‘People in India compare themselves to their past. In today’s world that’s irrelevant’

But you come to Haji Ali, you go to Indonesia, you go to Malaysia, you go to places in Bangladesh, even in Pakistan, and it’s a very different Islam that has always mingled with local culture.

• And it’s not exclusivist. It doesn’t tell people from another faith, someone like me, go away.

No, in fact, many people who come here… are Hindu. Or of other religions.

• From all religions.

The important thing is that I think the way it tells us … that this kind of syncretic Islam has always been able to mingle with modernity and that is the real challenge for Muslim society today. To find a way of embracing modernity… Rather than cutting itself off and saying no, we are too different, we have to construct our own Utopia. Whether it’s the Taliban, whether it’s Iran.

This tells you no, you can mingle with the existing culture, with modernity. And you can succeed.

• And the rest can mingle with you without feeling fearful or afraid or suspicious.

Precisely, precisely.

• So where does this Islamophobia come in from?

Oh gosh! Look, I’d say there are two parts to it and one has to be careful to mention both. The first is that you have had, within the world of Islam, a genuine crisis. If you look around the world, wherever you have Muslim societies there is a difficulty adapting to modernity. Look at even China. China is one of the most absorptive civilisations. It was able to absorb the Jews. Think about it. But it was not able to absorb Islam. So there is a tension.

•There are those in India who will say the fault lies in the Muslims. It’s not as if the Chinese were not able to absorb them, it was the Muslims who were exclusivist.

I would say there is some truth to that. That Islam, because it has defined modernity for so many centuries, in the 7th, 8th, 9th centuries, it has difficulty adapting to another person’s definition of modernity.

• Or accepting the fact that the rest of the world perhaps has gone ahead.

Take a Chinese person, tell him in order to succeed in the modern world you have to learn English, put on a suit, learn computer science. He’ll say, fine, no problem. By and large you tell a Hindu that, he will have no problem.

For a Muslim it raises fundamental questions. What is my identity? Am I subordinating my identity to that of a modernity not of my definition?

• And that is debilitating a Muslim?

That paralyses you. Because if you start worrying about the fact that you are losing your culture in order to succeed, you will never succeed. If you look at the cultures that have succeeded in the modern world, the Chinese, the Japanese, the east Asians, increasingly in Latin America. Those are people who don’t worry about …

• Even the Indian culture in some way?

Even Indian culture, absolutely … It is a sign of Indians saying look whatever the rules of the world are, we will succeed according to them. And trust us to adapt that success to our ancient culture.

We will not lose our culture, we will find a way to be computer scientists who speak English, but somehow remain deeply involved …

• And still have arranged marriage, still have your karva chauth … And even astrology.

Exactly. Look at the Japanese. Japan is the richest non-western country in the world, second richest country in the world. It’s deeply modern and deeply Japanese at the same time. I think elites worry too much. And Muslim elites are worried too much that you lose your culture when you …

• So secular politics does not mean irreligious politics?

It shouldn’t because I think one thing we forget in developing countries is that development requires a great deal of acceleration of change. You’re asking people to move away from village life, move away from their families.

You’re asking a lot, you must give them something to hold onto. You must give them some sense of their spirituality, their culture. My point is let that be their choice, what they choose to hold onto. But it’s very important that they hold onto something.

• Fareed, you now live in New York. You come back to India after some time, some gaps. Where have Indian Muslims lost out? You know Indian Muslims have a problem — 120-130 million people by some estimates, a very small middle class, the elites have mostly left, they have gone to the West or elsewhere. We have a ruling party which defines itself, in some ways, in anti-minority terms, at least in the sense that minorities were defined in the past.

Well it’s a very difficult question. And honestly Shekhar you should probably ask my father (Rafeeq Zakaria), he would have a better sense of it. But my sense is that Indian Muslims are doing badly on some dimensions because of two or three reasons.

The first is that a large number of them are concentrated in the north, where things are not going well for a number of people. If you take UP or Bihar out, the picture looks somewhat better. But there is without question a problem. The Indian Muslim has, I think, the potential to improve because as you say he can be part of a successful dynamic society, which is not happening in Pakistan.

If you look at Bangladesh by the way, it’s a much more hopeful picture.

• Our problem is the debate is still stuck in the 1950s. It is still about a temple and mosque … about the uniform personal code, about Article 370, about cow slaughter. Our inter-religious debate is very old-fashioned.

Well it’s static. The real heart of the debate should be how do you create a Muslim middle-class? How do you create a Muslim community in India that is comfortable with modernity, comfortable with the free market, comfortable with professional jobs?

And then let them figure out how they want to define their religion, how they want to adapt. If that becomes the focus rather than these legalistic issues or issues of temples and rebuilding them … Now shrines in the South are also becoming suspect. I think it’s a losing battle for everybody.

• That’s because if you fail to look at the future and start bothering too much about the past, you are frozen in the past. But you know there are certain areas where the debate has gone on for some time. The old secularist view was let things remain the way they are until Muslims want changes. But the way our debate is now being defined, there is largescale support for the BJP’s view, for example on why should there not be a uniform personal code.

I myself have personally never felt opposed to the idea of a uniform personal code as long as it’s done with some degree of consensus. You have to bring the community along with you, you cannot impose it. If only the BJP would take that as a democratic challenge of saying how do we educate the people, particularly the women, that they would benefit. And more so have the Muslim community more liberally interpret the Shariat so that they understand that it is not in conflict …

• Can they do it? There will be people here who will say they cannot do it.

Well then you get back to one of the problems in the Muslim world, which is the lack of strong moderate voices who are willing to say — look there is nothing incompatible with modernity with Islam.

The problem is not that there are no moderate Muslims. The problem is that they are not willing to speak in one voice, saying look these extremists you’re listening to represent two, three, five per cent. When you see elections take place how many votes do the extremists get? A handful. Even in Pakistan, at its height, it’s been five, six, seven per cent.

• That is where street power comes in. There is this funny term called the Muslim Street or the Arab Street that is fashionable to write about, particularly after Iraq. How do you think the Indian Muslims feel differently from the Arab Muslims?

I don’t think there’s any difference in the sense that in both cases you have the same phenomenon. Over the last three years, people have been warning us that if you go after Al Qaeda, if you go after the Taliban if you go after Saddam Hussein, the Muslim Street will revolt.

In fact nothing has happened. In going after these extreme thuggish terrors, it’s been good for the world of Islam because it has cleansed that world of extremely unsavoury elements.

• It’s also made the Muslims look better.

It’s also made the Muslims look better. It’s made the unsavoury regimes in the Muslim world shiver. It’s not an accident that Libya has renounced its use of WMDs. It’s not an accident that Iran is now open to international inspectors. When you tell people that there is no special exemption for you …

• … Just because you are a Muslim or a Christian…

… Or that you have oil … You are going to (be) held by the same standard. And the vast majority of the Arab Street, Muslim Street wants to make money, live well, have good jobs and feel more integrated…

…The big difference is political openness. If you look at most Arab societies — very dictatorial regimes, tyrranical, brutal, repressive…

• And they give Islam a bad name.

Give Islam a bad name, give the Arab world a bad name. They found two ways of dealing with religious revivalism. Either they repressed it like Saddam Hussein or they bought it off like the Saudi monarchy. In neither case is it a healthy way to deal with it.

In India, because of the democratic nature of the country, you’ve had to deal with it, you’ve integrated it into your experience. You know how many votes they get, you know they are a force, but a limited force. So they are more integrated into the population.

My theory has often been when a Hosni Mubarak says ‘Oh you shouldn’t do this because my street will go into revolt’, what does he know of his street? This is a man who has never fought an election in his life. You ask an Indian politician: what do you think of the Muslims? He knows. He’s fought 20 elections.

• He may know nothing about anything else, but he knows his street. You’re right.

You know this is what people often said about Clinton. Clinton was a master at understanding the mood of the people. Why? Because he had fought many elections for governor and two elections for president. That’s what gives you a sense of your street.

• So does Musharraf know his street?

Ah! I think probably not, because otherwise he wouldn’t have been as bold as he has been in some areas.

• You say that in a positive sense.

I say that in a positive sense. The Pakistani democracy is fundamentally flawed because it has never dealt with the problem of feudalism. And so the feudal system has just reasserted itself through the democratic system and Musharraf is taking on some of that.

He is not an angel by any stretch and I understand the great suspicion Indians have about him because of Kargil and other things. But he is better than almost any alternative I can imagine in Pakistan. The best thing you can say about Musharraf is he has all the right enemies. The jehadis hate him, the old feudal elites hate him …

Has he done a lot on Kashmir? Not yet. Although the last few weeks have been promising. But I think one has to remember that it is fundamentally in India’s interest that Pakistan not be a failed state. And there is a great danger, as you were saying, that Pakistan will be a failed state and will believe that it’s only mission, it’s only claim to world fame …

• Is to bring India down with it …

Is to be the spoiler … For example, the role Syria has played in the Middle East.

• Fareed, in your book, The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad, you describe India as a democracy in danger of becoming an illiberal democracy. And you ascribe it mainly to poor governance … At the same time, we have institutions like the Election Commission, judiciary doing interesting things. Where do you think we are headed?

Genuine democracy in India is currently being preserved by certain elements of the judiciary, the EC and certain other, let’s face it, non-elective branches of the government … The electoral process and the free press. I think one of India’s greatest glories is that it probably has the most genuinely free press in Asia. I cannot think of another Asian country, including South Korea and Taiwan, which are real democracies. It’s certainly freer than the Japanese press.

But the electoral system in India is increasingly becoming captive to votebank politics, which is crippling Indian democracy, crippling economic reforms that India needs to undertake. Let’s face it, what does India need to do to catch up with China? The Indian government needs to invest in its people. Healthcare, education and then infrastructure.

Why can’t we do this? Because the Indian government is too busy subsidising rich farmers …

• Subsidising the middle-class, subsidising people like me by giving nine per cent on my provident fund.

… And rural electricity. You cannot change this unless you are willing to show leadership and say, ‘I will risk momentary unpopularity’ …

• … ‘But I will bring about fundamental changes.’ But that brings me to one more fascinating thing in your book. You talk about a kind of minimum per capita income which a nation or society needs to have for sustainable democracy. What is that — $ 400 or 450? Can you sustain a democracy?

The point I make in the book is … successful democracies have been consolidated around $3,000-6,000 per capita. Well above the Indian figure. Now why is that? It’s not some simple gizmo or sign.

What it is is a recognition that if you are trying to use a very modern form of politics, which is what democracy is, if everything else in your society is backward, if your economy is backward and feudal, if your social relations are feudal, your legal system is feudal … then you are not going to get a real democracy, you are going to get something strange.

Now the Indian case is one of the few exceptions … There is no question India is a great and wondrous democracy. But the danger is precisely this — the unmodernised parts of India, the old feudal culture. Look at UP and Bihar, (they) will simply capture the political system and retard the modernisation of the country.

• They will become spoilers.

They will become spoilers in the system … In India the economy is doing well despite the government. But China is doing well because of the government. And that’s a sad comment on the democratic system.

• Fareed, talking about democracy, this year, the two great democracies, the biggest and the most powerful will go for elections. Both have rightwing governments facing re-election. What do you see happening? Where do you see India and America going?

I think both rightwing governments will be re-elected. I think people underestimate the degree to which the war on terrorism is real. There is a genuine danger that has been produced by the privatisation of foreign policy, the ability of small groups of individuals to take into their control the ability to do great harm. And in order to protect against that, I think citizens in places like India and the US are going to be quite comfortable with a tough line. And I think that tough line will mean a certain degree of government control.

• And looking at the Indian picture in this situation, at the BJP and the coalition, and looking at one more victory and five more years in power, what can they do to become more acceptable to people outside the, sort of, Hindu fold? Do you see the BJP becoming a mainstream party, mainstream as in a party cutting across religious lines?

I think they need to become a modernising party, they have left that part of their heritage behind. They used to claim they were the modernising party. Now, it’s very difficult to find any strong modernising elements. Economic reforms, they are not doing particularly well on. Legal reforms, they are not doing well on.

So I think what they could do to appeal to a broader section of the people is say, ‘Look, we are going to move this country up, we are going to create a middle-class society in which all of you can participate — Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Sikh.’ And I do think they have to recognise that they play with symbols that can, in a multi-cultural, multi-religious society, be dangerous.

It is the rewriting of history. The tendency to, if not condone, look the other way when there are events like Gujarat. These things I think leave a very powerful message in the minds of the world, because not only are we in an age of terrorism, but also in an age where we are highly attuned to the dangers of religious fanaticism. And that means not just Muslim fanaticism but Hindu fanaticism as well.

• So Fareed, where do you see India and the US going now, a couple of years or five years ahead? Have they finally discovered each other? …

I think the relationship is on a much firmer footing than it has ever been. I think not for reasons of love but of self-interest, which is good. It’s the surest sign of a genuine relationship. But for it to mean more, for it to genuinely become something real, India has to economically modernise. It has to grow, it has to open …

• Much faster.

Much faster. You know, people in India compare themselves to their past — ‘We’re doing much better than we were doing.’ In today’s world that’s irrelevant. Comparison is how well you are doing in comparison to China, Malaysia, Thailand.

• Turkey, Romania …

Turkey, Romania, exactly … Because that’s what the investor is concerned about. He isn’t investing in your present versus your past. That is irrelevant.

• He is investing in your future versus somebody else’s future.

Exactly. And I think the Indian private sector and Indian society are absolutely capable of taking this chance. The question is of the Indian state and the Indian government …

• Have they the stomach to do it, the intellect to do it or the stamina to do it.

If you look at other countries that have truly made the break to modernity, they have all had the political elite that has really been devoted to the cause of political and economic reforms. So far, India does not show the signs of having that kind of elite. So perhaps it indicates that India is a society that will have to push …