Indian novelist and essayist Pankaj Mishra will be in Taipei this weekend to give a lecture called Poor but Democratic: Democracy in India in the Age of Globalization as part of the Taipei Salon (台北沙龍), a series of talks hosted by the Lung Yingtai Cultural Foundation (龍應台文化基金會). The lecture, as the title suggests, will address two issues.
“The idea that poor countries have to have an authoritarian government is one notion that’s been around for a while. And India is the one major exception,” Mishra said in a phone interview from his hotel in Hong Kong.
His second theme investigates the process of globalization and its potential to turn back the clock on India’s democratization.
“To diminish centuries-old patterns whereby people were born into one caste … has been the whole promise of democracy in India. Globalization, by privileging certain classes and certain kinds of people and introducing new kinds of inequalities, has in many ways undermined this particular promise,” he said.
His lecture seeks to connect these two threads, illustrate the growing pains India is currently undergoing and examine how it can serve as a litmus test for other Asian countries experiencing the same problems.
This is Mishra’s second visit to Taiwan, and he professes a fascination with Taiwanese cinema: “[Taiwan] has Hou Hsiao-hsien (侯孝賢), easily one of the world’s great directors, if not the world’s greatest director. To take an interest in his films is to also take an interest in Taiwanese society, to take an interest in Taiwanese history.”
Pankaj Mishra’s lecture is tomorrow from 2pm to 4pm at Yue-han Hall (月涵堂), 110 Jinhua St, Taipei City (台北市金華街110號). The lecture is in English. Admission is free, but pre-registration is required. Call (02) 3322-4907, or register online at www.civictaipei.org.
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