Okay so let us continue with the discussion of the monodromy theorem so what we have is so here is a monodromy theorem so the situation is like this you are given ahh 2 points z0 and z1 and you are given a path gamma ahh and you are given a function ahh so this path gamma is ahh ahh defined on close interval AB and takes values in ahh it traces out this geometric path okay it is given by this function on the defined on the close interval AB in R and ahh you are given a function ahh fa which which is analytic at this point okay ahh this point by the way is gamma of a initial point and you can continue it analytically along this path to ahh a function fb ahh analytic at this point and z1 is gamma of b okay and this analytic continuation along gamma is given by ahh is given by ahh even analytic continuation ahh so you know ahh analytic continuation are given by specifying a family of 1 parameter family of power series so you have ft of z is equal to ahh sigma n equal to 0 to infinity a n of t z-gamma t to the power of n defined in the disc of convergence of this power series which is given by mod z-gamma of t is less than r of t ahh ahh so I will put a subscript r sub f ahh t okay ahh r sub ft of t is ahh the radius of convergence ahh of this power series ft okay ahh and of course we always assume ahh all the radius of convergence of positive because they are all analytic functions when t equal to a you get fa the analytic function fa which is which is analytic at this point and when t is equal to fb you get fb which is analytic function at this point so fb is an indirect analytic continuation of fa along this path okay and suppose you are given another path like this which is say eta and suppose along this path also you have an analytic continuation of fa okay ahh and so again start with fa which is the same as ahh ahh g a okay so gt is another analytic continuation ahh it is another analytic continuation on another path the other path is what what is common between the other path and the first path is that both of them have the same starting point and ending point okay so ahh z0 is also eta of a and z1 is also eta of b so you have another path eta defined on ab ahh with values in c okay and ahh ahh with the same starting point and the same ending point and I again start for this for the analytic continuation along this path I am given an analytic continuation along this path of the same function fa but it is now given by ahh another one parameter family of power series which ahh which I denote by g sub t so this is sigma n equal to 0 to infinity ahh bn of t into z-neta of t to the power of n and this is this power series as disc of convergence z-neta of t is less than radius of convergence of gt ahh ahh as a function of t. So you are given given two analytic continuation like this okay and the question is I started with fa equal to ga at the end I am getting fb if I go if I analytically continue along this path and if I analytically continue along this path I am getting gb the question is are these two equal the question is are these two equal and the monodermy theorem says that it is they are equal under certain conditions so what are the conditions the conditions are first of all that ahh this path gamma ahh should be continuously deformable ahh ahh to ahh this path eta okay. So you should continuously be able to deform the path gamma to the path eta okay which in the language of topology or the language of homotopy is got but is is said as follows we say that gamma is fixed end point homotopic to eta okay ahh that is gamma and eta have the same end points and you can continuously deform gamma to eta okay. So ahh that is a condition and the other condition is of course that along any of these intermediate paths ahh through which you are deforming there is no obstruction to analytic continuation of fa okay. So so here so let me write it down ahh if ahh ahh if gamma is homotopic ahh that is continuously deformable deformable to eta and if there is no obstruction to analytic continuation of fa along any intermediate ahh gamma is ahh then ahh fb is the same as gb this is the monotermy theorem. So so an intermediate path is something here okay it is something it is one of those paths that occur in the continuous family of paths which start at gamma and end at eta okay. So this is the monotermy theorem okay ahh so the important thing the crucial thing is of course that ahh along ahh you you are you you at the at the starting point you have an analytic continuation at the ending at the starting ahh at the starting path you have an analytic continuation at the ending path you also you have an analytic continuation and in the intermediate along each of the intermediate paths also you have analytic continuation okay. Analytic continuation should exist the function the function fa should be analytically continueable in any along any intermediate path ok. We express that by saying that there is no obstruction to analytic continuation of this function along any intermediate path ok. In other words give me any intermediate path the function f a can be analytically continued along that path you make that hypothesis and then the monodromy theorem says that the final function that you get when you end when you go to the end point you are going to get the same function ok this is the monodromy theorem. Now so you know so how does so let me let me let me expand a little bit more on the statement I have to tell you what I mean by gamma is homotopic veneta and there is no obstruction to analytic continuation of f a along any intermediate path. So this is this is a definition this involves the definition of homotopy which you might have seen in a course in algebraic topology but nevertheless it is very easy to understand. So you see the idea is like this so what is happening is that you know you have you have this on the on R2 ok you have you have the axis and you have this interval it need not be positive real line it could be some ab and you could have some cd. So ab is a close interval on the real line where where the paths all the paths are defined ok and cd is a parameter is a parameter s so you know this is the parameter t this is the parameter s ok.  So the x coordinates vary from x equal to a to x equal to b which I am calling as t. So t coordinates vary from t equal to a to t equal to b and the y coordinates which in this case is I am labeling by the variable s the s coordinates vary from c to d ok and what is happening is that you have you have a f is a continuous function from this into the complex plane ok and what is this f doing it is doing the following thing you see you know when s is equal to c and t varies from a to b alright you are you are getting the path gamma sub c which is the same as gamma ok. So you start with so the diagram is like this so you have gamma sub c which is gamma it starts at z0 ends at z1 ok and then and you know as you as as as t moves along this line the path that is traced is gamma which is gamma sub c ok and then if you take any value of s in between ok any value of s of the of the pi coordinate in between then what you get is an intermediate path gamma sub s ok which is what I wrote there and when s becomes d s equal to d and t varies from a to b you get the path gamma sub d which is beta so you get this path this is gamma sub d which is the path beta ok. So this so this function f is a continuous function it is a continuous function it is a continuous function of two variables two real variables so we write f is as f of s, t ok and we write gamma s to be the path f of s gamma s of t we call gamma s of t to be f of s, t for fixed s is also a path which starts at z0 and ends at z1 ok and the so what you what is what you are seeing is you know see try to imagine it like this if you have a square here or if you have rectangle like this if you take a continuous image of this rectangle on the complex plane you will get something like this you should you should expect to get something like this with you know if I take a continuous image of this on the complex plane I should I should get these these four should correspond to these four ends of a distorted rectangle alright and and and the image of this line segment will be this path, the image of that line segment will be that path the image of this line segment will be a path like this and the image of this line segment will be a path because the images of all these line segments are going to be continuous images of an interval. So they are going to be paths so you are going to get something like this But then you know if I put the condition that uhhh at the point t equal to a all the uhhh all these uhhh each of the uhhh each of the paths gamma s they all started the same point. So then it will it will amount to actually you know collapsing all this into a point okay and at the point t equal to b if I insist that all the points end at the same point all this will get collapse. So you know all this gets collapse to uhhh z0 and all these all these points on this arc uhhh on this path they all collapse to z1 and then you know if you collapse it this is the resulting diagram this is what is happening and this is this is an intermediate path the intermediate path is here okay. So if you collapse this diagram this is what you will get okay and that is the and we say that capital F is a fixed end point homotopy from uhhh uhhh gamma equal to gamma c to gamma neta equal to gamma d okay this is what uhhh this is what I mean by saying that gamma is homotopic that is continuously deformable to neta okay. So this is this explains this statement in a very precise way alright. So that is that is one thing and the second thing is I should tell you that there is no so the second hypothesis is that there is no obstruction to analytic continuation of a along any intermediate path. So you know I know that F a can be analytically continued to uhhh along along the path gamma which is gamma c and I know uhhh that F a can also be analytically continued along the path neta which is gamma sub d but I need also that F a can be analytically continued along any intermediate path gamma sub s okay. I need that condition that is part that is part of the hypothesis and then the monodromy theorem says that uhhh in fact for any along any of these intermediate path you continue F a the final function you are going to get will have to be the same. So it has to be F b which is what it was for the first path okay that is what the monodromy theorem says alright. Now uhhh now the point is uhhh uhhh uhhh let us uhhh uhhh let us postpone the proof of this theorem but let us try to see how uhhh why it is important and why it is so uhhh you know so I have I have told you that uhhh given uhhh so so applications one of the application is the following. See suppose you are given uhhh u,f which consists of a pair uhhh uhhh f and analytic function on the domain u suppose you have given a given a pair like this. We have defined two types of uhhh domains connected with uhhh uhhh this we can define two we have defined and we can uhhh we have done that earlier there are two types of domains that you can uhhh define with respect to u,f. One domain is called the domain of maximal analyticity it is called the domain of maximal analytic continuation of F okay. So uhhh uhhh there is the domain uhhh p,g of maximal uhhh v1,g1 of maximal analytic uhhh maximal direct analytic extension continuation or extension or extension of u,f. There is there is this is the domain of maximal analyticity I mean so in in other words what this means is that v1 is the largest open set in the complex plane uhhh which is uhhh this is the largest domain in the complex plane uhhh uhhh which contains u okay which will contain u and to which uhhh f extends to an uhhh uhhh uhhh single analytic function on all of v1 and I am calling that as g1 okay. So let me recall that is uhhh v1 in c is the largest domain v1 containing uhhh u such that uhhh v v1,f1 is a direct analytic extension extension or continuation of u,f which means which is just trying to say that you know if you take g1 and restricted it to you will get f okay. So this is the largest uhhh uhhh this is the domain of uhhh maximal analytic continuation okay this is the largest domain to which you can continue analytic function okay.  This is the the domain of analytic maximal analytic continuation is the complex plane punctured at z equal to 1 and the corresponding analytic function is 1 by 1 minus z okay and of course uhhh uhhh this analytic function cannot be continued to z equal to 1 because uhhh at z equal to 1 it has a uhhh it is a it has a singularity it has a simple pole it cannot it is not a removable singularity it cannot continue it okay uhhh if because if you continue it you if you if you can continue it means that uhhh that singularity is removable at at least locally okay that is not possible because it is a pole pole is not a removable singularity uhhh so so this is what happens and then uhhh second example is that of the zeta function zeta of z is equal to sigma uhhh n equal to 1 to infinity uhhh 1 by n power z. So, this is defined to be sigma n equal to 1 to infinity uhhh 1 uhhh 1 by uhhh e power uhhh z lawn n and this is the Riemann zeta function and you know the domain on which uhhh uhhh uhhh so here I am taking f to be uhhh f to be zeta and I am taking u to be the right half plane uhhh to the right of the vertical line uhhh uhhh uhhh real part of z is equal to 1 okay. So, this is set of all z in in in the complex plane such that real part of z is greater than 1. So, this is the zeta function we we all know that it represents an analytic function in this uhhh in this right half plane we proved that earlier and then I told you that it was it is a theorem it is a theorem it is not trivial it is a theorem that in this case uhhh v1 uhhh is actually again like the geometric case of geometric series the domain of maximal analytic continuation is just the complex plane punctured at the point 1. That means this zeta function extends to the whole complex plane except at the point 1 and what happens and of course the extended function uhhh is called g1. So, g1 g1 is equal to extension or it is called the extended zeta function called the extended Riemann zeta function uhhh which is just an extension of this function you extend it from the right half plane to the whole complex plane but the only point you cannot extend it to is the point z equal to 1 where uhhh z equal to 1 it cannot be extended because z equal to 1 will be a simple. So, uhhh z1 z z equal to 1 is a simple pole pole for g1. So, this is something that we uhhh prove later on in the course okay and this is a non-trivial example and then uhhh that is of course uhhh there are of course uhhh uhhh uhhh there is of course another important example you take f of z to be the principle logarithm of z principle branch and in this case you take the uhhh uhhh the open set to be the slit uhhh plane. So, this is just complex plane minus you remove the you remove the negative real axis including the origin okay. Then you know the principle branch of logarithm is analytic here alright and in this case what happens is that uhhh the uhhh if you take the maximum uhhh if you can if you take the domain of maximal uhhh uhhh direct analytic continuation it will simply be the same in this case uhhh v1 will be equal to u and g1 uhhh will be simply equal to f. So, in this case uhhh uhhh uhhh uhhh you you you you simply cannot directly analytically continue it across the uhhh across the slit which you have made uhhh by deleting the negative real axis okay. So, this is the this is the situation with respect to so these are 3 examples the situation with respect to uhhh uhhh the domain of maximal analytic continuation okay the domain of maximal direct analytic continuation or this is called the domain of maximal analyticity of the function okay. Then then what we have defined is we have defined another thing the given of function analytic function we also define another domain that domain is called the domain of uhhh uhhh regularity it is called the domain of indirect analytic continuation okay. So, uhhh we also have the domain uhhh uhhh uhhh v2, g2 of indirect analytic continuation analytic continuation of uhhh u, f okay we also called the domain also called the domain of regularity of regularity of u, f you also have this now what is what is this domain see this is the domain which consists of all those points to which the original function can be indirectly analytically continued along a path okay. So, uhhh so how what is the definition uhhh v2, g2 is so v2 uhhh so whenever I say domain I am also uhhh when I say domain but I include both the domain and the analytic function you must always remember that. So, uhhh uhhh that is why uhhh a pair like this is called a function element which namely it consists of a domain and analytic function defined on the domain holomorphic function defined on the domain it is called a it is the pair is called as a function element okay. So, uhhh so what is the domain of regularity v1 is the set of all z belonging to c such that there exist an indirect analytic continuation continuation of f uhhh from a path uhhh uhhh f along a path uhhh starting at the at a point of uhhh u to z okay. So, so the diagram is something like this you have uhhh so you have this is my complex plane and here is my domain u and here is my analytic function f with values in c and what am I doing uhhh I am I am I am collecting all those points z with the property that uhhh you know the whenever uhhh there is a so there is a point z0 in the domain and there is a path there is a path gamma starting at uhhh this point z0 in the domain u and such that along this path you can analytic analytically continue indirectly analytically continue f to get a new function new analytic function at the point z and you put together all these points okay you put together all such z's okay. So, you see you put you put together all these points and the result is uhhh the result will be an open connected set because the point is you know if you can if you uhhh after all you know if you can analytically continue it along this point then you know uhhh uhhh I am getting an analytic function at that point. So, it is analytic in a small disc surrounding that point. So, for every other point in that small disc I can I can extend that that analytic function itself extends along a smaller uhhh radial path okay. So, if I can extend from z0 to z uhhh analytically indirectly analytically uhhh f okay then I can do so for every point in its small disc surrounding z okay uhhh and mind you an analytic function on a domain is of course analytically extendable along any path trivially on that domain. So, the moment I say that I can extend analytically f to obtain a new analytic function here at this point it means that it is analytic in a small uhhh disc surrounding that point and it means that along uhhh for every point in that disc it is analytically continueable for a path starting from the centre of the disc to any other point. So, uhhh so the moral of the story is the set of all such z is open okay and it is by definition path connected okay. Therefore, it is a domain. So, this v1 is a domain by definition okay and what is happening is what is happening is uhhh uhhh you are getting a you are getting a new you are getting a new set but the only problem is that in this case uhhh at various z you will get various analytic functions okay.  And so the the so the fact is that uhhh uhhh uhhh so you know you you can look at these three examples uhhh uhhh with respect to uhhh example 1 uhhh you see that uhhh uhhh uhhh if you take the domain of indirect analytic continuation uhhh uhhh that is the domain of regularity of of of uhhh you will still get the same domain because you cannot continue it to the point z equal to 1 because that is a simple point that is the only point that is left out. The same thing will happen uhhh to example 2 okay. So, in both examples 1 and 2 the domain of uhhh direct analytic continuation the domain maximal domain of analyticity is the same as the domain of regularity for 1 and 2 because the only uhhh point that is left out is the point z equal to 1 but at z equal to 1 you cannot even indirectly analytically continue the function because of the fact that uhhh uhhh any indirect analytic continuation we will amount to a direct analytic continuation because every point allow every point every a whole uhhh any deleted neighbourhood about one is already the function is already analytic there okay. So, any indirect analytic continuation will amount to actually a direct analytic continuation you cannot have a direct analytical analytic continuation you cannot continue these 2 functions directly to the point z equal to 1 because z equal to 1 is a pole ok. So in example 1 and example 2 domain so you have domain of domain of maximal analytic continuation is the same as the domain of regularity that is of maximal indirect analytic continuation. So this is what happens in these 2 examples but something striking happens in this case. So in this case what happens is that the domain of maximal direct analytic continuation so of course here I should say maximal direct analytic continuation will be strictly smaller than the domain of maximal indirect analytic continuation. So in example 3 namely if you take the fundamental branch of the logarithm what will happen is that the domain of maximal direct analytic continuation will be of course the slit plane which is a complex plane minus the negative real axis along with the origin removed and this will be properly contained in what is going to be the domain of maximal indirect analytic continuation it will be just the function plane ok. So the whole negative real axis except the point 0 the whole negative real axis will also come in so it will be this is properly contained in C minus 0 punctured plane which will be the domain of maximal indirect analytic continuation. So this is properly so this properly contains this ok so in other words if you take the principle branch of the logarithm what is happening is that you know it is analytic to make it analytic I have to throw out the negative real axis and the origin ok. But if I want to analytically continue it indirectly along paths I can always analytically continue it across any point on the negative real axis so long as the path does not go through the origin ok and therefore the domain of maximal regularity ok the domain of regularity the domain of maximal indirect analytic continuation will also include the whole negative real axis ok and it therefore it will be just C minus 0 of course 0 can never be remedied because at the point 0 logarithm is not defined logarithm is not defined for the point 0 ok. So you see there is a big difference so you know all these examples so there are two definitions there is one definition of maximal direct analytic continuation there is another definition of maximal indirect analytic continuation which is regularity and the question is how are these two related and we have seen that this could be bigger than that ok. Now so what the monotromy theorem says the monotromy theorem says the following thing so you can ask the question when are these two when can you say these two are equal ok so the monotromy theorem in another version ok which is actually equivalent to this version says that suppose your domain of maximal indirect analytic continuation is simply connected ok suppose your domain of maximal indirect analytic continuation is simply connected then it is the same as the domain of maximal direct analytic continuation ok so that is a reformulation of the of the monotromy theorem. So monotromy theorem says that if you start with a function element namely a pair consisting of a domain and a polymorphic function on the domain analytic function on the domain then and if the domain of regularity of that element of that function namely the domain of maximal indirect analytic continuation of that function if that is simply connected then that has to coincide with the domain of maximal direct analytic continuation in other words both these domains will be equal and on the domain of maximal indirect analytic continuation the domain of maximal indirect analytic continuation will actually become a domain of maximal direct analytic continuation which means that the function will extend to a single valued function on the whole domain of regularity ok whereas you know you do not expect it in this case for example log cannot you cannot extend log to a single valued analytic function on the on the punctured disk you cannot get a single valued analytic function of the logarithm on the punctured disk ok that is a if you want that is a basic exercise simple exercise in the first course in complex analysis right you can never find a single valued analytic branch of the logarithm on the punctured disk ok. So the moral of the story is that in this case the domain of regularity is bigger than the domain of maximal direct analytic continuation and the problem is that this domain of regularity is a punctured plane it is not simply connected ok. So the problem is that you are not able to get a single valued function you are not able to get a single direct analytic continuation of the function to this domain of regularity the reason is that this domain of regularity is not simply connected it has a whole ok and what the monetary theorem says is that whenever you have a domain of regularity which is simply connected such a thing cannot happen ok. So let me so you know let me state that version of the theorem let me keep this as it is so and let me state that version of the theorem and try to convince you why the monotromy theorem implies that so this is a very important question that the monotromy theorem answers it says that whenever you are in a situation where you can you know that the domain of regularity is simply connected then you can for sure say that that domain of regularity is the same as the domain of direct analytic continuation ok that is what the monotromy theorem says. So here is monotromy theorem version 2 so you know I therefore let me call this as version 1 this is monotromy theorem version 1 this is monotromy theorem version 2 so what does it says it says given a function element u,f which means that is a holomorphic or analytic function f on the domain u ok if the domain of regularity of f namely the domain of maximal indirect analytic continuation of f v1 is simply connected then it is equal then v1 so v2 is what I have used for so let me use v2 so let me read this for a moment given a function element u,f namely a holomorphic or analytic function f on the domain u if the domain of regularity of f namely the domain of maximal indirect analytic continuation of f v which is which we call v2 is simply connected then v1 is equal to v2 that is the domain of maximal analytic extension maximal direct analytic extension extension is the same v2 v1 is the same as the domain of regularity. In other words what we are saying is that wherever you can analytically extend f indirectly no matter your extension may be indirect analytic extension you are only going to get a direct analytic extension so what it says is every indirect analytic extension of f has to be a direct analytic extension ok so it is also saying that is a very indirect analytic extension of f is direct that is what it says ok this is the conclusion you can get you can come to if you assume the domain of regularity simply connected ok.


Hello and welcome to NewsClick. I'm Paranjwari Guhaathakurtha. I had the honour and the privilege to spend two hours with a person who is arguably India's greatest living film director. His name is Shyam Benegal. I met him at his office in Tardew in Mumbai. And instead of half an hour, which I thought I would get from him, he gave me two hours. So we are going to publish this interview in three segments. And the first segment is all about his 23rd feature film, which is going to be released very soon. It is a film called Mujib, The Making of a Nation. It's about Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, often considered by many to be the father of Bangladesh. It is Shyam Benegal's first and so far only film made in the Bengali language. The film is not only Shyam Benegal's first and so far only film made in the Bengali language. It is unique because it is a co-production of two government bodies. The government of India's NFDC or National Film Development Corporation and Bangladesh Film Development Corporation. The film is expected to be released across the world in 2023. Different subtitled versions of the film are going to be released across the world towards the end of 2023. Hello and welcome to NewsClick. I am Paranjoy Guha Thakurtha. And I am truly honoured and privileged that I am here in the office of India's greatest living filmmaker. I am sitting in the Tardio Mumbai office of Shyam Benegal. Thank you so much Mr. Benegal for giving us your time. And the viewers of NewsClick, we are very proud that you gave us your precious time. How is your health? We are hearing that you are having to go for dialysis. You have to go for dialysis twice a week. So tell us about your health. Because your age is 88, you are 88, you are going to be 89. How is your health? Well, I would say middling. At my age I cannot complain about anything. It's good that I can at least walk and stand and come to my office and do my regular work. Now that's important. For me, the most important thing is working. And that's the only thing that keeps me in good health.  But I decided that I wasn't going to do that. There's no question of retirement. Retirement means goodbye as far as I'm concerned. And I'm not yet ready to say goodbye. That's very good. We are very honoured and we are very happy that you are optimistic. Tell us a little bit about the current status of the film that you're making, which is a co-production of the Government of India and the Government of Bangladesh. And it is titled, Mujib, the Making of a Nation. It has been several years since this being made and kindly, and I understand, correct me if I'm wrong, this is the first time that you're making a Bengali language feature film. I mean you've been making films from the time you were 12 years old, I know, using your father's camera. But from 1974 you have been making feature films. And this is going to be your 23rd film and the first film in the Bangla language. But the new nation of Pakistan will have one national language. Tell us about the current status of this film. Well, you know, I don't really know Bengali. That's a bit of a disadvantage. But I had very good people to help me. Because, you know, the most important thing was that the Bengali has spoken in Bangladesh. It's slightly different from the Bengali has spoken in West Bengal. You know, the accents are slightly different. Some of the expressions are slightly different. The Bangal language. Yeah, quite right. Both my parents are from East Bengal. But, you know, one doesn't, if you say Bangal in West Bengal, it's seen as an insult. You know, because the fact is that, but as far as the Bangladeshies are concerned, the original Bengali is theirs. You know, West Bengal has a language that's got mixed up with several other languages. But they sort of pride themselves on the purity of their language. You know, so of course for me, all this is above me because I don't know Bengali. But what was interesting to me when making the film, since I chose to make it in Bengali, the reason being that Sheikh Mujibur Rahman fought for a Bengali nation. You know, he was East Pakistan. And he among a whole lot of people, particularly the intellectual community, was, you know, there was a kind of jackboot on top of them from Pakistan, West Pakistan. And they suffered a great deal on account of that. So these are people who rose against Pakistan. And then eventually Sheikh Mujib was a person among the people who said that we have to fight for a Bengali nation. In other words, would you agree with me when I said the birth of Bangladesh in 1971? Conclusively, I won't say conclusive, but indicated clearly the culture of which language is an integral part in more senses than one matters more than religion. It does actually. It does. It matters a lot because, you see, one of the things is the Bengali person, person of Bengali background who speaks Bengali, feels that his heir to a very rich culture where the language itself provides a very rich culture. And it's also, you know, you have a great number of people who contributed to, you know, because the 19th, late 19th century, which really is, you might call the modern age as far as India is concerned also. You know, 1857 being a kind of break between the old feudal order and the changing order from then on. And the people who created the Bengali nation saw themselves as heirs to this modernity because if you find that the first state, Bengal is the first place where you had education in English as well. You know, in a way that opened their windows to the West in a way that the rest of India did not quite have that. So they were part of a much larger culture and the process of civilization. You know, the evolution of that civilization, it was much more advanced, let's say, in terms of the world than a large part of India. And that was very important because, you see, in India, the rest of India, it really was only the South. Actually, because, you know, you had the Calcutta University was the first one among the universities. Then you have the Madras University and after that everybody else came later. So that in terms of education, you know, and also education that would be kind of the link to the rest of the world was much, much more advanced than any other part of India. Mr. Shyam, this film is being made for a long time. In this, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting of the Indian Government is the Minister of Information and Broadcasting. Bangladesh is the government, your National Film Development Corporation is also the NFDC. So where did it come from? Were you shooting in Dhaka and in different places? So what is the current status of the production of the film? Because I was reading and I was told that by this time, the film was supposed to be ready and completed. So you tell me, how far is this film? Well, you see, it was not, it was a force of circumstances. You see, the pact between Dharin Modi and Sheikh Hasina was signed in 2019. So you, and then the fact... Four years ago, four years back. But the fact was that it took time. You know, who was going to share how much and so on and so forth. Because, you see, the government of India, that is, Dharin Modi, said that we would like to make a film about Sheikh Wajib Arama. And then Sheikh Hasina said, see, I mean, it's a wonderful idea. It's marvelous that we should do this. But I personally feel being the daughter of Sheikh Wajib, you know, we should participate. You know, we should participate in the making of this film. So let it not just be a film that is being made by India for Bangladesh. Let it be a joint venture between Bangladesh and India, you know, together. So the contract that was signed was between the Bangladesh Film Development Cooperation and the National Film Development Cooperation of ours. You know, so between the two of them, they put this project together. And another thing was that Sheikh Hasina also said that, look, I think we should put a little more money. Then India. So you are saying Bangladesh is putting more money into the project than India? Because, you see, she said, look, I mean, it's a film about the father of our nation. You know, now like what happened when we made a film on Gandhi in India. You know, because the Admiral wanted to make a film. But Mrs. Gandhi at that time said, sorry, you make the film, but we pay the pay for it. I'm going to come to that. I'm going to come to the other films you made on Gandhi on Moundas Karamchand Gandhi on Netaji Subash Chandra Bose. But before that, what is the current status of Mujib, the making of animation? What is the present status? The film is more or less ready. It is ready, but it requires a few things like, say for instance, the film we shot was in Bengali. But India wanted, you know, in this BFDC and FDC thing, India wanted the film to be, that we would be able to show the film all over the country, in our country. In which case, by having a film in Bangla, it's reach becomes limited. So they said you should have a Hindi version as well. You know, and then in any case, Sheikh Hasina had said that you should have a version that can be shown abroad. So an international version? An international film, mainly because, you see, the Bangladeshis are all over the world now, and particularly in the western world. And in the western world also, in countries like Germany, France, you know, Britain, Canada, U.S. So you have large numbers of Bangladeshis, and they, you see, unlike a lot of other people from South Asia and East Asia, they never lose their links with their home. You know, that umbilical cord is remains, and which is why she felt that it was important. Alright. Sheikh Hasina felt it was very important that the film should be shown to people, Bangladeshi people in the rest of the world. So we felt that yes, that's a good idea actually.  But I stood firm, I said no dubbing. So it's being subtitled. Yeah, the reason for that being that, see, Sheikh Mujib fought for Bengali and fought for a Bengali nation. You know, you cannot tamper with that by dubbing it in other languages. So we decided on subtitling the film. So currently it is being subtitled to Hindi and English. And English, but it will probably, depending on, you know, where people, where you have a large congregation of Bangladeshis. Now you see, at the moment it is capable of being shown in Canada because you have a very large Bangladeshi community there starting all the way from the east to the west. So today we are in Mumbai. This is the first of July 2023. When are you hopeful that this film would be shown to the public at large? Well, you know, originally because of these, because it was between two countries, there were many, you know, bureaucratic hurdles to be cleared. So it took a long time. In fact, the film was supposed to be ready and would have done some part of its run by now. So when are you hopeful it will be really useful? We are hoping that we are hoping that, you see, there needs to be some occasion, you know, to open the film. March next year? Yeah. So one of the things was to open the film in Toronto.  Particularly in the countries where you have a large Bangladesh presence. So we did, I mean, we did do a few things, but even when it was not fully complete. For instance, we had a curtain raiser, you know, in the Toronto film festival. Although it was just a curtain raiser, but it had excellent response. So now we will, you know, we can do it with caution. There's no date that's been fixed. What's this? No date has been fixed. No, no, no, no date we wanted to keep it on the, you know, I mean, the, I mean, Mujib, as you know, was assassinated. One day before our Independence Day, you know, on 14th of August. So we thought that, you know, but then it was, it was a slashing with India's Independence Day. You know, so we didn't want to do that. And we wanted it absolutely clear of all of that, you know, so that politically speaking, we wouldn't do something that would be, that would affect them or affect us in any way, you know. So it was, so obviously now it will be released anywhere between September and December. But the most important thing was that there were other things that came in the way because, you know, you had Ramzan coming, which meant that the month of Ramzan is very little is done in Bangladesh. You know, because they keep those very, they keep it very, they're pretty orthodox like that. You know, you have very, very few people, I mean, certainly no Muslim will eat anything during the day. You know, so you have, it's not some time when you can release the film. All right. We are not yet sure, but it's likely to happen within this calendar year. Yeah, all right. All right. Tell me a little bit about the film, the actors and what were the challenges you faced in the making of the film? Well, the most important thing was the question was of language. Since the film was going to be shot in Bengali. And since I couldn't, I mean, one of the things that was not acceptable, easily acceptable, let me put it that way, was to take Bengali actors from our country to make the film. So I had to cast everybody from their side, from Bangladesh. Although the film was shot partly in Bangladesh and partly in Bombay, but we had to bring the whole lot of actors from there.  So I had to have actors from there. Fortunately for me, the actors from Bangladesh are outstanding. Who plays Mujibu?  So most of the actors who, if they have to make a reason of living, have to do a lot of theatre. So he's a theatre actor? Same thing with the, like in Calcutta actors also do the same because they can't make a living doing films. I got you. You know, so Arifin is a brilliant actor, but he also acts a lot on stage and particularly all over, you know, between Dhaka and Chittagong everywhere. So he's a, he, along with the other actors, Bangladesh actors, they are acting in the theatre much of the time. All right, I got you. And do you have an actor playing Sheik Haseena's role? Yeah, Sheik Haseena, but Sheik Haseena is also playing young Sheik Haseena. And she's also one of that group of actors along with Arifin. You know, the young Sheik Haseena is in the film, you know, because he was assassinated in 1975, I think. Do you also in the film talk about what happened after the assassination? No, after, you see, the film actually naturally will end when 14 people, 14 members of Sheik Mujib film including himself and his wife and a whole lot of relations were assassinated. Only the two daughters were not, that was only because they happened to be abroad at the time. You know, Helen and Sheik Haseena, these are the two who, you know, survived. The massacre. Because the whole plan was to massacre the entire family. Okay, I wanted to ask you a different question. You have made a film on Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose. That was a film that you made in 2005. In 1996, you made a film on the Mahatma, the making of the Mahatma on Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. You have made a television serial on Jawaharlal Nehru's discovery of India, Bharat Ek Hoj, 1988. And also on Jawaharlal Nehru himself. That's correct. It was a three-part film because, you know, it became a three-part film because it was meant for television. That's correct. And you have made not only biographies of people who were politically important and historically important, you've also made a film and you've also, you know, written a book on Satyajit Rai with whom you have had a long association and you interviewed him over several years and you put it together. In what way was the making of this film, Mujib, the making of a nation, different from your experience in making films about Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, about Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru? Well, you know, there's only one point to be made here, which is that you have to, you cannot defy the person. Then you lose a lot of the person's characteristics, you know, character also. Because human beings are not gods. You know, they have their flaws but their flaws are outweighed by so many other things that they do which helps people around them, you know, and also generations that come after them. Now the fact is that this is very important because for me, when I'm making a film about some great historical personality then I have to remember that he is not simply to be defied. You want to portray a person not, as you say, diified that person but as a human being with limitation. That's the main thing, a human being but there's always a plus factor, you know, that makes him, that makes him rise because there is a certain kind of integrity, there's certain kind of moral integrity there, you know, which is very important. Like when you look at Gandhi, there are flaws in everybody but the fact is none of these people intentionally have done harm to anyone, you know. They're not like a whole lot of other people who are also leaders of their country.  You just heard Shyam Benegal discussing his yet to be released film called Mujib, The Making of a Nation. In the second part of this interview, Shyam Benegal talks about his trilogy of films on Muslim women. We discuss politics, we discuss the Muslim question in Narendra Modi's India. Keep watching, news click, subscribe to the channel and wait for the second part of this interview with India's greatest living filmmaker, Shyam Benegal.


It's my pleasure to introduce the Marian Roth Bar Memorial Lecture sponsored by Stephen and Cassandra Torello. When Jiru and Joya is a senior lecturer at the University of Exeter Law School, a fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy and a research associate of the Center for Business Research at Cambridge University. She has previously taught law at the University of Oxford, LSE, and Queens University in Kingston, Ontario. She has published several articles supporting capitalism, free markets, and freedom of contract in the context of employment relations. Her critique of equality legislation is published in the Journal of Libertarian Studies. Her recent books include Economic, Freedom, and Social Justice, a classical ideal of equality in context of racial diversity. She is also the author with Dr. David Gordon of Redressing Historical Injustice, Self-Ownership, Property Rights, and Economic Equality. She will address us today on Defending Private Property, Principles of Justice in Rothbard's Ethics of Liberty. Please welcome. Dr. Joya. Thank you very much to the Mises Institute for inviting me to speak about property rights. Thank you to Dr. Joselano and thank you to David Gordon as well for all the work that we've done together on Marie Rothbard's Ethics of Liberty that I'm going to speak about today. I have come a long way from the southwest corner of England to honour Marie Rothbard. It's such a great privilege and a great pleasure for me to be here today to give this lecture. So I'm going to talk about how we can defend private property in the context of many of the political debates that we hear going on around us. And I'm going to defend the ideas of self-ownership and property rights in the context of what is often referred to as the culture wars. So my aim is to evaluate the extent to which the common law concepts of property are just. And I evaluate this by asking to what extent does the common law of property uphold principles of justice set out by Rothbard in the Ethics of Liberty. So before I begin, I just want to say a little bit about the questions that I want to address because I'm not looking at justice in a sort of general and broad way. I'm not trying to develop a theory of justice. I have specific questions that I'm concerned with. So I just thought it would be helpful if I set out what those questions are. And first is the threat to private property that comes from ideas that are themselves labelled as justice. So when people say it's social justice, you need to dismantle property rights for social justice. You need to dismantle property rights for land justice. Sometimes they say, or people who say this is stolen land. So quite clearly if it's stolen, we want it back. So the attack on property rights is itself couched in the language of justice. And so we have to ask in that context, is that really just? It's not just about the label. Anybody can call anything justice, but we need some kind of benchmark or standard or guidepost to tell us whether what people call justice really is just. So that's one of the questions that I want to look at. The precise form of the claim that's mounted in relation to property rights varies. But the gist of it is that the British Empire was founded on theft. So anything that they can trace to the legacies of empire, they will call the legacy of stolen property, the legacy of theft. And the idea is that any resources that flow from that are resources that have been acquired from theft and critically that some form of wealth redistribution is now required to redress that theft that historically occurred. So that's the gist of the claim. And the reason why I've said from the British Empire is because I also want to emphasize the double standards that we see when people talk about redressing historical injustice. They're not looking at what the Romans did to England. They're looking at specific claims of injustice that are derived from the legacy of empire. So in that context, I want to ask what is meant by land justice? How can we ascertain whether entire cities are built on stolen land as we have seen some cities now? City authorities declaring that the city is built on stolen land, we must have some test to ascertain whether that is the case. And if we can show that a historical injustice occurred, if that is clearly established, what is the appropriate remedy? It's not just a question of saying there was a theft. We have to ask what is the appropriate remedy. And we want to be sure that the remedy is just. So that's really what I'm looking at in my lecture today. Now, the position in the law is very clear. And here I have a quote from the Chicago Law Journal. Sorry, the Columbia Law Journal from 1922 by Earl C. Arnold, where he says, it is an elementary proposition of law, of all civilized communities that no person can be deprived of his property except by his own voluntary act, this much we know, or by operation of law. And that's where it starts to get tricky when we say by operation of law. Because law can be, and these days, tends to be anything that people say, every day in the news there's somebody saying, we need a new law to do this and we need a new law to do the other. So when we say you can be deprived of your property by operation of law, that can't be the end of the question. We must still ask, is the law just? And that's what I want to ask today and to just see what we can learn about that from the ethics of liberty. I'm looking here for a normative guidepost from the ethics of liberty and want to make the point that justice is not simply what anybody desires or what anybody wishes, or the world as anybody wishes it would be. Justice, as I define it, is to give each man his own. To give each man his own. I say as I define it, because even though this comes from Justinian's principles, I know that classical scholars debate exactly what the old Roman Latin words mean, whether it means to give each man his own or whether it means to give each man his due, because of course, if you say to give each man his due, then we can debate what is his due. I define it as to give each man his own, meaning property, things that belong to a person. And here again, John Locke would agree with that. Every man has a property in his own person and things that are derived from his own labor. And Rothbard in the ethics of liberty sets this out in three elements, that each man has ownership of his own self, of unused resources that he has occupied and transformed. So we're going to be talking a lot today about what that means to occupy and transform, and also has ownership of titles derived by voluntary exchange or voluntary gift. And notice, and this is the distinction I wanted to draw. He doesn't go on to say, all by operation of law. It is simply what you own, unused resources that you have transformed, or titles derived by voluntary exchange or gift. And this just highlights how important it is to ensure that law is just, because that's where all the problems begin. So that's an outline of what I want to cover today. I'm going to present libertarian theory as a normative guidepost, just meaning that I'm not looking for rules of law that will decide particular cases. I am looking for the normative values that should underpin the law. And for the rules here, I'm looking at the English common law tradition. What do I mean by that? I mean the tradition of law that has been developed by the courts as distinct from legislation or statutes. And then I'm looking at this in the context of the culture wars. I think all of us who read newspapers know what's been going on, but I have a few examples to give, because the point I really want to highlight about the culture wars is that the threat to private property doesn't just come from the outrageous things that people say.  You know, they say, I want my justice. That's not where the real threat comes from. The real threat comes from these demands being translated into legal obligations. Because once it's law, you can't say, well, that's ridiculous. It's outrageous because it's the law. So for strategic reasons, that becomes something that you probably would have to pay more attention to no matter how ridiculous you think it may be. So the examples that I'm drawing upon are examples that have been translated into legally binding obligations. I have some examples from unjust acquisition, because the idea is that these are titles derived from an originally unjust acquisition. And then I want to finish with a point about state violation of property rights to emphasize that the threat that we need to be concerned about is the threat that comes from ideas backed by the state, that is to say, from legislation and rules that have the force of law. So I begin by defining why property rights are important. Property rights are human rights. This point has been made by philosophers of many different stripes, not just libertarians. Property can only accrue to humans. So their rights are rights that belong to human beings. And a person's right to his own body, his personal liberty, is a property right in his own person, as well as a human right. So this just shows the fundamental importance of property rights, which I'm highlighting, because a lot of the time in these debates, we hear people saying, oh, well, they've demanded it so much. So just give it to them. We don't say that when human rights are at stake. We know that we should defend them. Not only are there no human rights, which are not also property rights. So all human rights are property rights. That's where they're derived from. They're derived from the idea of self-ownership. But human rights lose their absoluteness and clarity. This is exactly what we see happening in the law. They become fuzzy and vulnerable. They become uncoupled from their moorings. And property starts to mean anything. It carries the label, property, but there's no content behind it. It could mean anything. And that's what happens when property rights are not used as the standard, or when people don't understand what is meant in any case by property rights. So human rights, when not put in terms of property rights, turn out to be vague and contradictory. It's left to the courts to reconcile rights that are in fact irreconcilable, because they are contradictory, inherently contradictory. And this causes liberals to weaken those rights on behalf of public policy or the public good. That is in the end what courts use as a balancing tool to measure conflicting rights, which have become completely fuzzy and undefined. And that's the problem that I want to talk about today, and to show how the idea of property helps to give meaning and content to the idea of property rights. So I take the principles of libertarian law that I'm looking at today as a normative standard, a guidepost for shaping and reshaping the positive law. Because positive law, unfortunately, doesn't follow any particular ideal standard. It tends to be very politically driven, tends to be very instrumental, very expedient, and often judges are not thinking about what ideal they're upholding, they're just trying to resolve the case between the two parties. So when we look at the positive law that we have, we need a normative guidepost that enables us to say whether the law is just or not, and that's the purpose for which I am using the ethics of liberty. So when I say the English common law, I just want to clarify what is meant by that. And here I'm talking about law that has been developed by the courts in the context of deciding ordinary cases. I know that it's been very much shaped by legislation in recent years, and I'm aware of that, but I'm trying to find the root of the principle which in the English common law comes from the Roman law. I agree with Bruno Leone on this point that it is to the common law courts that we look for the organic way in which legal principles develop. We don't expect law never to evolve and to just remain as it was when it was first created. In fact, the common law has evolved so much that a strict Roman lawyer might say it's barely, the principles of Roman law are barely recognizable in the common law. But the point there is that it evolves through the courts and not by edict from a statute. I also distinguish between civil law and criminal law. I thought this was an important clarification to make because I know in the libertarian framework we don't have these artificial distinctions between the civil and the criminal or between the different causes of action, whether a claim arises in property, in contract or in tort which is very important of course in looking at the way law actually functions in the courts. So I'm not dealing here with the common law that concerns crime. I realize theft is a crime, but I'm dealing with claims in private law, in civil law where people are just asking for the return of their property. They're asking for some restitution. They're not asking for a criminal to be locked up. In the ethics of liberty Rothbard says, a criminal is anyone who initiates violence against another man and his property, this I think we know. And he adds, anyone who uses the coercive political means for the acquisition of goods and services, that in Rothbard's view is also a criminal.  That is a criminal as well because they're using political means to acquire goods and services. So I realize that in the libertarian framework, a criminal has the sense of anybody who uses aggression to take your property and that's the sense in which I understand the idea of the criminal, rather than in the common law sense where you'd be looking at the criminal code. And the third point I wanted to make is about the adversarial process of the common law, which is a tradition that decides a case between two opposing parties that are before the court. This is really important to mention because not all legal systems work this way. I know, for example, continental European jurisdictions have an inquisitorial function where if there's a dispute concerning property, there's a possibility of finding out who the owner of the property is so that the judge can say, well, we need to know who owns this property. In the common law, it's a case you could have, for example, a case between two squatters. Neither of them is the owner of the property. Neither of them claims to be the owner of the property but the squatter number one is trying to evict squatter number two. And the judge can't just say to them, the two of you are both squatters, so be gone, okay? The judge will have to decide which of these two squatters has the better title. So this is something that we have to be aware of. The common law does not follow the Roman concept of dominium of ownership. It's rooted in possession. So we're going to be asking what does possession mean? We're not going to be asking who is the owner and remedies in the common law are also really important and artificially linked to causes of action. So if you bring your claim in property or if you bring your claim in contract, there are different remedies that you can get. If you bring your claim in contract, you are 99% of the time going to get your remedy in money damages.  So of course, in the libertarian framework, we don't have to worry about that. I think Rothbard talks about this in the ethics of liberty. You can give the appropriate remedy, but in the common law, you do have to worry about that because if you bring a contractual claim and you win, you can't say to the judge, I want the thing because you should take your remedy in money. So these are things that we need to think about when we are evaluating how the common law stacks up against what is just. We then also have to look at principles of equity. I have quoted here from the Encyclopedia, Fritanica, because I wish to emphasize that equity in law has a meaning. I realized, I realized the word equity has been co-opted by the types of people who like to use words that will be guile and that will make people think this is a very good thing. And so they take a word and they stick it as a label on some nefarious scheme that they've cooked up. And that's what they've done with the word equity, which now you hear being used to mean equal outcomes for everyone, which is of course not what the word equity means in law. In Anglo-American law, it simply means the custom of courts outside the common law or coded law. It's a jurisdiction you could say in conscience or a jurisdiction in fairness. The common law has no concept of good faith. Okay, if you take something that belongs to somebody else, you have to give it back. You can't say, well, I did it in good faith and I was, you know, this is irrelevant at common law, but it is relevant in equity. It could be relevant, it may be relevant in equity. So that's what I'm referring to here. This idea of good faith and how it shapes the cases. It was a very established system of law by the 14th century, which means it also has developed a body of case law. It is not simply a matter of the judge deciding what do I think justice requires. The judge must follow precedent in exactly the same way as the common law. But it's really important to bear those two legal jurisdictions in mind because often Rothbard's view of what the law should be follows what the common law says, that is the principles of Roman law, but not what principles of equity say because equity introduces principles of good faith. So we're going to see how that makes a difference to some of the outcomes to these cases. So the common law is rooted in the idea of relativity, of title. This is the first thing that we really have to think about because the idea of ownership in the ethics of liberty is a universal and absolute idea. Your property rights give you an absolute entitlement to the thing, whereas in the common law, it's a relative idea. It's a cherished tenet of the common law. In fact, this example is taken from American law, but it's a cherished tenet of the common law that a thief acquires no title to stolen property. It's as simple as that. There is no ifs or buts. A thief acquires no title to stolen property nor may a thief pass title not even to a good faith purchaser. And this is the point I was making about equity bringing in good faith obligations because at common law it doesn't matter if the purchaser bought stolen items in good faith. But behind that simple doctrine lies a possibility that thieves can acquire good title in the common law. And already here you can see the law starting to deviate from the position set out in the ethics of liberty because at common law, yes, a thief can acquire good title and a good faith purchaser of stolen property can also acquire new and paramount title to the goods. In fact, here, this is a quote from D.A. Thomas on an article on adverse possession. So he's talking about adverse possession where you acquire title over time and the idea of adverse possession is mainly statutory, but even in equity, there's an idea that as time passes, you can lose your rights if you sleep on them.  So already you can see that the idea of title being relative starts to introduce some modification to the idea of absolute ownership or absolute rights to property that we see in the ethics of liberty. That's going to be a concern that I would like us to bear in mind as we consider the attacks on private property. Social justice has been used as a way of making claims, entitlements to things that people say the reason why they should be given the transfer, wealth transfer that they're asking for is because social justice demands it. Land justice demands it. We have many examples from Southern Africa, from Zimbabwe in South Africa where people say there aren't meant to be white people here. Therefore, I want their farms. And the reason I want the farm is because of land justice. They will simply make the claim like that and they will call it justice. And the idea of using the word justice in that way is that people should collapse when they hear the word justice. And it's a really difficult problem for somebody like myself who really thinks justice is important because you're trying to say no to people who are being ludicrous but at the same time you don't want to say justice be gone. Justice is important, justice matters. We want to uphold justice but we want to say that isn't justice. Well, what is? When you have people saying you stole my thing and now I'm just going to steal it back which is actually what's been happening to white farmers in South Africa. There have been mobs gathering at the gate saying to these farmers chanting war songs and saying to these farmers, you stole my farm I'm here to steal it back. Okay, so when you have conflicting claims of theft we must have a way to ascertain who's the thief as between the two and who's the aggressor. In the ethics of Liberty Rothbard gives the example of somebody, I don't know, he describes him as some kind of mugger. He tries to grab a watch of somebody on the street and he says, well, we don't know if that's somebody mugging an innocent passerby trying to steal his watch or whether that's the owner of the watch trying to get his watch back from the thief who's walking along. So this is exactly the case that we have here. Now Hayek had some choice words to say about social justice. He says the people who habitually employ the phrase social justice simply do not know themselves what they mean by it and just use it as an assertion that a claim is justified without giving a reason for it. They don't know what they mean. They just mean I want this thing. They don't know what they mean by justice. That does not mean that they are not influential and that does not mean that their claims will not be translated into law. So we must have an answer. We cannot just dismiss them, I think, in the almost cavalier way that Hayek did. He said, well, they don't know what they're talking about. So there's nothing, the phrase is empty, he said. Well, it may be empty, but it is powerful, increasingly so as we can see over time. We need an answer to them. I have an example here, some examples of the threat and the nature of it. From Glasgow, great city in Scotland, where the city authorities, so I'm not talking about random people in, I don't know, in the newspaper, politicians who will say anything, these are city authorities who have power to decide what rules people must follow. Announcing, first they started with an apology for Atlantic slavery, so they made their apology. They said, Glasgow is sorry, we're all sorry. And then they followed that by saying, follow the Atlantic slavery money trail and its tentacles reach into every corner of Glasgow. So the poor people of Glasgow now are on the hook for this. That's a serious matter. The city authorities, their own authorities have just put them on the hook and they said every corner of Glasgow has got that money and should be paying it back to whomever they took it from. An example from Vancouver, those of you who've been following Canadian news will know. The city authorities announced that rights and title holders of Vancouver are the native tribes within the meaning of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which they are now translating into Canadian law. Okay, so this is the point I was making about binding law and the city says they are the original stewards of the lands known as the city of Vancouver and they have throughout history and to this day lived in relationship with their lands and waters. These are their lands. The city stands on other people's lands and now we have to pay, they say. It is a declaration of basically being a squatter on somebody else's property and I was just looking just yesterday actually I got an invitation to an event where we were going to be told about this relationship of native peoples with their lands which was described as sacred. Not only does this property belong to other people but it is a sacred relationship that they have with the property. So you can see here the nature of the claim becomes ever-graver and this is what Bruce Pardee says about this in his article entitled 13 Things That Can't Be Said. He has 13 things to say that can't be, can't but should be said about Aboriginal law and policy in Canada and one of the points he makes there is that the United Nations law, well it's international law being translated into domestic law provides that indigenous people amongst other things own the land, they own resources that is resources to be extracted from the land. They have the right to self-government and the right to their own political, legal, economic, social and cultural institutions and educational systems and that the federal government shall pay for all of it. Yes, the federal government shall pay for all of it. In fact, I think in the case of Vancouver they said we're happy to pay, we're really happy to pay all this. So we must ask what is the root of this claim? What is the nature? What is its root in the idea of property? And again here the Encyclopedia Britannica tells us about what happened when Vancouver in cities like that first arose, that the Europeans in continents like North America and Africa, when they arrived there were people there of course who were primarily hunters and gatherers, hunters and gatherers. This is going to be interesting for us when we ask what we mean by possession. And they were nomadic people, meaning they would not be in the same place all the time, which is also an interesting point to bear in mind when we ask about settlement. And the Encyclopedia Britannica says Europeans perceived, meaning it was their perception rather than the truth, they perceived that they had found a pristine country. That was their perception when they looked around. And so we have to ask what does that mean for the idea of possession as the root of title? If you perceive that you have found a pristine country, what signs would you be looking for? So in the Ethics of Liberty Rothbard says, well it's pretty obvious if land is inhabited. Well really? Okay, so we're going to ask what signs you would be looking for. Or rather what signs the law expects you to look for? If you, as far as you can see, the land looks uninhabited and people later, hundreds of years later, say well actually no, that's our land because our ancestors lived there. So this forces us back to the root of title that we thought we had moved on from. We're back to John Locke and the idea of first possession. In his article, Property in Thin Air, Kevin Gray searches for what he calls the propertiness of property. What is it he asks that makes property property? What gives property its essence? And he basically argues, which is why it's called property in thin air, that there's nothing really, he says, there's no content to property because it's all about relative titles. So there's nothing to it. It's just about who has a claim or the best claim to possession. And he says, a pervasive influence on all philosophical thinking on property is still the brooding omnipresence of John Locke. People haven't been able to get away from John Locke. And he says, well, we really ought to have outgrown John Locke by now because there's no more virgin land anywhere for anybody to go and first possess. In fact, he writes about the idea, the preposterous idea of anybody picking up an acorn, which is Locke's example, and saying, you know, I'm the first person to pick this acorn. This, he says, doesn't have any meaning now that titles are derived. Nobody is first acquiring a title. But we can't escape it. This question when we ask about ideas of justice because that's what people are claiming that their ancestors were the first people to possess this land. So we have to go back to John Locke and back to the idea of possession. And we have to ask what needs to be established so these are the questions that we have to ask. First, was the property stolen? And second, must it be returned to the claimant? If so, now the cases that I'm talking about in the culture wars are often depicted as analogous to returning stolen property to its owner. And if you accept that the property is stolen, that's if you answer the first question in the affirmative, it follows that you should return it. Why wouldn't you return a thing that you stole? This is the question that I ask my Canadian friends who like making land declarations. My house sits on stolen land. Well, give it back. Rothbard says no one has the right to aggress against the legitimate or just property of another. The criminal has no natural right whatever to property that he has stolen. No natural right whatever to the retention of property that he has stolen. The aggressor has no right to claim any property that he has acquired by aggression, right? So if you stole something, if you say, yes, I stole it, then it follows that you should give it back. So that's the first question that we want to ask, was it stolen? Because if we answer that in the affirmative, we know what the answer is. I think it's very clear Walter Block has an example there of the rule that applies. So the person, the claimant in this case is the true owner of the property or the heir to the true owner of the property, that's A. This is somebody saying this is my land that was stolen or saying this land was stolen from my predecessor in title. The rule that applies is simple. If the claimant, if A is the rightful owner and B steals property from A and sells it to C and then disappears, there is only one correct answer to the question of who should keep it according to libertarianism, and that is A. There is only one correct answer to that. We don't do what equity does and say, well, wait a minute, let's look at the good faith of all the parties. No, there's only one correct answer, C is out of luck. He has to return the stolen thing and he has no remedy unless somehow he can locate the thief, the person who did the wrong thing and he can try to get compensation out of that person or whatever other remedy he seeks. But once we accept that a title is stolen, the answer becomes clear. I have clarified that where the claimant is the person making the demand because we also have to question when hundreds of years have passed, if the person making the demand is in fact the true owner of the property, even if we say that the property was stolen. So that's just something to bear in mind. Now, how would we know if the property was stolen? First, we have a number of assumptions that we make. First, that the claimant is the rightful owner, that the case can be proved and that the property is identifiable. Those are the assumptions that we make in a clear case where we're saying, oh, give it back because we know there has never been any acceptance in the law that you can keep something, you stole or transfer it to somebody else. So, and this is not, it's not only libertarians who take this view. I think anybody who knows anything about property rights would take that view. I have an example from Posner and Vermeula who wrote an article about reparations. Reparations for slavery, legacies of harm derived from slavery. So they are not concerned with justice. You know, these are Chicago economists. They're not concerned with justice. What they're concerned with is this, how's this going to work anyway? Who's going to be paying? How are you going to decide how much to pay? Where's the money going to come from? What about people who are mixed race? What about all these types of questions that they're asking? Can California afford $569 billion that they've proposed to pay in reparations? So these kinds of questions they're asking. But even they do not contest the idea that if you prove something is stolen, you should give it back. They say in their example, if a communist government seizes property as communist governments sometimes do, and hands it to cronies of the regime, that is unjust enrichment and the property must be returned. So unjust enrichment is a jurisdiction inequity where you're saying somebody got the benefit, wrongfully got the benefit of something that really belonged to me and they should make restitution for that. So many of these claims are framed as restitution claims. And if all these factors are clear, then nobody would contest that some sort of remedy has to be found. But I want to ask whether all these facts are really clear. If the claimant is not the original owner, because these are events that happened hundreds of years ago, who was? Because often they don't tell you. You know, like in the South African example, when people are marching on other people's gates and saying you stole our land, well, it was 400 years ago and you were not there, but they don't tell you whose property it was. We're just supposed to assume, I don't know because they're the same race that that's their property. So that's the first question. We want to know who the owner was. No, specifically, we want to know who the owner was. Not just what is said about the types of people who we want to know in whom did this land vest. What evidence is required to prove the original acquisition and the subsequent theft? So it's not just about making assassins but about proving the case. We can only find the answer through investigating the concrete data of the particular case that is through historical inquiry. That is a quote from the Ethics of Liberty where Rothbard says, we need a historical inquiry. We need the concrete data of the particular case. We need all these details to substantiate the case. Can you say, well, my people lived on this continent, does that suffice? That's Rothbard's example of Robinson Crusoe who lands on an island and he's so pleased with himself. He says, I own this entire island. This island is mine. Is it his? No. The only part of his is the part that he settles and transforms into use. So nobody can claim ownership of an entire continent. Only what is settled is known. And we see the same principle in the common law. The case I have there is Payne Graham. The point could be taken from any case. It's a very well-established principle. I only cited Payne Graham because it's a recent House of Lords decision where a squatter acquired farmland worth 20 million pounds didn't pay a single penny for it just because he used it for over 12 years, which was the time frame required for adverse possession. So the test set out is that you need to prove two things to show that you have acquired title to the land. The facts of having physical custody and control of the land, not just I was nearby or I used to walk across that field every day to take some air. No, you must have a sufficient degree of physical custody and control, and you must have intention to possess. That means intention to exercise such custody and control on your own behalf and for your own benefit. So we are looking for two things, the facts of control and the intention, the intention to control, not just the intention to go to a park and have a picnic. That is not intention to control. How do we know whether we have the sufficient facts and intention? Well, that has to depend on the land in question, the nature of the land. So in the example of Pai and Graham, it was farmland. So they used it for grazing their cattle, growing hay, the things you'd expect a farmer to be doing because it's farmland. It also depends on the manner in which the land is normally used. So you're using the land for what you would expect it to be used for. And you're dealing with it as an owner would. So these days, that includes things like putting up a fence, putting up a lock, exercising some sort of control that people would expect, behavior that people would expect of an owner. So not just that you are present, but that you are behaving as the owner of the place would and that you are doing so exclusively. You're not behaving the same way as everyone else in the place behaves because property is an exclusive right. It's about the right to exclude. So really, as an owner, you're saying, this is mine and I have a right to exclude people. If these things are absent, then that is not possession at common law. Neither is it possession in Rothbard's example because that's just a declaration backed up by nothing. If you can establish possession, you are entitled to exercise all the rights of an owner, including the right to exclude. Whether you are there rightfully or wrongfully, says the common law. We don't ask whether the squatter is there rightfully or wrongfully. In fact, many squatters break into the property. So here you can see that the common law departs from the point that Rothbard made because the common law doesn't care how you came there. As long as nobody has a better right to possession. So it's not just about the conduct of the person in possession, but it's whether there's anybody present who has a better right to possession. So I could say, any pen that I find here, I could say, this isn't my thing. I just found it here. But that doesn't mean that anybody can snatch it off me, who also isn't the owner and doesn't have a better right than I do. The fact that it's not mine is irrelevant, says the common law. So you look for the degree of occupation or physical control coupled with the animus posidendi. That's the intention to possess. And dispossession is anybody taking possession in the same way with the facts of possession and the intention to possess without license or consent of anybody else. Then they become the person who has dispossessed you. So there you can see that there's quite a lot of overlap between the cases. Other than that, here we have the idea of people who've wrongfully acquired possession being able to retain possession, which, according to the ethics of liberty, would be unjust. So what sort of historical evidence are we looking for? So Rothbard says, you can acquire title to land that is unused and unowned if it has obviously never been transformed by anyone. That is to say there was nothing to give you the indication that anybody had transformed it. The common law framework says whoever claims possession of land must be in exclusive possession of it openly. It should be clear to anybody who looks that you are in possession of that land notoriously. So this should not be some kind of hidden secret, adversely, meaning adverse to anybody who's claiming a counter-entitlement exclusively. That's of the essence of ownership and continuously not intermittent ownership. So that's what we would be looking for. If all the facts are clear, that is to say they are not disputed, if you can establish the facts that I've just outlined, then the property must be returned. But if not, if not, and in many of the cases that I talked about, they've proved nothing. They're just making amorphous claims. So if nothing is proved, then there has been no dispossession. If this is the example in the ethics of liberty, if Green comes upon land that has obviously never been transformed by anyone, he can move on to it at once and with impunity. For in the libertarian society, no one can have a valid title to land that has never been transformed. So all this language that people use about sacredness, they're trying to evade this, say, in my sacred ownership of land, I'm not allowed to transform it. In my sacred ownership of land, I must leave no sign that of my presence, because that's how I understand my relationship with the land. Here, I don't have time to go into this, but we look at this in more detail in our book, where we ask, is property a cultural construct? Can somebody come up and say, well, in my culture, we don't do possession and acts of use and intention to possess. We just do a spiritual thing, and then we become the owner. No, because property rights are human rights and they are universal and they're absolute. And we have an entire chapter talking about that, actually. So if none of this can be shown, then there has been no dispossession. The burden of proof and the presumption of innocence apply to cases where the historical evidence is not clear or historians are all in conflict about what happened. The burden of proof lies on someone who disputes a land title to make good his claim. If he cannot do so, the present possessor owns his land legitimately. So if somebody comes up and says, well, I don't know because it was 400 years ago, absent a clear proof by the objector that the land has been forcibly arrested from him or his ancestors, the current possessor's claim holds good. So the current possessor's claim is a just claim. It is not simply, I found myself here and what did I know? No, it is a just claim. It is not stolen property. It is a just claim to ownership of that land. And I think that pretty much covers the case of whether property is stolen. And now we must think about the remedies. In a case where it is proved, suppose the historians are clear that the people lived here and they were dispossessed and now we're looking for the remedy, must it be returned to the claimant? And my answer, I might as well spoiler alert, is no. We have to ask if the property has been materially transformed over time, if it is recognizably the same property that was stolen. So Rothbard's example of a watch, you can tell that that's the watch, right? It's the same thing. So that's a clear example. But with land that has been used over time, questions may arise if it is the same property. And then we must ask, would it be just to return property that has been materially transformed? It's not the property. It's pretty much a new thing. Does justice require that you give it up? Here's what equity says. If the thing has been transformed by somebody else, you know, he's put money and labor into it, to give it its value, nearly all its present value, then equity will intervene. And to say that the person who's transformed it acquires a good title to it, because equity is a jurisdiction in fairness. So, you know, you could criticize this. And in fact, this case has been criticized because otherwise you could steal anybody's thing and work really hard on it and improve its value and then say, now I have title to this thing because I've done all this work on it. And it is true that equity looks to good faith. So if you did that deliberately, you wouldn't get the remedy. But you can still see that that doesn't fit with the idea that property rights are absolute. Now, the types of examples we have in relation to land things like cities built on what used to be a riverbed. They've literally re-rooted the river and built a city there. Can people come later and say, my ancestors used to fish in that river, that used to flow where the city now is, so now the city belongs to me? That's the type of question we're dealing with. Or grassland, that used to be just open grassland and now there's a city. Can you say, well, I used to walk along that grassland, you know, going wherever on my nomadic tour. And now there's a city and the city belongs to me, so that's the question we're asking. So Jeremy Waldron, talking in the context of New Zealand, says that surely over time, rights are transformed in their nature. If you have a right to fish in a river, it doesn't mean you have a right to the city that's built there now. He says, even if we are sure that the right had survived, we have to ask whether the rights remain stable over time or in the same form.  You can't say, well, the thing I owned doesn't exist, so I want that thing instead, because that's not your thing. Now you are the thief stealing somebody else's thing. So that's the question that we're looking at here. The common law has rules of accession and transformation to decide whether the thing that you're demanding is really your thing. And the classic example in the Roman law is the ship of Theseus. Okay, so assume that the ship of Theseus had been stolen and finally it was found and they said, well, we'll have that back, that's our ship. Well, is it really their ship? So that's the question. And there are so many complex rules that apply. For example, if it's land, things become a fix to the land or if it's personal property, you ask whether you can separate what's been added to the property or whether you can't. And Rothbard says, if the addition is not separable, but an integral part of the property, well, too bad, you improved somebody else's property, you've still got to give it back. You can't say I'm keeping it because I improved it. So he would not agree with the position in equity. He would say give it back anyway. But, and I think this is important, Rothbard says, if it's separable, you are entitled to separate the thing you added to it and return the thing. So he gives the example of putting a radio into a car. If you can retrieve it without damaging the car, retrieve it by all means. And this is interesting. He says, if you built buildings on somebody else's land, well, move the buildings and return the land or demolish the buildings, return the land. This would please the objectivists. You know, objectivists say, if you built something on land and somebody comes and takes the land, it's your thing, you built it, destroy it. Okay, so if you can, if you can, if you are able to retrieve the thing that you built, then by all means, you should retrieve it. And just to conclude, this is Rothbard's conclusion, you must ask before you decide that you're giving things back. Ask whether the victim, that is the person, the property owner originally aggressed against, is clearly identifiable and can now be found. That's a prerequisite. And ask whether or not the current possessor is himself the criminal who stole the property. That relates to his other point because Rothbard thinks that thieves should be punished. Okay, so that's the kind of thing, you know, to do with the criminal element of the fact that theft is wrong. So that then it becomes relevant if the person in possession is the actual thief. And just to conclude with the idea of the role of the state, because the threats that we're looking at come not from the claims, but from the law that backs up these types of claims with force. And here again, I have a quote from Walter Block. He asks, if someone stole something from you, having the state steal from someone else altogether different does not really solve the problem, does it? And if the state robbed or more accurately allowed somebody else to pilfer something from your ancestors, does it make sense for them to now steal something from everyone else and give it to you? Not at all. Thank you. Thank you.