The modern intellectual must engage with the masses they speak for, says Soumabrata Chatterjee. After all, everyday politics is conducted on the street, not in administrative buildings.
Case 1: I was attending a public talk a few weeks ago at the India International Centre in Delhi, when I noticed something extremely curious. The talk was supposed to discuss the future of the humanities, both as a discipline and as a pedagogical practice. It generally happens with academic conferences that too many metaphors spoil the broth. Nonetheless, I went with a bloated sense of hope and a hidden admiration for the speakers who were internationally recognised scholars.
The talk progressed and the three professors placed their opinions across the table. Two of them were impressive, conservatively erudite. The other professor (let’s call her Prof A), who, unlike the other two, happens to teach at a public university, spoke of a terrible crisis at the heart of the institution that is the humanities and its close corollary: intellectual freedom. She was the only one on the panel to speak of humanities as a discipline that can be dangerous. The Janus-faced freedom that we have been granted by the authorities was stark in its obscenity and futility in her point. She was the only person who talked about student movements happening across the country, from Shimla to FTII to Presidency and Jadavpur University.
What was even more surprising that one of the other professors (Prof B), who is at the helm of a private university, spoke about a detailed interdisciplinary and career-oriented approach and his fellowship intending to produce Indians who are successful in creating communicative patterns and breaking entrepreneurial borders. It was difficult to comprehend why he didn’t even try to engage with Prof A’s concerns about the danger looming large over institutions that provide fearless knowledge. It should be kept in mind that Dr Kalburgi had been murdered a couple of days before this, and Prof A had spoken about it. Nobody in the audience asked a question about this, and Prof A seemed shocked at how the whole discussion boiled down to mundane career alternatives and insipid jokes about a “Taiwanese girlfriend”, which was the example used by Prof B to hint at the globality that his students achieve through the fellowship.
It should be kept in mind that Dr Kalburgi had been murdered a couple of days before this, and Prof A had spoken about it. Nobody in the audience asked a question about this, and Prof A seemed shocked at how the whole discussion boiled down to mundane career alternatives and insipid jokes about a “Taiwanese girlfriend”.
Case 2: A head of department in another public university refused to lend a classroom for a reading group session. Why? Because it was a ‘queer studies group’. Simple and uncomplicated in its absurdity.
Case 3: Again, the venue was the India International Center, where Akshaya Mukul’s Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India was being launched. The discussion that followed was all about causalities and affects and direct confrontations. There was no attempt to unearth the ghosts of modern India and its discontents. There was no understanding of the nuanced version of politics.
There were apologists for different parties along with a distinguished scholar who desperately attempted to engage with a slightly different and fruitful version of what was happening. There was Mani Shankar Aiyar, Sitaram Yechury, Urvashi Butalia and Chandan Mitra. It turned out to be a political slugfest with Mr Mitra showing that even his Oxford education didn’t allow him to decolonise his mind off what is crude Hindutva politics. Yechury was no better, still wallowing about the yesteryears of Marxism lost in textbooks of political studies. (Also, his jokes and one-liners were not funny.) Polite, suave and clever, Aiyar picked up passages from the text and demonstrated how the BJP-Hindutva nexus is evil and in an almost Marxian way, suggested that we should exorcise this demon.
It turned out to be a political slugfest with Mr Mitra showing that even his Oxford education didn’t allow him to decolonise his mind off what is crude Hindutva politics. Yechury was no better, still wallowing about the yesteryears of Marxism lost in textbooks of political studies.
Nobody talked anything else. Mitra talked about his party politics and ghar wapsi as a benevolent process, Yechuri talked about Seeta and Geeta jokes and Aiyar about the secularisation of modern India. At the end I was feeling sorry for the author Akshaya Mukul and Urvashi Butalia and the moderator, but then they knew what they were walking into. Anyway, the kebabs were pretty good!
What is the similarity between these three cases, two of them considerably serious, pointing towards a deeper psychological inadequacy in society, and the other a sign of personal prejudice? All of them are absurd incongruities that should not exist in academic spaces.
They should shock us. They don’t. Dr Kalburgi’s death didn’t shock us; the misrepresentation of protesting Presidency students in national dailies didn’t shock us; the ghettoisation of education and subsequent saffronisation didn’t shock us; Radhe Ma’s antics didn’t shock us; hell, even Narendra Modi’s usage of the word ‘ideology’ at the Global Hindu-Buddhist Initiative on Conflict Avoidance and Environmental Consciousness on 3 September didn’t shock us.
The intellectual is what he does. His identity as an intellectual is formed by the actions he undertakes, by the strategies he employs and—to an extent—the tools he makes use of.
So, what is the role of the intellectual today? What is the definition of ‘intellectual’? I don’t think the two questions can be separated. The intellectual is what he does. His identity as an intellectual is formed by the actions he undertakes, by the strategies he employs and—to an extent—the tools he makes use of. What I can assert that the intellectual cannot be non-political. He could be apolitical, in a different sense of the term. But he is always already political. He cannot be otherwise.
When it comes to thinking about intellectuals, two or three contemporary theories come to mind. Gramsci makes a distinction between what he terms as a traditional intellectual and organic intellectual. Traditional intellectuals are in a way non-partisan, and rise above contextual issues to raise questions about meta-issues like Truth or Reason or God, for that matter. Organic intellectuals are representatives of specific groups and proponents of what we might call minority interests.
What is truly intriguing is the manner in which these two categories interact or even engage with other. Can we even sustain this distinction in the contemporary world? In this world of simulacrum, where would we find such an ethical politics?
The intellectual cannot be non-political. He could be apolitical, in a different sense of the term. But he is always already political. He cannot be otherwise.
The second comes from an amorphously defined non-Marxian philosopher. Foucault talks about a new position that the intellectual has to take in order to expose certain presumptions or pre-sanctioned truths that society has organised around the capillary nodes of power. The intellectual has to explode this power-knowledge nexus and its ensuing hegemony and try to revive an alternate regime of alternate truisms. He bridges the gap somewhat between the Gramscian categories.
In a slight deviation from what Foucualt must have meant, we could talk of Zygmunt Bauman, who understands that the authorial position the intellectual occupies might be problematic and hence proposes the role of the intellectual as the “interpreter” across texts/disciplines rather than a “man talking to men” situation. What Bauman doesn’t realise, however, is that a disinterestedness of sorts creeps into his definition of what an intellectual is. Edward Said has advocated that the intellectual has to employ a position of alterity to question the State in whatever capacity he can.
However, the multifarious nature of world politics probably doesn’t allow us the scope of an universal intellectual to engage with every hegemonic issue that’s out there. Rather, there has to be a steady flow of specific intellectuals, who I would rather call workers, who will work/engage with different minority groups, sexuality issues, class problems, race identity and try to bring possibilities of resistance. Mere interpretation won’t save us anymore.
There has to be a steady flow of specific intellectuals, who I would rather call workers, who will work/engage with different minority groups, sexuality issues, class problems, race identity and try to bring possibilities of resistance. Mere interpretation won’t save us anymore.
What we need is a conscious interactive politics that goes beyond the classroom. Radical politics has to be worked out on the streets and corners of the world. The North-South divide or the problems of the refugees can no longer be dealt with in administrative meetings. We have to open ourselves to the “other”, invite him/her, take care of her and maybe understand that our identity is formed through our interaction with this other that we have rejected time and again. It’s time to take a risk. It’s time to be hospitable. It’s time to couple politics with ethics, and think about the aesthetics of everyday politics that is not fought in administrative buildings but rather savagely out there in the streets.
