My article published in Opendemocracy.net, 28 August 2014
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/openindia/contradictions-of-indian-intelligentsia
The knee jerk reaction from India’s intellectuals to the advent of a new
government has been to profess a concern for ‘liberal order’. But we need to
think about the space for dissent and divergent opinion in more nuanced ways.
“The respected intellectuals are those who conform and serve power interests”.
- Noam Chomsky
An intellectual should be honest and can take sides, supporting and
opposing based on merits of the issue. But in India, Modi-bashing has been more
of a fashionable phenomenon. It has been the standard hallmark of the decade to
prove one’s intellectual and liberal credentials, something akin to a political
rite of passage. Any debate on religious strife invariably revolved around the
communal riots in Gujarat that occurred in 2002, and the alleged culpability of
Narendra Modi, the present Prime Minister of India and the then Chief Minister
of Gujarat. The anti-Modi campaign has provided perennial intellectual fodder
for certain sections of the Indian intelligentsia, helping them in varnishing
their scholarly pursuits and left-liberal credentials. This mode of argument not
only goes so far as to dismiss the independence and credibility of the Indian
Judiciary, but refuses to adhere to a civilized and sensible debate on
intellectual freedom and scholarship.
Ironically this has led to an Indian version of McCarthyism in intellectual
circles, wherein anyone disagreeing with the anti-Modi discourse is selectively
targeted and their scholarly credentials lampooned in universities and media
studios. This has led to a situation in which a considerable number of
intellectuals in India fear to endorse the policies of the BJP party, out of
political correctness, lest they get branded and enmeshed in the
secular-communal debate. In the aftermath of the national polls, which resulted
in the shrinking of the numerical strength of the Indian National Congress as
well as the Left Front, Shiv
Vishvanathan exposed the tendency
among leftist intellectuals and their liberal siblings to undermine religion as
a way of life and to overemphasize secularism, while the BJP under Modi latched
onto popular aspiration, invoking good governance and economic health.
This situation has been further aggravated by the selective intervention
of the Indian English media. Its TV channels, print and social media
publications have more or less never questioned the intellectual subservience
to the Nehru-Gandhi family, who have controlled the reigns of the Indian state
for the last four decades. State organs, on the lines of the
‘ideological state apparatus’, in the language of Louis Althusser, have long patronized
academic institutions, nurturing ideological foot soldiers in order to promote
and perpetuate the legacy of the leadership. It also perhaps explains why urban
India and its anglicized institutions of higher learning cannot nurture an
environment of diverse opinion.
Indian intellectuals, politicians, artists and journalists of a
liberal-left persuasion have all failed. In their desire to divide and rule,
they outdo the former British colonial state. But all they teach the public to
do is to pit one against another rather than strive to foster an inclusive
society. The space inhabited by India’s intellectuals has demonstrated an
excessive reliance on identity politics. And the left has, for too
long, used 'political correctness' as a tool to monopolize public discourse.
We need only look to the case of
award-winning Tamil writer Joe D’Cruz. The English translation of his first Tamil
novel Aazhi Soozh Ulagu which deals with the lives of
fishermen, who have converted to Christianity, has been indefinitely halted by
Navayana, a self-declared progressive left-liberal publishing house, after
D’Cruz expressed his support for Modi on his Facebook page. The intelligentsia
had vociferously questioned the chain of events concerning Penguin’s decision
to withdraw and pulp Wendy Doniger’s book The
Hindus: An Alternative History. And yet the same high decibel chorus of
protest which transformed India’s intellectuals into upholders of free speech
was nowhere to be seen when Navayana deployed its bullying tactics during the
D’Cruz episode.
The issue of giving space to dissent and divergent opinion merits
attention. Or in other words, can non-leftist opinions be given space in Indian
academic discourse? The stony silence on the freedom and rights of authors like
Salman Rushdie and Taslima Nasreen, hints at the double standards that guide
the official intellectual class.
The last decade has taught Indians to embrace the lexicon of dislike
in
academic and intellectual discourse. And while the rhetoric of dissent
may be the hallmark of a
liberal social order, it is used in India to target any political
opposition to existing structures of power, protecting the unrestrained
socio-cultural and intellectual dominance of elites. The
intellectual class has yet to discover the people of India, and fully
comprehend and relate
to the challenges that confront the nation and its citizens.
