At the Safai Karamchair Andolan office on 4 January 2010

In his Sarai lecture, on 4 Jan 2010, Slavoj Žižek called Gandhi a ’soft fascist’ and said he was more in line with Ambedkar’s radical approach to the question of caste. In this interview to the Sunday Times of India (10 Jan 2010), he elaborates on these questions. Excerpts with links to full text.

Q: You have also been accused of glorifying political violence. Do you support violence as a means of political change?

A: Here I must be frank. For me, the 20th century communism is the biggest ethical-political catastrophe in the history of humanity, greater catastrophe than fascism. In fascism, you had bad people who said we will do bad things and they took power and they did bad things. That’s why in fascism you don’t have dissidents. But in the first years of the October Revolution, in spite of the so-called Red Terror, there was sexual liberation, literary explosion and then it turned into the nightmare. I don’t accept the right-wing critique that says it was evil from the very beginning.

Q: What’s your point?

My point is what people perceive as violence is the direct subjective violence. It’s crucial to see violence which has to be done repeatedly to keep the things the way they are. I am not just talking about structural violence, symbolic violence, violence in language, etc. In that sense Gandhi was more violent than Hitler. Hitler killed millions of people. It was more reactive killing. Hitler was active all the time not to change things but to prevent change.

Q: A lot of people will find it ridiculous to even imagine that Gandhi was more violent than Hitler? Are you serious when you say that…

A: Yes he was, although Gandhi didn’t support killing. With his actions — boycott and all that — he helped the British imperialists to stay in India longer. This is something Hitler never wanted. Gandhi didn’t do anything to stop the functioning of the British empire or the way it functioned here. You have to think why was India called the jewel of the empire? That for me is a problem. Let us locate violence properly.

Q: I guess you have no respect for Gandhi who is a tall figure in this country…

A: I respect him. I don’t respect him for his peaceful ways, vegetarianism etc. I don’t care about that. But Gandhi somehow succeeded in carrying on his principled attitude with pragmatic spirit. It’s very difficult to maintain this balance. But again I feel Ambedkar was much better than Gandhi. My favourite oneliner from Ambedkar is when he said that “there is no caste without outcastes”. Ambedkar saw that the Gandhian solution for untouchables was wrong. This attitude doesn’t work. I am for Ambedkar’s radical approach.

The full text of the interview can be viewed on Times of India staffer Shobhan Saxena’s blog. The print version can be viewed here. The TimeOut and Hindustan Times interview can be found here.

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