[Music] lovely to see you and thank you thank you for coming yesterday no I don't because I felt that it's my duty as an Indian to voice my anguish my apprehension that what's happening and before coming I was just looking through the pages there's a big book I have your grandfather's name and I was looking through that and I know you this 2 800 kilometers is nothing you walk through sweat tears and blood literally and we have seen history happen from the inner circle I've watched it from the Ou
ter Circle so walking with you if I don't come with you it's not fair my nephew's a photographer so I said listen I want to give a little present to my friend Kamal Hassan and I said give me a picture one of your pictures uh as a gift to him so I want you to guess what he came up with [Laughter] what what picture do you think he gave me I don't know let's go and see it oh it's here let's see what Kamal is right oh oh he shot this he shot this and that's for you because it it tells us your approa
ch your attitude to life and the fact that you're a great Indian and a great Channel thank you and we're proud of you thank you it looks good nice huh oh lovely I'm quite interested in how you see what is going on in India of course an Indian person but also a Tamil person because the view from South India often looks very different it is I'm sure it is the same from Azam or Omega the same exactly at the capital we forget history and we are only agitated by the topical or recent happenings I tal
k a lot about gandhiji now it is not from the right from the beginning my father was a congressman but my environment made me a better critic of gandhiji when I was in my teens my father did not say he said just read history I think you're talking from today yeah yeah but today matters is my question he's a lawyer and he didn't argue with me on this case around 24 25 I discovered gandhiji on my own and I have over the years exponentially become a fan and that's me to explain myself to you actual
ly correct yourself and say sorry that's why I made Hiram right a film where I played a parallel assassin wow wanting to kill gandhiji and as he goes near nearer to the person and the truth he changes yeah but it's too late somebody else does the job that he wanted to do but he changed his mind that's the story of Hiram so did you came up with the idea yes that is my way of saying sorry to my Babu excellent that's quite a sort of sophisticated intelligent way of looking at the problem yeah becau
se I have to take the owners of all the crimes including what happened in your family we let it happen but I think inside what you're saying is hatred is actually blindness and misunderstanding yes and the worst form of criticism is an assassination I I think it's very cheap yeah and that's why it's a coward a coward does that because he has no other way to fight that cannot be the answer so what's your view then of the violence and the hatred that is being spread in the country I mean eyes view
it as a consequence of the fear that is being spread in the country no this is actually a synthetic reproduced manufactured manufactured thing I don't think so because going to Kerala more than Tamil Nadu you will find Amity prevails yeah unless you Doctor it yeah you can do it from either side yeah I think there are more sides to it than just Hindu and Muslim yeah we have to look at all that and understand that this country will flourish only with this plurality as a person who loves Tamil Nad
u loves the Tamil people whenever I go there I try to understand slightly better you know what exactly is the Tamil idea right well so as as somebody who you know is looking at it from far what is actually what does it mean to be Tamil I know that the Tamil language is very important what does it actually it means the same as one wanting to be a maharashtrian yeah or Telugu or malayali we all have a pride but I must say something about Tamil land they always feel that it's an island with parochi
al mindset and language chauvinism everybody is proud about their language but I can tell you you can go to a village any Village or town my town and just stand in the middle of the road and Shout nehru a dark man will turn around or you'll say both somebody will turn around and he doesn't look anything like yeah an energy or you'll find Gandhi many gandhis that is a mindset and at a particular point they felt there was apathy from the center that happens every time it will happen with every gov
ernment they are now unhappy with what is happening now but that's not permanent if you could approach it like you're doing it now the reason why I want to celebrate your walk is reaching out to the people and lending the year instead of standing on a Podium and lecturing that's commendable from your side but my experience when I go to Tamil Nadu right is that they express themselves in a very passionate it's different expression so if you go to Maharashtra people show affection but the way the
Tamil show affection is something completely different I get that feeling when I go there and and I always wonder what is that exactly how does it why is such a strong affection or strong expression or so so passionate it's part of the culture it's a very old culture and they've seen Wars this in battle they've they've learned a lot from Jainism yeah Buddhism it's a mixture of everything that kind of affection was enjoyed by kanama Raji yeah MGR all those leaders they are moved to tears laughter
screaming when they see the man of the I think it around the country it's like that with variations and also the the Tamil language is very important to them yeah I think even non-religious Godless people celebrate Tamil and worship Tamil so you said you've got um you're doing this fashion business and so you know a lot about what is going on in the rest of the world how do you see the United States China these countries where do you see India's place in all this nowhere less than them but we s
hould walk the talk yeah like you're doing every Indian must walk the talk I want to be or simply resigning ourselves to calling it a third world country yeah you can't do that anymore that's blasphemy and and you said in our earlier discussion that production has a lot to do with it the ability to produce something and sell it outside India not just in India we can't have a toddy mindset because you can't bottle it it has we had right then and there we are in G20 not because of what government
successive governments and whatever good they could do that has accumulated and come to this day so we are aware of that and you were talking about China I want you to say more the security of the country both internal and external yeah your opinion on it I was speaking to some ex-servicemen the other day when I was mentioning to them that security today in the 21st century it's not good enough just to say okay what do our borders look like right because Security today has become a holistic thin
g you don't necessarily get attacked from the borders you can get attacked from inside you can get attacked by cyber weapons you can get attacked by you know use of your media so in the 21st century one has to have a global view about security and that's where I think our government has completely gone and miscalculated we constantly hear about what is going on on the border and the fact of the matter is that China has Taken 2 000 kilometers of our territory okay square kilometers and frankly we
haven't said anything the Prime Minister hasn't said anything the military has clearly said that they're sitting in our territory but the Prime Minister said nobody has come this sends very clear message to China and the message is we can do whatever we want and India will not respond right and in fact in some of the conversations that they are having with our military they are actually making the statement that look your prime minister himself has said we are not in your territory so what is t
he conversation about so that's one aspect of it to them it will look like we are whistling in the dark to alef here yeah no and somewhere else imagine imagine if you're the leader right and your forces and my forces are negotiating and your forces are coming and saying you're in my territory and then I say no no but your leader has said we're not so it destroys the entire negotiation position of India so that's one aspect of it the second aspect of it is how conflict has been transformed and co
nflict has been transformed because earlier you fought on a border now you fight everywhere right so you fight by shutting down power stations you can fight by attacking the railway system you can fight by militarily attacking you can find the oldest trick is to contaminate water yeah so you can you can do that so the single most important thing in the 21st century is that a country has internal cohesion that there's Harmony in the country that people are not fighting that there's peace in the c
ountry and the country has a vision the point is not going to war right the point is being in a position where you cannot be attacked and there's a link between a weak economy a confused Nation without Vision hatred and anger and the Chinese sitting in our territory because they know that we are dealing with internal matters internal confusion in an internal lack of Harmony and so they can just go in and do whatever they want so that's that's one element of the problem the other huge element of
the problem is what has happened in Ukraine right and essentially what the Russians have done in Ukraine is they've said look we will not accept that the ukrainians have a strong relationship with the west and they basically told the ukrainians if you have a strong relationship with the West we will alter your geography and that is the exact same principle that can be applied in India what the Chinese are saying to us is be careful with what you're doing because we will alter your geography we w
ill enter ladakh we will enter arunachal and what I can see is them building a platform for that type of an approach so as an Indian person I don't want to be somebody who's warmongering but I would like I'd like our country to be aware that there are real problems on the border and those problems on the border are connected to what is going on inside our country when Indian fights Indian when the economy doesn't work when there is joblessness our external opponents can take advantage of that si
tuation yeah so that's that's broadly opportune moment we have distracted yeah so one of the things that we've you know constantly telling our government is talk about it if you want to do don't want to talk through the media at least talk to the opposition we understand these things we might be able to help you advise you you know bounce ideas off us but they just don't listen so it's that it's the approach that you know we understand everything the other aspect of it which you touched on is th
at frankly there's no one who can compete with China I do not believe that on production on as far as the economics is concerned I do not believe that the voice can take on the Chinese I believe that India can take on the Chinese we have the population we have the population we have the people what you need to take on the Chinese you need a young population you need large numbers of people you need a large educated base compared to China our population is younger exactly right and if you see the
West right and you know this might be a bit controversial but they've got too much they're flabby they're living in opulence they live on they are outsourced and they Outsource right whereas our people they know what a struggle is they understand difficulty so I think as an Indian person I see a huge opportunity for India to become like China the producer of the world right and of course the West has a space which is high-end manufacturing high technology Etc etcetera which they're very good at
they'll Dominate and we should try and challenge them on that but I do not think they can compete with China on the large-scale manufacturing Blue Collar work and I think that's that's the tragedy that we are walking on these streets you worked with us and all our children are saying we are unemployed when in fact we could have huge amounts of employment through our agricultural system through sort of manufacturing the constant neglect of Agriculture is disgruntled many tamilians they're voiced
they came here they didn't even get an audience India has skills and it has skills everywhere right I always say that the next to satyagraha is the skill set development for India right because making thousands of lawyers who won't get a job thousands of Engineers who won't find a job instead if you develop their skills they can have their degree but pursue their passion instead of me talking about other subjects generally let me talk about where I come from the film industry but the number of
training facilities 200 jobs in in a film and there is no ITI for that so so what it is right is actually a disrespect of skills you will not respect the person's skill and then say okay as the nation how do we Empower this person's skills so I gave you the example of belari right which is the genes capital of India now belari should be exporting genes to the rest of the world should be exporting different types of genes should be innovating on genes right below has been shut down because of dem
onetization and wrongly applied GST and you've literally taken a hub which could challenge the Chinese across the world in making genes and you've destroyed it it used to have four and a half lakh people working there it now has fifty thousand like something like what you're doing with khadi right I mean who would know that that's a khadi jacket nobody right yeah more than the publicity of it the reach of it exactly um Americans are loving it and then you got you got the history of khadi right b
ecause if you start to say well this is khadi from the Indian Freedom Movement this is made by yes Indian people by hand this is what fought a superpower you can make a beautiful story out of it yes yeah and it it's not done in a modern Factory it's done by people sitting in villages and handmade exactly you know I am very happy and honored to be sort of partnering with these people who've been neglected they're almost on the verge of closing down and going back thanks to GST so how many people
now are working there we have started like we have not started a full-fledged tailoring system because we don't have we only have 12 outlets and we can supply with a number of trailers and but the number of uh Weavers are many they are in Telangana karimnagar in we are sourcing it we are going even to cut and other places so that we can and bring India together so that's it very nice it was very nice of you to come I must say I I you know with all the situation and the BJP and sort of the the ab
ility they have to coerce I think it's also a brave thing you know that's why I think that's why he that's why he gave he came up with that idea of the picture no no we are not easy I'm glad to hear things of me that way but I still remember the speech by gandhiji when he said shake the lion's mane for which he was incarcerated so we we have the strength and ability but I'm I'm happy that you're meeting people practicing Jiu Jitsu walking miles and miles and miles it's it's nice and because you'
re doing exactly what gandhiji did to understand the nation before fighting for it no it's actually it's quite a fantastic experience so I remember walking from Tamil Nadu into Kerala completely different yeah and as you said it's changed but then it's the same so there's huge commonality and then there's huge difference so that's the individuality of it that's the plurality that we should not lose at all and I think a lot of what we traditionally have is also the Artisan the small and medium pe
rson you know the little clusters who have huge skill but they are sort of hidden away Hidden Treasures so to speak yeah I think it's very important that a government and position should bolt like farmers during the gaja Calamity for them after some time party affiliations don't matter the Calamity that they're facing is the pain is the most important thing it doesn't matter and politicians always go and talk about the next election and their trajectory is towards that and that they don't like t
hey don't they can't tend to take the eyes of it yeah politicians I find that and I get criticized a lot you know sometimes where they're like oh you know he's not you know he's not election-centric I mean I think of course one has to fight elections one has to be in politics one has to take them seriously but there's also another role of people there's a role of bringing people together of listening of being affectionate you know that role I think is very important role what we have done throug
h our part is that simply sort of wipe the Dust Away from the gram sabhas and brought it back into now the it's happening because we are attending now we want to take it into the towns I think people should participate in politics not necessarily electoral politics only exactly but they must have a firm say that politicians will have to understand it's not all about number crunching that they'll have to answer certain things and they people should also feel that I can vent or complain I can say
something and politicians should also feel that I I can take some punishment you know I he shouting at me okay no problem I did something wrong I go and listen to what he's doing what he's saying I think that's you know people don't like criticism I think I think crism is a good thing I think we are a very young democracy still in spite of 75 years the reminiscence of the monarchy is still in our mind hey you know that's the way that's a profound thing you've said it's true it's still the they w
ant loyalty and politicians who are in power born to somewhere behave like a king because we are not it's not too far behind in history that we had princely say 20 years yeah but I think if you look a lot of sort of our chief ministers and leaders the approaches that of a king you know you look you're like unilateral decisions I will do whatever I want not taking into account what people feel not listening I think there's quite a lot of that yeah and they are offended when you call them a civil
servant I'm not a civil servant I am in position I have power but that's what we are ultimately it should be a position of Honor rather than position to boost up the trusty idea of Mahatma Gandhi over the time I'm looking for people who are at least a semblance of that in them because it's Unique is a tall International figure yeah and that we realize when he's not there well anyway I don't I won't keep you no no I'm keeping you lovely lovely to see you and whenever you're in Delhi you know next
time maybe we go and have a meal or something yeah sure I'd love to do that and I'd like you to look into our thing I've said I will I will I'll give you your message okay I'll do that thank you thank you for the time thank you
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