We must exercise utmost caution while choosing enemies because, as novelist Michael Ventura put it prophetically, we will ultimately come to resemble them. This partly explains the way William Dalrymple (cheered by Aatish Tasheer and many others) prevailed over Bloomsbury publisher to withdraw a book on Delhi riots, something which under normal circumstances, would have been seen as the tactics of an exclusivist regime hell-bent on denying alternative voices to emerge. Dalrymple unfortunately chose to ignore the fact that adversaries are not the same like enemies. And no career intellectual came forward to remind him that intellectual life not only should engage with adversarial ideas, but also should look for them consistently. The controversy is a classic case of intellectuals coming to reproduce themselves in the image of what they claimed to be fighting against. What exactly were they trying to convey? What does it reveal about our contemporary intellectual culture?

How intellectuals lost it:

In an ideal situation, intellectuals have an important social function, that is to sustain the idea of a deliberative democracy. Since intellectual life cannot be dominated by a singular narrative and the spirit of freedom cannot be envisioned as an extension of a specific ideology, intellectuals must consistently strive to tolerate and encourage what they do not agree with. In the absence of that, the intellectual degenerates into an ideologue. In reality, since Nurul Hasan’s control of the Ministry of Education, knowledge production in India has been dominated by a Marxist understanding of history and culture. To a large extent, it remained derivative of Western, modernist and Orientalist frameworks, not allowing competing ways of approaching knowledge to grow. Marxist thought, masquerading as intellectual labor, sustained itself due to strategic planning in terms of controlling teaching, research and funding institutions and not-so-subtle dalliance with communist parties.

Suddenly it was a new dawn in 2014 and career intellectuals, given to privileges, could not just fathom. The debates around intolerance, award wapsi were constructed to wring-fence themselves as voices against what they called majoritarianism and fascism. These self-declared intellectuals believed that people who voted for Modi were suffering from false consciousness and if they as intellectuals tried harder, people can be rescued. This consciousness raising project involved de-Hinduization of the Hindu by foregrounding caste divisions so that the majority community will be constantly shamed about the internal contradictions within Hindu faith. This also meant encouraging the minority community to imagine itself as a monolith. The default intellectual position was the consolidation of minority and the fragmentation of majority.

Indian democracy affirmed itself once more in 2019. By then the nationalist government had learnt the virtues of subtleties and started promoting an idea of India that is territorial (along with a cultural India). Defending the borders was the ultimate act of unifying people; Uri, Balakot, Article 370 and 35A were pointers in that direction. The chorus of career intellectuals became fainter and fiery sermons turned into whimpers. Having returned their awards already, there was nothing much left to return. Also, the symbolic importance of award wapsi was no longer relevant. The election of 2019 was a confirmation that for Indian voters, intellectuals of a particular hue and their ways of reducing Indian ethos to a crude understanding of secularism do not matter anymore. Already out of power, these club intellectuals took it as a fait accompli and gave up on the people. Some of them ended up in jail for abetting Naxal violence.

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. In the increasing irrelevance of career intellectuals, many wannabe Bollywood intellectuals (most of whom may not have been exposed to elementary philosophical concepts) rushed to fill the vacuum and seized the opportunity. Like the intellectual cliques, they had their syndicates and sugar daddies; their celebrity status was an insurance cover for ignorance. As such, intellectualism in India is characterized by its sheer visibility and exhibitionism, something that Bollywood could do even better. Given that Amartya Sen had become too feeble and Ram Guha had started planning for reviving Congress party, Bollywood replaced them with Naseruddin Shah, Amir Khan, Anurag Kashyap and Swara Bhaskar. We can only speculate to what extent an aggressive and noisy Bollywood with its inbuilt fan base damaged academics and activists in controlling the left-liberal narrative.

The world of books:

Intellectuals felt betrayed by the people. The people, on the other hand, could not relate to what was being said in their name or were smart enough to understand that intellectuals are actually interested to protect their privileges. Having lost the space, both privileges and people’s respect, intellectuals grudgingly accepted their situation and drew sustenance from bubbles of academic and activist communities in universities, NGOs and media. They still had academic spaces, news channels, newspapers and publishing houses. If for Milton’s Satan, it was better to reign in hell than serve in heaven, for intellectuals it was not such a bad situation either. They congratulated themselves for having survived majoritarianism and for being in control over the world of letters, books, journals, ideas that they were confident will outlive ‘fascist regimes’ Modi and BJP. When decades later people will be trying to make sense of the present time, it will be their writings that which will be adorning library shelves and acting as the gateway to the analyses of history.

Their consolation came from this supposed moral victory: let BJP supporters go where they belong – the street and its violent politics. In this state of resignation, they let their enemies control electoral politics and hoped for their continuing control over knowledge. Their naivety made them believe in a world where violent people rule the pole of politics and career intellectuals control the pole of knowledge – their world of redemption. Though Hindutva forces ruled the world of doxa and politics, the world of episteme guaranteed intellectuals a secured subjecthood in history. In the battle of ideas nobody could dislodge them. That is the power of the book, the insignia of authority, the metaphor of knowledge, the weapon of the intellectual minority; it is the book which will decide the winner of the future. In terms of Delhi riots, BJP may have won the present and possibly the votes, but when the riot is converted to knowledge and represented in scholarship, intellectuals will win the future. That will compensate for the humiliation of the present.

Or, so it seemed. But India was changing fast. Alternative narratives began to emerge, at first with caution and doubt, but soon became a movement with the rise of social media. The new wave champions were irreverent and refused to carry the baggage of the past that grew idolizing Romila Thapars, Ram Guhas or Barkha Dutts, who symbolized a culture of entitlement. These champions were combative, though on occasions impatient and rusty. It will be naïve to believe that this army of culture warriors are all planted by BJP. Many of them are just nationalists and are tired of the excesses of secularist ideology; some are conscious Hindus who refused to disavow their belief as a mark of scholarship. But, most are agentic professionals who have taken upon themselves to correct the imbalance in the marketplace of ideas. They are willing to confront and speak the language that was once used to demonize them and their beliefs; they tell us that democracy, equality, tolerance, freedom of expression cannot exclude the majority of Indians and cannot be used as an alibi to shame them. They are documenting, fact-checking, countering, writing blogs, making opinions. In short, they are writing, that was once the preserve of powerful intellectuals. It appears, the bunker of episteme is no longer exclusive to intellectuals and cannot guarantee immortality.

Conclusion:

This fear of losing their safe house could have guided William Dalrymple and others to pressurize Bloomsbury. In desperation, and instead of waiting for the book to come out and countering it with facts and arguments, they ended up not just arm-twisting a publisher but also demonstrated their fear of alternatives. But the fact that they can still pressurize the European publisher to cancel a contract by its the Indian office implies their continuing power over knowledge. Bloomsbury’s capitulation may also signifyimply the publisher’s confidence that there are more authors and academics of secularist hue than that of the saffron or neutral variety. In other words, in a conflict scenario such as this, strategic capitulation perhaps makes economic sense. We cannot be sure if Bloomsbury’s decision was ideological or economic, but we can be reasonably sure that this is a defining moment in our evolution as a democracy. It marks the declaration of intent by the non-left culture warriors to fight books with books; it also betrays the anxiety of status-quoist intellectuals that the ground under their feet is loosening.

Image Credits: Thayne Tuason via Wikimedia Commons

 

Tags :

• Media65
• Intellectual Freedom65

• Share on Social Media

• Follow us on Social Media