>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. >> Jane McAuliffe: Good evening and welcome to the Library of Congress and to Scholarfest. The 15th anniversary celebration of the John W. Kluge Center. A special word of appreciation to the members of congress, members of the diplomatic corps and distinguished guests who are here with us tonight. And I'm delighted to welcome back so many of our Kluge Center alumni who have come from near and far to be part of this first ever Scholarfest. I am welcoming you in the name of Dr. James Billington, the 13th Librarian of Congress. As I suspect most of you have heard, Dr. Billington announced his retirement today after 28 extraordinary years at the helm of this institution. He hopes to join us for dinner, but is presently tied up in meetings with congressional well-wishers and other senior administrative officials. We are extraordinarily pleased to be commemorating the 15th anniversary of the John W. Kluge Center and 15 years of scholarship at the Library of Congress that the center has fostered. This scholarly productivity is the legacy of John W. Kluge, a businessman philanthropist and a dear friend of this institution. We are delighted that his son, John Kluge, Jr. could be with us this morning, as is his spirit, John Kluge, Jr. [ Applause ] John Kluge donated an unprecedented $60 million to establish a center that would invite the world's leading thinkers to spend time in residence at the Library of Congress. These research residencies would allow scholars to make greater and more consequential use of the world's greatest collection of human knowledge. Our proximity to the capital would offer such scholars to make their findings and insights continuously accessible to the world's most important lawmakers. John Kluge's gift also enabled the Library of Congress to award the John W. Kluge prize for achievement in the study of humanity. A $1 million which recognizes exceptional scholarly achievement of great impact in the humanities and social sciences, and fills a notable gap in the Nobel Prizes and other major world prizes. The Kluge prize will be awarded again later this year. Taken together the prize and the center have supported, showcased, and celebrated more than 600 outstanding scholars from around the world, demonstrating to the world the leadership of America, the Congress, and the library in sponsoring and developing the human sciences. [ Applause ] This evening and tomorrow we will hear from more than 70 of these top scholars who have at one time or another been residents of the Kluge Center and made substantial use of the library's collection. So in the name of Dr. James Billington. Welcome to Scholarfest. [ Applause ] I will now transition my role as moderator of this panel. This is the point in the evening where I ask you to make sure that your cellphones are turned off, because we are recording this session. As I just said, over the next two days, we'll hear from 70 outstanding scholars on a wide array of topics. We will begin tonight with two of our most important returnees, most important guests. Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Romila Thapar. Fernando Henrique Cardoso is a world renowned sociologist and the 34th President of Brazil. He received the 2012 Kluge Prize for achievement in the study of humanity. Dr. Romila Thapar is a preeminent historian of India and in 2008 a co-recipient of the Kluge Prize along with historian Peter Brown. I'll start with an initial question to each of our distinguished guests. Dr. Thapar in your lifetime you've seen the birth of the modern nation of India and its emergence at a global economic super power, as well as the world's biggest democracy. History in both it exploration and Its manipulation has played a pivotal role in the formation of national identity and in the foundation of political ideologies. Could you talk about this a bit? How Indian history has been cast and recast since independence. And how understandings of Indian's ancient and modern histories continue to shape its economic, cultural, and social reality. >> Romila Thapar: I'll make an effort [laughter] it's rather a difficult subject. But let me begin by saying that I'm absolutely delighted to be back at the Kluge Center where I had what I can only describe as a memorable year. And I will explain to you why it became a memorable year, more than most memorable year. But before I go on to talk about that let me just say that the two things that you mentioned about the emergence of the Indian nation as the world's largest democracy and a global economic super power, a democracy we are and we're very, very proud of it. We're very proud of the fact that since independence over the last 67 years we've had more than a dozen elections and governments have changed through elections. And therefore we feel very gratified that democracy has taken root in India and we hope that it will continue to function as a democratic society. On the question of being a global super power, some of us are not too excited about that partly because well we've seen global super powers in history and what they've done and we feel that perhaps we should pause before we leap in that role. And partly also that before you can become a global super power in the widest and the best sense of the word, you have to make sure that the human condition at home that you are dealing with is a condition that is producing valuable citizens and contentment among citizens. This is a problem that we're still facing in the sense that we have a large population which is either at or below the poverty line. And therefore I think that there are some questions about how we leap into becoming a global super power. But let me turn to your major question which is that of history and it's a question in which I have been very deeply involved. The question takes one back a little bit to the point of the anti-colonial movement when history became an extremely important discipline and subject because it was what gave an identity to the Indian nation. Now let me just also explain in this that one of the reasons why the identity has become complicated and of course in all post-colonial societies, identities are very complicated. So we're not an exception in that, but we're certainly a society in which there are these complications. The colonial experience that India went through with British colonialism was undoubtedly a major disjuncture in the history of the country. Why do I say that? It was a major disjuncture because the British colonial policy in three areas changed the flow of Indian history and Indian society, culture, economy. The economy was re-geared. The Indian economy was re-geared to support British industrialization. And we all know what the result of that was. It brought in immense poverty of a kind which we had not experienced before. The caste structure of Indian society was reformulated so that colonial policy could use it and colonial administration could understand it. And thirdly the religions of India were reformulated as if were on the pattern of the Judeo Christian tradition of Europe and to some extent the Islamic tradition the Middle East. Whereas the Indian religious experience and I suspect possibly also the Chinese religious experience was of a very different kind. It was of a different kind because I think that we went through a process in which religion was not a firmly determined historical process. Religion in India was a series of sets and even the former religions like Islam and Christianity broke up into a series of sets. And the religious experience, the religious life was really a kind of negotiation between sets. And so when we talk about religious tolerance in Indian, relatively speaking compared to what we went through in more recent times, we're really talking about the fact that there was a certain amount of decentralization and a certain amount of negotiation between smaller groups who learned to live together in a much more positive way than what we're now trying to do which is to have these massive religious blocks and to constitute laws for the functioning of these very large scale religious blocks. As far as the caste in history was concerned, so we went from colonial scholarship, totally denying that there was any historical tradition in pre-modern India. Indians didn't have a sense of history, they argued. This is a statement, which we have since spent 50 years counting and I think have at last succeeded in country. But the colonial view very definite about what it understood of Indian religion, and what did it understand two major things. The territory of India was inhabited by two religious communities, the Hindus and the Muslims. And these two religious communities which formed nations. How you had nations way back in 3000 BC and 2000 BC I don't know. But still they formed two nations that were permanently antagonistic and hostile to each other. So that was one given. And the other given was that the foundations of Indian civilization were based on the Arian experience of the Vedic culture and the ancient Hindu tradition. And therefore today you have many people in India who are going around claiming that Indians are Arians without perhaps fully understanding the extent and nuances that this Arian has taken in certainly from the 20th Century. Anyway these were the two givens of colonial scholarship and when anti-colonial nationalism became strong they took some of these ideas and internalized them and there were others that they rejected. And remember of course, that in early stages of nationalism, or any stage of nationalism, history if very important. As Eric Hobsbawm has put it history is to nationalism what the poppy is to the heroin addict [laughter]. And that is something that has been made very clear in the study of all nationalisms all over the world. So anti-colonial nationalism began by saying we're all part of the same story, we have a shared history. Everybody that lives here and calls himself or herself an Indian are all part of one history. And it is a very inclusive procedure. It was a very inclusive history in which everybody was given a position and people participated. That was fine for anti-colonial nationalism. It gave us an identity, it gave us such a strong identity that we were able to get rid of the colonial power finally and acquire independence. But because of this insistence that there were two religious communities that were very important, there were two sub nationalisms that developed. The Islamic sub nationalism and the Hindu sub nationalism. The Islamic sub nationalism came to fruition in the creation of Pakistan. A new state which became in effect a Muslim state. So the Hindu sub nationalism today is arguing that if they, the Muslims have got their state, we in India should also become a Hindu state. Whereas in effect we are still living with the ideology of anti-colonial nationalism that argued that India was to be a secular society and a secular party and this is part of the reason why historians have run into problems in the recasting of history because at the public level, the struggle today is between the projection of Indian history and the Indian past as a Hindu past and other historians who are saying no, it is a secular projection which has to take in all kinds of people. Now the reason why this is an important issues is that historically we have been a country of multiple cultures, multiple religions, any religion under the sun we will have representatives in Indian. It has been a culture of plural societies. And we have over the years tried to live together and negotiate as it were our relationships that I mentioned earlier. One of the characteristics of the Hindu sub nationalism is that there is a belief that the Hindus were victimized by the Islamic rule and other rulers that came and ruled. Which is a kind of ironic statement because the real victimization as in every society in the world, historically and today, the real victimization is of people who are at the bottom level of the social scale. And certainly the Hindus were not at the bottom level of the social scale. So that is another contention that we have with this kind of history. But lest you think that all of Indian history is simply a contention between religious sub nationalism and secular nationalism, let me hasten to add that one of the most exciting intellectually exciting periods of Indian intellectual life, I think, has been the last 50 years in which we have opened ourselves up to a variety of intellectual ideas, to a variety of ideologies. And as far as the discipline of history is concerned, what has emerged is a very, very powerful intellectual base to the discipline of history, to which many of us have contributed in smaller or bigger ways. This has taken the form of course of history moving from being what, in colonial times and soon after was called Indology. Now Indology was a word invented by British colonialism and it referred to anything to do with India, from butterflies to railways. If you were studying them, you were an Indologist. We've shifted that. We've taken history out of Indology and we've put it into the social sciences. And if there's anything in which I think I can legitimately take pride is that I did contribute a little bit to this shift to the social sciences. Why do I say it's important? Social sciences and humanities, why is it important? Because it now means that there is a relationship between the discipline of history and every other history that goes into the making of these two broad categories literature, sociology, economics, demography, archeology, anthropology, you name it. There's a link. So that the historian is today in India beginning to ask a large range of questions that hadn't been asked 50 years earlier. And the main emphasis is not just in collecting information which is very useful, very necessary, which is a first step. But in asking the major questions of history, which is why and how. Why and how was there historical change? Why did societies and cultures change? How did they change? These are the questions that we're concerned with. We're concerned with the reliability of evidence and therefore we run into problems with people who like to put mythology and fantasy in place of history. But we are very concerned about that. We're concerned with critical and inquiry and that is what we are trying to convey through this. And there has been intellectually a tremendously impressive output of Indian historical writing, particularly in the history of the modern period. Those of us who worked on the pre-modern period have been somewhat besieged by these sub nationalism, but we are learning to slowly get around them, ignore them, forget about them. And carry on with doing the kind of history that is truly meaningful. And in this process of coming to terms with the challenges that we meet as historians, and it's certainly, when I first decided to do history I thought it would be a nice comfortable discipline. Ancient history particularly, who is interested in ancient history? Nobody. So I thought that's very nice I'll sit in a little corner and do my own work. It has become politically the most volatile subject in the country today. All over the question of what is the identity of the present day Indian. It is extremely important, but as a result of that, at the intellectual level, it has led to some of the most thrillingly exciting debates of a historical nature, that I at least have ever experienced. [ Applause ] >> Jane McAuliffe: President Cardoso, in your lifetime you have seen and in fact you have overseen the transformation of Brazil from a nation on the margins of the world stage to one squarely in the center of it. Your pioneering scholarship confronted the legacy of face and slavery in Brazil and exposed myths about why inequality persists. This research set the stage for the Brazilian transformation that you led as president from 1995 to 2003. Could you reflect on how these insights into Brazilian society can help us understand the Brazil that we see and know today. Does the legacy of racial inequalities continue to shape Brazilian national identities? >> Fernando Henrique Cardoso: Well thank you very much. Let me start by saying some words about Dr. Billington. >> Jane McAuliffe: Good. >> Fernando Henrique Cardoso: Since he's not present, but I have a very high evaluation. The first time I met Dr. Billington was a long time ago. Maybe a bit of the '70s. Then I was at the [inaudible] and two friends of mine Albert Hirschman was a member of [inaudible] and Abe Lowenthal. We decided to create a circle study here about democracy in Latin America about Latin America. As you probably know in the '70s we are under dictatorship in several countries in Latin America including my own country in Brazil. So we came to the Smithsonian and Dr. Billington received us. And who create maybe a circle of, a group of people to take care of the question of democracy in Latin America and this has been encouraged by Dr. Billington. So some time after that I came to this place, I was very pleased, as you to have the opportunity to be here at the Kluge Center. I left office in '03 and I spent some time in Paris, then I came to this place in order to prepare a book by experience, not about, not a self-biography, but a book about the government in Brazil. And I spend some time here, that's why I was capable to produce this book. It's a big one, 700-page, but [inaudible] only Portuguese. And this was a very exciting experience. I have contact with other scholar from different part of the world and the Kluge Center. And I remember I was trying to recall my capacity as a scholar, because I was in power for a long time. Ten years all together. Before the president I was Finance Minister, Foreign Minister, and Finance Minister. So I had no training in dealing with computers. And I lost one of the chapter of my book here [laughter] because I press a wrong button. But anyhow it was for me fascinating to have the opportunity to again to think about what's going on in Brazil said that. Try to respond to your question, but to let me elaborate a bit more about Brazil since you gave us a wonderful brilliant lesson about India. I am not capable to do the same about Brazil. First of all because my English is poor and I was not under the colonial age of the British Empire, under the Portuguese Empire, Portuguese. Anyhow. As you probably know Brazil became part of the world of the so-called western world because of the Portuguese. And since the beginning the colony was composed by enormous amount of land controlled by landlords. This was the big main impressive feature of the Brazilian history is the property of land, big proportion of land and landlords, who were to some extent delegate by the Portuguese Empire. The second important element is the empire, state, since the beginning we're under the control of the Portuguese Empire. Well I'm not going to tell you each year of the Brazilian history, but anyhow at one point in time at the 18th century, the point is that Brazil was in terms of GDP, more important than Portugal. So our sense of colonialism is quite different than yours. >> Romia Thapar: Yes. Yeah. >> Fernando Henrique Cardoso: Because we never been properly in that sense were a colony. We have been Portuguese who came to America, like the British who came to America. Portuguese came to America and we are under the umbrella of the Portuguese Empire. And the state was very strong in Portugal. And Portugal was very developing in terms of the economy of 16th century, 17th century. And the state was control everything in Portugal and Brazil. So we had land, big landlords, the state, and people. People were almost anyone, slaves. In the group of Portuguese. It took long time for Brazilians to have this sense that we are not Portuguese. You have, in 19th century at the beginning of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th century, this was already widespread notion that we have to become independent from Portugal. And who had us in Brazil. Portuguese came to Brazil and people native to Brazil and mixed population. Because the Portuguese since the beginning have interrelate with the black, with the slaves. The slaves are the indigenous people and they came from Africa. But the Portuguese were fighting against Spain all time. At one point in the 18th century, the then Prime Minister of Portugal, the royal king of Portugal, Marquess of Palmela was very influential man in Portugal and he send his brother to be the representative of the crown in the northern part of Brazil, namely the Province of Grao-Para, the Amazon area. And there is a very interesting letter from Palmela, Marquess of Palmela to his brother saying like that, you have encourage the Portuguese living in Brazil to marry with the indigenous women. Provide they will have children, because for us it is better to have half a Portuguese than Spanish [laughter]. So there was this sense of how was important for the Portuguese to mix you see. So since the beginning if you look the portrait of important Brazilians in 19th century, how they were mixed blood. Even if they were, they had, they were, nobles. Because Brazil after, in the beginning of the 19th century because of the French, Napoleon invaded Portugal. So the King of Portugal under the protection of the King of England decide to move with the all crown to Brazil, all together. The state of Portugal move to Brazil. This will be a unique case as a colonial power became part of the colony, so-called colony. And the King of Portugal was living in Brazil for a long time. For years, and years, and years almost I don't know 15 years or 20 years. So, and well then he left and when he left from Brazil back to Portugal because of liberal revolution in Portugal. The liberal were, the new constitution in Portugal forced the king to went back to Portugal, he left his son as his representative in Brazil, delegating Brazil. And his son became the man who used to say this expression proclaim it. We decide our independence. So our independence, our hero is the son of the King of Portugal, who became our king. And Brazil become an empire. This is and we had two emperors up to 1888, a long time. And the second one was much more liberal in creating a kind of put like that, noble [inaudible] you see, in fact it was very simple, it was enough to call the emperor to send a letter to a person and to qualify this person as euro, or marquess, or Viking, or something like that. Very swift for the treasurer, not expensive to appoint anyone is enough to say you are a noble, but they create a nobility in Brazil in 19th century. This nobility was basically bourgeois because here they were the landlords, most of them became noblemen, noblemen. So Brazil was a very aristocratic society. That is to say distaining people in general. And the slavery was there up to the end of 19th century. After the end of 19th century. Which is a difference compared to the United States. You have a fight in America to promote the end of slavery. We didn't in our case what happens is the British prohibited the trade of slaves. So slavery was put, was jeopardized by the British Empire. And then Brazil had to solve the problem from the labor force. So then Brazil imported people from Europe, from Italy, from Spain, from Portugal, from Germany, from different parts of Europe. This was at the end of the 19th century and beginning of 19th century. So then Brazil, 20th century, sorry, 19th century to 20th century. Then Brazil become to be much more as I can put a modern society, but is still the landlord are there. Concentration for all is very powerful and this came for all time in Brazil. But I'm not going to say step by step. But asked my about inequality and the work I did about race, etcetera. Because of the fact that we're to a large extent mixing, the idea was well we are a rational democracy. This is what the ideology in Brazil in 19th century. Between the 19th and 20th century. And I'm sorry between the 19th and 20th century, the wealth people of Brazil decide to white wise the Brazilians to transform Brazil into whites. So that's why they are asking for people to come to Brazil largely you see. But anyhow the inequality was there. When did the end of slavery occur, the former slaves become marginal people. This is the first wave of poverty and misery in Brazil. Blacks without be more workers because the work, they had been replaced by migration in Brazil. So we have an enormous amount of poor people, black people, without any possibility to integrate into the market. And Brazil was developing because of export, as I have said in 18th century our GDP was bigger than Portugal. In the 19th century continue to grow because of different reasons, in the 19th century as well we started to industrialize but to have always a massive amount of people out of the system. Outcast people you see? Well in this area I tell you in the 20th century we began to speak about racial democracy. That was the ideology in Brazil. Several sociologist and historians wrote about racial democracy in Brazil. The more they maybe the more important one is the sociologist named Freyre, Gilberto Freyre. Who wrote important books about Brazil and abut Brazilian slavery so on and so forth. But anyhow he tried to well to be lenient with the, what happened in Brazil. So Brazil is not as bad as other parts with respect to the blacks. When I start to do some research about that, I was under the influence of important teachers in Brazil, one sociologist, one French man named Jose Basti [assumed spelling] was an expert in black religions and another one the Brazilian [inaudible] both have been my teachers. And we did several research because the UNESCO tried to convince the world that the Brazilian model would be the best model for the world, that this was a racial democracy and Strauss an important anthropologist wrote a book about the concept of race, and another French [inaudible] came to Sao Paulo and asked us to a research to prove to the world how good we were. Well, we did several research, including myself I did several research in the south of Brazil, and the result was exactly the opposite that is to say we had not exactly segregation, but prejudice. Blacks were put apart. It was sort of difficult to have you know some beach for black and so on and so forth. To give you a short idea and story of how was importance the inference of this ideology, I have been long time ago, I was very young, was in twenties, 25 something like that, in the '50s and attending a meeting under the office of UNESCO in Rio in the Palace of [inaudible] which is foreign affairs building and I showed my the results of my servicing in Brazil and the results were very obvious. This is almost racist. The head of the meeting was an Ambassador at the end called me and said, "I was almost to expel you from the room." I said, "Why?" "Because you cannot say that to foreigners." [Laughter] Well that was the situation in Brazil. From that point on we moved a lot. In other sense. Because the transformation of Brazilian society was very impressive in the 20th century. Very, very impressive. I was born in Rio, in 1931. That's terrible, but a long time ago. But and I moved to Sao Paulo 8 years later on. My father was a minister and he was transferred to Sao Paulo. Well, when I first time I came to Sao Paulo 1940. Sao Paulo was well very beautiful, as a small city, a European city with [inaudible] on the streets, the streets were not paved. So I was shocked we were coming from Rio. This was Sao Paulo. And now if you go to Sao Paula maybe it is bigger to New York and all those buildings and so on and so forth. They all, this has been done in 88 years, you know. Very impressively, very impressively, but inequality was still there. On top of that I said you had since the beginning landlords and also a strong state. Well step by step civilian society become more important in Brazil. Workers have become more important, middle class group more important, [inaudible] more important. Then have lots of problems and so from time to time authoritarian regime. The last one start in '64 and last up to I don't know maybe '88 which was the constitutional day where you create new constitution. Was a member of this assembly. But so society start moving ahead. After the re-democratization, well it was almost impossible not to change. I mean not to change in terms of the economy, GDP itself, it has been always well. We are not a super power either, anyhow, but being able to have economic growth we're among maybe the 10 biggest economies in the world. But society was very unequal. After the constitution because of democracy people were being, people in power, have been forced to look after people. It's impossible now on from '88 on not to take care of education, health, access to land. So on and so forth. We did a lot in that sense. Still if you look, there's a highly unequal society, but the aspiration is more, a more open society, more democratic society. We have been successful in preventing some programs, you referred to some program in my period we did. But then my successor, President Lulu continued to also to improve so we have a little bit more you know democratic society. But democracy became a value in Brazilian society. So no more state and landlords. You have [inaudible] you have an industry, and you have the aspiration of becoming a decent society. I'll put an end here. Thank you. >> Jane McAuliffe: Thank you. [ Applause ] As you think about your two countries today, all of the problems that beset them, and all of the problems that beset countries all over the world, but concentrating particularly on India and Brazil, what's your greatest fear for India? What's your greatest hope? >> Romia Thapar: Well, I think my greatest fear would be the possible loss of democracy. Not loss, but decline. Because I think that what really keeps us going board up and very hopeful is the fact that the democratic process has taken root. I don't think that it will be affected in the future by whatever happens. But maybe I could put this better if I looked at it in terms of what is it that threatens Indian democracy at the moment. And I would say there are three things. One is what we call vote banks. Which is that although technically every person, every adult Indian has a vote and exercises the vote very effectively, there is at the same time an attempt being made to try to build up groups of people on the basis of religion and caste to vote as a single entity and this really does skew the democratic process. And one of the things that has almost encouraged this is again a legacy from British rule. The British had a census and they had a census by which they demarcated people according to religion. So the majority of Indians of course were Hindus. So the Hindus became the majority community and then you had a series of minority communities. The Muslims, the Christians, the sects and so on the spaces. Now what is happening is that sometimes you get an effort being made to try and take these communities and organize them into vote banks. And get them to vote as a whole. And this is something that we are very anxious to weaken. So that the idea of the individual vote still continues. The other thing which is a little threatening from time to time is of course what threatens all democracies everywhere in the world, attempts of centralization by the central government where decisions are taken, which should be taken at a much more de-centralized level, but which tend to be captured by those in the central government and then used for purposes of really extending their own power and authority. The third problem is again coming back to what I was talking about earlier, which is at least feel very strongly about and that is the need to protect and defend the secularity of Indian society. I think that this is extremely important. And at the moment, there have been attempts, there have been attempts all along since independence, but these attempts have got a little more noticeable in recent months. There's more talk about banning books and censoring phones. There's much more talk about how places of worship where you know why do we have to have these other people have places of worship why shouldn't we give priority to Hindu temples, that kind of thing. There is also a movement going on which has a certain irony. It's called returning home. And the argument is that initially everybody was, all people were Hindus and then the Muslims came and some got converted to Islam. And then the Christians came and then some got converted to Christianity. So now there's a move to try and reconvert the Muslims and the Christians back to Hinduism. It's not a major move by any means. It's a small group of people who are going around doing this. But it's ironic because Hinduism as a religion does not accept conversation. So the reconversion is a bit of a joke. But anyway there it is. The point is really the mood that goes with this kind of thinking. It's not that it's effective and in fact they kept offering goodies to people whom they were re-converting and when the goodies, they re-converted and when the goodies didn't materialize, they converted back to Islam and Christianity. And why not I mean it's perfectly logical thing to do. But not only it creates that kind of awkwardness and it creates a sort of mood of giving priority to this kind of thinking, which doesn't need priority in a country that is being desperately secular. So that's another thing that I'm concerned with and particularly because I think that what is happening now is that the program for development is moving away from the program that we had initially after independence, which admittedly was a very romantic program. The upliftment of the poor. The removal of poverty. This was a very major program, which didn't of course come off. We didn't succeed in removing poverty altogether. But today there is a tendency for the middle class particularly in India to talk much more about development meaning access to commodities and the whole commodification of the economy to a much greater extent than a concern for the poor. And this I think is a problem. Those, I would say are and all of this actually ties into a very basic question which has been much discussed recent times of course with Thomas [inaudible] book it's been discussed even more. The question of inequality. And this is absolutely fundamental. It's a question that we are all discussing at great length. What do we do? It's not just the economic removal of poverty. It's not just the culture of equal citizenship. It is a fundamental notion of equality, which we have to cultivate. And we don't seem to be cultivating too much. Partly of course because political parties are now getting huge donations of money. I mean the amount of money that was spent in the last election a year ago by every party was absolutely phenomenal. And some of us just give up and said well you know if this is the way it's going to go then we may as well not talk about this, the future of this kind of politics. But exactly about four months back there was an election in the Union Territory of Delhi, which is not a state, but it's a Union Territory. And there's a party which was relatively unknown and didn't have too much power, the Aam Aadmi Party, the party of the common man, literally. And it swept the board. It threw out all these very heavily financed rich parties completely. And so people then started saying, oh now wait a minute this is getting a new political direction. So that if you can send your people to work in areas and convince people about what they need and tell us what they need. You may be able to build up an alternative politics to the politics of highly financed parties. So that is a little element of hope. The other fear that I have of course, is again, a fear that many, many societies all of the world have. Gender inequality. Which is extremely strong. And we are trying extremely hard. All kind of promises are made on occasions. On state occasions, we're told that the position of women will be dramatically improved, but in effect it doesn't happen so easily. We have to keep in mind the fact that we are a highly patriarchal society. Have been. And when you have three thousand years of patriarchy you can't throw it out overnight. You have to struggle very hard to get rid of it. And the biggest struggle is not we've got the laws, we've got the courts. We've got people who are also going out and helping every time there is a rape case, there is police action and so on. You have to change the mindset of people. Both the men and the women. To recognize the fact that gender equality has to exist, has to come. And that is really the biggest problem in a way to that changing the mind, the mindset. On the question of what is one's greatest hope. One's greatest hope is my greatest hope for India is a, that it will continue to remain a pro-race society. That it will continue to remain a multicultural society, a multi-religious society as it has been in the past. And the mixture of populations, which characterize the Indian population. We have no purity of race, however much we may pretend that some people are racially more pure than others, and there are enough people who hold that opinion. We are a very mixed people. Have to be. I mean all great civilizations are hopelessly mixed. And therefore we should accept that as a reality. So my greatest hope is that that will continue. That that will not be broken up and that there will continue to be a public opinion that is concerned about the reality of the success of multicultural plural societies. That public opinion is extremely important. And in this I think that a very major part has to be played by the judiciary. And we fortunately, up to now have a judiciary which does make some pretty good decisions at times. At times they go off, by our standards. But most of the time they do make good decisions. And as long as that remains, it's a great support. It's a great support to the whole question of both multi-culturalism and inequality. And of course the greatest advantage we have is that we have a very fine constitution. And there is a tendency when there is a crisis for people to turn around and say, but this is unconstitutional. And that's a help. I mean you can go against the constitution. That is also known. But the fact that you can quote the constitution is something of a help. >> Jane McAuliffe: President Cardoso? Your greatest hope. Your greatest fear for Brazil. >> Fernando Henrique Cardoso: Well you know long time ago President Clinton ask me the same question. And he said, he said a different thing. He said, "You know when I approach a nation I would like to know what is its big fear and what is its hope. Well in a case of Brazil, there is a phrase in our anthem, our national anthem which says great by nature who be living forever in our cradle of I don't remember Portuguese, splendor in a cradle of splendor. So this is ambiguous right. Great by nature who keeps living forever. In a cradle of splendor. Is this good or bad [laughter]? Is ambivalent you see. And this is also doubt. Will we be really great in our case, our passion has been that to be develop it, to be modern, to be western. You see. But we are not. We are maybe far western. We are western, but not exactly. So to what extent will be successful in our attempt to become a big nation in that sense. Because you know there's a fear in Brazil and from time to time we are effectively losing the [inaudible] history for instance for us was difficult from the '70s to the '80s, up to the '90s to understand what was going on in the world. Because of globalization. To what extent this could be used by Brazil as a to be integrate is better or to be apart from. So this has been always a little bit you know we're hesitating what to do. What is good for the nation? So this is a nightmare. And I'll say still, still there is a kind of division. Some people think it's better to be in isolation because we are 100, 200 million. Others say no, is a little more possible. The world is integrated. You have to take in to account the new knowledge and new technology so on and so forth. So we never know if we really would be one of the big ones. This is not a [inaudible] for the people. The people want education, health, work and this kind of thing. I'm referring to the political elite. Because is always doubting what to be our future. And normally the Brazilians are very self-confident. They believe that they will be capable to do whatever will be necessary to become a big nation. But then how, this is a fear in our hard desperation is to grow, to develop. Now, again after the constitution, not because of the constitution, but because it to some extent increased our lives, this sentiment is more usual to look after social pressures. So what is the fear? Well poverty, misery, all causes you referred to. Including gender questions. This is all day by day. If you read Brazilian newspapers or people speaking each other, this is a day by day discussion to what extent do we be successful in offering education for everyone, to give you an example. In the '90s looking for the [inaudible] education for blacks, 25% of the blacks are out of schools. We had no universal access to education. Now we have. You know 97, 98% have access to education. What kind of education, what is the quality of education. The children stay at school, maybe 4 hours per day, so it's not enough. So since we are 200 million always 10% is big. So if you have 10% of good schools, this good enough to go ahead with the economy, but not good enough for people. Not good enough for the nation, not good enough for the market and so on and so forth. So we still, aren't sure that you be capable to really create a democracy capable to deliver to people. You refer to democracy. Democracy was a nightmare for us too. The lack of democracy, this has been an obsession during generations in 19th century. Mainly after 1930, we had a period of democracy which in 1946 up to '64 and from '64 to '88 again, kind of dictatorship. From that point on we have elections. And, but they will say democracy is well entrench in Brazilian's mindset, not in institutions. Have it be the architecture of democracy in institutionally speaking, but the mindset of people, yes. But the soul of the government is not democracy. So the government is still, because you are also as I said, since the beginning, the government, the administration the state has been always very powerful. So always there is a risk of someone in power to become populist. That is to say to address to the people not in order to be done what has to be done properly, but to manipulate the sentiment the population. So populist therefore the sense that we'll prosper again to that populist, I'm not saying that we have. But it's always possible to have because you have a normal amount of people with a very medium range of the education. The education is not good enough for all of the population. It's possible to manipulate that state is strong. There is always that. But simultaneously, civil society very strong. The press has independence in Brazil. As you said the judicial system is also very important. And you have a relatively independent judicial, relatively independent judicial system. Given an example, as President I had no possibility to call on the phone the Minister of Justice, Minister or Supreme Court to ask him to vote. No, no, no, this is no feasible. They have some you know institutional independency. While this is true, but you have another questions, is corruption. As you said before the political party became like a very strange kind of institution. And they are day and night looking for money to assure votes, or to assure their personal wealth. And corruption is a big problem. And again, judicial system is maybe the main, you know solution for that. Could be. Could be. Yeah? So this is I myself I fear to some extent kind of regain of force by populist elements and also the corruption becoming some say would demoralize the civic life in Brazil. Other side is because of the new technologies. So now have the, you know the information of society, we have the access to everything in terms of the net. The network and almost all the people mobilize people do protest. Everyone wants to have a say in the decision making, but there is no, up to now possibility yet to have, you have in America also the frequency how to consolidate the institutions with the people's role, and the [inaudible] of people to react immediately with a new situations. So it's not clear yet what will be our future in that sense. I'm hopeful. I'm not a pessimist. I of course if I read the newspaper today, or yesterday, or the day before it would be a disaster because we have corruption, we have the fragmentation in congress, the lack of leadership, etcetera. But looking at the society I'm rather optimist with respect to the future of the country. >> Jane McAuliffe: Well I think this evening has given us a phenomenal launch to Scholarfest. Our two Kluge Prize Winners could not have been better, conversation partners as we start this celebration of the 15th anniversary of the John Kluge Center. I'd like to ask you in join me in thanking Dr. Thapar, and President Cardoso for their remarks this evening. [ Applause ] >> Fernando Henrique Cardoso: Thank you very much. >> This has been a presentation of Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.