Swapan Dasgupta | Why India Suspects American Intentions | NatCon 4

Swapan Dasgupta's address at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington, DC on July 8, 2024.

[sushrutabatsya]

Kudos to Swapan da for hitting the nail right in the head. No conversation could have been complete on conservatism of both Anglosphere and India without mentioning of how evangelicals funded by the USA are subverting social dynamic of India

[Kannadiga-rn]

Good to see swapandas sir speaking in various platforms, BJP should promote more people like Swapandas, Sundanshu Trivedi, Alok Sharma, Shehzad poonawala, Jaswinder Singh and get rid of crap like Sanju Verma, RK Sinha.

[sreed]

Nicely delivered the message. Good to bring up the contentious point of evangelization. It may be new knowledge for many and take sometime to accept.

[libshastra]

Woah, NatCon is bringing some of the big guns in Conservative thinking from India. I am glad to see some recognition of free thinkers from India that is not cut from the same cloth as OxBridge Lutyen elites (aka India's liberal elite).

[PrachandParshuram]

He should have been invited to the Oxford University debate on India with Palki Sharma, but they didn't for obvious reasons.

[gautamganguli]

Swapan Dasgupta is eloquent in debate as always.

[HemmyHighlander]

Conservatives around the world could never be united under one banner unlike liberals who have a common global agenda, conservatives prioritise their respective national interests. Each nation has it's own national interest and at times it may clash with the interest of other nations.

Another point is, it's a futile exercise trying to get validation to earn a place among the Anglo-Saxon world. India may be an English speaking nation but it never was and would never be accepted as a part of the Anglo-Saxon world. Instead of that India should work to form a union with its neighbouring countries of the Indian subcontinent, most of them unfortunately are hostile to eachother. India is closer to its neighbouring countries culturally, ethnically, linguistically and historically, it shares nothing in common with Anglo-Saxon countries.

India's neighbours unfortunately are unable to realise that and they keep letting themselves be used as a pawn to the big powers like United States and China. This never ending hostility between the Subcontinent countries is diminishing the potential of all the nations in the region and keeping them poor, backward and belligerent.

[kaushiksivakumar]

Very rightly put! Swapan da is an intellectual I have respected for decades now. This speech is a sample of why.

[lordofbulls]

More importantly the anglosphere relies only on the comentry in English which again is a grave injustice to the comprehension of Bharat and her civilization. Truth be told, its extremely complex.

[JS-bntz]

An excellent talk by #SwapanDasgupta. One aspect that he touched on towards the end needs further attention, reflection, and better understanding - that conservatives all over the world basically describe a wide swath of people. It starts with nationalism (as he described), but essentially draws on the wellsprings of civilization, culture, religion, and identity.

To that extent, conservatism anywhere would have a religious segment tightly embraced and this segment itself is not likely to be uniform, but exist on a continuum - from extreme religious affirmation (and its supposedly ordained practices) to the "liberal" religious affirmation. This is worthy of note as the extreme religious segment in the Christian belief system - present in the American movement and hugely identified with it because of its omnipresence - such as with abortion has no equivalent counterpart among Hindus. So there is the evangelical element that Swapan pointed out that does not exist in the Hindu tradition, but also the sociocultural beliefs that basically characterizes fundamentalist Christian beliefs that do not exist in the Hindu tradition.

The last point is important because a lot of facile conversations about conservatism do not distinguish between the Indian expression of it (based on its essentially Hindu construct) and the Western expression of it. Being a conservative in India is certainly not equivalent to the American conservatism as epitomized by fundamentalist beliefs that are often front and center in contemporary American debates and the cause of much acrimony resulting from courtroom battles and Supreme Court pronunciations.

[rationalthinker]

Because their intentions are never honest!!

[octillionable]

Swapn, you know why Jewish population in the US has a different influence on the US politics than Indian-Americans. One can write an essay on this subject.

[jashasandhu]

Huge respect for Swapan Da for clearly calling out evangelical bs

[sagarwalke]

Excellent Illustration by 🙏 Swapan Sir 🇮🇳🇮🇳🇮🇳.

[GuzzarAwan]

Good that in India today the ither side that is right is also getting intellectuals. It still in very initial stages BTW. It needs to expand and evolve fast in days of internet

[sn]

What a fine thinker and a speaker! His articles, columns in newspapers, etc are of course excellent, but speaking this way is another skill

[mitalisharma]

Y'all bringing the big names from India is a great sight to see.

[dadsonworldwide]

Great speech and it is a long time coming. As we all know the American founders thought ahead of our time so much so that they defined the nation and lived by it in their times .that's how important they viewed the coming
age where material sciences & technology blurred fact from fiction that we may need 3 lines of measure to find our way home. The shining capital on the hill wasn't just a metaphor or a white house. ❤❤🎉

[rolapack]

Swaponda that was just awesome!! You are less heard of these days. Please speak up more….the world is waiting to hear.

[Katiresan-od]

Every converting evangelist doesn't've total faith/surrender to either Christ or Christianity. Their motives are ulterior. Ultimately in course of time, Sanatan Dharma will win over them all