{"id":7139,"date":"2026-02-04T13:00:01","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T13:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fondationfranceasie.org\/?p=7139"},"modified":"2026-03-25T14:12:27","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T14:12:27","slug":"interview-nouveaux-regards-with-anne-vigiuer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fondationfranceasie.org\/en\/interview-nouveaux-regards-with-anne-vigiuer\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview Nouveaux Regards with Anne Viguier"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Understanding India:\u00a0<\/b>democracy,\u00a0 colonial legacies, and cultural plurality.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

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Interviewed by Jean-Rapha\u00ebl Peytregnet<\/p>\n

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Jean-Rapha\u00ebl Peytregnet : In your most recent\u00a0 book, A Brief History of India [1], recently\u00a0 republished, you write in the introduction that the\u00a0 country \u201cseems to resist all shortcuts.\u201d Yet when I\u00a0 read what is written in France about the land of\u00a0 Mahatma Gandhi, I sometimes get the impression\u00a0 that certain \u201cIndologists\u201d adopt a reductive\u00a0 discourse that boils down to criticizing Prime\u00a0 Minister Narendra Modi and what they describe as\u00a0 his \u201cauthoritarian drift,\u201d while overlooking earlier,\u00a0 no less authoritarian policies\u2014particularly those\u00a0 pursued by Indira Gandhi and the Congress Party,\u00a0 which she ruled with an iron hand. What is your\u00a0 view on this?\u00a0\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

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Anne Viguier :\u00a0<\/b>It is very difficult for an outside\u00a0 observer to grasp India in all its diversity. This\u00a0 may sound like a clich\u00e9, yet it is an undeniable\u00a0 and foundational reality. This diversity existed in\u00a0 the past, even within the smallest kingdoms. The\u00a0 anti-colonial struggle, followed by the\u00a0 construction of a modern nation-state, led India\u00a0 to develop common administrative structures.<\/p>\n

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Economic development transformed agricultural\u00a0 practices; urban lifestyles brought about a\u00a0 certain degree of homogenization; and today,\u00a0 the use of the Internet and social media seems to\u00a0 be leading to even greater uniformity. Yet in\u00a0 many respects\u2014and for a significant portion of\u00a0\u00a0the population that remains rural\u2014diversity still\u00a0 prevails: languages, religious practices and\u00a0 village customs, ways of eating and dressing,\u00a0 choices of spouses, relationships with nature,\u00a0 music, entertainment, and so on. The political\u00a0 sphere is no exception. Seeking to summarize\u00a0 India through a single political figure, even a\u00a0 prime minister with undeniable charisma across\u00a0 large parts of the country, is misleading. One\u00a0 must not forget that he came to power through\u00a0 elections and has never obtained an absolute\u00a0 majority of votes.<\/p>\n

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During Indira Gandhi\u2019s era (1966\u20131984), her\u00a0 party, the Indian National Congress, was\u00a0 undoubtedly far more powerful: it dominated\u00a0 almost all regions of India and all social\u00a0 categories. It was the fear of losing this\u00a0 dominance that led Indira Gandhi to declare the\u00a0 Emergency from 1975 to 1977, resulting in the\u00a0 suspension of democratic freedoms in the country for two years.<\/p>\n

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This possibility was provided for by the 1950\u00a0 Constitution, which established a strong central\u00a0 state. Independent India also inherited from the\u00a0 colonial period certain authoritarian\u00a0 mechanisms allowing action in exceptional\u00a0 circumstances: anti-sedition laws, laws\u00a0enabling restrictions on movement during\u00a0 epidemics, and so forth. Practices that today\u00a0 appear undemocratic are therefore not new.\u00a0 What perhaps explains the particularly critical\u00a0 stance of foreign scholars and journalists, or of\u00a0 Indians within academic and intellectual circles,\u00a0 is the relative novelty of increased central\u00a0 control over the media and over scholarly\u00a0 production in the social sciences and\u00a0 humanities.<\/p>\n

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You suggest that approaching India\u2019s past through\u00a0 the history of its population settlement is, to quote\u00a0 you, a slippery slope. Yet it is well established that\u00a0 India\u2019s origins lie in the Indus Valley civilization\u2014\u00a0<\/b>also known as Harappan\u2014followed by Indo-Aryan\u00a0 and Dravidian civilizations, all sharing the Vedas\u00a0 (Hinduism). Much later, from the 10th century\u00a0 onward, there were Arab, Afghan, Turkic, and\u00a0 Mongol occupations, but the populations resulting\u00a0 from these account for only about 14 percent of the\u00a0 total. Based on these facts, could you explain your\u00a0 position?\u00a0\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

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The history of India\u2019s population settlement cannot today be definitively established,\u00a0 because sources are lacking in many\u00a0 respects.<\/p>\n

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As far as the earliest movements\u2014those prior to\u00a0 the Common Era\u2014are concerned, current\u00a0 interpretations are hypotheses largely based on\u00a0 linguistic studies or readings of ancient texts,\u00a0 rather than on indisputable archaeological\u00a0 evidence. For example, we still do not know the\u00a0 origin of the Indus civilization (c. \u22122600\/\u22121900),\u00a0 how it disappeared, or how the inhabitants of\u00a0 that region subsequently migrated eastward\u00a0 and southward. Since its script will likely never be\u00a0 deciphered, obtaining definitive answers\u00a0 remains extremely difficult.<\/p>\n

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As for the arrival of proto-Dravidian language\u00a0 speakers (around \u22122500?), preceding that of the\u00a0 Indo-Aryans (around \u22121500?), this too remains\u00a0 uncertain and is above all the subject of\u00a0 controversy between northern and southern\u00a0 Indians. This is what I meant by a slippery slope:\u00a0 interpretations of India\u2019s ancient history\u00a0 contribute to the construction of regional\u00a0 identities. Every new archaeological discovery\u00a0 can be seen as politically sensitive. As for more\u00a0 recent population movements\u2014particularly the\u00a0 arrival of Muslims from Central Asia starting in\u00a0 the 11th century\u2014they are certainly better\u00a0 documented, but their impact is not always\u00a0 easy to assess. Their legacy cannot be\u00a0 measured solely by the proportion of India\u2019s\u00a0\u00a0population that today identifies as Muslim,\u00a0 which is indeed a minority.<\/p>\n

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The architectural, cultural, and institutional\u00a0 heritage is considerable, and northern India\u00a0 remains deeply marked by the brilliant Indo Persian culture that flourished between the 16th\u00a0 and 18th centuries. As for contemporary\u00a0 Hinduism, it does not present a unified face. It\u00a0 draws on the ancient legacy of the Vedas\u2014 sacred Sanskrit literature at the foundation of\u00a0 Hinduism\u2014but also on the stories of the\u00a0 Mahabharata and the Ramayana, epics written\u00a0 in various Indian languages, as well as on more\u00a0 recent bhakti (devotional) texts.<\/p>\n

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Later in your book, you ask whether Indian\u00a0 democracy has colonial origins. You argue that the\u00a0 Indian elite\u2019s decision to introduce universal\u00a0 suffrage as early as 1950 was primarily intended to\u00a0 prevent a more radical social revolution. Could you\u00a0 elaborate on this argument, which I find\u00a0 particularly interesting?\u00a0\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

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From the 1870s onward, colonial authorities\u00a0 gradually developed forms of self-government in\u00a0 India, associating certain Indian elites with the\u00a0 administration of regions directly controlled by\u00a0 the British through elections based on property\u00a0 qualifications. Between 3 and 11 percent of the\u00a0 population could vote to elect municipal\u00a0 representatives or deputies to provincial\u00a0 legislative councils. After 1935, local governments\u00a0 were able to administer the provinces.<\/p>\n

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Congress leaders thus gained experience in\u00a0 governance that they were able to draw upon\u00a0 at independence. Of course, the autonomy\u00a0 granted to Indians remained very limited within\u00a0 a colonial system that retained all the\u00a0 characteristics of an autocracy. Moreover,\u00a0 conditions in the princely states\u2014which then\u00a0 covered three-fifths of British India\u2019s territory and\u00a0 about one-third of its population\u2014depended on\u00a0 the choices of the princes, resulting in a wide\u00a0 variety of situations.<\/p>\n

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Because of the very limited development of\u00a0 educational institutions during the colonial\u00a0 period, the overwhelming majority of the Indian\u00a0 population was illiterate at independence. The\u00a0 Constituent Assembly that drafted the 1950\u00a0 Constitution had been elected by property based suffrage in 1946 and therefore\u00a0 represented only a very small, wealthy, and\u00a0 educated segment of the population. The\u00a0 dilemma faced by the French revolutionaries in\u00a0 1792 thus arose in India.<\/p>\n

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Should the right to vote be granted to an\u00a0 illiterate mass? How could one ensure that\u00a0 elections would truly be democratic?<\/p>\n

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At independence, India\u2019s main problem was not\u00a0 primarily political but social and economic. The\u00a0 population was extremely poor. To mobilize\u00a0 peasants and workers, the Congress Party had\u00a0 blamed the colonial system for their misery,\u00a0 citing the exploitation it had imposed on the\u00a0 country.<\/p>\n

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Yet concrete social demands for a better\u00a0 distribution of wealth\u2014voiced by landless\u00a0 peasants, tenant farmers, and factory workers in\u00a0 Bombay or Calcutta\u2014were directed primarily at\u00a0 Indian elites. Although the Communist Party,\u00a0 founded in 1928, did not enjoy broad support at\u00a0 the time, it accompanied the Telangana\u00a0 peasant insurrection (1946\u20131951) and had\u00a0 already established itself in Kerala and Bengal.\u00a0 Land reform, in particular, was an extremely\u00a0 sensitive issue.<\/p>\n

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Nehru, as a socialist, was in favor of it, but he had\u00a0 to contend with conservative members of his\u00a0 party drawn from the propertied classes. There\u00a0 was therefore a strong risk that, if no decisive\u00a0 measures in favor of social justice were\u00a0 adopted, the country would be drawn into major\u00a0 social unrest, or even a revolutionary situation.<\/p>\n

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Universal suffrage\u2014organized with extreme\u00a0 seriousness despite the logistical challenges of\u00a0 enabling 173 million Indians to vote\u2014could serve\u00a0 as a safety valve and confer a central role on\u00a0 the people in the new India. We know, however,\u00a0 that the entire democratic machinery set up at\u00a0 the time, though it functioned relatively well,\u00a0 proved incapable of truly reducing inequalities.<\/p>\n

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This is why a violent movement such as the\u00a0 Maoist-inspired Naxalite insurgency developed\u00a0 from 1967 onward in the rural areas of eastern\u00a0 and central India. It also explains the gradual\u00a0 erosion of support for the Congress Party during\u00a0 the 1980s.<\/p>\n

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Could the ideology of hindutva (Hindu-ness\/ Indian-ness), which seeks, as you write, to\u00a0 homogenize India, ultimately be a necessary evil in\u00a0 a country composed of so many states, languages,\u00a0 and religions\u2014especially given a regional security\u00a0 environment perceived as threatening to its\u00a0 stability? I am thinking in particular of Pakistan and\u00a0 China, two countries with which India has recently\u00a0 had to confront tensions.\u00a0\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

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As a historian\u2014and a foreigner at that\u2014I would\u00a0 not venture to judge the legitimacy of this policy\u00a0 for Indians themselves.<\/p>\n

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It is undeniable that India faces security\u00a0 challenges that compel it to strengthen\u00a0 national unity.<\/p>\n

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We also know that new civilizational narratives\u00a0 are developing everywhere in the world today,\u00a0 and that each major country must engage in\u00a0 identity-based struggles in order to play its role.\u00a0 What I observe, when studying the very long\u00a0 history of the Indian world (whose geographical\u00a0 boundaries extend beyond the present-day\u00a0 Indian Union and include Pakistan and\u00a0 Bangladesh), is that diversity only became a\u00a0 problem for India with its confrontation with the\u00a0 West.<\/p>\n

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In a way, Christian proselytism and the\u00a0 superiority complex of European colonizers\u00a0 pushed Indians to rethink a form of coexistence\u00a0 that had long been marked by acceptance of\u00a0 differences. Must this shift necessarily lead to the\u00a0 erasure of some of the values that long\u00a0 animated the peoples of this part of the world\u2014\u00a0values shaping their relationship to nature, their\u00a0 conception of humanity\u2019s place within it, or the\u00a0 role of politics?<\/p>\n

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That is for Indians to decide. But we must not\u00a0 forget that they number more than 1.4 billion.\u00a0 This is not the case of the 20 million French\u00a0 people under Louis XIV, to whom Catholicism\u00a0 was imposed, nor the 39 million of the late 19th\u00a0 century who, through schooling, moved toward\u00a0 linguistic uniformity.<\/p>\n

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Perhaps this drive toward cultural\u00a0 homogenization may instead weaken what\u00a0 constitutes India\u2019s strength and originality\u00a0 in today\u2019s world.<\/p>\n

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In the conclusion of your book, you rightly observe\u00a0 that \u201cfor a long time, the French tended to cultivate\u00a0 a fascination with China (rather than India).\u201d This\u00a0 may indeed seem paradoxical, given that, from a\u00a0 civilizational standpoint, we share common Indo E<\/b>uropean roots with India, and that the country\u00a0 remains\u2014whatever one may say, unlike China\u2014a\u00a0 democracy as we understand it in the West, as\u00a0 demonstrated by its most recent national election,\u00a0 in which the dominance of Narendra Modi\u2019s\u00a0 nationalist party was challenged at the ballot box.\u00a0 What do you think?\u00a0\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

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This is indeed a reality that I observe and regret,\u00a0 like all French people who love India and wish for our country to strengthen its ties with it. There\u00a0 was a time when French intellectuals could see\u00a0in India ancient roots of our own civilization. That is no longer the case today.<\/p>\n

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First, because our culture itself has changed and\u00a0 moved away from its Greco-Roman and biblical\u00a0 references. We find ourselves caught between a\u00a0 form of rationalism that dismisses all religious\u00a0 phenomena as inherently suspect and\u00a0 dangerous, and a chauvinistic tendency toward\u00a0 inward retreat that seeks to avoid any external\u00a0 influence.<\/p>\n

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This is hardly conducive to engagement with an\u00a0 Indian world marked by multiple contradictions\u00a0 that resist easy categorization. I have always\u00a0 believed that Europe is the appropriate scale at\u00a0 which to engage with India. Indian federalism is\u00a0 a fascinating construction that Europeans\u00a0 should have studied more closely.<\/p>\n

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At one point, there were requests from the\u00a0 Indian side for institutional exchanges, but these\u00a0 were not understood in Europe. India, like Europe,\u00a0 must manage multilingualism and negotiate\u00a0 the place of English in education and internal\u00a0 exchanges. But for the French to approach India\u00a0 with fewer prejudices and anxieties, studies on<\/p>\n

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the country must first be developed\u2014and not\u00a0 only on political issues. Consider that in France\u00a0 there are only two university positions dedicated\u00a0 to teaching Indian history. Indological studies\u00a0 are declining, including the teaching of Hindi,\u00a0 which is nevertheless the official language of the\u00a0 Indian Union and spoken by 40 percent of\u00a0 Indians.<\/p>\n

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We should also avoid constantly judging India\u00a0 through our democratic models or our ideal of\u00a0 secularism, and remain mindful that India has\u00a0 many faces. Indian democracy is not a replica\u00a0 of ours. For example, affirmative action plays a\u00a0 major role there. Indian secularism is not French\u00a0 la\u00efcit\u00e9, and one cannot judge what threatens it\u00a0 by our own standards.<\/p>\n

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I believe we need neutral observation,\u00a0 exchanges in all fields, and trust. Perhaps\u00a0 economic exchanges\u2014which will be vital in the\u00a0 future\u2014will give new impetus to Franco-Indian\u00a0 relations within the framework of a strengthened\u00a0 India\u2013Europe relationship.<\/p>\n

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[1] A Brief History of India: From the Land of a Thousand Gods\u00a0 to a Global Power, Champs histoire, \u00c9ditions Flammarion,\u00a0 Paris, 2025, 272 pages.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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*****<\/p>\n

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Anne Viguier is an\u00a0agr\u00e9g\u00e9e\u00a0<\/i>in history and an associate professor in the Department of Indian, South Asian, and\u00a0 Tibetan Studies at Inalco, as well as a researcher at CESSMA. Among her publications are A Brief History of India:\u00a0 From the Land of a Thousand Gods to a Global Power (Flammarion), first published in 2023 and reissued in 2025,\u00a0 and the co-edited volume Encyclopedia of Historiographies: Africas, Americas, Asias. Gender and Sources, vol. 1\u00a0 (Presses de l\u2019Inalco), published in 2020\u20132021.<\/p>\n

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This publication reflects the views and opinions of the individual authors. As a platform dedicated to the sharing of information and ideas, our objective is to highlight a diversity of perspectives. Accordingly, the opinions expressed herein should not be interpreted as those of the Fondation France-Asie or its affiliates.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Understanding India:\u00a0democracy,\u00a0 colonial legacies, and cultural plurality.\u00a0   Interviewed by Jean-Rapha\u00ebl Peytregnet   Jean-Rapha\u00ebl Peytregnet : In your most recent\u00a0 book, A Brief History of India [1], recently\u00a0 republished, you write in the introduction that the\u00a0 country \u201cseems to resist all shortcuts.\u201d Yet when I\u00a0 read what is written in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6874,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","filesize_raw":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[118],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fondationfranceasie.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7139"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fondationfranceasie.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fondationfranceasie.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fondationfranceasie.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fondationfranceasie.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7139"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/fondationfranceasie.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7229,"href":"https:\/\/fondationfranceasie.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7139\/revisions\/7229"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fondationfranceasie.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fondationfranceasie.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fondationfranceasie.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fondationfranceasie.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}