No country for intellectuals

THE PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL IN INDIA
Romila Thapar
Aleph
204 pages; Rs 499

When Romila Thapar came to Mumbai a few months ago to deliver a lecture on "Indian Society and the Secular", the city's police force threw a protective ring around the venue. The Mumbai Police feared her talk could have an incendiary impact on the city's fragile law and order situation. But, thank goodness, at least no ban was imposed. On a more serious note, when an 83-year old academic talking about secularism poses a threat to society, it is a measure of how rapidly the space for public intellectuals is shrinking in the country.

The space is shrinking not just because we live in times of strident political belief systems but also because people are unwilling to engage with ideas different from their own. It is shrinking also because, as historian Ramachandra Guha eloquently frames in an article he wrote for Caravan magazine in March on a completely different issue, intellectuals are being confused with ideologues. It is also shrinking because the level of public debate in the country has degenerated into slanging matches and learning has been reduced to clearing a string of examinations.

Who is a public intellectual? And why has she become so dangerous? In her book, Ms Thapar describes him or her as one who can "take a position independent of those in power." She must be autonomous, concerned about the people's welfare and question ideas irrespective of where they come from. Ms Thapar's co-essayist, Sundar Sarukkai, a philosopher interested in physical and natural sciences, says "the real essence of a public intellectual: Someone who acts to create a public in which her role will become redundant and unnecessary." Peter Ronald deSouza, professor with the Society of Developing Societies , says a public intellectual "must continuously strive to show that another world is possible in India."

Not only are there many definitions, there are also divergent views about the role of public intellectuals. More than a hundred years ago, American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson described the public intellectual as the "world's eye", who communicates his ideas to the people not because of his social conscience but because of his obligation to himself. That is what makes him a whole man. Edward Said, says Alan Lightman (who is professor of the practice of humanities at Massachusetts Institute of Technology), was the one who brought a political tone to the concept. Said delivered a series of lectures during the course of which he said an intellectual is a part of society and should address his concerns to as wide a public as possible.

For Professor Lightman, a public intellectual must always be aware of the enormous power he wields and at the same time realise the limitations of his knowledge. "He has enormous power to influence and change, and he must wield that power with respect," he said in a recent address to students at MIT.

It is the power of ideas that an intellectual wields and this book is the most effective advertisement for why we need them. Each essay deals with a range of issues, eclectic, diverse and controversial. And the ideas the essays present come clad in the armour of scholarship.

Ideas are the lifeblood of a civilisation and if we choke them or try to hammer them down with nails, we are signing our death warrants. Ms Thapar points out an interesting fact; Buddha and Socrates were contemporaries and they were both philosophers who "encouraged questions and who explored causality and rational explanations." Yet, Socrates had hemlock written in his destiny; Buddha, on the other hand, faced stiff opposition from the reigning orthodoxy but was not killed for his ideas. Indian civilisation was far more amenable to new ideas. Of course, it is also true that Buddhism faced stiff competition in India and had to find a home in neighbouring lands.

Ms Thapar also looks at the concept of evil and asks who defines it. She quotes the Gita (9.32) where Krishna tells Arjuna that women, Vaishyas and Shudras are born of a papa-yoni (a womb of evil). But, even they can achieve salvation if they take refuge in him. Is that how we would define evil today? Surely not, but that is how a civilisation progresses: By accepting that their gods are flawed and by learning to discard ideas and concepts that are no longer relevant.

But, this is India and no argument can end on a definitive note; so to bring in a different perspective to the debate, here is a story: In the run-up to the last elections that the Bharatiya Janata Party won with a rousing mandate, I remember a particularly tetchy conversation with a few friends. One remarked, disdainfully, that the naysayers to the then prime-minister-in-waiting, Narendra Modi's development agenda were all "intellectuals", implying they were jobless wasters. Well, it must be a degenerate society that finds no role for its intellectuals.