Questionable Intellectuality
Nidhu Bhusan Das
Honesty is and should remain the hallmark of real and profound intellectuality such as that of Einstein,Romain Rolland, Rabindranath Tagore, APJ Abdul Kalam,et al.Sadly,this is often found absent in the ‘marketed intellectual products’ of present-day India.What is evident is that such products look like being ordered and tailor-made to serve,not the society,but the vested and political interests to the detriment of the society.
It appears, a segment of the intelligentsia finds it comfortable and rewarding to toe the line of the power that be or likes to believe it is progressive to play a tune that doesn’t have the foundation to stand the test of sound logic.
One may tend to think the hallmark of such intellectuality is Hypocrisy.Such intellectuality generates commercial products which need be marketed with meticulous and extensive ad campaigns.One of the tools of marketing such products is traditional mass media outlet like newspapers.It is perceptible that some such outlets promote some people to facilitate their ways of doing business.
Besides,such intellectuals or pseudo-intellectuals are an anachronism in a society Tagore dreamt of in his poem “Where the Mind is Without Fear”.They, evidently, do not possess the “clear stream of reason” and comfortably live in a world broken up into fragments by “narrow domestic walls”.They are prejudiced,lack the power of profound observation and the capacity to collect data and analyse them scientifically to arrive at a logical conclusion that is original.Rather, they parrot the existing socio-political jargons within the existing framework,restructure the existing materials to repeat the same conclusion clad in jugglery of words and expressions.Their performance fits into the idiom “back to square”. Their words do not “come out from the depth of truth”.They do not strive towards “perfection”, being under the belief that they are sages and people tend to swallow any and everything they preach.They are not blessed with a free mind.
Einstein believed to know the dates of battles, and which army killed how many of the enemies are not important but why one kills the other or what is the cause of the battle is important and need be explored.He called this “idea”.The intellectuals under discussion lack what Einstein called “idea” in response to a query from his teacher in the history class at his Munich school.
These intellectuals identify the political divide in India as represented by secularists and fundamentalists.As fundamentalists they identify the Hindu fundamentalists only forgetting the existence of Islamic fundamentalists of which there is global wariness.This they do to conveniently come to a summary judgement of the situation.They also ignore the dangerous existence of communal-secularists mired in corruptions,and their electoral politics of minority appeasement which has not done any good for the socio-economic uplift of the minority( Sachar Committee Report). This politics has paved the way for the emergence of whom they call Hindu fundamentalists.They hold the wrong notion that appeasement of the minority is an integral part of secularism which is possibly an Indian version of the concept for electoral benefit.
They are not vocal about the cause of the emergence of identity politics and reticent about the failure of the polity to implement the Gandhian principle of bringing the 'harijans’ on par doing away with the curse of casteism for decades from Independence.
Many of those who emerged as saviours of the ‘low caste’ Indians in the wake of Mandal agitation are now in the peculiar secular grouping.The intellectuals do not find the corruption charges against some important leaders of caste politics plausible, perhaps, because they think corruption is an unimportant issue for those who are involved in electoral politics of secularism.They are reluctant to work on how some such saviours have amassed huge wealth to thicken and expand the 'creamy layer’ over the 'harijans’ and other backward castes(OBC).
The failure of our democracy is, unfortunately,clear and a stark reality when universal education and level playing ground for at least 70 per cent of the Indians are a dream even after about seven decades of Independence.The intellectuals choose to steer clear of such failures in their tailor-made effort to defend the Indian version of secularism which is in keeping with neither Gandhian philosophy nor democracy in letter and spirit.Gandhi held the opinion that political freedom is meaningless without economic freedom and opportunity for all.Summary judgement and tailor-made analysis of the Indian polity and politics by the apparently pliant intellectuals are really baffling.
I would like to present the poem of Tagore hereinbelow for the intellectuals to revisit.
Where the Mind is Without Fear
“Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.”
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.”
