Who shrank our intellectuals?

As the country obsesses over the many twists and turns in the “Anna Hazare vs government” saga, the intellectuals, of the Left and the Right, look seriously out of business. Corruption being an ideology neutral subject does not allow this normally vociferous lot much space to put a spin to the ongoing battle. There have been feeble attempts at it though, but these were mostly from the government’s side. [caption id=“attachment_31656” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Where is the nuance? Can we only think Black and White? Parivartan Sharma/Reuters”]  [/caption] It’s a bit unusual. The fashionably Left have not found a strong subplot in the whole corruption narrative to target the oppressive, pro-capitalist, anti-poor, corrupt and obnoxious establishment. Anna’s agitation does not exactly fit into their idea of the romantic Utopia of popular revolts and mass movements. The vocal Right, partly in the establishment’s mindset at present, has nothing significant to say. Not that it matters; not that the Left and the Right votaries matter. Both have managed to make themselves redundant by overstating their ideological positions. What is curious is most of our intellectuals – the bunch of reasonably intelligent and articulate people who make it a point to be heard on public issues – go blank in the brain when the issue on hand does not render itself to a polarising debate. Anna’s agitation is a case in point. That brings us to the question of the state of our intellectuals. Who shrank them to whatever they are now? A gifted lot with unique command over two important tools of communication – knowledge and articulation – the intellectuals have traditionally been the voice of reason in the country and protectors of its tradition of discussions and arguments. They shape perspectives with knowledgeable intervention. But this description is changing now. How? The explanation should start with the obsession with ideology or the inability to look beyond them. Why must intellectuals be pro-Left or pro-Right? Such alignments militate against the idea of intellect in the first place. Moreover, in a fluid and flattening world, the theoretical relevance of political propositions like the Left and the Right has worn thin. The more the advocates of both go on asserting themselves, the more they come across as victims of some mental handicap – some kind of compulsive obsessive disorder. People no more stay in sharply bracketed social-financial environs of early industrialisation days, a condition which sharpened the class conflict argument of the Left. Over a century-and-a-half people have matured to seek out what is best for them. The political processes and institutions all these years have been about continuous conversation and negotiations between conflicting interest and insular worlds. The world has changed, in terms of scope for social and economic mobility and the individual’s awareness of the fact, making the logic of the obstinate Left tenuous in the contemporary world. The same applies to the Right, which is more of a reactionary spin-off of the Left, and much more swallow in its intellectual depth. In the post-liberalisation India, where the accent is on the individual and on personal aspirations, both are hopelessly out of tune. The drift of the new generation is not difficult to grasp, but our lack of ability to think of a new framework to factor him in is. But this is just one aspect of the bigger malaise. The intellectuals have demeaned the value of human lives with their partisan, selective approach. Watch those panelists on TV trying to put clever spin to the simple, inhuman act of people being killed and you realise how deep the rot has travelled. The Left thinkers do not get hysterical when Maoists kill policemen – they are the tools of the obnoxious establishment, aren’t they? Their reaction was muted when the rebels butchered 75 policemen in the jungles of Chhattisgarh a year ago and in several other cases where people get killed by the Naxals. The Right either hits the silent mode or goes ballistic when communal Hindus kill others. The result: death has lost its shock value and turned a subject of perverse entertainment. We have managed to trivialise death by intellectualising it and squeezed the space for emotional reaction to events that are so intensely human in character. A policeman is a normal human being after all, not a grotesque offspring of some ideology. The opinion makers on television and other media cut a sorry figure, not because they have nothing new to offer in terms of ideas but also because they put up visibly desperate efforts to manipulate the truth and defend the indefensible. Not many look mentally capable of getting out of their ideological cocoons to say something original. The thinking class is incapable of venturing beyond the existing theoretical paradigm. It is a sad testimony to our dumbed down times. Why can’t we have free thinkers around? These are people who could think intelligent without being handicapped by ideology. Aren’t social realities far too expansive to get encapsulated in narrow theoretical formulations?