Watch: Ashis Nandy at Express Adda

Nandy was in conversation with Vandita Mishra, National Opinion Editor, The Indian Express, and Pratik Kanjilal, Literary Editor.

Ashis Nandy, one of the country’s leading public intellectuals, was the guest at the Express Adda in New Delhi on Wednesday. He was in conversation with Vandita Mishra, National Opinion Editor, The Indian Express, and Pratik Kanjilal, Literary Editor.

A clinical psychologist and sociologist by training, and a political psychologist and futurist by imputation, Nandy brings the rigour of his disciplines to the study of Indian society, culture and politics, in areas of interests ranging from Hindutva to modernity and utopia.

Nandy has survived the accusation of hurting sentiments by writing on the riots in Gujarat in 2002. And at the Jaipur Literature Festival, he weathered the hostility of Dalits, a group whose interests he has frequently championed, and among whose ranks he has too many friends to count.

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Nandy’s work focuses on the creative and destructive possibilities of the human race. (Express photo: Praveen Khanna)

He is also one of India’s dwindling band of bilingual writers, having ventured into Bengali publishing in 2016 with ‘Footpath peroleyi Shomudra (Across the Footpath, the Sea)’. Nandy’s publications are too many to enumerate, and his most recent honours include the Grand Prize of the Fukuoka Asian Cultural Prizes (2007), the Sree Narayana Guru Samiti’s Dr K K Damodaran Award for lifelong work for marginalised sections (2016), and the Hans Kilian Prize (2019).

Nandy’s work focuses on the creative and destructive possibilities of the human race. He is a reliable weatherman because he is unencumbered by the lens of political affiliation, and is free to interpret the evidence logically.

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