A Conversation with Mr Sanjeev Sanyal—Member, Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India

Interviewed by Prem Ansh Sinha (Editor-in-Chief)

Edited by Manjari Bhargava (Assistant Editor) & Alankrita Singh (Associate Editor) 

Mr Sanjeev Sanyal, a Rhodes scholar and author, is a member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India. He has authored a number of best-selling books, including ‘Revolutionaries: The Other Story of How India Won Its Freedom’ (2023) and ‘ Land of the Seven Rivers: History of India’s Geography’ (2012).

An edited transcript of the interview, as taken on October 4, 2024, is as follows. 

Mr Sanyal, I have been through a lot of your works, and in-person events and lectures as well. The most distinguishing feature has been your emphasis on ancient Indian political philosophy and various other things aligned with it. But, if I am allowed to ask you, there has been a certain gap in contemporary times with respect to this particular area. What do you think has caused this limitation, that we do not have any contemporary literature that could interpret this whole idea very well?

First of all, thanks for coming to the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council. 

The problem that we have in our discourse and our academia is that we have been so totally taken over by Western thought and lineages of thought that we have ended up forgetting that we have our indigenous systems. I am not necessarily saying that our systems are better than somebody else's, but we have our way of thinking about the world, with fairly deep roots. Many of those lineages of thought have had huge impacts on the rest of the world, whether it is in mathematics, in medicine and surgery or many other areas. 

This is also true in the universe of economics, political thought, thinking about governance, and so on. We are arguably the oldest living civilisation in the world, and in this long period of time, not surprisingly, many empires have risen and fallen. Many people have thought about how to govern better. So, the question is, where is this line of thought written about and discussed? Now, people will randomly pull out the Arthashastra by Kautilya and talk about it. But the point is, the Arthashastra clearly mentions that there were many thinkers before Kautilya, and many thinkers after him, but we barely mention any of them: this comes all the way to modern times. The point here is that we have been thinking about governance-type issues for a very long time. It reflects in the Mahabharata and the Ramayana as well. But in the end, the Ramayana and  Mahabharata are not textbooks of governance; they do have discussions, but they have other concerns. But, there were fully formulated lineages or traditions of thinking of governance that have existed in India for a very long time, including going before Kautilya. 

If I may ask you, why do you think we lack a good number of authors or academics writing on this particular area in contemporary times?

You should ask the academics—I have no idea. I have written about it myself; there are lots of interesting things that one can understand by reading Kautilya. Now Kautilya himself, in the beginning of the book, starts by saying, ‘Salutations to the great Rishis, Shukra, and Brihaspati’. In the text, in the first section, he then mentions that many lineages of thought already exist in the world, and then explains what the differences between them are and where he fits in.

If I am allowed to interject, do you not think that there is too much emphasis on Kautilya’s Arthashastra?

There is. First of all, it is unhealthy, because by emphasising just that, you do not know what the context was in which the arguments he was having were. For example, just so that you know, what the school of Brihaspati and the school of Shukra were, who these people were and what their arguments were. Shukra, who was also the guru of the asuras, belonged to the school of thought where ‘dandaniti’ is the most important, that is, the rule of law. So his point was that if you want to avoid ‘matsya nyaya’, which is the law of the fish—anarchy, then a civilisation requires a rule of law. His thinking of governance was entirely driven by a legalist school—there are sets of rules, and governance is about making sure those rules are good rules, and then imposing those rules.

Other people may call this too limited. You also need government intervention—varta—that is what Brihaspati says you need, particularly for economic policies. You need somebody thinking about encouraging industry, you need to think a little bit about how to build infrastructure, all these kinds of policy issues, that is varta. Then Kautilya says this is not good enough, you also need to have a political philosophy, and to think about the cultural context. He says, you need to think about anvikshiki and trayi (anvikshiki is a philosophy, trayi is a cultural context). Today, we have philosophies which provide a framework of thinking about laws; the laws do not exist in a vacuum. 

To decide what laws and policies you need, some philosophy of the world is required. Even if you agree on policy, laws, and philosophy, the cultural context in which you apply them also matters. Kautilya says you need to learn all of these things, you need to have a view on how to make laws, on policy. You need an economic philosophy of some sort or a general philosophy, and a philosophical frame on governance. And then you need to know which cultural context you are applying all of this in; all of these are important. The Brihaspati school, which predates it, agrees with Shukra's need for law, but states that we also need policy. Manu says, we all, in addition, require cultural context: that is the Manu school. Then, of course, Kautilya himself says you need all four. It does not end with Kautilya; there are later scholars like Kamandak. Kautilya, is functioning in the Mauryan period, is one of the founders, better known as Chanakya, along with Chandragupta Maurya. We do not know the extent to which his book of theory was actually used to run the empire; presumably, some of it did inform his ideas of governance in practical terms. But then, many centuries later, you have Kamandak, who is in the Gupta period. An important thing for one to understand is that not everybody agrees on everything. For example, Kautilya discusses many things in his book that I disagree with. For example, Kautilya was against prohibition; he was against banning many things that we consider social bads, he was much more into either taxing them or regulating them. There is a section on regulating prostitution, and an entire section on taxing and regulating alcohol. He would not have approved prohibition, for example, because he would have said: one, you are losing a source of income, and people are anyway going to do all of these things, so you might as well regulate them in some sensible fashion. Similarly, he was not a welfarist; he was extremely suspicious of government officials. Those who do not read Kautilya seriously and just flick through will tell you that he encouraged spying. Who are these spies spying on—either they are spying on foreign powers, or they are spying on government officials, because Kautilya says that just like a fish swimming in the water, you cannot tell how much water it is drinking, in the same way, you cannot tell how much money a government official is skimming. He continuously talks about the need for retaining strict control over government officials. He is a big believer in a strong but limited state.  

Sir, if I may ask you here, you write in most of your writings that you believe that a ‘Kautilyan India’ should be a ‘Kautilyan Republic’ instead of an ‘Ashokan Republic’.  Could you please expand on that? Do you think it is realistically possible in a democracy like India?

You decide whether it is a good idea or a bad idea. I will tell you what the Kautilyan Republic would be like. First of all, Kautilya was not a libertarian, so he believed in a state—strong state—he was just suspicious of government officials getting involved in too many things. A Kautilyan state will not have a sense of humour about things like internal and external security, certain kinds of infrastructure being built—for all those kinds of things, the government is there. However, he would be very suspicious of expanding the state in the name of welfarism. The state does have some role to play in certain kinds of welfare, for example, helping people after a natural disaster, which he would consider as being a legitimate role of the state. But he would be very suspicious of a nanny state, because his view would be that the moment you allow the government to expand there, the officials are going to skim.

How do you define a nanny state, sir?

A state where everything you do, the state is telling you what to do. Basically, every kind of dole, some kind of freebies—clearly stuff that Chanakya would have been extremely suspicious of.

How do you maintain that balance in federalism in a Kautilyan state?

He is making his case. It is a book of theory—the point being made is that a Kautilyan state would be very clear that the state exists for doing certain things, it is a contract with the citizens, and the state does not have any business crossing that threshold. This is very different from how, for example, today's Indian state has become, although even this is a shrunk version of what it used to be. The state, otherwise, would like to tell you this is good for you and bad for you; it will try to control people's lives and nanny them, whereas Kautilya would have found that extremely uncomfortable. 

Unfortunately, just two generations after him, in his grandkids, Ashoka turned up with an opposite view. He starts by saying that I am trusting my state, my people, to the care of my rajukas and dharmamahamatras, who will look after the people in the same way as a mother hands over her child to a vet nurse. It is a nanny state. Then you read Ashoka’s edicts, he is going on about how you should not eat some food on some day, you shall not castrate a bull on such day of Chaturmasi and such day of Tisa. Kautilya would have been shocked—how does the bull care which day he is getting castrated! The point is that he would have said, why are you giving these powers to dharmamahamatras—translated to modern terms, it is a religious police, going around teaching people to love their parents. I love my parents or do not love my parents, why is a government official getting involved—see the interference. Now you come to modern times and you end up with this overextended Nehruvian state, which likes telling people what they should and should not do. It is one thing up to a point, wearing safety belts, maybe. Up to that point, it is okay, those kinds of rules are fine—traffic rules—but should it get involved in what you eat, what you wear, or, for that matter, building codes—you look at our building codes, you will be shocked. It tells you exactly how big your post room should be or your prayer room should be. The building code should care whether or not my building stays up safely, after that whether I want a large prayer room or a small prayer room—what is your problem?

You have written a book on the Indian Ocean and the maritime history of the Indian Ocean. Former India's ambassador to China, Mr KM Panikkar, in his very famous book ‘India and the Indian Ocean’, writes how India has always been a seafaring nation, but this deteriorated during the Mughal period, and the British actually did not care about it because the entire Indian Ocean was the playground or a lake. So, with the Chinese ambition of the Strings of Pearls, where they are wishing to establish a range of ports and various other places for trade and commerce—there is even a military base in Djibouti—how is India responding to it? Is this a neglect of the Indian Ocean once again, or are we moving forward?

No, for the very first time, we are finally thinking of the Indian Ocean. We have not controlled the Indian Ocean for hundreds of years, and nobody seemed to care. The navy was a stepchild of the military till very recently. In 1971, they did play a role, but before that, in the other two wars, they did not. By and large, it was the smallest of our armed forces. Similarly, if you look at the Merchant Navy and so on, it is very small; something like 90 per cent of all our goods are carried by foreign vessels. 

Are you trying to say that we are catching up with the pace, sir?

No. We are playing below our size, punching well below our weight. Even ignoring China, we need to invest in merchantry, we need to invest in the navy, and we need to invest in big ports. But the good news is, for the first time, we are beginning to do this. Just now, a major port has been announced in Vadhavan, just north of Mumbai. It will be India's largest port, and, for the first time, we are thinking in terms of a ‘Chinese scale’ port. For the first time, you are seeing the Indian Navy operating, for example, off the coast of Somalia and Yemen; to an extent, the Red Sea is functioning because of the Indian Navy's operations. 

What you are trying to say, sir, is that when we are thinking of the Indian Ocean, when we are thinking of a strategy in security, we should be thinking independently of what China is doing? 

We should not; what I am trying to say is that we can begin worrying about China only after we have punched at least to our weight. We do not need China to understand that we need to have more ships in the Merchant Navy, that more of our containers need to be owned by Indian owners and shipping lines. We need to build our shipping capabilities irrespective of China. Additionally, you also have to worry about China, but let us get to the point where we are at least punching our weight. 

You have been one of the strongest advocates for rewriting history. What do you think is the right approach to it, given that, for instance, Dr Meenakshi Jain wrote a certain aspect of the NCERT history during the Vajpayee era, but it got removed when the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) came to power again. 

One of the major problems, history writing—in many areas, social sciences also—unfortunately, worldwide—but that has also happened in India—has been taken over by people of a certain ideology. They have ethnically cleansed academia of pretty much anybody who did not agree with them. Till the 1950s, you had multiple views of history; you had people like RC Majumdar and so on, they were all weaned, literally evicted out of the architecture of our academic thinking. Of course, this did not just happen in history writing; it happened in economics, it happened in sociology and to some extent has happened worldwide. That certain left-leaning ideology has basically captured all discussions of academia. 

Now, if you want to build an alternative, you have to, unfortunately—or fortunately, maybe—go back and relook at the primary evidence. There is no escaping going around the primary evidence and history, as any other subject has got lots of new evidence, it keeps appearing, you have to keep updating this stuff. Unfortunately, we are still stuck with absurd colonial era ideas, which are then perpetuated by these left-wing Marxist historians for their agendas. They have created and skewed a lot of the conversation in a particular way. 

You need people who start afresh, look at primary evidence and can interpret it. I will just give you one example—the entire project of the Nehruvian left, different kinds of left have done different kinds of distortions. The Nehruvian left's distortion is that they deliberately edited out of the conversation the role played by the violent revolution against the British. Only one branch, not even all branches, but one branch of the Congress party is given credit for giving us independence. There were many others, people within the Congress, people outside the Congress. Particularly, the role of the revolutionaries was slowly and slightly edited out, till we reached a point where you got the impression that there was the occasional something that maybe a Bhagat Singh or a Subhash Bose did, but it did not really add up to very much and they did not know each other, that it was a random act—totally wrong. There was a well-organised movement; all these people knew each other, and they were trying to do something. They had clear views, they had literature, they had all kinds of things, and a lot of the conversation was driven by what these people were doing. 

I think I was surprised when I saw how the ‘First War of Independence’ by VD Savarkar had been reprinted again and again by various people, right up to Bhagat Singh and Subhash Chandra Bose. 

Right—all of these people are reading all of this (literature). The few people who have survived that conversation (regarding the role of revolutionaries in the national movement) are also very instructive. Because the communists, for example, had very little role in our freedom struggle. They went and plucked Bhagat Singh out of the revolutionary movement and so you only have Bhagat Singh. Now, Bhagat Singh was actually hanged with two other people. Why do we not hear so much about Sukhdev and Rajguru? They were hanged on the same day for exactly the same reason, but you only hear about Bhagat Singh. Because, out of all these revolutionaries, he alone was a communist. Then later on, you get the impression that maybe all these revolutionaries were communist—no, they were not. Today, you would actually call them Hindu nationalists; the term did not exist then, but the point of the matter is that Rajguru would today be branded a Hindu nationalist. 

Are you claiming that Nehruvian historians have actually distorted history?

No, they deliberately did it because they wanted to play up one branch of the Congress, of course, culminating in Nehru himself.  

You say that Bhagat Singh was actually plucked out of it, but when we read Modern History of India by Bipin Chandra, we see that he terms Bhagat Singh as a ‘revolutionary terrorist’.

First of all, pull one person out, isolate him from the wider movement, so that only this guy is the one who is built up, and then he is called a revolutionary terrorist; he is also diminished. You get no sense that there is a wider movement—what their agendas are, how many people are there, what they are saying, what their literature is—you get no sense of it. You get the impression that basically, Gandhi ji gently requested the British to leave, and they politely left.

Sir, what do you think is the right way to go about rewriting history?

Just go and look at the original texts, look at the newspapers of that time, at the conversations of that time, all this is recent history, some people alive even today have witnessed that history. It was not such a long time ago that I would have had to dig up some archaeological site in Harappa and figure it out; this is all there—today's history. Look at the way it has been distorted. 

In fact, what is shocking is how it was deliberately tried to be erased. Cellular Jail is a sacred site; it was almost entirely pulled down. The little bit of it that you see today is what was left, which did not somehow get demolished, because there were a lot of protests against it. But in other places, the protests happened, and they demolished it completely, like Maulana Azad Medical College, built on the site of the Delhi Jail.  

Sir, I have another question for you. There was some evidence doing the rounds on social media—of course, there is primary evidence—that there was a massacre of Chitpavan Brahmins after the assassination of MK Gandhi. So how do you think these things went out of the mainstream? How did people not talk about it?

Those who edited them out should be addressing this concern. At least we talk about the 1984 Sikh riots. Why do we not talk about the Brahmin riots of Maharashtra of 1948, which were just as violent: just as many people got killed, tens of thousands of houses got burnt down, women got raped, and all kinds of nasty things happened. We do not talk about it at all, literal silence

But, I think, that is very convenient for the students as well. Why would a student wishing to pursue a career in academia want to take this particular side?

No, that is why the search for truth is important. If academia is not about the search for truth but-

I mean, there are greater benefits of being on the left. 

No, it is basically a part of  ‘citation rackets’ where they give each other promotions and awards. So those citation rackets are the problem. Now, unfortunately, the citation racket culture has spread to the natural sciences also, and this is not an Indian problem; this is happening globally as well. If you do not subscribe to the view that there is no biological difference between a man and a woman, you can get into trouble in American academia.  

But there is no conservative movement.

Then maybe you create one. But the point of the matter is that people have to at least speak up against the absurdity. If they are careerists who want to do it, fine, that is their thing. But if you are saying academia is about pushing the realm of knowledge, then let us be clear: people have to stand up and speak the truth. If you want to just be a careerist, do your PhD, do your postdoc, and quote each other’s work. 

Even in contemporary times, we see that when authors like Arun Shourie tried writing on these things, they were actually sidelined later in their careers.

Of course, he faced a lot of problems, but he stood up against them. It requires people with some courage. That is why you need people who will stand up to fallacy and misrepresentation. So, the problem is that, and the first point is to agree that a large part of what is taught in universities is nonsense, particularly in the social sciences. 

I happened to have been in university at the time that the Berlin Wall fell, and our own economy collapsed, and we had to do liberalisation and reforms. Now think about the sheer absurdity that I was faced with—in the classroom, I was being taught how wonderfully successful the five-year plans were. Nationalisation was such a wonderful idea. Meanwhile, in the newspaper, I could read that the whole place was collapsing. Manmohan Singh stood there and announced that we are finally going to liberalise the economy. But what is even more absurd is now, thirty years later, the liberalised system has clearly outperformed the pre-liberalisation world; there is no comparison between the two worlds. If you do not agree with me, go and look at Shastri Bhavan, great construction of that period, wander around its corridors, you will understand what socialism is. 

Brutalist architecture.

Not just brutalist architecture, the general stench, you will see the whole mindset. Now we all know that thirty years of liberalisation have been good for India, yet, in your textbooks and economics, you read them, even today, you will hear substantial amounts of it as how wonderful the five-year plans were! I am sorry, but I lived through those five-year plans; they were indefensible! Unbelievable corruption, and much of the corruption that happens even today is because of rules and regulations written during that period. 

The last question is that there is a very common lament when it comes to students of history and political science, that a lot of historiography and even archaeological discoveries were made during the British period, and we could not achieve any remarkable feat post-Independence.

The good news is that in recent times, we have finally begun to do archaeology again. Up to the 50s, interestingly, we were doing some new archaeology; there were people like BB Lal, for example, who went and dug up all the Mahabharata sites, and then it was thought that people like BB Lal were digging up inconvenient things, so the Archaeological Survey of India’s (ASI)  budget was slashed. Recently, in the last few years, we have begun to go back to archaeology, putting some more money into these things. For example, Rakhigarhi is being dug; we had the Sanauli digs where we finally found chariots. Similarly, Humayun’s Tomb, look at how beautifully it has been done up now; there is a really nice museum. You should visit it. Some effort is being put into all of this again, and we are going to convert the North block and South block into the National Museum.  

Ends.