Interview Nouveaux Regards with Anne Vigiuer

Understanding India: democracy,  colonial legacies, and cultural plurality. 

Interviewed by Jean-Raphaël Peytregnet

Jean-Raphaël Peytregnet : In your most recent  book, A Brief History of India [1], recently  republished, you write in the introduction that the  country “seems to resist all shortcuts.” Yet when I  read what is written in France about the land of  Mahatma Gandhi, I sometimes get the impression  that certain “Indologists” adopt a reductive  discourse that boils down to criticizing Prime  Minister Narendra Modi and what they describe as  his “authoritarian drift,” while overlooking earlier,  no less authoritarian policies—particularly those  pursued by Indira Gandhi and the Congress Party,  which she ruled with an iron hand. What is your  view on this?  

Anne Viguier : It is very difficult for an outside  observer to grasp India in all its diversity. This  may sound like a cliché, yet it is an undeniable  and foundational reality. This diversity existed in  the past, even within the smallest kingdoms. The  anti-colonial struggle, followed by the  construction of a modern nation-state, led India  to develop common administrative structures.

Economic development transformed agricultural  practices; urban lifestyles brought about a  certain degree of homogenization; and today,  the use of the Internet and social media seems to  be leading to even greater uniformity. Yet in  many respects—and for a significant portion of  the population that remains rural—diversity still  prevails: languages, religious practices and  village customs, ways of eating and dressing,  choices of spouses, relationships with nature,  music, entertainment, and so on. The political  sphere is no exception. Seeking to summarize  India through a single political figure, even a  prime minister with undeniable charisma across  large parts of the country, is misleading. One  must not forget that he came to power through  elections and has never obtained an absolute  majority of votes.

During Indira Gandhi’s era (1966–1984), her  party, the Indian National Congress, was  undoubtedly far more powerful: it dominated  almost all regions of India and all social  categories. It was the fear of losing this  dominance that led Indira Gandhi to declare the  Emergency from 1975 to 1977, resulting in the  suspension of democratic freedoms in the country for two years.

This possibility was provided for by the 1950  Constitution, which established a strong central  state. Independent India also inherited from the  colonial period certain authoritarian  mechanisms allowing action in exceptional  circumstances: anti-sedition laws, laws enabling restrictions on movement during  epidemics, and so forth. Practices that today  appear undemocratic are therefore not new.  What perhaps explains the particularly critical  stance of foreign scholars and journalists, or of  Indians within academic and intellectual circles,  is the relative novelty of increased central  control over the media and over scholarly  production in the social sciences and  humanities.

You suggest that approaching India’s past through  the history of its population settlement is, to quote  you, a slippery slope. Yet it is well established that  India’s origins lie in the Indus Valley civilization— also known as Harappan—followed by Indo-Aryan  and Dravidian civilizations, all sharing the Vedas  (Hinduism). Much later, from the 10th century  onward, there were Arab, Afghan, Turkic, and  Mongol occupations, but the populations resulting  from these account for only about 14 percent of the  total. Based on these facts, could you explain your  position?  

The history of India’s population settlement cannot today be definitively established,  because sources are lacking in many  respects.

As far as the earliest movements—those prior to  the Common Era—are concerned, current  interpretations are hypotheses largely based on  linguistic studies or readings of ancient texts,  rather than on indisputable archaeological  evidence. For example, we still do not know the  origin of the Indus civilization (c. −2600/−1900),  how it disappeared, or how the inhabitants of  that region subsequently migrated eastward  and southward. Since its script will likely never be  deciphered, obtaining definitive answers  remains extremely difficult.

As for the arrival of proto-Dravidian language  speakers (around −2500?), preceding that of the  Indo-Aryans (around −1500?), this too remains  uncertain and is above all the subject of  controversy between northern and southern  Indians. This is what I meant by a slippery slope:  interpretations of India’s ancient history  contribute to the construction of regional  identities. Every new archaeological discovery  can be seen as politically sensitive. As for more  recent population movements—particularly the  arrival of Muslims from Central Asia starting in  the 11th century—they are certainly better  documented, but their impact is not always  easy to assess. Their legacy cannot be  measured solely by the proportion of India’s  population that today identifies as Muslim,  which is indeed a minority.

The architectural, cultural, and institutional  heritage is considerable, and northern India  remains deeply marked by the brilliant Indo Persian culture that flourished between the 16th  and 18th centuries. As for contemporary  Hinduism, it does not present a unified face. It  draws on the ancient legacy of the Vedas— sacred Sanskrit literature at the foundation of  Hinduism—but also on the stories of the  Mahabharata and the Ramayana, epics written  in various Indian languages, as well as on more  recent bhakti (devotional) texts.

Later in your book, you ask whether Indian  democracy has colonial origins. You argue that the  Indian elite’s decision to introduce universal  suffrage as early as 1950 was primarily intended to  prevent a more radical social revolution. Could you  elaborate on this argument, which I find  particularly interesting?  

From the 1870s onward, colonial authorities  gradually developed forms of self-government in  India, associating certain Indian elites with the  administration of regions directly controlled by  the British through elections based on property  qualifications. Between 3 and 11 percent of the  population could vote to elect municipal  representatives or deputies to provincial  legislative councils. After 1935, local governments  were able to administer the provinces.

Congress leaders thus gained experience in  governance that they were able to draw upon  at independence. Of course, the autonomy  granted to Indians remained very limited within  a colonial system that retained all the  characteristics of an autocracy. Moreover,  conditions in the princely states—which then  covered three-fifths of British India’s territory and  about one-third of its population—depended on  the choices of the princes, resulting in a wide  variety of situations.

Because of the very limited development of  educational institutions during the colonial  period, the overwhelming majority of the Indian  population was illiterate at independence. The  Constituent Assembly that drafted the 1950  Constitution had been elected by property

based suffrage in 1946 and therefore  represented only a very small, wealthy, and  educated segment of the population. The  dilemma faced by the French revolutionaries in  1792 thus arose in India.

Should the right to vote be granted to an  illiterate mass? How could one ensure that  elections would truly be democratic?

At independence, India’s main problem was not  primarily political but social and economic. The  population was extremely poor. To mobilize  peasants and workers, the Congress Party had  blamed the colonial system for their misery,  citing the exploitation it had imposed on the  country.

Yet concrete social demands for a better  distribution of wealth—voiced by landless  peasants, tenant farmers, and factory workers in  Bombay or Calcutta—were directed primarily at  Indian elites. Although the Communist Party,  founded in 1928, did not enjoy broad support at  the time, it accompanied the Telangana  peasant insurrection (1946–1951) and had  already established itself in Kerala and Bengal.  Land reform, in particular, was an extremely  sensitive issue.

Nehru, as a socialist, was in favor of it, but he had  to contend with conservative members of his  party drawn from the propertied classes. There  was therefore a strong risk that, if no decisive  measures in favor of social justice were  adopted, the country would be drawn into major  social unrest, or even a revolutionary situation.

Universal suffrage—organized with extreme  seriousness despite the logistical challenges of  enabling 173 million Indians to vote—could serve  as a safety valve and confer a central role on  the people in the new India. We know, however,  that the entire democratic machinery set up at  the time, though it functioned relatively well,  proved incapable of truly reducing inequalities.

This is why a violent movement such as the  Maoist-inspired Naxalite insurgency developed  from 1967 onward in the rural areas of eastern  and central India. It also explains the gradual  erosion of support for the Congress Party during  the 1980s.

Could the ideology of hindutva (Hindu-ness/ Indian-ness), which seeks, as you write, to  homogenize India, ultimately be a necessary evil in  a country composed of so many states, languages,  and religions—especially given a regional security  environment perceived as threatening to its  stability? I am thinking in particular of Pakistan and  China, two countries with which India has recently  had to confront tensions.  

As a historian—and a foreigner at that—I would  not venture to judge the legitimacy of this policy  for Indians themselves.

It is undeniable that India faces security  challenges that compel it to strengthen  national unity.

We also know that new civilizational narratives  are developing everywhere in the world today,  and that each major country must engage in  identity-based struggles in order to play its role.  What I observe, when studying the very long  history of the Indian world (whose geographical  boundaries extend beyond the present-day  Indian Union and include Pakistan and  Bangladesh), is that diversity only became a  problem for India with its confrontation with the  West.

In a way, Christian proselytism and the  superiority complex of European colonizers  pushed Indians to rethink a form of coexistence  that had long been marked by acceptance of  differences. Must this shift necessarily lead to the  erasure of some of the values that long  animated the peoples of this part of the world— values shaping their relationship to nature, their  conception of humanity’s place within it, or the  role of politics?

That is for Indians to decide. But we must not  forget that they number more than 1.4 billion.  This is not the case of the 20 million French  people under Louis XIV, to whom Catholicism  was imposed, nor the 39 million of the late 19th  century who, through schooling, moved toward  linguistic uniformity.

Perhaps this drive toward cultural  homogenization may instead weaken what  constitutes India’s strength and originality  in today’s world.

In the conclusion of your book, you rightly observe  that “for a long time, the French tended to cultivate  a fascination with China (rather than India).” This  may indeed seem paradoxical, given that, from a  civilizational standpoint, we share common Indo European roots with India, and that the country  remains—whatever one may say, unlike China—a  democracy as we understand it in the West, as  demonstrated by its most recent national election,  in which the dominance of Narendra Modi’s  nationalist party was challenged at the ballot box.  What do you think?  

This is indeed a reality that I observe and regret,  like all French people who love India and wish for our country to strengthen its ties with it. There  was a time when French intellectuals could see in India ancient roots of our own civilization. That is no longer the case today.

First, because our culture itself has changed and  moved away from its Greco-Roman and biblical  references. We find ourselves caught between a  form of rationalism that dismisses all religious  phenomena as inherently suspect and  dangerous, and a chauvinistic tendency toward  inward retreat that seeks to avoid any external  influence.

This is hardly conducive to engagement with an  Indian world marked by multiple contradictions  that resist easy categorization. I have always  believed that Europe is the appropriate scale at  which to engage with India. Indian federalism is  a fascinating construction that Europeans  should have studied more closely.

At one point, there were requests from the  Indian side for institutional exchanges, but these  were not understood in Europe. India, like Europe,  must manage multilingualism and negotiate  the place of English in education and internal  exchanges. But for the French to approach India  with fewer prejudices and anxieties, studies on

the country must first be developed—and not  only on political issues. Consider that in France  there are only two university positions dedicated  to teaching Indian history. Indological studies  are declining, including the teaching of Hindi,  which is nevertheless the official language of the  Indian Union and spoken by 40 percent of  Indians.

We should also avoid constantly judging India  through our democratic models or our ideal of  secularism, and remain mindful that India has  many faces. Indian democracy is not a replica  of ours. For example, affirmative action plays a  major role there. Indian secularism is not French  laïcité, and one cannot judge what threatens it  by our own standards.

I believe we need neutral observation,  exchanges in all fields, and trust. Perhaps  economic exchanges—which will be vital in the  future—will give new impetus to Franco-Indian  relations within the framework of a strengthened  India–Europe relationship.

[1] A Brief History of India: From the Land of a Thousand Gods  to a Global Power, Champs histoire, Éditions Flammarion,  Paris, 2025, 272 pages.