Arjun Appadurai
Is there any value to the tag "Indian" especially since problems endemic to India, like caste-driven hierarchies, have survived both colonialism and the forces of globalisation?
Do you foresee the concept of a nation withering away, say 50 years from now?
What is "Indian" in a diasporic context?
Post-internet, "moving images meet mobile audiences", to use your phrase. But we see that Hindutva ideologues who harp on the timelessness of certain values, symbols and images are also the most technology-friendly. Is there a fundamental contradiction?
Violence has been a defining feature of the post-'90s world. How do you see them in the Indian context?
Globalisation seems an unstoppable force, and divisions of language, class, caste and nationality, even gender, seem to be collapsing for the rich. But at the same time we see an assertion of very local identities, subaltern struggles which question both the idea of a "nation" and also challenge globalisation. Where does this lead us to?
Has the decolonisation of Indian cricket really happened? How?
(Arjun Appadurai is also the author of Grassroots Globalisation and the Research Imagination, 2000, and Dead Certainty: Ethnic Violence in the Era of Globalisation, 1998.)
