Contemporary intellectuals’ right to opportunism

The tragedy of contemporary Indian society is not the lack of democratic consciousness among the masses and their commitment to an egalitarian society but the absence of genuine intellectuals and reformers who earlier played a greater role in consolidating sentiments of the people and rationalised their aspirations. Contrary to it, we are finding social divisive forces now more active than any time in the past. 

Electoral democracy has been setting agenda and intellectuals merely follow them. So, we have multi-polarised intellectuals and each subset has its own perspective of society based on interests of their political masters. In brief, degraded intellectualism, from far right to far left, now champion caste, communal, regional and linguistic identities that suit the fragmented politics of India. The casualties of degraded intellectualism are creativity, critical thinking and truth.

There are now more caste/sub-caste, communal organisations and regional outfits than in the past. Artificial conflicts are being imposed by borrowing issues and binaries from immediate past to a few hundred years. And the modern Indian mind fails to make a distinction between glorious and inglorious Indian past. The 19th-century thinkers and social reformers had shown the path at the hour when British divide and rule policy and social conservatism dominated Indian polity and society. RG Bhandarkar, a great social reformer, while addressing the Madras Hindu Social Reform association on December 27, 1894, reminded the audience that “Social Ideal was much higher and rational in ancient times than it is now.” 

In the 19th century when the Indian struggle for freedom was taking shape, the imperative for social reforms and solidarity produced a number of reformers with a high intellectual bent of mind. It also generated a debate whether politics or reform preceded each other. But such reform movements had provided a solid democratic foundation and enlightened political workers against British imperialism. This was evident from political actors of independent India who in the 1950s and 1960s had a greater social appeal and reach. Presently we have a society, which, to borrow the phrase of another reformer of the 19th century Jyotiba Phule, ‘a veritable hotchpotch’ which deters the consolidation of national life and spirit. It seems that society is a federal mix of warring caste camps. Each has its own agenda and new caste leadership shows irreconcilability with the higher social ideal of dilution of exclusive identities. 

The reason is not incomprehensible. From Lalu Yadav to Jignesh Mewani or Karni Sena to Bhim Sena, from Maratha politics to Patel consolidation, all are guided by narrow interests of self-empowerment in politics. We find intellectuals becoming spokespersons of such reactionaries and justifying issues raised by them. There is no MG Ranade, NG Chandavarkar, Phule, B Jambhekar, Dadoba Pandurang to deter the emergence of social reactionaries of all shades. The 19th and early 20th-century Indian reforms collapsed in independent India and social reformers and intellectuals either volunteered themselves to the service of politics or the latter co-opted them. 

Today, every caste and identity is aspiring its imagined golden era or struggling to undo history of social bigotry of the past. This is unlike a modern Indian mind. In the 19th century, the intellectuals and reformers’ commitment to the social ideal was unmistakably egalitarian. Their efforts were self-generative and tedious. They aspired nothing for themselves. Phule’s mindboggling work ‘Gulamgiri’ (1873) focused on repression of marginalised castes and their exploitation. This had not caused verbal war among intellectuals but helped to understand the cause of social reforms. 

Chandavarkar in a famous lecture on “Our social Ideals” at Presidency College, Madras, in 1896, had said “the Social Mind represents centripetal force in society; it is its conservative power but the centrifugal force which is necessary to make society to move beyond its customs, traditions can only come from what is called ’idealistic reason’, or ‘conscious intelligence’ of its individual members.” It’s time for self-introspection for all but intellectuals in particular. The importance of a philosopher can be understood by a historical incident. Bindusara, Chandragupta’s son, requested Antiochus, the successor of Seleucus I, to send some sweet wine, figs and a philosopher. The wine and figs were sent but the philosopher refused on the ground that it was not good for the Greeks to trade in philosophers.” Unless social reforms are accelerated with a selfless mind, divorced from political aspirations and agenda, the task of nation-building will be a far cry.

The author is founding Honorary Director of India Policy Foundation, a Delhi-based think tank. Views expressed are personal