Grand Tamasha

Pankaj Mishra is the acclaimed author of numerous books of fiction and non-fiction. He is a frequent contributor to some of the world’s top publications the New York Times, New York Review of Books, Guardian, the New Yorker, and Bloomberg.   His new book, Bland Fanatics: Liberals, Race, and Empire, focuses on the decay of Western liberalism but somehow manages to cover an array of topics from Salman Rushie to The Economist to British colonialism and Indian politics.   Pankaj and Milan discuss the state of Indian democracy, the (absent) standard-bearers of Indian liberalism, and how the Cold War-era conception of democracy helped India geopolitically. They also discuss what the British Raj can tell us about Brexit and the future of big government, for good and for ill.  Episode Notes: Pankaj Mishra, Bland Fanatics: Liberals, Race, and EmpirePankaj Mishra, Age of Anger: A History of the PresentPankaj Mishra, “Coronavirus Will Review an All-Powerful State”Ramachandra Guha, “The 50-50 democracy”Ashutosh Varshney,