In the second part of the interview, Mirza recalls how the spirit of questioning nationalism had begun during the Vietnam war, when the anti-war supporters refused to be drafted in the US army.
After the release of his latest book, Memory in the Age of Amnesia, Saeed Mirza sits down to talk with Souradeep Roy, member of the editorial collective of the Indian Writers’ Forum. In the second part of the interview, Mirza recalls how the spirit of questioning nationalism had begun during the Vietnam war, when the anti-war supporters refused to be drafted in the US army. He also talks of his childhood and the idea of India that he was brought up with. The spirit of India he grew up with has found expression in the campus protests across India, and also in the protests by writers, filmmakers, and artists. “The genie is out of the bottle”, he says, “and it cannot be brought back.”