what censorship really means like,
[00:17:26] and my generation remembers it from the emergency
[00:17:30] years, what do you think the increasing presence of RT in
[00:17:34] the region, do you think it balances the western?
[00:17:37] media coverage of South Asia to a certain
[00:17:40] extent? first of all, i think RT should
[00:17:44] drop the use the term south asia, that is purely a
[00:17:48] state department coinage, us state department
[00:17:52] coinage, you should not use, what should rt use then? indian
[00:17:56] subcontinent or whatever, india, pakistan, bangladesh or whatever, but
[00:17:59] not the south asia bunk, while RT should do what
[00:18:03] is right in terms of
[00:18:07] journalistic ethics and values, i think so long as you
[00:18:11] avoid driving agenda, it
[00:18:15] should it should go, mean and and please don't fall into this
[00:18:19] trap, white west media has this preachy
[00:18:23] pontificating attitude, he doesn't do that,
[00:18:26] so we know the best on how to run a democracy, we know
[00:18:30] how best to do this, we know how best to do that, i
[00:18:34] think this is hate that,
[00:18:38] being preached to, you and I
[00:18:42] are this is, so we don't like being preached to, not at
[00:18:45] all, so I think that would hold for the
[00:18:48] masses, so you should avoid that. Narendra
[00:18:52] Modi's instagram video was taken down after which India
[00:18:55] summoned representatives of meta, of x, of
[00:18:59] snapchat, what is going any big tech
[00:19:02] platform, whether it is YouTube, whether it
[00:19:05] is Facebook. instagram,
[00:19:09] whatever, they enjoy what is
[00:19:12] called safe harbor protection, that means
[00:19:16] they are protected from penal
[00:19:18] action, for anything that
[00:19:22] appears on their platform,
[00:19:25] provided they have not engineered
[00:19:29] it, provided they have no role in it.
[00:19:32] okay, now when the platform intervenes in this
[00:19:36] manner, this is intervention a country's
[00:19:39] political process and it is
[00:19:42] unacceptable and that is why these platforms were
[00:19:46] summoned by the parliamentary standing committee which is
[00:19:50] headed by Nishikant Dube and I think all them came in
[00:19:54] the trouped in and they said they
[00:19:55] were very sorry that this happened
[00:19:57] it won't happen again etc but rightly they have been told sorry I
[00:20:01] mean this is violation the safe harbor
[00:20:04] clause
[00:20:06] in in the IT act. "you can't just do it and
[00:20:09] say sorry, and and now I think they have
[00:20:12] said that Mark Zuckerberg has to has to offer
[00:20:16] apology, which I think he owes
[00:20:18] to the prime minister, exactly, Nishikant Dube saying that Mark
[00:20:21] Zakkaberg was apology, and this was attempt to
[00:20:25] discredit India, where is this coming from? see, you have
[00:20:29] to understand where it's coming from, the
[00:20:33] whole question is what prevails, does the
[00:20:36] law?" " sovereign law and sovereign rules of
[00:20:40] India prevail or do the board room
[00:20:44] rules these big tech companies
[00:20:46] prevail, so just because Facebook decides
[00:20:50] that this is acceptable or this is not acceptable, does it
[00:20:54] mean that the government of India must also accept it? no,
[00:20:58] okay, it it has to be the other way around. very quick point over
[00:21:02] here, which I would like to make, lot of people, including sadly
[00:21:06] Indians think that we have
[00:21:09] guaranteed absolute
[00:21:12] free speech in this country. we don't,
[00:21:16] we don't have free speech, what we have. is
[00:21:20] conditional speech, people who talk about
[00:21:22] constitutionalism, they wave a copy the
[00:21:26] constitution and say free speech is guaranteed here, please read
[00:21:30] it, my foot, you haven't read it, the first constitution
[00:21:33] amendment in this country was done in the most
[00:21:36] unconstitutional manner, it was done by the constituent
[00:21:40] assembly, not even by an elected parliament, and it
[00:21:44] changed Ambedkar's clause of free speech into
[00:21:48] conditional speech, senior advisor to the Indian ministry of information
[00:21:52] and broadcasting, we recently saw the Indian Prime
[00:21:55] Minister take to Instagram, he recorded that selfie
[00:21:58] video, since then we've seen parliamentarians talk in the
[00:22:02] genzi lingo, what is going
[00:22:06] on, is there are two parts to
[00:22:09] it, one is that you will find many them trying
[00:22:12] to ape the gensy, which
[00:22:16] I find comical, I mean I cannot become a
[00:22:20] part the genzy crowd, i can, i can communicate with
[00:22:24] them, i can be with them, but i cannot be them, of course,
[00:22:28] okay, that's that's an impossibility, then there are
[00:22:31] politicians who think that
[00:22:33] it is good politics to connect with them, and we
[00:22:37] have to connect with them on their terms, i cannot expect
[00:22:41] them to connect with me on my terms, so
[00:22:45] then therefore you have the prime minister shooting his own videos,
[00:22:49] putting it.
[00:22:50] I don't know whether he puts it out also, but he definitely shoots it, I know it for
[00:22:54] fact, he as a smart politician, he realizes that he needs
[00:22:58] to connect with them, and he is at an advantage, look
[00:23:02] man, I mean in 2013 he was using
[00:23:05] google to hold, what were they called now,
[00:23:09] google meets or something, so he was doing all this in
[00:23:13] 20 11, 2012,
[00:23:16] 2013 when Jenzi was not even
[00:23:20] It stap us, so let's not,
[00:23:23] let's not mock him for it, by
[00:23:27] 2029, the next general elections in
[00:23:31] India, nearly 30% the voters will
[00:23:34] be Jenzies, isn't Indian politics
[00:23:38] bound to change because of that then?
[00:23:41] 65% of India's population was
[00:23:45] 65 or 68% was 35 and below, so we are
[00:23:48] talking of
[00:23:49] a of a... demographic profile which was never
[00:23:52] old, so if if of that
[00:23:56] 68%, say half percentage points are
[00:24:00] genzy, then it's a very good, it's i think it's very good that this
[00:24:03] churn is happening, that it brings with it a certain
[00:24:07] freshness, every
[00:24:09] republic
[00:24:12] needs
[00:24:14] regeneration, because otherwise
[00:24:17] republics decay, mean history tells
[00:24:20] us that, so that the best way of regenerating
[00:24:24] republic, of reaffirming
[00:24:27] nationhood of
[00:24:30] reclaiming national
[00:24:32] identity is to have new
[00:24:36] generations of people who
[00:24:39] who are open to change, who think differently, so I would be
[00:24:43] very happy with it. Vladimir Putin is coming to Delhi in
[00:24:47] September for the brick summit and this is going to be his. second visit in less
[00:24:51] than year, each time Mr. Modi and Mr.
[00:24:55] Putin are together, their photographed together, the
[00:24:58] western media has a meltdown,
[00:25:01] why? again, you have to see it, because the cold
[00:25:05] war is over and done with, but that's
[00:25:09] what we think, but for them
[00:25:12] the cold war is still on, so you are either with us or you
[00:25:16] are against us, this kind of a stark choice. which they
[00:25:20] insist on exercising,
[00:25:23] you know, for instance, the coverage the Ukrainian
[00:25:27] war, I'm not going into the rights or wrongs of
[00:25:31] it, but the Russia Ukraine conflict or Ukraine Russia
[00:25:35] conflict, whichever way you want to phrase it is, is not a black
[00:25:39] and white story as the western media would insist it
[00:25:42] is, and again there, you are either with us or you are
[00:25:46] with Russia, that kind of choice make... I
[00:25:50] don't think works anymore and lot of people may not
[00:25:54] want to talk about it, they may not want to get entangled
[00:25:57] with in long debates and discussions over
[00:26:01] it, but just like you know with
[00:26:04] China, the world has learned that it's best not to
[00:26:08] engage a unending debate where you could be debating it till
[00:26:12] the cows come home, it's best to deal with China the way it is,
[00:26:16] and you figure out your own way, your own devices to deal with
[00:26:20] China, so similarly,
[00:26:21] you know, the world will figure out a way and its own
[00:26:25] devices to deal with the west,
[00:26:28] and the white west media at some point
[00:26:32] the... will find its influence declining. my
[00:26:35] last question, both India and Russia, they speak of
[00:26:39] building a multi-polar world. what role can information and
[00:26:43] broadcasting play in turning that vision
[00:26:47] into reality? think a lot of countries
[00:26:51] now believe a multipolar world
[00:26:54] and the south definitely believes in a
[00:26:57] multipolar world, and this belief has
[00:27:01] only gain. in strength and ground
[00:27:04] after
[00:27:07] the covid
[00:27:09] experience when when there was
[00:27:13] lot of extreme bias and and and
[00:27:17] supply chains broke down even
[00:27:20] multilateralism is now a
[00:27:23] discount so what you have instead are
[00:27:27] not grand global treaties but working
[00:27:31] arrangements with between some countries, so
[00:27:35] that is going to gain ground, and the more
[00:27:38] ground it gains, the stronger will
[00:27:42] be the global
[00:27:46] demand for a multilateral world and it will make it
[00:30:23] Russia's investigative committee unpacks the results of its
[00:30:27] probe into Kiev's attempted invasion the Kursk border region
[00:30:31] launched exactly. two years ago, also
[00:30:34] ahead on the program, thousands of migrants, including many children remain in
[00:30:38] suita following last week's mass influx into Spain. We
[00:30:42] examine the political fallout, as the EU demands, Morocco
[00:30:46] police, the very frontier, it
[00:30:48] contests and the devastating
[00:30:51] consequences unleashed by the atomic age is
[00:30:55] remembered as Harashima marks the day the US
[00:30:58] dropped the bomb.