Refreshing! Someone calmly cutting through the superficial labels of left/right, Islam/Christianity - to diagnose our predicament as a reaction to being left behind in this race for "modernity" - and for exposing this version of "modernity" as a false, destructive, pathological ideal that it is. Must read him! Thanks Berkley Center and the interviewer for a brilliant conversation!
I read this book and some of his previous books as well. He is to be admired for his intellect, not denigrated. Just reading the comments, I get the impression that people like to post comments after watching a fraction of the video. Age of Anger is a difficult book to read. It is dense with detail and ideas which are uncomfortable but thought provoking. Mishra's reference to India, Gandhi, Modi or Savarkar are very small part of the book. The European especially German, Italian and Russian intellectuals have propagated ideas about resentments, fascism, anarchy. Asian and African countries sent their bright young men to be educated to London, Paris and Berlin for two hundred years. So the ideas they brought back caused revolutions, anarchy and violence. Mishra provides a framework to understand it.
'Self-hating' is a label' applied too quickly to persons who care to look at their own race, country or culture. How do we reform or improve a situation if all we look for a empty platitudes about how great Indian (read Hindu) civilization is?
Vinod Puri: I am quite certain that, at least from the Asian experience, the students who return home from Western capitals with their university degrees are not consumed with ideas of revolutions, anarchy and violence and the motivations to carry these out. Rather, I would argue, the return romanced by ideas of "getting ahead" in their chase for wealth and perhaps power if not influence to further their accumulation motives.
Pankaj Mishra is an honest intellectual, fearless opinion-maker and a masterful writer and his latest novel just reaffirms this. For all those inarticulate and trifling Modi Bhakts who like to heap petty insults on Pankaj , I would highly recommend reading his widely-quoted and acclaimed column in the New York Times: 'A Malign Incompetence of Britain's Ruling Class'. A taste of his deep intellect, sharp wit and intellectual honesty can be found there.
Pankaj is a keen and empathetic observer. A glance through his 'Butter Chicken in Ludhiana' demonstrates his singular approach to the subject he undertakes to investigate primarily through observation, experience, reflection, and high-risk flânerie that borders on cautious stalking of the frisky kitten to the covert cattery. I lent the book to an avid reader who lent it to an addictive reader who lent it to his girl friend....I had to buy another copy. Pankaj's trenchant comments are a byproduct of not only analysis but synthesis also. More often than not he removes his overflowing head to write with the heart. Few historians would collate their conclusions with supporting pathologies from the domain of literature. Balzac, George Eliot, Dostoevsky, Henry James, Rohinton Mistry and sundry philosophers provide more than a modicum of grist to his mill. The Devil is able to corrupt Judas because his chanting of the Lord's prayer has never been perfunctorily off-key. May his stylus continue to scratch on the parchment till the crack of dawn. The world needs intellectuals who can speak truth to brute power.
thank you so much Pankaj Mishra who brings Gandhi into acedemic discourse again . now a days Indian acedmia is suffering from the ignorance of Indian tradition thinking.
Gandhi is a minor philosopher , How about Kapila, Gautama, Nagasena or Sanklara. The poverty of Indian modernty is its acceptence of the Abrahamaic world of Which Gandhi is a part
It is good to see that the life of the mind is still possible in America,,,I had thought the language so debased,,the abuse so virulent,,the voices so shrill,,that nothing was possible, Good to see too that fine minds from abroad can still be recognised and invited to speak,,,that the values of Mumford Trilling Alinsky Harrington Merton Howe Hofstadter Boorstin are still cherished These thinkers would have understood Mishra,,,because most of them were the sons of immigrant Jews,,,who knew about empire exile and suffering,They are all dead now,,,,,and their vision of America dead,,,and no thinkers of that quality alive.I doubt that America can survive its present intellectual squalor,,,its spiritual impoverishment,,,but with quiet intelligent conversations like this one at Berkly Centre there is some hope
Just read his NYRB review of Jordan Peterson's book... an eye opener but flawed. The article takes a shot at his long term friendship with an Indigenous artist.. that was a low blow and beneath any writer. The rest of the article is a fair criticism of Peterson's position and Peterson's historical in-uniqueness as a unwitting heralder of a kind of change that they did not anticipate or invite. There were uncomfortable comparison's of others with striking similar fascinations with myth, masculinity and disillusionment of liberal failures, compassion as a potential flaw (or vice) and a return to the eternal verities that pre-dated all the nonsense. Similar writers appeared in history that seemed to stoke all the wrong people (like in Romania) to totalitarianism and a return to mythic wisdom. (eg. Teutonic Knights of the Nazis, Order of the Black Swan of Knights in Germany or Schwarze Schwan (SS) in Germany). Umberto Eco's list for Fascist foundational markers come close to Peterson's positions. #10 - Contempt for the weak #13. Selective populism. “There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.” #7 - the followers must feel besieged. An obsession with a plot #12- Masculinity and a fascination with non-standard sexuality. #6 - "One of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.”. Article was an eye opener even thought I thought the use of the term "noble savage" was real plebeian ignorance on an order I wouldn't attribute to a 50 year old man but understandable if a guy was spending most of his time hanging with undergrads and quoting Rousseau to get laid. But you have to also understand, Peterson is going after a very particular group with a very specific brand of "burn it down" ideology who also make the grade on some of Eco's warning markers. The writer seems to ignore this entirely. He also doesn't give his view on this ideology (but leans toward saying it is OK and without flaw by his silence.) Or on things like "safe rooms", language policing, Title 9 claims in the US, and the absolute authoritarian fear this ideology has struck into the heart of academia. So on the whole, he does not disclose his position on a very critical element in Peterson's arguments and this I think undermines any good points he might make and with the personal attack on Peterson's relationship with Joseph Clarke, that he may have squandered them in a biased attack and associated them in the future with irrational bias by bad actors so as to not ever be read by those who need to. It is, therefore, technically, on the whole an incomplete critique and does not disclose any bias or properly address the key elements of his opponents arguments. So I think anyone who reads this should consider it a "swipe" , focusing purposefully on surface elements and possibly phrases out of context to satisfy a personal feeling of anger. It started well but the bias (to keep his job in Cambridge) can be seen as a polluting influence that possibly takes it out of serious consideration.
Niall Ferguson: So why do I think the West came to dominate the Rest economically, geopolitically and even culturally between the 1500s and the 1970s? In Civilization, I argue that besides the familiar, ugly methods of expropriation and enslavement - employed by all empires through the ages - there were novelties, not all of them pernicious. One of these was the scientific method. Another was the rule of law, under which, among other things, the freedom of the press does not extend to defamation. www.spectator.co.uk/2011/12/on-being-called-a-racist/ Pankaj Mishra writes: Niall Ferguson does not, alas, satisfactorily embody the ‘novelties’ - ‘scientific method’ and ‘rule of law’ - that he insists were the West’s gifts to the ‘Rest’. He seeks to mitigate the crimes of his beloved Western empires - what he calls ‘ugly methods of expropriation and enslavement’ - by also implicating ‘non-Western’ empires in them Consider the rule of Law and the scientific method was both violated with the 9/11/2001 false flag event and its socalled investigation by american NIST www1.ae911truth.org/en/evidence.html It's no wonder that the anger felt in the western world with Trumpism is natural. Donald Trump in 9/11/2001 believed the World Trade Center could have been brought down by “bombs that exploded simultaneously” ruclips.net/video/PcKlPhFIE7w/видео.html
this guy is a falsificator of history. Through his idealism he has negated the genocide of the native Americans implicitely admiring Cortes, and the massacres by Ghazni and Aurungzeb.. The MCCauley education is too thorough. Like Aristotle he can spew off any venom and expect others to believe it. He is a regular at New York Times . This paper is a raectionary tool of imperialism that Mishra serves
Arun Jetli: You throw nasty labels around like confetti. Bear in mind Mishra does not write a history of the world in one volume. Nor can anybody. It's fair enough that he starts his discussion and analysis from the position of idealism and although he deals with the ideas propagated by the political elites of the countries he examines, those ideas -- if you read carefully -- do resonate with historical and contemporary realities found on the ground. I hope you're not an anti-intellectual. Don't attack the messenger, as you seem prone to do, but attack the message.
great ideas of modern west..... and do the so called modern ideas include colonialism and other things which they did for centuries around the world...
Muslims colonized India for 800 years through genocide, rape, torture, vandalism, desecration, et al. To contend that Hindu nationalists = Fascism that blindly hate Muslims in 2017, after centuries of genuflection, accommodation, grudging cooperation, and often times real empathy for the deranged oppressor, is one of the most bigoted and vile summations of what has happened in the India over the last 1000 years. Pankaj Mishra succeeds in his critiques in many spheres, but fails miserably when it comes to Hindu-Muslims relations. Islam is the single most destructive ideology and force in India has confronted in all its existence.
1.3 bn voted for modi...and you think that with your made up accent you can disgrace the PM sitting in the uk...wish you were here in india and on the road talking to people...
Right- so this guy spends a lifetime bashing Hindus, yet goes onto say that there is we should not associate terrorism with a religion. Can someone explain who made him the thekedaar of Islam? Why are you ascribing Nazi ideologies to Hindu nationalists....just call them thugs or nationalists or just Indian nazis. Why ascribe and elevate them to Hinduism as well? He has made a career out of bashing Hindus and hinduism. Any hindu who demands even an iota of space in India, you brand him Hindu nationalist, RSS-wadi etc etc etc. I don't like the BJP and actually voted Congress last election, will probably vote for Congress the next time too, but every single time you try to brush away valid Hindu fears about conversion, better temple facilities etc you're branded a bhakt. On the other hand genuine problems with Islam and their religion are brushed away like this chap does. If you are going to be secular, apply an even handed approach to ALL religions. If a Hindu tries to proselytise, he's branded a nationalist. If a Christain/Muslim tries to proselytise...you'd claim oh it's part of his religion.
Refreshing! Someone calmly cutting through the superficial labels of left/right, Islam/Christianity - to diagnose our predicament as a reaction to being left behind in this race for "modernity" - and for exposing this version of "modernity" as a false, destructive, pathological ideal that it is. Must read him! Thanks Berkley Center and the interviewer for a brilliant conversation!
I read this book and some of his previous books as well. He is to be admired for his intellect, not denigrated. Just reading the comments, I get the impression that people like to post comments after watching a fraction of the video. Age of Anger is a difficult book to read. It is dense with detail and ideas which are uncomfortable but thought provoking. Mishra's reference to India, Gandhi, Modi or Savarkar are very small part of the book. The European especially German, Italian and Russian intellectuals have propagated ideas about resentments, fascism, anarchy. Asian and African countries sent their bright young men to be educated to London, Paris and Berlin for two hundred years. So the ideas they brought back caused revolutions, anarchy and violence. Mishra provides a framework to understand it.
I have only read his columns in NY times and so a self hating man who never produces a substatntive argument , only labels and attacks opponenets
'Self-hating' is a label' applied too quickly to persons who care to look at their own race, country or culture. How do we reform or improve a situation if all we look for a empty platitudes about how great Indian (read Hindu) civilization is?
Vinod Puri: I am quite certain that, at least from the Asian experience, the students who return home from Western capitals with their university degrees are not consumed with ideas of revolutions, anarchy and violence and the motivations to carry these out. Rather, I would argue, the return romanced by ideas of "getting ahead" in their chase for wealth and perhaps power if not influence to further their accumulation motives.
Pankaj Mishra is an honest intellectual, fearless opinion-maker and a masterful writer and his latest novel just reaffirms this. For all those inarticulate and trifling Modi Bhakts who like to heap petty insults on Pankaj , I would highly recommend reading his widely-quoted and acclaimed column in the New York Times: 'A Malign Incompetence of Britain's Ruling Class'. A taste of his deep intellect, sharp wit and intellectual honesty can be found there.
Pankaj is a keen and empathetic observer. A glance through his 'Butter Chicken in Ludhiana' demonstrates his singular approach to the subject he undertakes to investigate primarily through observation, experience, reflection, and high-risk flânerie that borders on cautious stalking of the frisky kitten to the covert cattery. I lent the book to an avid reader who lent it to an addictive reader who lent it to his girl friend....I had to buy another copy.
Pankaj's trenchant comments are a byproduct of not only analysis but synthesis also. More often than not he removes his overflowing head to write with the heart. Few historians would collate their conclusions with supporting pathologies from the domain of literature. Balzac, George Eliot, Dostoevsky, Henry James, Rohinton Mistry and sundry philosophers provide more than a modicum of grist to his mill.
The Devil is able to corrupt Judas because his chanting of the Lord's prayer has never been perfunctorily off-key. May his stylus continue to scratch on the parchment till the crack of dawn. The world needs intellectuals who can speak truth to brute power.
@Vishwanath Natarajan Well, that's the whole point of this freakin talk, why base your being on this imitation of West.
thank you so much Pankaj Mishra who brings Gandhi into acedemic discourse again . now a days Indian acedmia is suffering from the ignorance of Indian tradition thinking.
Gandhi is a minor philosopher , How about Kapila, Gautama, Nagasena or Sanklara. The poverty of Indian modernty is its acceptence of the Abrahamaic world of Which Gandhi is a part
I particularly liked Mishra's answer to the last question.
It is good to see that the life of the mind is still possible in America,,,I had thought the language so debased,,the abuse so virulent,,the voices so shrill,,that nothing was possible, Good to see too that fine minds from abroad can still be recognised and invited to speak,,,that the values of Mumford Trilling Alinsky Harrington Merton Howe Hofstadter Boorstin are still cherished These thinkers would have understood Mishra,,,because most of them were the sons of immigrant Jews,,,who knew about empire exile and suffering,They are all dead now,,,,,and their vision of America dead,,,and no thinkers of that quality alive.I doubt that America can survive its present intellectual squalor,,,its spiritual impoverishment,,,but with quiet intelligent conversations like this one at Berkly Centre there is some hope
Just read his NYRB review of Jordan Peterson's book... an eye opener but flawed. The article takes a shot at his long term friendship with an Indigenous artist.. that was a low blow and beneath any writer. The rest of the article is a fair criticism of Peterson's position and Peterson's historical in-uniqueness as a unwitting heralder of a kind of change that they did not anticipate or invite. There were uncomfortable comparison's of others with striking similar fascinations with myth, masculinity and disillusionment of liberal failures, compassion as a potential flaw (or vice) and a return to the eternal verities that pre-dated all the nonsense. Similar writers appeared in history that seemed to stoke all the wrong people (like in Romania) to totalitarianism and a return to mythic wisdom. (eg. Teutonic Knights of the Nazis, Order of the Black Swan of Knights in Germany or Schwarze Schwan (SS) in Germany). Umberto Eco's list for Fascist foundational markers come close to Peterson's positions. #10 - Contempt for the weak #13. Selective populism. “There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.” #7 - the followers must feel besieged. An obsession with a plot #12- Masculinity and a fascination with non-standard sexuality. #6 - "One of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.”. Article was an eye opener even thought I thought the use of the term "noble savage" was real plebeian ignorance on an order I wouldn't attribute to a 50 year old man but understandable if a guy was spending most of his time hanging with undergrads and quoting Rousseau to get laid. But you have to also understand, Peterson is going after a very particular group with a very specific brand of "burn it down" ideology who also make the grade on some of Eco's warning markers. The writer seems to ignore this entirely. He also doesn't give his view on this ideology (but leans toward saying it is OK and without flaw by his silence.) Or on things like "safe rooms", language policing, Title 9 claims in the US, and the absolute authoritarian fear this ideology has struck into the heart of academia. So on the whole, he does not disclose his position on a very critical element in Peterson's arguments and this I think undermines any good points he might make and with the personal attack on Peterson's relationship with Joseph Clarke, that he may have squandered them in a biased attack and associated them in the future with irrational bias by bad actors so as to not ever be read by those who need to. It is, therefore, technically, on the whole an incomplete critique and does not disclose any bias or properly address the key elements of his opponents arguments. So I think anyone who reads this should consider it a "swipe" , focusing purposefully on surface elements and possibly phrases out of context to satisfy a personal feeling of anger. It started well but the bias (to keep his job in Cambridge) can be seen as a polluting influence that possibly takes it out of serious consideration.
Great mind. Americans just don't get it.
Mishra’s notions of race power and global conflict take on many assumptions of the alt-right.
Niall Ferguson: So why do I think the West came to dominate the Rest economically,
geopolitically and even culturally between the 1500s and the 1970s? In
Civilization, I argue that besides the familiar, ugly methods of
expropriation and enslavement - employed by all empires through the ages
- there were novelties, not all of them pernicious. One of these was
the scientific method. Another was the rule of law, under which, among
other things, the freedom of the press does not extend to defamation. www.spectator.co.uk/2011/12/on-being-called-a-racist/
Pankaj Mishra writes: Niall Ferguson does not, alas,
satisfactorily embody the ‘novelties’ - ‘scientific method’ and ‘rule of
law’ - that he insists were the West’s gifts to the ‘Rest’. He seeks to
mitigate the crimes of his beloved Western empires - what he calls
‘ugly methods of expropriation and enslavement’ - by also implicating
‘non-Western’ empires in them
Consider the rule of Law and the scientific method was both violated with the 9/11/2001 false flag event and its socalled investigation by american NIST www1.ae911truth.org/en/evidence.html It's no wonder that the anger felt in the western world with Trumpism is natural. Donald Trump in 9/11/2001 believed the World Trade Center could have been brought down by “bombs that exploded simultaneously” ruclips.net/video/PcKlPhFIE7w/видео.html
SALUTE TO Mishra
Pankaj Misra like intellectuals sit on the ivory tower and they don't have a clue how commoners think and quite disconnected to the masses.
this guy is a falsificator of history. Through his idealism he has negated the genocide of the native Americans implicitely admiring Cortes, and the massacres by Ghazni and Aurungzeb.. The MCCauley education is too thorough. Like Aristotle he can spew off any venom and expect others to believe it. He is a regular at New York Times . This paper is a raectionary tool of imperialism that Mishra serves
Arun Jetli: You throw nasty labels around like confetti. Bear in mind Mishra does not write a history of the world in one volume. Nor can anybody. It's fair enough that he starts his discussion and analysis from the position of idealism and although he deals with the ideas propagated by the political elites of the countries he examines, those ideas -- if you read carefully -- do resonate with historical and contemporary realities found on the ground. I hope you're not an anti-intellectual. Don't attack the messenger, as you seem prone to do, but attack the message.
he must have paid 1000$ for that beardcut
great ideas of modern west..... and do the so called modern ideas include colonialism and other things which they did for centuries around the world...
Brilliant!
The hanging stand of hair is distracting
27:53 An unwitting reference to The Beatles?
Muslims colonized India for 800 years through genocide, rape, torture, vandalism, desecration, et al. To contend that Hindu nationalists = Fascism that blindly hate Muslims in 2017, after centuries of genuflection, accommodation, grudging cooperation, and often times real empathy for the deranged oppressor, is one of the most bigoted and vile summations of what has happened in the India over the last 1000 years. Pankaj Mishra succeeds in his critiques in many spheres, but fails miserably when it comes to Hindu-Muslims relations. Islam is the single most destructive ideology and force in India has confronted in all its existence.
Pankaj Mishra is non sense guy, he should be living in islamic nation.
1.3 bn voted for modi...and you think that with your made up accent you can disgrace the PM sitting in the uk...wish you were here in india and on the road talking to people...
Right- so this guy spends a lifetime bashing Hindus, yet goes onto say that there is we should not associate terrorism with a religion. Can someone explain who made him the thekedaar of Islam? Why are you ascribing Nazi ideologies to Hindu nationalists....just call them thugs or nationalists or just Indian nazis. Why ascribe and elevate them to Hinduism as well? He has made a career out of bashing Hindus and hinduism. Any hindu who demands even an iota of space in India, you brand him Hindu nationalist, RSS-wadi etc etc etc. I don't like the BJP and actually voted Congress last election, will probably vote for Congress the next time too, but every single time you try to brush away valid Hindu fears about conversion, better temple facilities etc you're branded a bhakt. On the other hand genuine problems with Islam and their religion are brushed away like this chap does. If you are going to be secular, apply an even handed approach to ALL religions. If a Hindu tries to proselytise, he's branded a nationalist. If a Christain/Muslim tries to proselytise...you'd claim oh it's part of his religion.