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In conversation with Pankaj Mishra. Photo by Vishnu R Shekhar |
A novelist, essayist and reporter, Pankaj Mishra is known for his versatile and engaging accounts on a wide-range of topics from politics, culture, spirituality, history, economics and Bollywood. He contributes articles and reviews for the New York Review of Books, the New York Times, the Guardian, and the New Statesman and many other international magazines and newspapers. He has authored six books. His latest work, From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia (2012) has reached high scales of success. The book chronicles the response of Asian intellectuals to the Western imperialism of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
He was at the Sharjah International Book Fair as a part of the “Meet the Author”
programme of the India pavilion. He gave an exclusive interview to the
reporters from Manipal University, Dubai media team.
What
interests you more, writing books or political essays?
Whether it is writing a novel or an essay, they kind
of feed into each other, they have all come out of from years of travel,
thinking and reflecting on issues that we come across.
How have
your perspectives changed since you published your first book Butter Chicken in Ludhiana in (1995)?
My perspectives have changed greatly because one of the exciting things of writing is when
you become a writer you are imbibing on a journey of growth and discovery. You will
remain a student for most of your life because you are constantly learning and
that process never ends. Your perspectives are constantly changing, refining
and developing. Perhaps this is the most exciting part about being a writer;
you don’t arrive at a certain point and say this is it. You can’t stop learning
new things about your craft, writing process and the world.
What
kind of an audience do you think reads your work?
I think the
kind of audiences who are generally curious, people who are particularly not
well informed, people who have open minds and who are interested in the world
as it is today and finding out how it came to be this way.
What
do you think are the ethical responsibilities of a non-fiction author, particularly
when you write a book related to history?
It would be mainly towards clarity and clarity in the sense of insisting that things are more
complicated than they seem, but also not over complicating things. The two tasks
which are imperative for any writer in today’s world are not to over simplify and
also not to over complicate.
You are a literary
critic, how important do you think criticism is to
writing?
For me, it is extremely
important because it shapes my idea of how books are constructed, allows me to
see from within the whole craft of writing. Engaging critically with a book
really sharpens your writing impulses and instincts. It makes you a more
sensitive reader and probably a better writer as well.
In your
latest book From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia
you talk about white imperialism through the eyes of Asian thinkers, Do you
think white imperialism still exists?
I think imperialism has different
forms now, it’s not allied with any kind of race. It’s more insidious than that,
you would find its agents; you would find people oppressing… sort of the privileged
classes oppressing their own compatriots within a nation state with the help of
privileged classes elsewhere. It’s much more complicated than it was in the late
19th century where the lines were clearly drawn racially, there were
certain racial hierarchies in play. Now, when you look at countries like China,
India and large parts of Africa where they are engaging in what might be called
neo-colonialism, practices where we can’t think about race in the same way, it
is no longer about one particular race.
What made you choose
thinkers like Jamal Al Din, Rabindranath Tagore and Liang Qichao, to portray the Asian perspective in your book?
I was interested in
people who did not feature in national histories; poets, writers and prophets. People
who are marginal to the mainstream of modern history and because their voices
are not heard, it was important for me to amplify their thought and their ideas.
What according to you is
the key factor to creative writing?
I’m very bad at giving advice of any kind. I
think everyone has to find their own way but if I were to speak in an extremely general way, what I would insist on is very wide reading.
Thank you for speaking to us.
Interviewed by Syeda Nawab Fathima
who is a media and communications student specializing in Journalism in Manipal University, Dubai.
Thank you for speaking to us.
Interviewed by Syeda Nawab Fathima
who is a media and communications student specializing in Journalism in Manipal University, Dubai.
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