![]() ![]() In your earlier book, This Unquiet Land, you described India as, and I quote, “essentially misogynistic.” What do you think is the most deeply rooted structural account of how that came to be?ĭUTT: Though as I’m answering that, I’m struck by the fact that my nation has a much more progressive set of laws around abortion and the right to legal and safe abortion than the Americans might have soon. I don’t think that there is a platform that really captures the nuances and the texture of my country in full.ĬOWEN: I have so many questions about India for you. But those are individuals I’m naming, and not platforms. ![]() Both made it a point to do very, very textured reportage out of India. I think there’s also a sense that there have been some great foreign correspondents, and I’d like to name two who have done stellar work on India: Ellen Barry of the New York Times and Annie Gowen of the Washington Post. But we would also urge you to read and watch and listen to us. I think that a lot of Indians would say that the more diverse your sources are, that would perhaps be more representative. Therefore, I think that Indians are sometimes exasperated by the simplistic, reductionist understanding of our very complicated, 1.3 billion-strong nation.ĬOWEN: If I’m a Westerner, where should I go in Western media to find the relatively better coverage of India? Or is that impossible?ĭUTT: I would say just don’t go to any one source. BARKHA DUTT HUSBAND FULLMany of them are raised by journalists like myself, but they do not tell the full story of a complex, paradoxical nation, where there are multiple simultaneous truths. BARKHA DUTT HUSBAND FREETherefore, the West understands India in terms of, let’s say, debates around whether there is equality for religious minorities, whether there is a free press. Some of these narratives that the West understands about India are true, but they are incomplete. Barkha, welcome.īARKHA DUTT: Thank you, Tyler, and thank you for having me.ĬOWEN: Which do you think are the most valuable conversations in India that the West is essentially blind to?ĭUTT: I think the West is able to see India only through certain tropes, tropes that it has gathered from newspapers like the one I write for, Washington Post, as well as the New York Times. The most recent one out is Humans of COVID: To Hell and Back. She’s an opinion columnist with the Hindustan Times and the Washington Post, and she was part of NDTV’s team for 21 years. She is an owner of a YouTube news channel, Mojo Story. ![]() If you have a connection to India, she needs no further introduction, but if you don’t have such a connection, she is a very famous Indian television journalist. Welcome back to Conversations with Tyler. ![]() You can also watch a video of the conversation here. A successful broadcast journalist and columnist, she currently runs the YouTube-based news channel MoJo Story and recently published a new book, Humans of COVID: To Hell and Back.īarkha joined Tyler to discuss how Westerners can gain a more complete picture of India, the misogyny still embedded in Indian society, why family law should be agnostic of religious belief, the causes of declining fertility in India, why relations between Hindus and Muslims seem to be worsening, how caste has persisted so strongly in India, the success of India’s subsidized institutes of higher education, the best city for Indian food, the power of Amar Chitra Katha’s comics, the influence of her English liberal arts education, the future of Anglo-American liberalism in India, the best ways to use Twitter, and more. This has opened her up to criticism as being a progressive elite who is out of touch with her heritage, and challenged her to be especially thoughtful in the way she examines the many overlapping values in Indian society. She devoured Enid Blyton and studied English literature during college, but read few Indian novelists. She spoke English, not her parent’s Punjabi. Growing up, Barkha Dutt was totally rootless. ![]()
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