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Conversations with Tyler

Barkha Dutt on the Nuances of Indian Life

Conversations with Tyler

Conversations with Tyler

Society & Culture, Education

4.8 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 29 June 2022

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Growing up, Barkha Dutt was totally rootless. She spoke English, not her parent’s Punjabi. She devoured Enid Blyton and studied English literature during college, but read few Indian novelists. She didn’t even know her caste. This has opened her up to criticism as being a progressive elite who is out of touch with her heritage, and challenged her to be especially thoughtful in the way she examines the many overlapping values in Indian society. A successful broadcast journalist and columnist, she currently runs the YouTube-based news channel MoJo Story and recently published a new book, ​​Humans of COVID: To Hell and Back.

Barkha joined Tyler to discuss how Westerners can gain a more complete picture of India, the misogyny still embedded in Indian society, why family law should be agnostic of religious belief, the causes of declining fertility in India, why relations between Hindus and Muslims seem to be worsening, how caste has persisted so strongly in India, the success of India’s subsidized institutes of higher education, the best city for Indian food, the power of Amar Chitra Katha’s comics, the influence of her English liberal arts education, the future of Anglo-American liberalism in India, the best ways to use Twitter, and more.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.

Recorded May 5th, 2022

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University,

0:09.2

bridging the gap between academic ideas and real world problems.

0:13.3

Learn more at mercatis.org.

0:16.0

For full transcript of every conversation, enhanced with helpful links, visit

0:21.0

ConversationsWithT Tyler.com.

0:27.6

Hello everyone and welcome back to Conversations with Tyler.

0:31.2

Today I'm chatting with Bartka.

0:33.2

If you have a connection to India, she needs no further introduction,

0:36.6

but if you don't have such a connection, she is a very famous Indian television journalist.

0:41.5

She is an owner of a YouTube news channel, Mojo Story.

0:45.2

She's an opinion columnist with the Hindus Stunt Times and the Washington Post.

0:49.7

And she was part of NDTV's team for 21 years.

0:53.4

She has two books, the very most recent one out is Humans of COVID to Hell and Back.

0:59.0

Bartka, welcome.

1:00.7

Thank you Tyler and thank you for having me.

1:03.0

Which do you think are the most valuable conversations in India that the West is essentially blind to?

1:09.9

I think the West is able to see India only through certain tropes and tropes that it has gathered

1:16.8

from newspapers like the one I write for, Washington Post, as well as the New York Times.

1:22.5

Some of these narratives that the West understands about India are true, but they are incomplete.

1:29.1

And therefore, the West understands India in terms of, let's say, debates around whether there is equality for religious minorities,

1:37.2

whether there is a free press.

1:38.8

These are valid questions.

...

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