Tradition:Delhi
The Reith Lectures
BBC
4.2 • 770 Ratings
🗓️ 21 April 1999
⏱️ 58 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Professor Giddens was director of the London School of Economics and he has been described as 'Britain's best-known social scientist since Keynes'.
The lectures are delivered from five major cities around the world, locating the lectures themselves within the cultural variety of the world across which they were broadcast.
In his third lecture, delivered from Delhi, Professor Giddens looks at the links between tradition and fundamentalism and argues that all traditions are invented traditions. Much of what we think of as traditional, and steeped in the mists of time, is actually a product, at most, of the last couple of centuries, and is often much more recent than that. It is a myth to think of traditions as impervious to change. Traditions, he says, evolve over time, but also can be quite suddenly altered or transformed.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Reith Lectures. |
| 0:04.3 | This lecture in the series Runaway World, given by Anthony Giddens, was originally broadcast in 1999. |
| 0:15.0 | Welcome to the third of this year's Reith Lectures on Globalisation. |
| 0:20.7 | Anthony Giddens, eminent sociologist |
| 0:23.0 | and director of the London School of Economics, |
| 0:25.6 | has now moved on to Delhi. |
| 0:28.8 | People who now play or have played important roles |
| 0:32.5 | in this great democracy, |
| 0:34.3 | the most populous in the world, |
| 0:36.1 | have gathered to hear him. |
| 0:38.3 | This lecture hall is in the grounds of the House where Jowal Al Nairu lived as First Prime Minister of Independent India. |
| 0:47.3 | It's set in the heart of the new capital designed by the British architect Sir Edwin Lutyens. |
| 0:53.3 | Just a five-minute drive from Parliament |
| 0:56.0 | where Nairu used to speak so eloquently. Lutyens laid out his trees as carefully as his buildings, |
| 1:03.2 | and although Lutyens Delhi has expanded to a city of millions, this part is still as green as he left it. |
| 1:13.6 | India, perhaps above anywhere else, is a land of tradition, the subject of this evening's |
| 1:18.6 | lecture. |
| 1:20.6 | Nero compared India's history to a palimset, an ancient manuscript written on over and over again with no lair ever being erased. |
| 1:31.4 | It's home to all the great religions of the world and to one of the world's oldest civilizations. |
| 1:39.2 | Nero had a deep respect for India's tradition, but was also a thoroughly modern man. He was even willing to adopt |
| 1:47.8 | what he regarded as the best of the traditions left behind by the British he'd fought against |
| 1:53.1 | for so many years. He was, as were so many in his day, a socialist. But I'm sure were he still here, |
... |
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