Entrevista a Peter deSouza
Entrevista ALICE n.º 5, por José Manuel Mendes, 05 de dezembro de 2012
Entrevista em Inglês.
Biografia:
Peter Ronald deSouza é atualmente diretor do Instituto Indiano de Estudos Avançados (IIAS). Anteriormente foi investigador sénior do Centro para o Estudo das Sociedades em Desenvolvimento (CSDS), onde foi codiretor do programa Lokniti sobre Democracia Comparada. O Professor D’Souza ensinou ciência política na Universidade de Goa durante 16 anos, tendo chefiado o departamento entre 1996 e 2002. Foi também um dos três investigadores principais de um estudo comparativo envolvendo cinco nações, sobre o Estado da Democracia no Sul da Ásia (2006), publicado pela Oxford University Press. Foi membro do Research Committe da Associação Internacional de Ciência Política para a Filosofia Política e Sociologia Política, e membro da Comissão de Bolsas para Ciência Política da Universidade. Foi professor visitante em várias universidades, tais como Birkbeck College, Universidade de Londres, Centro Taubman e Kennedy School of Government da Universidade de Harvard. Publicou numerosos artigos e editou vários livros, incluindo a obra “Os Partidos Políticos da Índia” (Sage, 2006), e “Falando da Morte de Gandhi” (com Tripid Suhrud, Orient BlackSwan, 2010).
O Professor D’Souza tem atuado como consultor do Banco Mundial para a Descentralização Rural e para a questão dos Dalits, Discriminação, e a Luta pela Igualdade de Cidadania; da Fundação Ford sobre o Governo Local na Índia; da IDEA Internacional na preparação do manual sobre Avaliação da Democracia; da Inter-União parlamentar na preparação do Manual de Parlamento no século XXI; da ICNRD-5 na sua avaliação Democracia da Mongólia; e ainda do PNUD no estudo sobre a Violência Eleitoral.
Questões:
- We will start with your personal trajectory and the decision, after 1975, the year of Emergency in India, to move from a career in Biochemistry and to enroll in Political Science.
- In your book chapter “‘Appeasement of Minorities’ and Multiculturalism: The Indian Debate” you say that “the protection of the life, liberty and property of the minority cannot be ensured through the exercise of strengthening minority rights per se but can be ensured by the general protection of human rights”. Could you elaborate on this, the specific case of India and how it could apply to Europe.
- The role of constitutional order in guaranteeing minority rights.
- Civil disobedience as an inheritance of Gandhi, today in India and its influence in some social movements in Europe.
- The question of Goa and the Indian State.
- The concept of demodiversity in Boaventura de Sousa Santos.
- Your critique of visions of India democratic project as ethnocentric, compliant to the hegemonic dominant discourses on democracy or the excessive ideological baggage (example: creolisation).
- What’s more important is your proposal that democracy in India can be analysed in isolation from an analysis of modernity. And this because as you affirm, “democracy, once introduced into a society, develops a dynamic of its own, producing a series of consequences, some of which may be unintended”.
- Another very relevant factor in many of your writings is the specific role and influence of scale, not just only population and territory, but cultural diversity (India not just a nation-state but a civilisation state).
- The parallel between a new political community in India and in Europe based on operating norms, rules and institutions. In Europe the thick political community lies at the level of states and the thin at the level of Europe. In India, there is an equal distribution between the union and the states. The role of political culture to sustain the institutions.
- MOST IMPORTANT: the need to refashion ‘appropriate universals’ that meet the objections of suppressed voice and excluded presence, that are inclusive in their scope and that can be identified with by the populations that they are to govern and serve. The emergent political community, will require some universals.
- size: populations that are internally plural
- the role played by political elites: politics of identity (ethnic outbidding and the enemy within); insulate political leadership from criticism.
- Study in democratic audit of South Asia: political discourse and democracy as part of popular commonsense. Democracy in South Asia: social upheaval: new ways of organizing collective life; new process of social interpretation and introduce a vibrant public sphere.
- Contradiction in the core principles of IDEA (International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance): more political equality may actually translate into less popular control.
- The need to create a global discourse on an alternative system for the production and management of wealth. Counter discourse to market fundamentalism: The concept of trusteeship in Gandhi.
