This lecture was delivered at the History for Peace regional conference on the 'Idea of Justice' in Noida on 13th May 2024.

Nivedita Menon | The Idea of Justice

I am really inspired by Swarna’s presentation on the importance of making a difference through our everyday actions and your responses to her make me feel like I have stepped into a very dynamic and engaging space. In fact, I am tempted to carry the discussion forward from where Swarna left off because the questions were so thought provoking. I will speak about a number of things but you will notice connections with what Swarna said earlier. In the course of these two days all of us are addressing the same predicament. It is indeed a predicament––not only because you are fourteen- or  fifteen-year-old school students but because the predicament is a human predicament––how do we live an ethical life?

Over time, I have come to believe that the human brain is born with some innate sense of justice. While the feeling of ‘It's not fair’ can come from your own experience of having been denied something, the sense of injustice can also arise on behalf of others.

Have you noticed young children say, ‘Why is that child sitting on the streets and begging while I am in an air-conditioned car?’ I think we all have been that child or we know children like that who start crying because they see a poor, ragged child on the road. There is an innate sense of justice that has to be trained out of us. We don’t have to be trained to learn what justice is.

Socialization is the way you are taught to live and become unquestioning parts of society. You have to be taught that it is not your business. You are just supposed to go to school and learn. If another child is hungry, that child is hungry. That flame of justice doesn’t disappear––it has to be trained out of us. And that takes some time and effort. You learn to sit on it and if you are very privileged, you learn to stop caring.

In the world that I live in today, young people have been leading global movements for justice for the last 15 years or more––the Arab Revolt, the ‘We are the 99%’, occupation of Wall Street or the global movement where 130 campuses across the US and the rest of the world united against the genocide in Gaza (the  movement is only gaining fervour because these universities are funded by companies that are running the war in Gaza). Think about why these students are risking their future and their student loans when it's not even a struggle about themselves––it is a struggle for an idea of justice.

When I see what is happening in these campuses, I see that the time has passed, when change was led by gray-haired people. The gray-haired people are being led by the youth. It is you who are pushing the frontiers. As Swarna said, we are not alone. So, when you ask ‘How do I start?’––you don’t have to start from the beginning, it is already happening. What you have to do is to step outside and connect with the movement.

There are two ways to talk about justice or a just situation. Is justice when everybody gets what they deserve or is it when everybody gets what they need? If we understand justice based on what everybody deserves, then we are cultivating a society that believes that justice is desert––an old-fashioned word for ‘what you deserve’. If justice were based on desert one would be rewarding those in society who already have cultural capital. Cultural capital is when no matter what financial background one comes from, there is a culture of respect towards learning––you learn to read and write and your parents are somewhat literate. Do not underestimate this––when you begin life with cultural capital, you are already on the faster track compared to someone who has never seen a book in their life. The same society has both these kinds of people.

To have cultural capital is to have access to resources, to be buoyed up and made to float by power structures in society––that is how you can meet the standards of success. Those benefiting from it will often talk about meritocracy. The term merit itself is very interesting. In many Indian languages it translates to punya––something you bring from your previous births i.e. you carry your merit with you. Believers in punya would say, ‘Anything that happens to you in this life is a result of your previous life’s sins.’ It is a peculiar understanding applied to a very modern and liberal idea––justice is for those who deserve it. But it promotes the same idea that justice is supposedly completely impartial. You don’t recognize any differences among people so that society treats every person equally.

Have you seen the image of Justice in court? In the court scene in Hindi movies, there is often this image of Justice as a woman with a blindfold around her eyes because she is not supposed to see you. But if Justice can’t see me, a person who has a savarna, upper-class Hindu background, who has never faced a moment of hunger nor known a moment of insecurity in her life, then she has to look at me the same way she would the woman who works in my house––struggling to survive every single day. Hence, the idea of justice as impartial sounds very fair but is not fair indeed.

Justice has to be based on the idea of recognizing differences and recognizing need. This has been long debated in academic circles but it also rears its head whenever there is a debate on caste-based reservations or reserved seats on buses for women. The crux of the matter is the same—should society recognize differences? Should justice be based on the idea of difference or not? 

Differences are of two kinds: hierarchy-based difference, which is obviously unfair and unjust and then there is difference without hierarchy. For example, South Africa had a difference-based system––apartheid, which differentiated between races––but that system was deeply hierarchical and unjust, giving only some people rights while denying rights to many. Difference does not have to be hierarchical but social structures produce the hierarchy. For instance, caste is obviously a hierarchical social structure.

Gender is more difficult to explain as a social structure but it is one. The problem wasn’t that I was assigned the gender female at birth. The problem is that in the world I live in, to be assigned the gender female implies a whole lot of other things.  These other things arise from the functioning of patriarchy, a key aspect of which is the sexual division of labour. For example, mothers are meant to be agents of socialization and that is their role in a patriarchal society. Patriarchy is not about biological men and women but about social roles and power structures––these are social identities.

Identities are also biological but I doubt I need to explain it to you. You live in a world which I didn’t live in––we know there are more than two genders, we almost take it for granted. When I grew up, I had to embrace that world and learn. Why? Because of a very powerful queer movement. We came to know these things because there was push-back from society. And in order to live an ethical life, you cannot say ‘Everything I know is correct.’ Rather, you have to say ‘Everything I know, may have to change’––and it is changing every day.

So, the problem is not difference but that difference arises from the social circumstances that produce hierarchy. Take a physical disability like blindness. Why is blindness a disability? Because the world is built for sighted people. Sayings like ‘In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king’ are not true. The aphorism merely makes sense because this world is built for the sighted and it becomes difficult and problematic for the unsighted.

Let me tell you a small story. One of my friends works in a research institute where one of his colleagues is blind. He dropped in to visit that colleague around 4 pm on a winter evening. By 5:30 pm it was already so dark that my friend couldn’t see in his colleague’s room. So, he said to the blind friend, ‘Don’t you want to switch on the light?’ The friend laughed and said ‘If you really need it, you can switch it on!’ It was the sighted person who was left disabled by darkness, the blind person was fine. Suppose you lived in a world which was structured for the blind, there would be no concessions for darkness and we sighted ones would be the ones who would be stumbling into things and the disability would be of those who can see. Physical differences are disabilities only because society assumes a certain norm. 

So, my point is that justice has to be based on the idea of equitable treatment. Justice is not about sameness; justice is about recognizing differences. This is an old debate in mainstream political theory that would privilege the understanding of justice as sameness but feminists and critical race theorists have questioned it. It is not surprising that there is a huge global campaign––especially in the USA––against theory and critical reasoning because they challenge the dominant norm.

When a philosopher like Judith Butler has their effigy burnt on the streets, I feel, ‘Wow! What a fantastic job she has done.’ Butler is a philosopher who has long argued that gender is constructed through multiple discourses including medicine and sciences like biology. Butler says there is a powerful frame, ‘the heterosexual matrix’ that makes the world appear as if there are only two sexes and that each sex is attracted only to the ‘opposite’ sex. This idea is dangerous to the social order that exists, which is patriarchal, heterosexist and unjust. This is Butler’s life’s work and it has enraged white supremacists and masculinists so that they are burning their effigy in places like Brazil.

So, when you think about justice in terms of difference then it enables you to think about social justice and affirmative action along the many axes of inequality that sometimes take the form of reservations in our country. This is from where ideas of redistribution are born.

There has been a lot of discussion and debate around redistribution––a very good thing of late––in this election campaign (Lok Sabha Elections 2024). I couldn’t actually believe that they were discussing redistribution and not in terms of how people pray or where they eat! What I find interesting is that a lot of middle-class people like us think that redistribution will take money from us. No, the income inequality in the country has grown so much in the last ten years that in 2018, an organization did a survey and found that the income of 63 individuals was greater than the National Budget for that year. So, we either have to assume that these 63 individuals worked really hard or something else was happening––redistribution of the wrong kind. When you redistribute things to the poor, it is called freebies. However, when you redistribute to the rich, it is called development and growth. One candidate in the election campaign said that people who don’t pay taxes have no rights. But please understand that a large part of the government income comes, not from income tax but from indirect taxation.

Every time a rickshaw puller buys a packet of salt, he is contributing to the subsidization of the IITs by the government. His own son will not see the doors of a school, but every time he buys salt or any other commodity there is indirect taxation. All that money goes towards what the government subsidizes. But everyone doesn’t make it to IIT––not because they can’t but because their circumstances don’t allow them to. Therefore, the problem is not that we don’t have the resources in the country. The problem is redistribution.

I want to discuss another dimension of injustice––unpaid labour, the foundation of the economy. This is reproductive labour and household work which is divided along gender lines i.e. the sexual division of labour––the work that exclusively women carry out. Reproduction doesn’t just mean bearing children and creating actual labour power, it also means performing the labour which allows people to go to work the next day––cooking, cleaning, looking after children. This is labour. This is work. Mothers and wives and daughters are performing this for love but as I like to say, ‘What does love mean in tennis? Zero.’ This unpaid labour bolsters the economy, be it the husband or the state. If somebody had to pay for this unpaid labour, the economy would  collapse. We have to accept the fact that all work produces value and that labour is the source of value.

Another important point to keep in mind is that instability is not the worst thing that we have to avoid at all costs. Often what appears to be ‘just’ is the normalizing of a previous history of violence.  Just the other day, seven or eight manual scavengers died in the capital of our country going into sewer channels which contained the contents of our commodes. That is what they work in and they die because of the toxic gases. Even if they have children who are no longer manual scavengers, we see institutions with house cleaning crews employing people who belong to castes that performed manual scavenging because their options are limited––given what work their parents did. They wear a uniform, look much more ‘respectable’ and are even treated respectfully––you may even call them ‘Bhaiyya’ and 'Didi’. But if you do a survey, you are likely to find that most of them are from formerly ‘untouchable’ castes. This is passing on disadvantage from generation to generation, just as for a handful of others, wealth and privilege are passed on from generation to generation. Not to recognize this is to normalize a history of violence.

History is not just what happened in the past––history is what is happening now; history is about the present. Nobody talks about the past because they want to remember what happened in the past. They talk about the past because they want to talk about the present in a certain way and they want to talk about the future in a certain way. That is why we have different versions of what happened in the past. When I say ‘history of violence’, I am talking about the here and now, not something that is over and done with. How many inter-caste marriages have taken place in your families? If someone wanted to have an inter-caste marriage, what would the reaction of your family be? I am including myself here. I am not saying I am special; we are all part of the same system. So, the idea of something being ‘just’ comes from a previous history of violence––one that continues––and at the end of it, because order prevails it looks normal, natural even. But it is normalized.

You have all heard the story of Ekalavya. One of the justifications for Ekalavya’s punishment in that story is to explain that Ekalavya did not just access that knowledge, he stole the knowledge. When do you have to steal knowledge? When you are excluded from it. He would not have been taught by Dronacharya because he was not a Kshatriya, so he had to steal knowledge. A society which justified Ekalavya’s punishment on grounds that he stole knowledge shows how caste order has been re-established. There is a beautiful quote by a French philosopher, Romain Rolland which says, ‘If order is injustice, then disorder is the beginning of justice.’ So, we need to think about ‘social order’ more critically.

In this context let me tell you a story about the Nicaraguan sign language. Only recently I learnt that sign language is not signing the alphabet; sign language is a language in itself. So, Nicaragua was a country where a military dictatorship was overthrown by a revolution. When that revolution took place, there was a huge push towards revolutionizing education. One of the things they decided to do was to start proper sign language teaching. It had been a very isolated society, so the deaf people there already had developed their own language––unlike any other existing sign language in the world––called the Nicaraguan Sign language. So, after the revolution they started building schools for deaf children to formally educate them. What was interesting was that every year as new students came in, they would pick up the sign language that their senior students were using and then break the rules. They would introduce new words and new ways of thinking and forming sentences which would then improve the language. The next batch would break the rules again and so on, making Nicaraguan sign language complex and supple. What I learnt from this is that rule breaking is the foundation of knowledge, not rule following. This is what blew my mind when I heard about the Nicaraguan sign language, that the teachers and senior students were willing to learn from younger students.

The other story I want to tell is by a famous French philosopher named Jacques Rancière, who wrote a book called The Ignorant Schoolmaster. In this book, Rancière tells the story of an actual teacher Joseph Jacotot who was sent to teach French to people in a Flemish speaking area. They knew no French and he knew no Flemish. There was a translation of the Greek epic, Iliad which had French on one side and Flemish on the other. The teacher gave them the text and told them to figure out the French words by comparing it with the Flemish section.

Reading this story––as someone from a formerly colonized country whose languages were thoroughly marginalized––I questioned why Rancière, a liberal, enlightened philosopher was not asking a simple question: Why was the teacher in a position where the Flemish children had to learn French but he didn’t have to learn Flemish? It was because of the way in which the French nation-state was created. All the nation-states from the eighteenth century have  been created by marginalizing languages other than the dominant one and assimilating or destroying local cultures. French was the language of the French nation-state and so Flemish––a minority language––had to be pushed aside in favour of French. Why was Rancière not even thinking about that? Because, as a Frenchman, he saw this as progress. Irrespective of the language it is the idea of ‘one nation, one language,’ or rather one nation, one anything that leads to injustices. I was really struck by this story. What the teacher was doing was one kind of education––it was preparing Flemish children to live in a French-dominant world which had already taken shape around them. Therefore, many historians have said that the process of creating a nation state is akin to colonialism.

Rancière says that people do not need teachers; they need their intelligence to be revealed to themselves. Rancière goes on to give other examples like the calendar. Everyone knows that there are 28 days in February. Even if a person doesn’t know the language on the calendar, they can compare and find out which specific word means February. Using that, they can figure out the names of all the other months.

Talking about the calendar, it is not just a natural object. All of us here follow two or three calendars simultaneously––the Hindu calendar, the Islamic calendar and the Gregorian calendar. Don’t we take for granted that Diwali falls on this day this year, Eid on this day and next year these festivals will fall on other days of the Gregorian calendar? What if all other calendars were removed and only one calendar was permitted? Isn’t that an act of violence? Isn’t that an act of destroying a way of life and a form of knowledge? This is the point I was making––what appears to be just is often the normalization of a previous history of violence.

I would like to conclude by talking about a person who has been a great inspiration to me and an inspiration to the whole country, especially over the last few decades. I am talking about Dr. B.R Ambedkar, the moving spirit behind the Constitution. Ambedkar taught us that political revolution and political transformation are not sufficient; what we really need is a social revolution and a social transformation. Without these, there is no justice.

Ambedkar was a philosopher, inspired by a Marxist train of thought, who thought that machinery and technology brought progress. He challenged Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj, especially his critique of machinery. Why do you think Ambedkar opposed the valorization of manual labour? Because he came from a caste which was forced to do manual labour. He said that in order to live a worthy life one must have leisure. Leisure is made possible by reducing the drudgery of manual labour through machinery. This understanding reflects a certain attitude towards nature that was characteristic of twentieth century modernity––that nature is merely a resource for human welfare. But towards the end of his life, he converted to Buddhism and he drew upon the idea of maitri––meaning that we are all one, human and non-human. The whole Universe is one––an important idea of ecological justice––which adds an integral layer to Ambedkar’s idea of social justice. But this oneness does not imply sameness.

So, if we think about Justice not being based on sameness but on recognizing heterogeneity, respecting heterogeneity as long as it does not exclude others, then I believe that heterogeneity and democracy are the core values that we should be fighting for as we go along.

Question and Answer Session

Audience Member 1: Since you mentioned redistribution of wealth––would it not discourage people from working because money is simply handed to them? Won’t the money run out at some point of time? Won’t this stop skill-development, since they would get money and not need to work?

NM: I understand the concern but this is the kind of normalizing argument made in the world where you are placed, so I am not surprised by this argument. Let us think of some states where this has actually worked like the Nordic states––there is 100 per cent free healthcare for everybody and almost a 100 per cent free education for everybody. Those countries are some of the richest in the world and also very focused on ecological concerns. Nobody stopped working because of high taxes because nobody would take away your money without reason––there are rules and principles based on how much people earn.

The taxes are invested by the state in such a way that everybody benefits. A graded tax regime benefits everyone. I am part of one of the last remaining social security schemes in India––the Central Government Health Scheme (CGHS). Every month, I pay some amount of my salary towards CGHS. I have never used CGHS yet. But my contribution goes towards other people's medical costs and when I do use CGHS in the future, everybody’s money will be used for whatever surgery or treatment I am undergoing. Everybody benefits from a government that invests in social welfare––education and health.

So, the idea that people will stop working hard because they will get things easily is simply not the case. The implication of thinking this way is that it is okay for others to get things easily because of generational advantages! Are people rewarded according to how much they work? Is that the society you see before you? Who is working the hardest here? Is it me, or is it the people who are keeping these buildings clean?

There is no shortage of resources. For example, in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) today, I can’t find half the things I want in the library because funding for the library has been slashed. What has funding gone up for? Security. It used to be a campus where everyone walked around freely but now there are these fancy security agencies. The guards aren’t paid any of the funding––it goes directly to the agency and the guards are as poor as they were. What does this tell us? It tells us that redistribution is good for all of us. It is similar to the argument which feminists make––that patriarchy is also bad for men.

Audience Member 2: You said that to make a real change, we have to come together with people who share similar ideologies. But it is really difficult to believe that we are actually making a change when people in power and large corporations control big choices that have massive repercussions on our lives. While we can try, it is still very hard to trigger change by ourselves––it is very difficult to remain positive in such a scenario.

NM: That is why I began by saying that we are all in a predicament. Obviously, I don’t have an answer but I will tell you what I think about it. It is a fact that corporations run this world and keep wars going. Wars are less about politics and more about money because there are huge armament companies which are making multi-billion dollars out of every sale they make to a state. Recognizing this, one can feel quite discouraged. But let us not start there.

Let us start from the fact that every little thing you do makes a difference. At the age of 64 I am suddenly faced with a world where there are more than two genders. How did that happen? So, when the first queer movement initially started talking about trans people and there being more than two genders, there was a lot of resistance to it. But nobody in the queer movement said, ‘Let’s all give up’.

When you look closely, you can already see various changes taking place in your own lifetime. You can see how different your world is compared to your grandmother’s. You can start by thinking that it is unfair to you but it is also worth thinking about what your privileges are. What are your privileges and how is your life unfair to someone else? This is what feminism has taught us. It is not about one big revolution. It is a daily nibbling away at social norms and suddenly, the whole landscape has changed before you know it. If you look at the Extinction movement which is fighting climate change, they work on the ground daily and take on big corporations as well.

The movement for women’s suffrage (right to vote) in England was a very militant movement and many women died. They were in prisons. They went on fast-unto-death strikes. One of them threw herself in front of King George’s horse in the London Races. They tied themselves to letterboxes.. I didn’t even know how militant the suffragist movement was until a later stage in my life––see how history is being erased.

Imagine that each of those women did what they could at their own level until universal suffrage became the norm. Or take the example of each person who followed Gandhi in the Non-Cooperation movement in 1919–20. If they were told that independence would come only in 1947, how would they have felt? They thought it would happen immediately and did what they could. And independence did come, eventually.

Audience Member 3: My question might appear contradictory. You spoke about the idea of justice. Do you think it is practically possible or is it just a dream of a utopian society?

NM: In 1968, there was a huge movement by French students opposing traditional order and one of their slogans was, ‘Be Practical, Demand the Impossible’. I don’t understand why everyone thinks everything needs to start with themselves. You are living in a world which has been continuously changing since you were ten-years-old.

Do we have a Right to Information Act? Yes.

Do we have a Right to Abortion? Yes.

So, what do you mean that justice is utopian? Justice is not a point that you reach once and for all. Justice, democracy and all the values that we believe in are a horizon. What is a horizon? You never reach it. When you think you have reached it, there is another one. So, you are already living in a society which is in some ways, more just and in other ways, less just.

One of my friends did not have air conditioners or a car. He tried to travel a lot by public transport. So, I asked him how all of this mattered––if he were trying to make an ecological effort, he should also abandon consuming electricity in the form of fans or lights. He replied, ‘Just because I can’t do everything, doesn’t mean I can’t do one thing.’ This is the point. You may not be able to do everything but you can do one thing and that is already happening. So, you can say justice for everybody forever is utopian but I am saying it is happening in my life. Once you reach the so-called 100 per cent justice, you find that there is another horizon. Why should it be all or nothing?

Audience Member 4: You spoke about Ranciere's idea of teaching as merely settling young people into existing systems of order and power. What is an alternative view?

NM: Another way of thinking about teaching as opposed to Ranciere is Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Paulo Freire thought of pedagogy as follows: the teacher teaches the students five things and students teach the teacher five things. Now I think the idea here that is productive is the idea of the ‘outside.’ So, if something is normal inside, when the outside breaks in, you suddenly think, ‘Oh! So, this is not okay?’. The outside could be a teacher or a friend. So, there is always an outside that stops power formations from being consolidated. Whether it is capitalism, patriarchy, supremacism based on a religious or racial or class identity, there is always an outside that breaks in. This is what Paulo Freire meant, when he said that the students are the ‘outside’ of the teacher’s knowledge and the teachers are the ‘outside’ of the students' knowledge. When the outside bursts in, it destabilizes you. It makes you ask ‘Oh, was I wrong all along?’ and sometimes, it would be time to say ‘Yes, I was wrong, but the new world that is created because of that, is wonderful’.

I also wanted to address a previous question asked about how to handle near and dear ones. I agree with the point that parents grow with you. My mother raised me but she certainly didn’t expect that she was raising the woman I grew up to be. However, parents also don’t grow with you. There is a huge deal of trauma and emotional blackmail and you have to call their bluff. So, they grow with you but they also overplay what will happen to them if you don’t follow their rules. Later, they will be boasting about you and the unconventional life you chose to lead.

Audience Member 4: You said that education should be free for all. So, do you think it will be acceptable to everyone, particularly the private institutions? If they do not accept this, what can be done to convince them otherwise?

NM: Why don’t we start with the government? Let the private universities charge whatever they want. Before the destruction of the public universities over the last ten years, more students preferred to go to public universities like Delhi University and JNU rather than private ones. So, let the private universities exist. Let it be a choice. But the best education should also be provided at public universities. It is the responsibility of the state or the government to provide free education to all. Once that is achieved, we can discuss what is to be done about the private universities. Every college and school teacher in this country wants free and plentifully funded education for everyone. Not just for  the ones who can’t afford it, but everybody.

Audience Member 5: You talked about meritocracy as well as caste-based reservations. In order to integrate into a caste-blind society, should we do away with the system of reservations? How exactly do we incorporate the idea of meritocracy?

NM: How would you build a caste-blind society? By getting rid of reservations? You want to get rid of the one thing that can lead to a caste-blind society? Let me give one small example.

When there were arguments about reserving seats for women in buses and metros––for anyone who says that this is against equality––I ask them to do a small survey. I tell them to ask women in public transport what is the first thing they do when they reach home and all of them say that they immediately start with housework. Ask the men and they say they drink a cup of tea, made by a woman in their home. So, there is no equality already. Those seats that the women get is the tiny space of rest between work outside and work inside the home.

For a caste blind society to happen, you have to undo existing caste privileges. I have a colleague who is a Dalit professor. He is successful and well-off. He went back to his village and while walking with his aunt, stopped at some point to sit on a rock. His aunt was shocked and told him that they were not supposed to even touch that rock. This is happened now––in the 21st century.

Caste privilege, especially untouchability, is alive in your homes. Ask yourself how many people who clean your bathrooms are allowed in the kitchen. If your family gives them water to drink, see if they are given the same glass. They are not allowed to use the same lifts as residents. This is all based on caste discrimination. When you show me a caste blind society, you can do away with the reservations.

Audience Member 6: I have three questions I wished to ask you.

1. When you speak about disorder, shouldn’t there be a limit to it since too much disorder can lead to anarchy?

2. When you say that history is not a point of reference to look at the past, then aren’t we letting go of the violence that had been inflicted in the past? Then how do we teach our younger generations to learn from the past and not make the same mistakes?

3. When you talk about redistribution of wealth, what are the parameters by which all classes could be covered?

NM: I did not advocate for disorder––I connected it with movements for justice. For example, the protests happening in universities in the US is disorder but it is also a movement for justice. So, it is not about setting limits to order and disorder because it is movements that will do that. The protests in the US campuses are the most orderly encampments.

In Canada, the McGill university is on the land of the indigenous people. The particular tribe on whose lands the university stands on, has released a letter saying that they support the students who are protesting against the university. We might not agree on which kind of disorder is needed and which is not but it is at least important to have that conversation––to recognize that the fear of disorder cannot trump the possibility of justice.

About the question on history, I said ‘You don’t study history to know about the past. You study history to know about the present and what sort of future to lead.’ It is not that we shouldn’t study history but we shouldn’t study it just to know how someone lived in the past. So, let there not just be one history. Let there be multiple histories from which you can choose based on what your idea of a just society is.

Coming to the question about redistribution, I am not here to offer policy. When I say redistribution, I am saying that it is an unjust, violent and obscene society where 63 individuals have more wealth than the budget of the country. There have been multiple government policies which have enabled some people to make so much money. Even if you withdraw some of those policies, that might itself lead to some redistribution.

Let me give you the example of Kerala. Kerala has a huge labour shortage. Why? Because people are educated and so find better jobs elsewhere. So, who does the labour work? The migrant labourers who come from UP and Bihar mostly. Kerala has a long history of social security and free education. So, all the children of these migrants are getting free education and midday meals. Redistribution is happening in front of you. It is not some distant dream. Some of us have seen a completely different world. So, redistribution is not a utopia. It has happened in this country before and it can happen again.

Audience Member 7: In classrooms, I can see some signs of coloniality and a history of violence still there. How do you chip away at that? Because we do not have colonizers anymore but a lot of the students and teachers are savarnas and belong to upper classes that still oppress people from the lower castes. How would you chip away at that problem?

NM: I would take your question as a comment. We do need to chip away at it. There is no one formula. It has to happen organically. The previous NCERT textbooks came out with something called the National Curriculum Framework of 2005. This was framed by thousands of teachers all over the country. Before the NCF, it was assumed that all the students came from very backward casteist classist backgrounds and so there was nothing valuable they could bring to the class. However, the NCF 2005 said that there were other kinds of knowledge that people can bring in and that there must be a space for  students to communicate. So, you can either chip away at these inequalities individually or as a movement where we all change the nature of the classrooms.

Audience Member 8: Since we are all in a very privileged position here, what would you suggest we do on an individual scale, to counter this situation we have found ourselves in, where certain groups are discriminated against?

NM: I don’t like to recommend things to do to other people. But I will tell you some things that can work. For example, forming a reading group––it sounds very dull and scholastic but the reading group can also read an op-ed in a newspaper for and against reservations. Then you discuss among yourselves. The more diverse the groups, the better. I am hesitant to use the word inclusivity because it is good but we have to think of a better word where we are all part of a diverse group. So, I think discussion groups and reading groups are a good way to start.

Audience Member 9: You were talking about how the idea of Justice should be based on differences. So, to cater to justice based on difference, societies have laws for different people, like people with special needs. How can these rules be made uniform?

NM: They don’t have to be uniform. That is the whole point. This generation has grown up in a world where ‘One nation, one law’ is seen as progressive. It is not. It is a huge regression. Legal pluralism has been recognized worldwide as the progressive thing to do. That is why I emphasize difference and not hierarchy. South Africa had laws based on differences that were hierarchical. But mere uniformity does not mean equality. Uniform Civil Code is not gender justice. There may be different laws needed to bring gender justice to different communities and societies. So, our goal should be justice rather than uniformity. Uniformity is not a constitutional value.

Audience Member 10: As we know, education is a right for all. How we perform depends on our capabilities. There are reservations in competitive exams. So, a person who got 70 per cent is chosen over someone who got 90 per cent. Is that justice?

NM: The problem is that we are assuming that the person who got 70 per cent and the person who got 90 per cent start from the same place. When you see an Olympic race on a circular track, it looks so unfair. Some people stand way behind while others stand in front. This is because the outer track is longer and they should have to run a shorter distance in order to compete with someone standing in the inner track. What we want is not simply equality but equality of opportunity.

If you just walk on the roads, you see children who sell ice cream at night and go to school the next morning. What do you have? You have every book and resource handed to you. The children who are on the roads selling ice cream work hard to even get that 70 per cent. So, when you go home, think about how many Dalit friends you have and what they do, how many friends you have who are poor. If you have the same opinion even after that, you and I could only disagree. A small child would see the injustice here, so bring that small child back into yourself. Don’t let that get away.