(The unabridged version of my earlier post in Opendemocracy)
The
advent of a new government in India has been welcomed with a kneejerk reaction among
certain sections of the Indian intelligentsia.
Their main concern has been about the alleged threats to the future of the
‘liberal order’ and to the ‘freedom of speech and expression’ that they claim
to have been professing.
“The
respected intellectuals are those who conform and serve power interests”.
-Noam
Chomsky
An intellectual should be honest and can take sides, support
and as well as oppose based on merits of the issue. In India Modi bashing has
been a fashionable phenomenon and it had been the standard hallmark since a
decade, to prove one’s intellectual and liberal credentials, something which is
akin to a political version of rites of
passage[i].
Any debate on religious strife had to invariably revolve around the communal
riots in Gujarat, that occurred in 2002 and the alleged culpability of the
Narendra Modi, the present Prime Minister of India and the then Chief Minister
of Gujarat. The official enterprise of anti-Modi campaign provided a perennial intellectual
fodder for certain sections of the Indian intellectuals, and helped them in varnishing
their scholarly pursuits and as well as what they proclaimed to be their ‘left
and liberal credentials’. This argument had even gone to the extent of not only
dismissing the independence and credibility of Indian Judiciary but the refusal
to adhere to a civilized and sensible debate on intellectual freedom and
scholarship.
Ironically this has led to an Indian version of McCarthyism
in the intellectual circles, wherein anyone disagreeing with the anti-Modi discourse,
have been selectively targeted and their very scholarly credentials lampooned
at in the universities and media studios, in a brazen manner. So this has led
to a scenario wherein a considerable number of intellectuals in India by and
large even fear, to extend issue based endorsement of the policies of the BJP
party, out of political correctness, lest they get branded and enmeshed in the
secular-communal debate, in the academic circles. The national polls of 2014,
witnessed the shrinking of the numerical strength of the Indian national
Congress as well as the Left Front, one of the causes, which Shiv Vishvanathan[ii] attributes
to the Left wing intellectuals and their liberal siblings undermining religion
as a way of life and for having overemphasized secularism, while the BJP under
Modi stuck to the aspiration of the common masses and invoked good governance
and economic well being of the common people.
This situation has been further aggravated by the selective
intervention by the Indian English media. The Indian English media (TV
channels/print and social media), have more or less never questioned the intellectuals
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, as defined by Louis Althusser, have patronized academic
institutions for nurturing ideological foot soldiers in order to promote and
perpetuate a certain leader’s legacy.
It also perhaps explains why urban India and its anglicized
institutions of higher learning, unlike the west doesn’t nurture an environment
where one can have diverse opinions nor does it
even have a caricature of Noam Chomsky, a conscience keeper of a liberal
order, who could defy and remain a dissident against the state in United States.
Amartya Sen's[iii]
recent comments are perceived to be very sober and in consonance with the
existing realities, wherein he publicly acknowledged that Modi has every right
to govern, after the BJP won in the recent elections. While the electoral
results of India are now invoked by the hitherto officially endorsed academics
and scholars for seeking some overseas, assignment in western countries, to
keep their bogey of ‘defending democracy’ going, Dipankar Gupta[iv]
cautions us about the proclivity of some sections of the Indian intellectual
class to toe the line of the political class, and let themselves be seduced by
inducements, resulting into their degeneration into ideologues for partisan
interests, and then become inflexible and refuse to accept contrary facts.
Debate
on Freedom of Speech and Expression
Girish Karnad's (1998 Jnanpith Award
winner) view that the Nobel Prize has given British writer VS Naipaul a sudden authority [v]and his use of it,
especially his comments about Islam and Muslim societies, needs to be looked
at, is reminiscent of similar disdain displayed by many Indian intellectuals
towards the Jnanpith [vi]Award winners in
India. Karnad went to comment on the literary credentials of Rabindranath Tagore[vii], the legendary
Indian poet and a Nobel laureate for literature. Karnad[viii] questioned Tagore’s
contribution to dramatic literature in the country and remarked about his
alleged inability to represent the common people and the poor.
Karnad probably knew what he was doing was
controversial, but still worth it, as it had enabled the political motives, in
the quintessential politics of left Vs right, if not this drama helps to score
some brownie points for the left, and assess them as a yardstick, as to how the
"literary" world is polarized in India today. Karnard’s belated response[ix] on Naipaul and
Tagore comes at a time after having served in various plum positions in the
state funded institutions and also as a Minister of Culture in the Indian High
Commission in London. Karnard went on to justify his late response to the
limitations, citing being ‘governed’ by the services rules of the state.
Such contemptuous unfounded views are
perceived as more of an academic rabble rousing rather than enriching
democratic space or diversity of views, without understanding of the about the
relevance and richness of Indian literature in Indian languages. The same
argument is used with much more credibility and righteous anger by Dalit[x] scholars about
the harsh and abysmal condition of their intellectual space, since Karnard and
other upper caste academic coterie are also accused of having appropriated the
space of various other cultural groups to represent themselves.
Joining ‘conscientious’
writer Karnard was his fellow kannada writer U.R. Ananthamurthy[xi]
who proclaimed that he wouldn’t like to live
in India[xii],
if Narendra Modi is elected as its Prime Minister, clearly mocking at the
democratic process and universal adult franchise. Ananthamurthy
and Girish Karnard represent those hallowed tradition that surprisingly
operates in a random fashion yet selectively confronts the ‘system’ or the
alternative political discourse. They are very elitist in their manifestation
and in a subtle fashion seek to retain the hegemony of the hitherto well
entrenched group in the power structure.
Secondly, one would argue that Indian intellectuals,
politicians, litterateurs, artists, journalists, and especially all with ‘left or
left-liberal’ sympathies, to be precise have failed. In their desire to divide
and rule, they outdo the former British colonial state, but all they teach public
is pit one against another rather than striving to bring solutions and foster
an inclusive society. Indian intellectual space also faces challenges from an excessive
reliance on identity politics. It is
also felt that the left has used 'political correctness' as a tool to
monopolize public discourse, assert its right to speak all the time on select
issue and deny any opinion that casts any doubt on the logic and validity of
any left-wing discourse, even to the extent of obstructing the basic right to
expression. The society has been
confronted with a scenario, where anyone questioning the assumptions of the
left-liberal and their agenda, is automatically bulldozed away into silence,
through a vicious condemnation, from the conventional academic circles, NGOs
and the ‘free media’ and all predictable in their regularity. Their hold on the Indian state and it
ideological apparatus has been disproportionate to their empirical presence in
the institutions of democracy, whom Ashis Nandy[xiii]
had termed as tools to ensure political control by the state as some people who
were self styled vanguard of the proletariat and arm chair revolutionaries,
sought to cleanse higher education of all other ideological strands and went to
help the Indian state to quell intellectual dissent.
The case of Joe D’Cruz
The recent issue involving Sahitiya Academy [xiv]award
winning Tamil writer Joe D’Cruz[xv],
merits mention, who had argued that Jesus was one of the gods incorporated,
into the existing pantheon of gods worshipped by his (fishing) community after
having embraced Christianity.
The English translation of his first Tamil novel Aazhi Soozh Ulagu which dealt with the
lives of fishermen, who converted to Christianity, has been indefinitely halted
by Navayana, a self-declared progressive left-liberal publishing house, for
having expressed his support for Mr. Narendra Modi, the BJP Prime Ministerial
candidate in the Indian national elections, on his Facebook page.
While there is no inherent conflict, to cite Asish Nandy who
had addressed the similar dilemmas’ associated with it in his study of the
multiple identities through, Facing Extermination- Gods and Goddesses in
South Asia[xvi]
It has been rather, a pan South Asian experience, that having multiples
identities necessarily doesn’t pave way nor result in what one may call a
divided self-consciousness. Even prior to the process of Globalization, various
groups in Asia, Latin America and Africa and individuals like Gandhi and Tagore
had negotiated with multiple identities and were able to reconcile multiple
identities and cultural experiences, whether primordial or even constructed due
to the membership of a particular class. The issues get complicated when one is
forced to do away with the choices and confine to a singular identity as the
case of Joe D’Cruz[xvii]
suggests.
The official conscience keepers had vociferously questioned
the chain of events concerning Penguin Publishers decision to withdraw and pulp
Wendy Doniger’s book, The Hindus: An Alternative History[xviii],
even when it was an outcome of a legal battle, after the petitioner Dinanath
Batra availed the judicial process within the democratic framework. The same
high decibel chorus of protests which transformed into ‘conscience keepers’ and
upholders of free speech, were conspicuously silent when the publisher’s
bullying tactics of seeking Joe D’ Cruz reconsider his decision on Modi, as a
precondition to publish his work, had clearly manifested itself in the public
domain.
The
issues of giving space to dissent and divergent opinion merit
attention - in other words can Non-Left opinions be given the space in the so
called Indian academic discourse? The stony silence on the freedom and rights
of authors like Salman Rushdie and Taslima Nasreen, hints at the double
standards guide the official intellectual class which also includes eminent
scholars and columnists. Rajiv Gandhi government went ahead and banned Salman
Rushdie’s novel, The Satanic Verses, following pressure by some sections of the
Muslims. This provided easy ammunition to articulate political and religious
demands by community centric movements notwithstanding its rationale.
The present concern about Modi dismantling the existing structures of power, which
had provided the present elite an unrestrained socio-cultural and intellectual dominance[xix]
in the day to day affairs, stems from the fear of the perceived sense of loss
of self-importance at the hands of new government.
This
perhaps explains how the last decade has taught Indians to embrace hatred and
deploy the lexicon of dislike in academic and intellectual discourses for their
acceptability by the establishment and for getting patronized for it. Hence
while dissent and disagreement have been the hallmark in a liberal
social order, they are also used in a blatant manner to target political
opposition.
In the last 67 years of independence, the discourse gives an
impression that the intellectual class is yet to discover India and relate with
the challenges that confront their nation and its citizens.
(I would like to thank Mr Vinay Varma and Mr Nataraja Upadhya for sharing
their views in an earlier discussion related to the theme of this article.)
[i] Rites of passage
by Arnold van Gennep, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rite_of_passage
[ii] Shiv
Vishvanathan, How Modi defeated liberals like me,
[iii] Modi has every
right to rule: Amartya Sen, http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/left-has-imploded-modi-has-every-right-to-rule-amartya-sen/article1-1235814.aspx
[iv] Dipankar
Gupta, Intellectuals vs ideologues, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/opinion/edit-page/Intellectuals-vs-ideologues/articleshow/34211852.cms
[vii] Rabindranath
Tagore, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabindranath_Tagore
[viii] Rabindranath
Tagore a 'second-rate playwright', Girish Karnad says,
[ix]
http://www.ibtl.in/column/1316/girish-karnads-toxic-tantrums/
[xi] U.R.Ananthamurthy, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U._R._Ananthamurthy
[xii] Dhiraj
Nayyar, Crude Modi bashing is just lazy
intellectualism,
[xiii] Ashis Nandy, The
Other Emergency: Indian State Has Stifled Intellectual Freedom, ,
[xv] The Sea, The
Sea, http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/the-sea-the-sea
[xvi] Ashis Nandy, Facing
Extermination - Gods and Goddesses in South Asia,
[xvii] Seetha, Navyana
controversy: Why Left’s intellectual bullying won’t work now,
[xviii] Vivek Gumaste,
The Wendy Doniger controversy: An Alternative View,
[xix] Swapan
Dasgupta, AFTER THE VERDICT - The
aesthetes versus the outlanders,
