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Chaturanga

~ statecraft, strategy, society, and Σοφíα

Chaturanga

Tag Archives: Ramachandra Guha

Where are the Left’s intellectuals?

18 Wed Oct 2017

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in Opinion and Response

≈ Comments Off on Where are the Left’s intellectuals?

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Aakar Patel, Charu Mazumdar, EMS Namboodiripad, intellectual, Left, MN Roy, New Humanism - A Manifesto, Ramachandra Guha, Shripad Dange

Where are the Right’s intellectuals?, Ramachandra Guha mused approximately two and a half years ago. Whether or not the scope of the question could be expanded internationally, its focus was, at least for the moment, on India. More particularly, for heuristic purposes at least, the attention rested on the fields of history, political science, and economics, which, presumably, Guha is more familiar with than others. A few months later, Aakar Patel further narrowed the scope to Hindutva intellectuals.

Both Guha and Patel had stirred up the proverbial hornet’s nest and received a flurry of rebuttals that questioned the methodological and definitional parameters of the articles. However, despite the authors’ assertions to the contrary, the same question could be flipped back on to the Left – where are the Left’s intellectuals? As someone who had until recently considered himself solidly as a man of the Left, the lack of a satisfactory answer to this question bothered me.

What were the great ideas of today’s Left luminaries? Who were these leading lights? As several prominent thinkers such as Michael Walzer, Stephen Pinker, and Camille Paglia – by no means of the Right themselves – have bemoaned, the Contemporary Left has come completely unhinged. In their lurch towards incoherent extremism, they have lost sight of their mission and are bleeding political relevance. In fact, opposition to the Contemporary Left has not only fuelled their opponents numbers but it has also polarised politics and society as never before.

Trigger warnings, safe spaces, and gender pronouns have not yet made their appearance in India – thank the gods! – and it would be more fruitful to restrict this discussion to India rather than take on the ills of the world. The Indian Left has never had the distinguished lineage that their counterparts in the West could boast of. Regardless of whether one agreed with Theodor Adorno, Daniel Bell, Jürgen Habermas, Edward Thompson, C Wright Mills, Stuart Hall, Herbert Marcuse, Perry Anderson, or their colleagues, they presented thought-provoking critiques of society and many translated their thoughts and beliefs into activism.

Indian Leftists, on the other hand, have never existed in that intellectual realm. Several of the eminent leaders such as Shripad Dange, EMS Namboodiripad, and Charu Mazumdar were at best little more than reactionary puppets of Moscow and Beijing. The rare exception, Manabendra Nath Roy, published his anarchist dystopia, New Humanism – A Manifesto in 1947, which criticised both traditional Marxism and parliamentary democracy as unsuitable for Indian conditions. Ironically, the case for an Indian ‘anderweg‘ is one of the fundamental positions of Indian traditionalists who would be further thrilled to see Roy borrow from the Charvaka school of dharmic philosophy rather than lean on Karl Marx, Thomas Hobbes, or John Mill to argue against uncritically imported Western politics.

Leftists may perhaps be horrified by my casual dismissal of their stalwarts such as Irfan Habib, Nivedita Menon, and DD Kosambi among others. Admittedly, there is something of a definitional grey zone in the matter, and as US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said of pornography, we know an intellectual when see his work. The primary criterion for the label, however, should be relevant application of deep knowledge to societal issues, be it via history, philosophy, literature, or some other field. A second yet equally important quality must be the influence of a work or idea beyond its immediate sphere. C. Wright Mills’ The Sociological Imagination, for instance, although a work of sociology, has gone on to affect history, philosophy, literature, psychology, and several other fields. It is telling that such works have become part of the canon for scholars on the Left as well as the Right and cannot simply be ignored. In this regard, the Indian Left’s pantheon falls short even if there may be the occasional impressive monograph with a circumscribed focus.

In the West, the degradation of the Left has reduced its contemporary members to screeching banshees who have little intellectual rigour and are lost in a relativist quagmire, that, in its defence, started with the right idea in mind. With increasing success in achieving its social goals, the Leftist mission took on a self-preservatory corporatist hue as those aims were extended further to avoid the loss of an agenda or political relevance. A genuine concern for non-Causcasians devolved into a shrill political correctness, true distress at the second-class-citizen status of women has unravelled into a toxic movement of hatred and a search for things to be offended by, and the protection of children has degenerated into a defence of laissez-faire parenting.

Not all these issues exist with equal vehemence in India and it would be silly to expect a mirroring of Detroit, Manchester, and Marseille in Delhi, Patna, and Lucknow. Yet curiously, the Indian Left has abandoned even the traditional championing of the working class, a weak concept in India as it is. Labour unions and their intellectual backers in the country have succeeded only at being disruptive forces but have done little to actually improve the quality of workers’ lives – job training, career advancement, health, and other indices remain depressing in Indian factories despite jarring sloganeering by activists, politicians, journalists, and obscure, derivative academics who have all been promoted to ersatz intellectuals of the first order owing to the lack of genuine cerebral heavyweights.

Today, the Left seems to have primarily two causes on their agenda – an uncritical, knee-jerk antipathy against the Hindu cultural sphere, and fawning sycophancy towards the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. While the latter is merely the opportunistic pursuit of sinecures, the former reveals difference between theory and praxis. In doing so, it opens the Left to a charge of either monumental hypocrisy or an insufficiently examined intellectual foundation to their politics. For example, it is unfathomable from a material or moral perspective that the Left would not constantly challenge the caste system. Yet we see that the Left harps on caste as long as it remains within the Hindu fold but falls suspiciously silent when the social category carries its potence into other faiths in case of conversion.

Similarly, Hindu festivals, beliefs, and laws are subject to attack on all grounds from environmentalism to social justice but nary a whisper is uttered against the performances, superstitions, and the autocracy of other belief systems. From the materialist lineage of the Left, this is a glaring and surprising omission in that not only are certain faiths given a special dispensation but the economic worldview is held in abeyance. Worse, criticism of this double standard is not countered with logic and data but stifled or labelled as bigotry and marked for disregard. In fact, it has been a frequent complaint that the Left typically shuts down all avenues of Right expression when its holy cow – identity – is threatened. Without a cogent argument and counter-argument, debate does not move forward; as a philosophy professor of mine hammered into the skulls of his students on the first day of class, repeating your hypothesis is not making an argument.

Politicians and activists are naturally given to hyperbole and without the presence of intellectuals to present sober perspectives, the public sphere becomes a forum for exaggerations and inaccuracies; the quality of public debate deteriorates and, over time, the population becomes polarised or apathetic. Given the seven-decades-long hold of such a rent-seeking Left on intellectual life in India, it is little wonder that there are few publications to boast of, the education system is a wreck, and the general well-being of the ‘proletariat’ has barely inched upwards.

The Left is proud of and takes care not to lose any opportunity to boast of its liberalism. However, that looks to be a better descriptor of their opponents, the so-called Right. As Thomas Sowell explained in Intellectuals and Society, what is called “the Right” are simply the various and disparate opponents of the left. These could vary from libertarians to monarchists to even supporters of theocracy. Although it need not be true in every individual, the Right broadly seems uncommitted to a commanded agenda unlike the Left. One might even hope that they approach each issue with an open, liberal mind before aligning with an opinion. This is clearly visible in how the Right in various countries disagree on several emotive issues such as the death penalty, abortion, and the social pleasures; the Left, on the other had, is fairly consistent throughout. It is this dynamic the Left uses to fuel internationalisation of their agenda whereas their opponents can scarcely decide what to have for breakfast!

The importance of high quality intellectual framing of India’s challenges and proposed solutions cannot be understated. Leaders, as they say, are limited by their vision more than by their abilities. The Indian Left’s “intellectuals” have been absconding from the policy field and its activists have instead chosen to disrupt with canned, pre-digested sound bites and shrill garble from institutional pulpits. Yet no healthy national course can be charted by one side alone, and the absence of rigorous Leftist thought weakens the Right as well – no narrative can thrive in isolation. As Austrian author Ernst Ferstl wrote, it is precisely because we are all in the same boat that we should be glad that not everyone is standing on our side.

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India’s Missing Right-Wing Intellectuals

14 Sat Mar 2015

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in India, Opinion and Response, Society, South Asia

≈ Comments Off on India’s Missing Right-Wing Intellectuals

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Dinanath Batra, ICCR, India, Indian Council for Cultural Relations, intellectual, Kota Shivarama Karanth, Lokesh Chandra, Ramachandra Guha, Right, Shatavadhani R. Ganesh, SL Bhyrappa, Yellapragada Sudershan Rao

In a recent article in Caravan Magazine, Indian historian Ramachandra Guha bemoans the absence of intellectuals on the right side of India’s political spectrum. He draws a distinction between ideologues, who are more interested in promoting their own beliefs, and intellectuals, who contribute to the growth of knowledge. While Guha does not define ‘intellectual,’ he gives several examples of those whom he considers as intellectuals in the fields of history, political science, and economics. For him, methodological integrity plays a large role in separating ideologues from intellectuals. Another difference between intellectual and ideologue is audience – the former is more concerned about the reception of research among scholars while the latter is keener on swaying the public.

At first glance, it is not difficult to have some sympathy for Guha’s point of view. A closer analysis, however, reveals a set of assumptions that may not be fully justified. First, Guha’s framework of the intellectual does not leave much room for the public intellectual – if the primary aim of scholarship is to talk to a small and academic community, then what role is there for them in the shaping of policy? If scholarship is to meant to, among other things, provide fertile material for ideologues, then would it not be wiser to look past the talking heads put up by the Right? Additionally, Guha limits the conversation to the humanities, that too a very thin slice of it – does this imply that the sciences do not produce intellectuals? In a world where it is becoming difficult to find spaces where technology and public policy do not intersect, this would be a bold assertion. If Guha’s point is merely that intelligence and intellectualism are two different qualities, then it is a rather obvious and boring observation.

Second, Guha does not specifically explain what it means to be an intellectual but takes the definition to be endoxa, that is, common wisdom based on observation over a period of time. This cleverly avoids a definitional quagmire but in exchange expects the reader to be receptive to Guha’s conception of the intellectual and the role of such figures in the public sphere. This might be too much to ask in India, a country that, even 70 years after independence, is still struggling with modernity and nationhood.

Guha’s intellectual is a product of the institution. This is not an entirely unreasonable position to take; after all, universities have become the epicentres of academic research in recent years, particularly in the humanities. Unfortunately, this view is also woefully incomplete – not only does it not acknowledge intellectuals by praxis, it also ignores scholars who are not in the academic circuit. Where does Kannada author SL Bhyrappa, for example, fit in Guha’s schema? Does the polyglot poet R Ganesh have a place? There is no doubt that these thinkers and authors have influenced millions of Indians, albeit largely in vernacular languages rather than the preferred institutional language, English.

Bhyrappa, by the way, is institutionally credentialed – he holds a doctorate in philosophy from the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, and R Ganesh is a Doctor of Letters from Hampi University. Yet degrees hardly make an intellectual, though admittedly, it is not a bad rule of thumb. Nonetheless, it should also be kept in mind that such a narrow vision would exclude people like Yevgeny Yevtushenko or Alexandr Solzhenitsyn. Moreover, it would be foolish to cling to intellectuals-by-degree in an era where more and more scholars are complaining about the flawed peer review system or a mutual citation society.

It is interesting that Guha mentions only the disciplines of history, political science, and economics. There is nothing particularly intellectual about these three than, say, philosophy, classics, and law. Presumably, Guha wants to whittle down the scope of discussion to how data or evidence is treated – in all the fields Guha mentions, there are archives, datasets, and databases upon which arguments must be based. It is here that Guha finds right-wing scholarship lacking. Yet Guha fails to mention Lokesh Chandra, the current president of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations and just as visible and allegedly controversial as Yellapragada Sudershan Rao or Dinanath Batra. Awarded a doctorate by Utrecht, Chandra has hundreds of works to his credit in the institutional setting Guha prefers.

An ideologue might retort that Guha is stacking the deck, that historical data has been tainted by layers upon layers of Christian, racial, imperial, and Marxian interpretation. For the Right to work out of such a framework would be akin to expecting a Christian theologian to make an argument for his God using the works of Charles Darwin, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens.  To this, one can easily demand that the Right develop their own primary-source-based scholarship than complain about research they do not agree with or like. However, the lack of a strong, institutional Right narrative in India is in part due to the hostile environment in which it would have had to develop. With near-dictatorial control and presence of the government in education, media, and broadcasting, there was little opportunity for right-wing institutions or intellectuals to develop. What we see today, be it the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party, the rebirth of a journal like Swarajya, or the slowly growing fan base for free market economics, is but a nascent movement. We are yet to see what they make of themselves.

The tradition of education, or what education was like a thousand years ago, in India is not pertinent today. Suffice it to say that several scholars – of law, Sanskrit, history, religion, philosophy, music, and art – exist amongst the teeming millions. They usually have day jobs and pursue their other interests in their spare time. Some of the more gifted ones have been able to abandon traditional 9-5 employment and embrace tutoring in their favourite subject. For those interested, it is not difficult to find such intellectuals but they are dispersed and not under institutional umbrellas. Which side of the political spectrum these scholars lean towards is difficult to declare for labels like Left or Right do not readily apply to the Indian political scene. However, several do maintain an admiration for the Hindu way of life and vote for the BJP.

An interesting example can be found in Guha’s hero, Kota Shivarama Karanth. Where would Guha place him on the Left-Right spectrum? Karanth is a most respected Kannada litterateur who has spoken out strongly in favour of Dalit rights (in Chomana Dudi, for example) and has opposed several infrastructural projects such as nuclear power at Kaiga and hydroelectric power at Bedti on environmental grounds. This ought to place him on the Left. However, Karanth has also opposed proselytisation and in fact aligned with the Vishwa Hindu Parishad on the issue of the Ram Mandir at Ayodhya. This would place him firmly on the Right. It is easier to find on the Right those who support Dalit rights and environmental causes than it is to find supporters of the Ram Mandir on the Left. Is Karanth not an intellectual or is the choice of Left/Right biased?

Despite the questionable assumptions of Guha’s article, any honest conservative will accept one frustration Guha has with the Right – institutions carry forward legacies and it is imperative for the Right to articulate its narrative clearly and intelligently. Whatever the past glories of India, her science, her education system, her values, or anything else, there is no turning back the clock and India’s Right must broadly conform to the modern state and its creeping bureaucratism. It is not that the Indian Right has no intellectuals but rather that it is time they stepped up to a different challenge and way of functioning.


This post appeared on FirstPost on March 17, 2015.

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