Why India has a 'sliver of time' to seize its chances

"After all, the faster history moves, the more likely is one to get left behind," he writes in an updated edition of his influential book, The Idea of India.

"I do worry. The urgent and immense problems that India faces, make one realise that it has a narrow moment of time and opportunity," Prof Khilnani, author, most recently of Incarnations, which tells the story of the country through 50 remarkable lives over a period of 2,500 years and is the subject of a new BBC Radio 4 series, tells me.

We are sitting in a hotel in Delhi, talking about his new book, India and the world.

"Times are changing fast. Just 15 years ago, we were living in a much more open global economy which was more welcoming and positive. Now we are living in a much more protective climate, economies and polities are turning inwards, there is a rise of nationalistic politics in Europe and the US."

'Volatile world'

Back home, says Prof Khilnani, director of the India Institute at King's College in London, India is facing a formidable youth bulge - every month, a million Indians turn 18, and every year the country needs to provide at least 12 million jobs - and a weakening of institutions, corruption, demagoguery and use of religion in politics.

"We are living in a very volatile world where we have to take long-term decisions under short-term pressures."

So the choices India makes about preserving environment, inclusive growth, welfarism and federalism now will have "enormous consequences" and affect the world "because India's footprint is so big globally".

"If you look at recent history, the real crunch happens in societies which have fared well for a bit, and then plateaued out. If that society has a lot of young people and if you don't have institutional capacity or will to deal with their demands, you are in for social upheaval," says Prof Khilnani.

"So we are not living in a routine historical moment, we are living quite an exceptional moment where the choices we make will have a major bearing on our future."

But don't lose faith, he adds, for India has shown the capacity to handle pressures well.

Remember the pressures and urgency India faced at the time of Independence - the end of World War II, the bloody partition, birth of a nation, religious riots - and "yet, somewhere, there was an ability [among the leaders] to stand back and take a long view".

"We have been there before. That's something we can draw from our history. Our bleak moments have often ended strengthening us."

As evidence he points to the darkest moment in India's history, the 22-month emergency rule in the mid-1970s, when the prime minister Indira Gandhi suspended civil liberties, jailed the opposition and muzzled the media.

"Mrs Gandhi's countermand of democratic principles instilled something important in independent India's public life: it deepened a spirit of dissent, and of civic and legal activism," he writes in Incarnations.

'Not a new moment'

So is India living through a similar period of anxiety now, with concerns over a rising tide of Hindu nationalism, intolerance and challenges to free speech? Is a religious majoritarianism threatening the country's foundational commitment to diversity and pluralism?

"I don't think it is a new moment. We have had periods like this in the last 150 years of our history. It is an ongoing struggle. 

When we are in the midst of it, it often looks as if it is a turning point. But that's very hard for us to judge, to have that historical perspective."

This does not mean, however, that people can be complacent, Prof Khilnani says.

"We have to be engaged in preserving India's plurality with all our energies. At the end of the day, democracy and pluralism are fragile human experiments. And they are also very easy to destroy."

"Getting the balance right between not exaggerating [the threats] but at the same time being not complacent is a question of political judgement."

That is also what his new book seeks to do.

'Strength of diversity'

In a history which is "curiously unpeopled" - usually told through dynasties, epochs, religions and castes - Incarnations profiles Indians who battled in the country's past, an "arena of ferocious contest, its dead heroes continually springing back to life and despatched to the frontlines of equally ferocious contemporary cultural and political battles".

Diversity is India's greatest treasure, he says, and India's complex history riddled with contradictions is not a threat "but something that is enabling".

"It is unlike the standard 19th Century European nationalism, in which diversity is almost a threat, where you want to homogenise, you want a single culture, language, religion. Whereas for India, diversity has made India distinctive and stronger as a national project.

"For me one of the ironies is that some of us in India today think our diversity is disabling and want to go back to a provincial European view of nationalism."

(BBC)