time ago now. more than six decades now. it's going to have two be with the return based system which doesn't make people furious with it. i think that's quite doable. the current code is loaded with provisions that are both complicated and make no policy since like the alternative minimum tax and the way a lot of tax benefits are subject to phaseouts which function as hidden marginal tax rate increases which nobody understands. for a lot of people the income tax has become kind of a black walks where you put numbers into the 1040 or into the software or you give them to your return preparer and it never comes out. this is your tax liability but they have no idea where that came from. i always have trouble saying this but i think it's a good laugh if i can get it out. taxation without comprehension is as an amoco to democracy as taxation without representation. we have got a real democratic problem when people are paying taxes and they have no idea they can't comprehend how those tax liabilities were arrived at. it just happens inside of the computer but it's a process that's invisible to them. i think that has to stop. we have to have a system which is simple enough that people could comprehend where their tax liability came from, how it was derived and also that they can deal with the complexity with a minimum amount of assistance. i think it's doable. but whether or not congress has the will to do it is another question. >> host: lawrence zelenak teaches tax law at duke university school of law. he is the author of this book published by the university of chicago press, "learning to love form 1040" two cheers for the return-based mass income tax. thank you for your time. >> guest: thank you peter. >> it really gets to me because i get to know these young men when i'm out there and i keep seeing some of them killed or amputated and i want out of there as fast as anybody else. and let the afghans fight their own fight. i just think we have to do it in a prudent way. what i try to say to the gold star mothers when i'm talking with them is we can't get to hung up on the defects of maliki and iraq or the defects of karzai and the afghan politics. we do have to keep a larger perspective that those who have died did not die in vain. you know go back. if i had said to anybody in 2001 that 10 years later there wouldn't have been another attack on the united states most of you listening would have said no you are wrong, it's going to. it's because we did take the war offensive way to al qaeda and sure a lot of mistakes were made but if you stand back from the particulars we are safer today than we were in 2001 and we are well on our way to crushing al qaeda and crushing the jihadist. so i think overall that we have done a successful job with their military. >> when we analyzed arab spring we had an optimistic view. these are the rebels. the changes happening. it looks like eastern europe. it is not but then you have the view that the entire arab spring is only about the islamist and nothing could be done in the middle east. in my book i make the case that it is either one or the other. it is both at the same time so you are right. from 9/11 until 2011 that decade had gigantic efforts in the region. we removed the taliban. we removed saddam hussein. we gave space in those two spots for societies to emerge and to play the game of democracy. many in washington forget that the next two peaceful nonviolent revolutions which have failed but they were there, were impressed by what was happening in afghanistan. women were in the parliament in iraq and it was not only the baath party. it was a mediocre democracy but that is how democracies begin so i make the case in this book that they arab spring was influenced by two presidents. one was the revolution of lebanon rising against the syrian occupation. it was not entirely successful because hezbollah remained in the green rebel-ish in iran in june of 2009 that also fraternized against the -- now the arab spring had its own experiments and to answer your question the jihadist who have been removed from afghanistan have re-created hubs all over the region. they are back in iran in the sunni triangle. they are rolling in yemen, and somalia. i won't even begin to tell you what's happening in syria where al-nusra has expanded into lebanon. each of them fighting in the sinai such as basically speaking yes me may -- we may have taken out al-awlaki but this is the generation of the ancestors of al qaeda now we are talking about the third generation. >> booktv continues with arundhati roy. she talks about the impact of economic globalization on third world countries and argues that the exploitation of workers on the margins of the global capitalist system goes largely unnoticed even though the negative impact is huge. this is about an hour and a half. [applause] >> thank you everybody. can you all hear me? yeah? okay. what i'm going to do is to talk a little and read a little but to try and follow my natural instincts as a storyteller even though a lot of what i write is about politics. so "capitalism" a ghost story is about the ways in which capitalism works in the modern day which isn't always what we think. you know it's not just about corporations and privatization and how does the colonized our imagination clinics how does it tame us? how does it make us into people we don't even know that we are? so i will just start, i will just start at the beginning of the book and i will just sort of read bits and talk a bit and if i'm being totally incoherent you can ask me questions afterwards about it. is it a house or a home? a temple to the new india or a warehouse for its ghosts? ever since and tele arrived on altamonte rd. in mumbai things have not been the same. here we are the friend who took me there said, pay your respects to our new ruler. and tele belongs to india's richest man. i had read about this most expensive dwelling ever built with 27 floors, three helipads nine lifts hanging gardens, ballrooms, whether rooms, gymnasiums, six floors of parking and 600 servants. nothing had prepared me for the vertical lawn a soaring 27 story hyatt wall of grass attached to a fast metal grid. the grass was dry and patches and bits had fallen off in nita rectangles. clearly trickle-down hadn't worked. that is why the nation of 1.2 billion india's 100 richest people on assets equivalent to one fourth of the gdp. the word on the street and in "the new york times" or at least was, that after all that effort and gardening they don't live in antilla. no one knows for sure. people still whisper about ghosts and bad luck and feng shui. maybe it's all karl marx' faults all that cussing. capitalism he said has conjured up such giant -- gigantic means of production and exchange that is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of another world whom he has called up by himself. in india the 300 million of us who belong to the new post international monetary fund reforms middle-class market. live side-by-side with the spirits of another world. the poltergeist of dead rivers, dry wells, bald mountains and denuded forests. the ghosts of 250,000 debt ridden farmers who have killed themselves and the 800 million who live potter first -- impoverished and dispossessed to make way for us and survive on less than half a dollar a day. but sean bonnie is personally worth $20 billion. he holds the majority controlling share in the reliance industries limited. a company with a market capitalization of $47 billion and global business interests that include ketchup chemicals oil natural gas polyester fiber special economic zones fresh food retails high schools life science research and stem cell storage services. they recently bought 90% shares in a tv consortium that controls 27 tv news and entertainment channels and now most every regional language. the only nationwide license to forge a broad and a high-speed information pipeline which if the technology works could be the future of information exchange. he also owns a cricket team. you have these huge industrialists who have this cross-ownership of businesses and then you have a huge media houses for example a newspaper which has a readership of 17.5 million readers in four languages and they own 69 companies which are mining companies power generation companies, real estate companieo they have this way of controlling information, imagination and business and land and agriculture. riaa all is one of the handful of corporations that run india. some of the others are other reliance. the growth has spilled across europe central africa asia latin america and the nets are cast wide. they are visible and invisible overground as well as underground. they run more than 100 companies in 80 countries and one of india's oldest and largest private-sector power companies. they own minds gaughey its field steel plants telephone broadband networks and they run whole townships. they manufacture cars and trucks owned the dodge hotel chain jaguar land rover day you a publishing company chain of bookstores and major brand of iodide salts and the cosmetics giant. they advertise the tagline you can't live without us. according to the rules of the gospel the more you have the more you can't have. the error of the privatization of everything has made the indian economy one of the fastest-growing in the world however as with any good old-fashioned colony one of its main exports its minerals. india's new megacorporations and those who managed to muscle their way to the head of the spigot that is spewing money extracted from deep inside the earth. it's a dream come true for businessmen to be able to sell what they don't have to buy. the other major source of corporate wealth comes from the land barons. all over the world corrupt local governments have helped wall street brokers agribusiness corporations and chinese billionaires to amass huge tracts of land. in india the land of millions of people is being acquired and handed over to private corporations for public interest this special economic zones in infrastructure projects dams highways car manufacture chemical hubs in formula one racing. as it concentrates wealth onto the tip of the shiny pen tidal waves of money crash through the institutions of democracy the courts the parliament as well as the media seriously compromising their ability to function in the ways that they are meant to. the noisier the carnival around elections the less sure we are that democracy really exists. each new corruption scandal that surfaces in india makes the last one looked tame. there was a huge telecom scandal in india which involves millions of dollars but the privatization of telecom doesn't involve displacement and ecological displacement. the privatization of india's mountains rivers and forests does perhaps because it does not have the uncomplicated clarity of a straightforward out and pound accounting scandal or perhaps because it's all been done in the name of india's progress. it doesn't have the same resonance with the middle-class. basically what is happening now is in central india you know, one of the things that i have been thinking of for a couple of years which i find quite shocking is that there hasn't been a euro in india since 1947 which is when we became independent. there was a transfer of power. there hasn't been a single era in which the indian army has not been deployed against its own people. from 1947 where the youth think about kashmir these are from telling ghana punjab the army is constantly deployed against people that are supposedly within the nation. now because of this new aggressive economic policy which involves selling the mountains, the rivers, privatizing and mining there is a war going on against the indigenous people in the forests of central india. but the war is not just in the forests. there's a a whole bandwidth of resistance movements. inside the forests are the armed maoists gorillas. outside there are militant people's movements. there's a whole bandwidth of movements which academics and journalists like to class of high as this is violence and this is nonviolent. this is violent and this is maoists but in fact people don't think like that. they think strategically so when you are out in the villages and the planes you can actually have the guerrilla army. you have movements which call themselves, in any case there are militant but not armed. inside the forests which are now filled with paramilitary forces like in latin america and like in colombia and peru to have these hugely armed soldiers posing in on villages burning them, raping the women trying to clear the forest for corporations. the prime minister of india called these indigenous people who are certainly armed. most of the arms are snatched by the paramilitary forces with grenades and ak-47s and rocket launchers. they were called india's greatest internal security threat. the government announced something called operation green hunts which was supposed to hunt these people down and clear the forests. so two years ago i actually went into the forest and spent some time with the gorillas and came out and wrote an essay called walking with the comrades. i will read you just a little bit adjusted kind of ibiza texture of what is actually going on there. the typewritten note slipped under my door in a sealed envelope controlled my appointment with india's againsl security challenge. i've been waiting for months to hear from them. i had to be in dante at four given timezone to give in days. that was to take care of dad whether, locke aides, transport strikes and sheer backlog. the note said writers should have camera and a coconut. the meter will have a cap in the outlook magazine and bananas. the password will be -- i wondered whether the meter and the greater would be expecting a man and whether i should get myself a mustache. there are many ways to describe dante vara. it's an oxymoron. it's a border town smack in the heart of india. it's the epicenter of a war. it's an upside down inside out town. the police where plain clothing in the police wear uniforms. the superintendent is in jail and the prisoners are free. 300 of them escaped from the old town jailed two years ago. women who have been raped are in police custody. the rapists give speeches at the bazaars. across the river in the area controlled by the maoists is the place police call pakistan. they're the villages are empty at the forest is full of people. children who ought to be in school run wild. in the lovely forest villages the concrete school buildings have either been blown up and fly in a heap or they are full of liesman. the deadly war that is unfolding in the jungle is a war that the government of india is both proud and shy of. operation green hunts has been proclaimed as well as denied. india's minister and ceo of the war says it doesn't exist, that it's a media creation and yet substantial funds have been allocated to it and tens of thousands of troops are being mobilized for it. though the theater of the war is in the jungles of central -- it will have serious consequences for us all. in ghost of the lingering spirits or someone or something that ceased to exist. perhaps the national mineral development corporations new fallen highway crashing through the forest is the opposite of a ghost. perhaps it's the harbinger of what is soon to come. the antagonists in the forest are disparate and unequal in almost every way. on one side is a massive paramilitary force armed with the money that is the firepower. the media and the hubris of an emerging superpower. on the other ordinary villagers armed with traditional weapons backed by a superbly organized hugely motivated maoist guerrilla fighting force with an extraordinary and violent history. the maoists and the paramilitary are ruling forces and have fought each other several times before. west bank in the 60s and 70's and then again in mirosha from the 70s onwards all the way through to the present. they are familiar with each other's tactics and have studies each other's combat manuals closely. each time it seems as though the maoists or the previous avatars have not just been defeated but literally physically exterminated. each time they reemerged more organized, more determined and more influential than ever. today the insurrection has spread through the mineral rich forests in west bengal homeland to millions of india's tribal people, dreamland to the corporate world. i arrived well before -- well in time for my appointment. i had my camera, my small coconut and the powdery red teacup on my forehead. i wondered if someone was watching me and having a laugh. within minutes a young boy approached me. he had a cap in the backpack chipped red nail polish on his fingernails. no bananas. are you the one that is going and he asked me? i didn't know what to say. he took out a soggy note from his pocket and handed it to me. it said -- it means i couldn't find it and the bananas i ate them he said. i got hungry. he really was a security threat. [laughter] is backpack said charlie brown not your ordinary blockhead. i soon learned that the forest i was about to enter was full of people who had many names and fluid identities. how lovely not to be stuck with yourself to become someone else for a wild. we walked to the bus and only a few miles -- minutes away from the temple. it was already crowded. things happen quickly. there were two men on motorbikes there was no conversation just a lancet of knowledge meant a shifting of audie blades the revving of engines. i had no idea where we were going. we passed the house of the superintendent of the lease which i recognize from my last visit. he was a candid man with esb. in fact this man committed suicide. maam frankly speaking this problem can't be solved by the police or the military. the problem with these tribals is that they don't understand greed. unless they become greedy there is no hope for us. i have told my boss remove the force and instead put a tv in every home. everything will be automatically sorted out. in no time at all they were riding out of town. it was a long ride, three hours by my watch and it ended abruptly in the middle of nowhere on an empty road with forests on either side. montague got off and i did too. i picked up my backpack and followed the small internal security challenge into the forest. it was a beautiful day. the forest flora was a carpet of gold. widely emerging under the white sandy banks of a white flat river. it was obviously monsoon fed so now it was more or less a sand flat. at the center a stream and easy to wade across. across was pakistan. out their maam the sp had said to me my boys shoot to kill. i remember that as we began to cross. i saw us and a policeman's rifle sight. easy to pick off but man too seemed quite unconcerned and i took my cue from him. then of course it goes on the weeks that i spent there. so the way it works is that the indian government now, i mean one of the main things that is happening in the elections that will be starting on the tenth of april. one of the main issues in the election unstated in some ways is that the present government though it tried to do this operation green hunts it was pushed back by civil society, by activists, by the physical fight in the forest. so now the corporations are backing or they want to back a government that can actually send out the army and the air force against the poorest people in india to hand over those lands to the corporation. they want someone who is not going to flinch, you know who's not going to be upset by what happened over the last two years when indian civil society, many people just stood up and said he you can't do this. this government linked so now we are looking for a government that is not going to blink. but obviously this kind of coercion works for the poor. you can bomb the poirier. you can jail them. you can do all of that but what are you going to do with the others? the army is experienced enough. so i'm just going to read you what the army says now. the indian army publicly released its up david doctrine of military psychological operations which outlines and i quote a planned process of conveying a message to a select target audience to promote particular themes that result in desired attitudes and behavior which affect the achievement of clinical and military objectives in the country. this process of perception management it said would be conducted by using the media available to the services. the armies experienced enough to know that coercive force alone cannot carry it out social engineering on the scale that is envisioned -- envisioned by india's planners. basically what the indian government is saying now is that it wants to move 75% of the indian population to cities which means something like 500 million people. how do you engineer something on that scale not voluntary? the war against the poor is one thing but for the rest of us the middle class intellectuals the opinion makers, it has to be perception management and for this we must turn our attention to the exquisite art of corporate philanthropy. of late the mining corporations have embraced the arts through art installations and the rush of literary festivals that have replaced the 1990s of sessions with beauty contests. currently mining in the heart of the homeland is sponsoring a creating happiness film competition for young students. the tagline is mining happiness. the jindal group brings out a pro tempore art magazine and support some of india's major artists who naturally work with stainless steel. sr was the principle sponsor of the "newsweek" incorporated fast that promises these high up teen debates and so on. tara steele which has a sordid record of its own were among the chief sponsors of the literary festival which is advertised as the greatest literary show on earth. the strategic brand manager sponsored -- many of the world's best and brightest writers gathered to discuss love, literature, politics and sufi poetry. some tried to defend the right to free speech by reading from his proscribed book "the satanic verses." the battle for free speech against the islamist fundamentalism mated to the world's newspapers and it's important that it did but there was hardly any report about the festival sponsors rule and the war in the forests, the bodies piling up, the prisons filling up her about the unlawful activities prevention act and the public security act which make even thinking an anti-government thought and offense. all about the mandate for public hearing for the steam plant which local people complained to place hundreds of miles away in the collector's office compound. where was free speech then? so now you see what's happening is they are sponsoring these film festivals, these writing festivals, art festivals, college courses but which of us sinners is going to cast the first stone? not me who lives off or else he's from corporate publishing houses. we all watch this hot tub taxis and we stay in their hotels. we set the t. and bone china with teaspoons made of steel. we buy books in the bookshops and we even beet basalt. we are under siege. at the sledgehammer of moral purity is to be the criteria of a stonethrowing then the only people who qualified for those who let bin silenced already who live outside the system the outlaws in the forests for those whose focus are never covered by the press. but the lit fest gave us their ah-ha moment. oprah came. she said she loved india and that she would, again and again. it made us proud. but this is only the end of the exquisite art. and though they have been involved with corporate philanthropy for almost 100 years now and going scholarships and running excellent education institutions and young corporations have only recently been invited into the star chamber and the camera, the brightly lit world of global corporate governance deadly for its adversaries but so artful that you barely know it's there. .. >> sun is physicians finance afforded by the rockefeller foundation of the united nations, the cia come the council on foreign relations , the most fabulous museum of modern art and the center is in new york. it was america's first billionaire in the world's richest man. and that must of been nice for him. [laughter] and to make the first appearance in the west with the providence stand lack of accountability. to have so much money they had to raise the wages of there workers' they made those outrageous suggestions in those days even in america. [laughter] but with the business imagination and non taxpaying legal entities with almost unlimited brief holy john transparent of better way to parlay economic wealth and to capital to turn money into power. how else would bill gates would evade knows the thing were to about computers find itself deciding agriculture policies not just for the west but governments all over the world? [applause] over the years as people witness the genuine good work the foundation instead the direct connection between corporations and the foundations eventually it fitted together. in the 1920's u.s. capitalism begin with the overseas markets they begin to formulate the idea of corporate governance into 1924 rockefeller and the carnegie foundation created the most powerful foreign policy pressure group in a the world the council on foreign relations. that later was funded by the ford foundation as well by 1947 then do the created cia was supported by and working closely with cfr. the cfr membership as included 22 u.s. secretaries of state. 532 members of the 1943 steering committee that play and the united nations and $8.5 million grant from rockefeller. all the world bank's president since the 1840's six covenant have presented themselves as missionaries to a the pork have been members of the cfr. and the world bank and imf decided the u.s. dollar should be the currency of the world in order to enhance the penetration of global capital it would be necessary to universally standardize the practices in the open market place. to this end the large amount of money promoting good governance in the concept of the rule of law to say we have part of making fellow laws. to streamline the system they put in place corporate endowed foundations put it on the chessboard said the clubs in think tanks whose members overlap in contrary to the conspiracy theory particularly among left-wing groups nothing secretive or freebase i'd like about the rage and it is not very different from the way corporations use shell companies and offshore accounts to transfer and of mr. there may. but the ford foundation the more conservative rockefeller foundation that work together 1936. the ford foundation than really talked up the idea of making america a society that lives on credit. this idea you could first credit to a department store owner who believed in creating the mass consumption society by giving workers affordable access to credit but only half the idea because the other half is he believed in a more equitable distribution of national income. but later the adl of micro credit to places like india and bangladesh. very poor people committing suicide like indian farmers and not want to talk about it now but will lay they change the education system to change politics into a forum of the ngo, the feminist movement, they basically funded the of politics of the civil-rights movement what they do in places like india now. so as to understand but itself to doing good work will whole way it serves the international markets is even more dangerous than direct corporate funding. it was hard to explain the whole thing but that is what the book is about maybe we can chat about it. [applause] >> the q arundhati. can you hear us back there? we have a full house. you made everybody happy. the government, the foundation. [laughter] who have you left out? there are so many things i want to ask you but let's start with the question about capitalism -- "capitalism" a ghost story" tavis struck by the figures you read at the beginning that people owning assets equal to one fourth of the gdp. you read the wonderful passage how much they owned and i suppose that type of concentration of wealth is what we are used to across india also china in the unit is states. but that is very much what indian capitalism has a common around the world but i am struck by the other figure that you have i think just a few pages later when did you say after 20 years of growth and you have growth within quotes just to make those people have become a you right after 20 years of growth 6% of india workforces self-employed and 90 percent of the labor force works in the unorganized sector. i think that might be worth talking about. could you talk more about the 90%? what we refer to as the masses of the people? why after 20 years of growth they are working in the unorganized sector? could you explain that? >> i think in the late '80s and early '90s when soviet communism lost the war in afghanistan, india used to be aligned with the soviet union begin to see itself as a natural ally. it changed the economic policy. one of those things of the royal dismantling of the protection of the workers come on the other hint there are laws forbidding wages but it was understood they would never be implemented. in let's say that i have written in followed a lot of the issue of the of building the slaves in their houses are told when the dam is built you will get a job. but there are no jobs. the mechanization, of love that takes place. so what we have is what is known as jobless growth. in one section is the information is in technology sector but you have a country where a small section of people have become very wealthy but even a small percentage of a population like india still means it is a very big market. the rest have just fallen away outside the radar altogether hispanic you have been involved or followed the labor strikes lake at the factory. is that right? could you talk a little bit about that and how you see what happened to workers? because they are former agriculture to get jobs in the cities and was struggles to they face? why aren't they doing well with 20 years of growth? >> but those who are regular and the organized sector the rest are unorganized and a the pressure on them to produce more cars to have less free time they are refused not allowed to have the union. so basically what happened finally there was a strike and according to the workers there were some people who enter the of factories were not really workers santa the person who was killed happens to be the one richer person who was on the side of the workers now hundreds have been put into prison and then workers brought from elsewhere with very low wages willing to work as slave labor every rare. if you go to the outskirts of delhi it is worse than medieval and it is supposed to be the pilot operation so the people in the villages are being displaced and losing the of livelihood into their land but now those in the window as well is a real problem. >> so over 20 years and has not led to much for the 900 million. what effect does this have on the election? you mentioned a reading free of charge so it has actually overseen the expansion of the market of the middle-class so why do people want the congress out? why do they want the congress out or the party and? >> a little bit to your earlier question, there is the great amount of fundamental that is involved with our society. since this time to go poon from international finance started the hindu chauvinist movement with the communism in corporatism going hand-in-hand. with the slowdown of the economy in the world, what happened was the huge expectation of this very brash new middle-class has turned dangerous hoping to take off now it is frozen in all those expectations of quick to panic and there is a hope there is a more aggressive government can push this through and of course, the congress as it is true like everybody else. the impatience of the middle-class takes those huge protest one different issue but mainly on the anti-corruption issue it was covered 24/7 by the corporate media channels. that was the beginning the very right wing groups that was the beginning of the end portraying we as a weak government that could not push -- pushed through the policies. >> why was it is seen as weak because it could not commit itself to the identity? >> that if you go back in time to the 20th century with the freedom movement you had these two factions the militant in the end of the of moderate now adjust to a different political parties but playing up the same trajectory. that is what they sell to the hindu nationalists and congress. so that secularism in fact, mike i was saying since the. . . >> host: the war is a they have fought there always fought against the other whether christians archrivals the upper crust hindu state. >> host: that remains consistent one does by day what the other does by night >> there is something very marked about this movement to be the most aggressive to has vague chief minister of iraq is banned from entering the united states. partly because of that but it is projected as the man the vision of the corporate india in the social media. it is the printing of him even the united states they are on the verge of accepting him as the person from the elite to india. one by day the other by night it is particularly marked about this moment. what do you think about that? >> we are forced in this slightly dangerous space. in 2002 following that, we still don't know how that happened but following that was the genocidal program where more than 1,000 people were berndt and lynch and 100,000 driven from their home. and now we are in a stage why do you have to go on about that? we needed development chief minister. even back to the idea the gate at the forefront of progress in development. >> host: house so? >> look at the developments index. but i think the reason is he shows himself to be a man who is able to be brutal and that brutality, when somebody is brutal against muslims have i heard a huge lesson and i wrote about them with the outrage and i was appealing to what i thought was the humanists and you just got a cold look. so what? i won't say. there is a huge community that is outraged even today there are people who still cannot believe this is happening. but now the hope is this brutality is turned against those that are fighting the big corporate projects. that is what the corporations are backing him for. >> there is almost the extraction of resources. but what are the people's movements for the protest just beyond the next election? can you talk about that? i have seen this you travel all over. what do you see when you go to the northeast or to the south? what do you see? this is something that is completely left out from the media. we don't see this. >> what is happening in india is how have countries in the west, how have they become industrialized, a modernized, and that has happened through a history of colonialism where raw materials are used. india does not have colonies so it has colonized self. as i keep saying you have a middle-class, he leaped that has seceded in would redoing and their relatives what is our water doing in their rivers? there is that sense of entitlement. i have to say that people have told me openly that all these other countries have a history and that means committing genocide. some people have to pay the price. i have heard many times. but i will say this. but the lender standing of what is going on is tremendous amongst the people who are involved. this is why i always find it surprising when people say she is a multinational. i don't think anybody could be prouder with such wisdom or courage or intelligence the battles are being waged with such profound questioning. it is not just the battle about this is my land i don't want to leave my home but a question that is asked about the nature of happiness of what we call civilization. and that profound question is told by people whose bodies are on the line. in these movements like when i wrote walking with a comrade i was criticized prettily for that. but in the land of gandhi how can you support these people with guns? if a thousand border security force surround the village in the start to burn it, what are they supposed to do? key and hungry people go on a hunger strike? [applause] they can. so while in tv studios and academia those talk about non-violence it is strategic. they can be a gandhi on the streets and ran to mao in the forest of 55 have you had criticism from them? >> no. the forest is under siege it is terrible what is going on there. people cannot get medicine. they are just been killed. i think six months after i came out after a book was published, there is a part in the book where i say i am lying amongst the rocks with these people and i say i am in my private suite in a 1,000 star hotel. [laughter] so six months after it was published, passed from hand to hand to he and to head to head to head a so i get a biscuit this a little piece of paper folded 95 times and i opened it in that was the letter from the forest that said after you wrote a wave of happiness went through the forest and was signed by the 1,000 star hotel. [laughter] [applause] >> so they do have a sense of humor. in terms of criticism talk about the most recent thing. you do have a copy of the book icy, an introduction it merges accepted in the magazine. knu taco little bit about that what the response has been or what drove you to the project? >> there was the 80 year-old speech delivered i think by one of modern india's. >> with the columbia connection he received of ph.d. in colombia but born into a family at that time called untouchable. he published this speech 1936 soon after declaring he was born eight hindu he would not die a hindu. but he converted much later. isn't going to replied to the provocation it was a debate between him into gandhi. he challenged gandhi in every way politically but intellectually but morally. it is the text of the speech that has been read and reread in is available everywhere. publisher asked if i would write the introduction. i took a long time to do it because while i was looking at this debate between the two, i was just appalled by what i learned about gandhi. >> host: you are harsh on him. >> i think i was says i should have been. [laughter] so it took me right back to his views on the cast and when he first arrived in south africa. of course, we knew after he came back from south africa for what he'd done their but what he did there was extremely disturbing. but when i wrote the introduction it was pretty long. it is just out just like a few days ago. so there was a reaction from certain scholars who said that people are familiar with the debates. is not a position that i would agree with. but i think go back to the ways in which we hermetically seal ourselves into identities in which literature cannot exist anymore because nobody can write about the other without being accused in the cliche way. the book has just come out so the reaction in my case with everything that i write for the first six months i have to duck and cover. [laughter] because the trouble is is side understand the fact a little weld to notes for my own good. it gets so much attention that it seems almost not fair but i cannot stop right-wing. i have to write what i have to right. >> it is becoming quite problematic in india. it was called back by the publisher to publish this book in you wrote to them in protest? is amazing the free-market democracy but it has been withdrawn because of a small pressure group. do you think this will go on or have been even more? you yourself of course, have the use court cases for speeches. all the way back to the novel. like the books? >> it is quite fascinating. as you legislate more about to free speech it make more of a song the audience, in fact, in india what the poet could stay in the 19th century in relationship with islam nobody could say today what the short stories the but they could say today about hinduism. you cannot say. is almost unbelievable how little you can say now. with the issue of wendy, it was really sad because it was not even as if there was a court case or anything. but just a group of right wing hindu group that said the sentiments were hurt by herblock gone hinduism. so they pulled back which i into many other people. at least they would have the resources to fight. other people do not. there was a criminal case against me for corrupting public morality. [laughter] i have to appear in court and by which time i had won the prize so they wanted to play me but not claim the book. so the judge would appear in said every time this case comes before me i get chest pains. [laughter] butted with don 10 years then with the threat of the second edition almost everything you write then you look for that brown envelope in the post. some person has filed a case somewhere. what has happened is not like you live in a dictatorship where the government has terrorized you and creative severs event literature. it is not that. the censorship is outsourced to the mob. so people can trash your house. trash your book launches that has happened several times with me. people came into anything with a little -- little bit timid to groups that take it upon themselves to do it. you are left to the danger of becoming someone whose answers himself all the time. i have to some extent how do you know, what i would like to say? [laughter] >> host: on that note let's open the floor to questions. we're doing well in terms of time. >>. >> some call you anti-american. what is good in what is cherished about the united states of america and. >> with people say their anti-american or anti-national, to whoever says it, the right to decide what is american nor what it is indian or what's is national? we don't give them that right. [applause] i don't actually think think, personally in terms of countries any more. i don't mean in this era of country -- arab country. [laughter] but the elites has seceded to some country of their own. so again i say india where somebody says india i really don't know what they've been. when someone says you have an interview about indian women, what does that mean? the women who are the most liberated in a unique and free that i know at the same time you don't have to dirty five minutes to know that people are living in the medieval times. how do we think in terms of countries? sometimes i really don't understand but i am not anti-american bets into i many american policies by the government. [applause] to i have a rice for the entire capitalist movement in the u.s.? >> i am data giving advice or taking advice. [laughter] i don't have any advice. [laughter] [applause] >> you mentioned india is recognized as the land of gandhi but largely not just a perception of the western world. is that not recognized in any manner relative to other things? his drive to bring india independence? one of the of very heroic that was hanging when he was 21 or 22 years old, in fact, i think the thing is he is one of those figures that everybody sees which happens to icons but i would say it is a much more important revolutionary and necessary figure they and the ante to india. [applause] >> do you think you would have the same resistance if published separate when your buck? -- the book? >> i think there would be a resistance of another kind. so what it is saying about ghandi through the establishment considers would have created a problem at some stage. but i think the annihilation is extremely important for people who have not heard or have not read it. this edition is to annotated. i wrote that introduction because i feel someone by being in the establishment i wanted to use whatever influence i had to bring that text to the world. he is the hero in india but virtually unknown in many places. where they should have had great solidarity between the civil-rights movement and the politics of black america you have a strange situation where ghandi is worshiped by black people because they don't know the history of his absolute contempt for black people in south africa. [applause] another question about advice. [laughter] >> never asked anyone for advice. [laughter] when can we expect to read the next book? i might come back here just leave a auditorium and the. we're not listening to anything more. i really want to do that now which is not to say it is not political but it is more subversive way to be political. >> have reduced the social movements with popular politics in india after the new land acquisition act? i think social movements in people's movement come under tremendous amount of pressure. but it a place all love you must have followed the protest were the girl was a gang rape didn't murdered. it was a as if it was much worse to be raped and murdered but they don't even referred to that fact. so with that one incident happened look at the women raped by upper-class men. 650 were murdered. but in the area walking with the comrades with the indigenous tribes of a schoolteacher accused captured by the police she was taken to a police station and headstones pushed up her vagina and the policemen who did it were given the president's gallantry award for bravery. of the one hand you have of the fast-track and the talk about what has happened to women and on the other hand, you have been institutionalized violence going on. in the homeland security act basically anybody who is resisting this project could be called mao in kashmir those that have been killed and thousands who have disappeared but known as the great democracy up part of india that is great but does not apply to all the people just to some people. i think social movements will be under tremendous pressure and what india is very good at doing it up to eight people and deploy them and like a good colonial power to 71 to the india or right-wing questioned. >> of food question. [laughter] >> host: there are no food questions yet. >> often the discourse within the muslim american community are highly apologetic stayed within the safety net. blooded vice. [laughter] would you give young muslims and other minority writers to develop a strong voice with their bright thing? on this lee i really don't know how to give the advice. but i think looking for acceptability is dangerous for the writer. for example, when i write all love the work -- all of the work, before he and i know i have not written

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