A requiem for Indian secularism?

As 2019 draws to a close and we look back at the events of the past year, reflect upon the gains and the losses and the lessons learnt, the one issue that is impossible to ignore is the rapid decline of secularism in India.

The Modi regime, backed by a solid parliamentary majority it got in 2019, has set into motion changes that have fundamentally altered India by forcibly extinguishing its secular ethos.

Although, India proudly claims to be the largest democracy in the world, democracy in India has largely been confined to the successful holding of elections.

For democracy to be meaningful, adherence to other sacrosanct principles of democracy are necessary. These principles include respect for democratic institutions, a legislature that engages in meaningful debate, independent judiciary, a free and thriving media that encourages debate and dissent.

Under the new Modi regime, democratic norms have been severe constricted. Today, India under Modi has no patience for secular principles and is keen to enforce aggressive majoritarianism.

Two events that demonstrated this tendency are:

• The lockdown in Kashmir
• The passage of the Citizenship Amendment Act and the implementation of the National Register of Citizens.

The Modi regime found a semblance of support for its assertive moves in Kashmir, primarily because many in India believe that the stalemate in Kashmir needs to be resolved. And if old methods haven’t yielded results in the last seven decades, new methods must be tried.

However, the lockdown of the state and its people since August 2019 is unacceptable, and a gross violation of people’s rights to freedom.

When the exercise of identifying illegal immigrants was launched in Assam after Modi was reelected, it raised legitimate concerns because New Delhi now had a government that swore by majoritarianism, and was not above using the state’s enormous reach to propagate its exclusivist philosophy of aggressive Hindutva.

Pertinently, the exercise of implementing the NRC in Assam proved how difficult, if not impossible, it would be for a large number of people to prove their Indian citizenship. Nearly two million people (including Hindus) could not prove that they were Indians. 

Perhaps in recognition of the anomaly that the NRC would result in the exclusion of Hindus, as well, the Modi regime amended the citizenship act to accord citizenship rights to non-Muslim immigrants from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

Modi’s supporters may claim that the amendment is to help minorities in these countries emigrate to India. But the fact is that the purpose of both the NRC and the amended citizenship act is to exclude Muslims.

Amit Shah, India’s Home Minister and the second-most important minister in the Modi regime openly declared that the citizenship register would be implemented across India to ferret out illegal immigrants.

“It is our commitment to implement National Register of Citizens (NRC) across the country to weed out the infiltrators. First, we will bring the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill to ensure that eligible refugees get citizenship, and then we will introduce NRC to throw out the infiltrators. They are termites, they are eating into the country's resources,” Shah asserted.

He declared in the Indian Parliament, “Maan ke chaliye, NRC aane wala hai.” (Take it as a given that the NRC will be introduced across the country).

In July 2019, when the implementation of the National Citizens Register was launched in Assam, the following protest poem, “I am a Miya’ written by Hafiz Ahmed spread like wildfire on the internet.

Write Down ‘I am a Miya’

Write

Write Down

I am a Miya

My serial number in the NRC is 200543

I have two children

Another is coming

Next summer.

Will you hate him

As you hate me?

Write

I am a Miya

I turn waste, marshy lands

To green paddy fields

To feed you.

I carry bricks

To build your buildings

Drive your car

For your comfort

Clean your drain

To keep you healthy.

I have always been

In your service

And yet

you are dissatisfied!

Write down

I am a Miya,

A citizen of a democratic, secular, Republic

Without any rights

My mother a D voter,

Though her parents are Indian.

If you wish kill me, drive me from my village,

Snatch my green fields

hire bulldozers

To roll over me.

Your bullets

Can shatter my breast

for no crime.

Write

I am a Miya

Of the Brahamaputra

Your torture

Has burnt my body black

Reddened my eyes with fire.

Beware!

I have nothing but anger in stock.

Keep away!

Or

Turn to Ashes.

Translated by Shalim M. Hussain

Will this protest poem be a requiem for India’s secularism?

The internet informs me that a requiem “is a religious ceremony performed for the dead. ... The word requiem comes from the opening words of the Roman Catholic Mass for the Dead, which is spoken or sung in Latin (requies means “rest”).

In a nonreligious context the word refers simply to an act of remembrance.”

Some of the biggest composers of western classical music have composed requiems, and one of the most memorable compositions is Clint Mansell’s Lux Aeterna for Darren Aronofsky’s 2000 film Requiem for a Dream. 

(You may listen to it here: Clint Mansell – Lux Aeterna – Requiem for a Dream).

'I am a Miya' will be a requiem for Indian secularism if the world allows India’s Modi regime to continue with its persecution of Indian Muslims.

Watch the video here:

Song of Silence - Sangeeta Gupta's paintings

Curator’s Note by Meena Chopra

In an ongoing journey with five elements of life, Sangeeta Gupta reveals the hidden realms of creativity by bringing it to the conscious levels through her art. There is a sustained intricacy of mystique, in the entire range of her work. 

The obscurity of abstract forms start speaking to one in a silent melody and a continuous song is created within the limits of space and time through the subjective experience.  Undoubtedly a spontaneous painter, the vision of her inner world is very clearly and honestly depicted in both her poetry and art. 

In her latest works, there is a kind of explosion of forms in contrasting tones and colours which give a powerful sense of free-spiritedness. This instantly grabs the attention of the viewer's eye and draws it deeply into the subtleties of forms and tones, thereby creating a continuous dialogue between the inner and outer worlds. 

What strikes me most in her art is the sincerity, through which the subconscious flows out naturally, impulsively and effortlessly through her art.

Fellow Artist and Curator Meena Chopra

Continued in the post below

Keshav Malik - a poet and an art critic

Continued from above

Guest post by Sangeeta Gupta

It seems only like yesterday, I recall.

I had recently come on transfer from Calcutta and was new in Delhi. My third solo exhibition was to be held at the All India Fine Arts and Craft Society in December 1997. I was desperately looking for someone to help me to curate the exhibition and to inaugurate it.

I met Manohar Kaul, Chairman, AIFACS regarding this and he promptly suggested that I contact Keshav Malik for this who was in the gallery attending some exhibition. Kaul said it was easy to identify Malik as he would be the tallest in the crowd.

I entered the gallery looking for him. He was there in the midst of a large gathering talking to people, yet he did not seem to belong there. I was simply mesmerised by his persona and walked up to him and said I need to have a word with him. He smiled and came out of the gallery and at that moment we were in a meaningful conversation, which went on for long.

At that point of time I was totally ignorant of his stature in the art world and had no hesitation in discussing with him about art and poetry. We instantly developed a bond which grew over the next 17 years. Keshav went out of his way to curate the exhibition of my ink drawings.

Keshav guided and inspired me to evolve as an artist and a poet. I felt anchored in Delhi – a big ruthless city. It was the beginning of a great learning experience and a beautiful relationship. His house became my comfort zone, we shared a lot.

Keshav witnessed my growth as an artist and a poet and enriched my life.

All these years I had the confidence that I could bank on him for guidance; could call him; meet him when I wished. I had immense faith in his advice and wisdom.

His passion for reading and writing poetry and reviewing art was the intrinsic force which made his life not only beautiful but so much worth living. He loved seeing art so much so that he would visit all shows in Delhi. He often said that he drew inspiration from art for his poems.

He translated my book of poems (The echoing groove - 2005). We did a book together, his poems and my paintings (Visions and Illuminations - 2009). One of my exhibitions had his poems and my paintings together on display (Shridharani Art Gallery, New Delhi - 2004). We read poetry together on several occasions in the midst of ongoing exhibitions.

I had this strong conviction that Keshav had so much wisdom and insight about evolution of Indian art that it should be shared with artists and poets of all ages and it would be appropriate to document it in a film. I discussed this with a filmmaker and he gladly agreed to do it.

Even after making all efforts by collecting data and research material the project did not take off. I was losing my patience and peace of mind over it. One day I decided that I would make the film myself. I am no filmmaker, but I made it as my tribute to my mentor Keshav. I scripted, shot the film and then did editing with the help of the professional.

I was keen to have a special screening of the film on Keshav’s birthday and the documentary was screened on 5 November 2012 at I.C.C.R, New Delhi. The first film on Keshav – Keshav Malik- A Look Back, is a reflection on the life of the noted poet and art critic.

He was a Fellow of the Lalit Kala Akademi. He was an Art Critic of Hindustan Times and Times of India. The film features, several eminent painters, poets, scholars, and their views on his life. The film has been screened at various venues such as Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Sanskriti Kendra, Anandgram, New Delhi and at Kala Ghoda Art Festival, Mumbai 2013.

The other two documentaries Keshav Malik – Root, Branch, Bloom and Keshav Malik – The Truth of Art were screened by India International Centre and by the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, Delhi in 2013 and in the Spring Festival, 2014 at Alliance Francaise de Delhi.

This film has been selected and is in the archive of Documentary Edge Campus, a resource centre for documentary films, New Zealand, to be used for educational and research purposes. This film was telecast by the TV channel DD Bharati and Lok Sabha TV several times.

My mind is flooded with hundreds of memories of Keshav. He would often curate my shows in Delhi spending hours together, till late evening and then rush back home to change his Kurta and come back to inaugurate the same exhibition.

Keshav wrote most of my catalogues for my exhibitions. He would come to my studio to help me select the works for an exhibition, then write about it, curate the show and also inaugurate it.

He was a complete man who cared for the feelings of all. 

Out of his concern for women artist that it was more difficult for a woman to sustain herself as an artist he would go out of his way to help and promote them.

Keshav often said that poetry is a way of life and merely writing poetry is not enough. His poems were philosophical and abstract and dealt with deep concern for humanity. He never compromised with his values in life.

During his 89 years on this earth he witnessed so much of change happening in and around him, but he remained unaffected by the material and mundane like a lotus in a dirty pond. He was a detached witness to the affairs of this world and lived life on his own terms.

He was modest and humble, sensitive to the needs of others and yet he firmly stood by his values in life. The artist community who were fortunate enough to meet and interact with him would cherish the memory of a man who came on this earth to spread love and compassion.

I salute the man and his spirit who had faith and hope in humanity despite numerous upheavals in the society. While the documentary was screened at IGNCA somebody asked him “Do you believe in God, have you seen him?”, Keshav said “No, I have not, I have only seen human beings and I only believe in them”.

Time neither is, nor passes.

What is, is the world-making womb

where you are born, to die.

Born asleep, born a dream –

dreaming dreams without recall.

These lines of his poem always remind me that we have limited time on this earth and each moment should be lived with a sense of purpose.

Keshav served and guided the Indian art world for more than six decades through his critical yet constructive writings. He was one of the first persons I had met in the art world when I came to Delhi 17 years ago. Keshav was a mentor, guide, and philosopher to me.

I specially admired his compassion for young and budding artists who came from all over India and flocked around him for advice and help. He was generous to all artists who came to seek his advice. He always had something good to write about each artist. He was a poet’s poet. I feel enriched by the long association I had with him.

His passing away is a great national loss and has created a void which cannot be filled ever. An era of art criticism has come to an end. His contribution as an art critic and poet will be remembered by the Indian Artist Community for times to come.

10-02-2016

Why this, why now?

Meena Chopra, a frequent contributor to this blog, is curating an exhibition of paintings by Sangeeta Gupta, a visiting artist and poet from India. The opening reception was held on 19 November, and the exhibition is on till 29 November at Heritage Mississauga - The Grange 1921 Dundas St. W Mississauga ON L5K 1R2.

(The visit of the artist and poet Sangeeta Gupta to Canada is co-sponsored by INDIAN COUNCIL FOR CULTURAL RELATIONS along with CROSS CURRENTS - Indo canadian International Arts and Heritage Mississauga (Mississauga Heritage Foundation)

-Exhibition is curated by Meena Chopra - Artist, Author & Poet and Nain Amyn- Lalji

On 29 November 2019, Sangeeta Gupta will make a presentation on Life and works of Keshav Malik - an Indian celebrity poet, art and literary critic, art scholar, and curator

29th at 5:30 pm to 8:30 pm at The Grange

followed by an open mic session in collaboration with Courtney Park Writers' Group

About Keshav Mailk:

Keshav Malik (5 November 1924 – 11 June 2014) was an Indian poet, art and literary critic, arts scholar, and curator. He remained art critic for the Hindustan Times (1960–1972) and The Times of India (1975–2000). He published eighteen volumes of poetry and edited six anthologies of English translations of Indian poetry.

He was awarded the Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award in India, for his contribution to literature. In 2004, the Lalit Kala Akademi, India's National Academy of Art, made him a Fellow of the Lalit Kala Akademi for lifetime contribution, which is its highest award).

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

'CROSS CURRENTS - Indo Canadian International Arts' believes in going 'BEYOND BOUNDARIES' both in 'thought and action', 'within and without'

Fall book launches

For the last eleven years, I have not missed a single Mawenzi House’s fall launch event. It used to be held at the Gladstone hotel till a couple of years ago and now, for the last couple of years at the cozy, comfortable almost homely Centre for Social Innovation at Bathurst.

For the last four decades, Mawenzi (earlier known as TSAR) has become the authentic voice of multicultural Canada, by focusing on providing a platform to authors from different ethnicities who have made Canada their home.

Mawenzi House has introduced me to many contemporary authors, some of whom have supported me in different ways in my attempt to become an author. It has published some of the best books that I’ve read in the last decade.

An illustrative (not exhaustive) list would include Chelva Kanaganayakam’s translation of R. Cheran’s Tamil poems You Cannot Turn Away; Kwai-Yun Li’s The Palm Leaf Fan and Other Stories; Safia Fazlul’s The Harem; Saima Hussain edited The Muslimah Who Fell on Earth; Dawn Promislow’s Jewels and Other Stories; Ava Homa’s Echoes from Other Land; Loren Edizel’s Adrift; Sheniz Janmohamed’s Bleeding Light just to name a handful.

Earlier this month, at the fall launch, Mawenzi again unveiled some excellent titles. I was at the launch and based on the readings by authors, I bought Lamees Al Ethari’s Waiting for the Rains – An Iraqi Memoir and Sohan S. Koonar’s Paper Lions (fiction).

Here’s an extract from Al Ethari’s memoir:

We knew that the Americans intended to erase us; if they had wanted to remove Saddam Hussein, there were less violent ways of taking him out. No one was safe. In the first Gulf War, they had bombed Al-Amiriyah Shelter, which had housed hundreds of civilians, mostly women and children. Father and husbands had dropped off their families there, hoping they would have a better chance of surviving the air raids. Four hundred and eight civilians died that night. Three missiles that hit the shelter led to the doors locking from impact and imprisoning people within the burning walls. I had seen images of the shelter and went to the annual memoriam at the site; the remains of bodies were plastered on the walls of the shelter.

Shock and Awe, as George W. Bush called it, was exactly that. Everything was a target; we saw smoke rising from different parts of the city, until the smoke was all we could see.

You may buy the books here: Mawenzi House

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Also, in November, my friend Fraser Sutherland’s collection of poems Bad Habits (Mosaic Press) was launched at the Yorkville Library. Fraser has published nearly 20 books – mostly collections of poems, but also a short story collection and a number of nonfiction titles. He is great editor, who has contributed to turning unreadable and badly structured writing into scintillating and compellingly readable prose or poetry.

Bad Habits has a section titled An Introduction to Fraser Sutherland, which has a page-and-a-half of Fraser’s idiosyncratic observations that are pithy, epigrammatic and memorable. 

Here’s a sample:

“Poetry can’t defeat ongoing ignorance, repetitive wrong-doing, physical deterioration nor persona extinction. But to say a few meaningful words about being in the world in the face of infinity and eternity – well, that’s something.”

“The idea of poetry-writing as therapy is especially seductive; if you’re writing a poem and it’s going well, there’s no better feeling in the world.”

“Somehow a good writer has to work aslant to the existing order. For a writer to be popular, to win prizes, to be feted by the media – those to me are grounds for suspicion. If the trappings of public success, however welcome, began to descend on me, I’d start to suspect myself.”

And here’s a poem from the collection

You may buy the book here: Mosaic Press

Lullabies for Little Criminals - Heather O'Neill

One of the perils of knowing little about contemporary Canadian literature is that I have heard of too few Canadian authors and haven’t heard of too many remarkable ones. The ones that I have read are the masters or those that I have come to personally in the last decade or heard about through friends. 

That leaves a huge gap that I furtively try to fill every time I go to my local library at Weston.

A couple of months back, I picked up Heather O’Neill’s debut novel Lullabies for Little Criminals (2006). It is a disturbing novel about a 12-year-old girl – Baby – who is smart, sassy, confident, and a victim of utter neglect. A motherless child whose father – Jules – is young enough to be her older brother, and perhaps therefore unable to do anything right in his life, leave alone raise a daughter. 

The novel depicts one year in Baby’s life (12 turning on 13) – a time when she is still a child but is forced to become an adult. During that period, Jules and Baby move around different apartments across Montreal’s seedy localities, populated by drug addicts, drug pushers, mentally unstable women, pimps, and prostitutes.

Lullabies for Little Criminals has no villains. Jules is someone who the reader would automatically sympathise with; he needs help and is unable to look after himself. He has long ago lost the ability to distinguish between real and imagined and prefers to be on the run rather than look after his daughter. Similarly, Alphonse, the pimp, who pushes Baby into prostitution, is abusive no doubt, but he is often reduced to a pathetic state, with no control either over himself and his circumstances.

It would seem that Baby gradually loses the ability to decide what is right and wrong, but in reality, she doesn’t really have a choice. Her circumstances force her to abandon the life that she desires and knows that she deserves – that of a normal child, who is good at her studies, scoring high in her class, and one who would prefer to spend time with children her age indulging in innocent fun. 

Instead, she experiences a harrowing spiral of descent into doom from which it is impossible to return.

All through that desperate journey, Baby doesn’t ever stop being hopeful that she will eventually find a mother, or someone who will be like a mother. She looks in vain for this mother-like figure in the women she encounters, whether it is the mother of the kids with whom she spends a few days, or the Russian landlady or even the prostitute and the drug addicts with whom she traverses the grimy nether world.

The tenth anniversary edition of the novel also has a short interview with O’Neill. The interview contextualises the debut novel. O'Neill is, as I later discovered, a renowned journalist, who produced the documentary Help Us Find Sunil Tripathi.

The novel won many accolades and was nominated for many more. It is so lovingly crafted that nearly all paragraphs end in epigrammatic sentences. 

The phantasmagorical descriptions of Baby’s mind when she is high on heroin flagrantly vibrant, flamboyant. It reminded me of Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting, which is based on Irvine Welsh’s novel of the same name and depicts the life of down and out Edinburgh dudes hooked on heroin.

Reproduced below are some lines from the novel that I found exceptionally noteworthy:

• Being judged by society makes you disregard it after a while.
• Usually I went around with so many ugly insecure things flying around in my head that when a pretty thought came to me, it usually died a lonely death, afraid to come out.
• Sometimes I wish I was the only man left on the whole planet. And then every day all these different women would come up to me and I’d have to give them a little love. Just a little peck on the cheek or a flower or something. Enough to get them through the day. That’s the way I was born and that’s the way I’ll die.
• The real first kiss is the one that tells you what it feels like to be an adult and doesn’t let you be a child anymore. The first kiss is the one that you suffer the consequences of. It was as if I had been playing Russian roulette and finally got the cylinder with the bullet in it.
• When you’re young enough, you don’t know that you live in a cheap lousy apartment. A cracked chair is nothing other than a chair. A dandelion growing out of a crack in the sidewalk outside your front door is a garden. You could believe that a song your parent was singing in the evening was the most tragic opera in the world. It never occurs to you when you are very young to need something other than what your parents have to offer to you.
• From the way that people have always talked about your heart being broken, it sort of seemed to be one-time thing. Mine seemed to break all the time.
• I cut through the parking lot, which was filled with men smoking cigarette butts. The ones who were worse off had tangled hair and looked like Moses when he came down from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments. From the distant looks on their faces, they seemed experiencing a level of profundity that could kill an ordinary citizen.

Photo credit: https://www.goodreads.com/photo/author/12676.Heather_O_Neill

Michael Ignatieff: The crisis of liberal constitutionalism - 1

According to the 'civilised' west, democracy is the best form of political governance and capitalism is the best form economic governance.

Together, democracy and capitalism are supposed to ensure that the will of the people is reflected in the election of governments. The will of the people is also reflected in the economic policies that such democratically elected governments pursue to ensure economic growth and prosperity.

That is the theory. In practice, of course, that isn’t how either democracy or capitalism have ever worked.

Late capitalism is a term that has been frequently used to describe the economic inequities that capitalism has succeeded in creating in societies that have an abiding faith both in democracy and capitalism.

Two recent films expose the ills of both democracy and capitalism.

Officials Secrets (2019) exposes the hypocrisy of democratic consensus in the way the United States of America and the United Kingdom – both pillars of liberal democracy – lied, concealed facts and generally took the world for a ride to justify the second invasion of Iraq (2003).

Based on the 2017 Panama Papers expose, Laundromat (2019) dwells into the nefarious operations of the offshore tax havens that give a legal avenue to the rich to avoid (not evade) taxes. The film is a glimpse into the murky world of offshore holdings, hidden financial dealings of fraudsters, drug traffickers, billionaires, celebrities.

All of these worthies were connected to Mosscak Fonseca, a Panama law firm with offices in more than 35 locations globally, and one of the world’s top creators of shell companies – the corporate structures used to hide ownership of assets.

Western democracies have a great deal to explain for their falsification and outright fabrication of facts (about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq) to wage a war on Saddam Hussein that resulted in tens of thousands of civilian deaths (check this: Iraq Body Count).

Western capitalism thrives on economic neo-colonialism, and questions are being raised about its efficacy now only because rampant automation is causing widespread job losses in western democracies.

I frequently remember Winston Churchill when I'm bemused by western hypocrisy. Churchill, responsible for the genocide of Bengalis in 1943, had famously said, “History will judge me kindly, because I intend to write it myself.” 

Western democracies, and especially their leaders, often get away with murder and worse because they determine the contemporary narrative of the world that becomes tomorrow’s history.

Therefore, while we roundly (and justifiably) condemn the likes of Slobodan Milošević, we are unwilling to judge Bush Jr or Blair by the same exacting standards.

Similarly, no institutional efforts are being made anywhere to rein in the untrammeled run that technocracy has over global economics that is resulting in unimaginable income inequities everywhere in the world.

The world’s richest 1 percent, those with more than $1 million, own 45 percent of the world’s wealth. Adults with less than $10,000 in wealth make up 64 percent of the world’s population but hold less than 2 percent of global wealth. The world’s wealthiest individuals, those owning over $100,000 in assets, total less than 10 percent of the global population but own 84 percent of global wealth.

In his lecture earlier this week at the Munk Centre, Michael Ignatieff (Democracy versus Democracy: The crisis of liberal constitutionalism) spoke about the failure of liberal democracies to deliver on fundamental promises. 

He spoke both the trust deficit (bordering on resentment) that masses living in democracies have developed in democratic institutions, and the economic subjugation of the vast majority of the global population.

Ignatieff spoke about the challenge that populist democracy is posing to liberal democracies with specific reference to North America and Europe. 

The distinction between populism and liberalism is populism defines democracy as rule of we the people, which is basically majoritarianism, whereas liberal democracy tries to create a nuanced framework for democratic institutions to engage in interplay of of checks and balances. 

Liberal democracy, Ignatieff explained, “Is a system built for conflict, for disagreement. The whole point of this system is that politicians resent the power of the judges. The judges push you back to defend the empire of law from the empire of politics, the media sits there and drives the politicians crazy and I have the scars to prove it. And this conflictual system is the very essence of any system that has any chance of protecting our liberties, as individuals. And the legitimacy of this system is conditional and performative at any moment in democratic life.”

According to Ignatieff, conflict is at the heart of liberal democracies. “We may sit around a table over dinner and think this is not going well. We’re at loggerheads. We’re fighting with each other. The Parliament is standing up to the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister is riding roughshod over Parliament. The media are driving everybody crazy. The judges are interfering too much. We will take sides in these institutional conflicts that are built into the heart of democracy and at any given moment we will think this system is losing its legitimacy, the conflict level that we are having to live through here is just too high for our health. And our democracy is at risk.”  

People who experience the strengths of liberal democracy such as freedom of choice often despair at its inherent conflict, Ignatieff said, and then emphasized that a liberal democracy is, in fact, a “conflictual system constantly in tension, constantly in crisis. And that it seems to me is both its glory in its strength and its resilience.”

Continued below

Michael Ignatieff: The crisis of liberal constitutionalism - 2

Continued from the post above

Citing the Brexit imbroglio, Ignatieff said, at present, liberal democracy in Britain is at its best. 

“A democracy is there to prevent a society polarizing into enemies and keeping everybody in a debate in which they’re merely adversaries. In the unwritten constitution of a democracy, there are no enemies, only adversaries, and thus far, despite the polarization in Britain, despite some of the bitterness, this it seems to me is exemplary example of democracy. Not at its worst, but actually at its best. That’s an unpopular thought. If I said that in a lecture in London, I might be laughed out of the house, but I’m sticking with it. If you like democracy, you have to like its rough and tumble.”

Talking about the Trump impeachment, Ignatieff again emphasized that the liberal democratic system has ensured that when the President of the United States stepped out of line, system has ensured that the whistle blower has the constitutional protection to perform his / her duty.

He said, “It illuminated with clarity what a liberal democracy actually is, as an institutional system.”

The President has a phone call with foreign leader and the President says something which violates his constitutional oath. “What is interesting is that they (those who think that Trump erred) then have recourse through protected legislation to blow the whistle. They’re guaranteed confidentiality. They’re guaranteed access to the Congress of the United States. The liberal institutional system worked. It protected devoted civil servants, public servants, gave them the right to go to the President of the United States and say he just crossed the line in a phone call. If the president is impeached, it will be because liberal democratic institutions did what they are supposed to do.”

Ignatieff said democracy would be in crisis if Trump was impeached but would refuse to step down.

He emphasized that, “If you love liberal democracies stop getting alarmed every time it has institutional conflict, because that is the essence of a functioning liberal democracy.”

Ignatieff turned his focus on the crisis in democracy with regard to the increasingly fraught relationship between liberal democracy and liberal professions. 

Liberal professions are academics, lawyers, doctors, journalists, and professional politicians. There is a deep association between these liberal professions and liberal democracy. These liberal professions run liberal democracy.

The lawyers and the judges run the legal system. The doctors run another pillar of a liberal democracy, which is public health care. Journalists run that entire thing called the free media, which is constitutive of liberal democracy. And academics train democratic citizens but crucially, they credential the entire elite that runs a liberal democracy.

“And one of the things that the populist challenge is making me anxious about is the erosion of trust in the population at large at the status privilege and authority of the liberal professions that keep liberal democracy going. And there is deep resentment towards the credential inequality that the liberal professions have benefited from,” he said.

The liberal professions in general, need to think about inequality. Thomas Piketty’s data on income inequality is revealing – liberal professions have done extraordinarily well from the new inequality that began to emerge from the 1970s onward. 

He said that a definite linkage exists (but has rarely been acknowledged) between inequality, the erosion of status, and the erosion of trust towards liberal professions, and declining faith and confidence in liberal democracy itself.

He said, “If you believe as I do that one of the glories of a liberal democracy is a thing called the rule of law; but at present you go to many communities across Canada and you ask, what is the rule of law mean to you? People are likely to respond by saying: It means I have no access to justice. The lawyers are too expensive. The judges won't listen. And my chances of ending up in the slammer pretty good. There is a an enormous gulf between the high minded way in which in a university we think about the rule of law, and the much crueler reality of what the rule of law looks like in an ordinary Magistrates Court or criminal law court.”

Ignatieff explained that the legitimacy of liberal democracy is performative. It’s won or lost every day in our courtrooms. It’s won or lost every day when a lawyer says, ‘You can’t afford my fees’. It’s won or lost every day when our legal aid systems don't work, it's won or lost every day in which an Aboriginal comes out thinking I can't get a fair shake and this goddamn system.

“These are the pressures on the performative legitimacy of liberal democracy that we ought to take seriously. They relate to the eroding trust that the general public has in credentialed liberal professions. And I think that has a knock-on effect in terms of the faith that people have in liberal democracy. It’s one of the reasons why people say I don't want liberal democracy. What I want is to be ruled by ‘We the People’,” he said.

Ignatieff concluded with an impassioned plea: 

“I want the doors to be open, so everybody can be put through the rigorous, relentless training that makes great universities great. I don't want to compromise any of that. But we got to make sure the doors are open. We got to make sure that everybody can get the kind of chance that my father Mike, and I got through being in these places. And I think we want as teachers to be constantly thinking about the professional ethics that we teach in the liberal professionals. If you’re in a liberal profession, you have obligations, their fiduciary obligations, their obligations of competence, their obligations of good advice, their obligations of academic excellence, but they’re also obligations of service and if we lose that we may pay a price in terms of the legitimacy of liberal democracy itself that we can barely see.”