Spotlight
New Delhi, 12 January 2019
Society Intellectualism
DEFINED BY POLITICAL NARRATIVES
By Sagarneel Sinha
In the present era,
slowly and gradually, intellectualism is being, more or less characterised by
political narratives of left and right. The well-being society’s most valuable
asset is the intellectualism that it possesses and in its absence, the society
starts to decay.
Philosophically,
intellectualism is identified with reasoning -- deriving knowledge through
reasons -- the way an individual understands. Sometimes one may be wrong to
derive the right knowledge but the unending urge of the human mind to sense the
surroundings works out at the end. But unfortunately, when narratives of left
and right-wing politics takes the form of intellectualism, the sun of wisdom
sets in and ignorance of mind starts dominating the discourse of society.
This is the reason
intellectualism is always identified as the enemy by those who want to dominate
the society. Obviously, for the left-leaning activists, the right ones represent
the dogmatic ideas and for the right wings, left ones are intolerant. Whom to
believe --the left or the right? Actually both are correct and incorrect too.
When right wings accuse the left for being intolerant to other ideas, they are
not wrong and when the left wings charge the right for being against
intellectualism, left is correct. They are wrong when they foster themselves of
being the true upholder of the flow of diverse ideas in a society.
It is a known fact
that when there is a Left wing government, the intellectuals belonging to the Right
are targeted and same is the case when there is a Right dispensation. When the
crusade is executed by one ideology, the other creates the narrative of the
society and the nation being in danger, because narratives are easily
understood by the common people.
Intellectuals, after
they become left or right, have new tasks for their ideologically close
political parties -- creating emotional and appealing political chronicles for
the masses to ensure votes for their close ideological political parties. This
association of some with ideological propaganda politics distorts the spirit of
intellectualism.
But the situation
worsens more, when the dispensation tries to gain political mileage by
exploiting the situation almost in its favour, if not totally. Intellectualism
hardly matters then. This is when the moral values of a society start to decay.
Political power, then, starts to call the shots to determine who is the holiest
intellectual, and who is not. This orientation is common for both the
ideologies.
It is not that all
the intellectuals embrace either the left or the right side. There are voices
in the society without any ideological baggage. But the problem is they are
often not heard in the ideologically-charged society which favours definite
identities — nameless are not oft- encouraged. Even if they manage to break
through, the nameless are labelled with certain ideological tags by both the
left and right intellectuals.
In India, the left
intellectuals always try to ignore the glorious Hindu past and only highlight
the gloomy side of it. In case of Sultanate and Mughal rule, they always try
their best to showcase the positive side of them — ignoring the dark sides of
those eras. On the other side, the right intellectuals do completely the
opposite of their counterparts — left intellectuals. This intellectual division
of India, no doubt, has hampered the progressive development of the society.
History needs an independent analysis and some of the major issues of the
country have their roots in the past and are continuing till today like the
caste problem. The question is why caste problem still continues in India? One
of the reasons, most probably, is due to improper analysis of the caste system.
Truth is even the intellectuals continue to practise racism because when the
right intellectuals give their opinions on caste they are rejected by the left
ones and vice versa. Actually, this division instead of contributing to end the
caste system has rather allowed it to flourish as these ideologically-sided
intellectuals have a say on the policies of the elected governments, which also
many times rely only on those who have ideological proximities.
Intellectual
development of a society is very essential if a country has to progress.
However, in many countries there have been regulations by ruling regimes backed
by politically-sided intellectuals to contain the flow of intellectual
development. In the past, there have been instances of Socialist regimes like
Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and Nazi-ruled Germany and Fascist regime of
Italy. In these regimes, it’s a known fact that those regimes had intellectuals
to control the society.
Similarly, the
present world is not so different with countries like North Korea, Iran, Saudi
Arabia and some other countries like Turkey, Venezuela et al, joining the list
with elected governments turning autocratic, influenced by emerging far right
and left movements, where the regimes backed intellectuals play a key role to
suppress diverse views and propagate those views only which suit them and their
masters. History has proved that such intellectualism only hindered and is still
hindering the society to prosper where dissent was and is a punishable offense.
Intellectualism ensures
an environment of discussions and debates, not loud debates as we often witness
in TV studios, and guarantees the flow of diverse ideas in the society. In such
a domain, existence of dissent is obvious. But when dissent is woven into a
political agenda, it doesn't actually serve its useful purpose for an
intellectual society. However, often, the analysis is on the problems of dissent
and solutions are hardly worked out. When we highlight on the problem, it
results only in the growth of it. Same goes in the case of dissent too.
In today's era,
healthy discussions and debates between persons belonging to different ideas
are very much required to contain the further growth of dissent into a violent
storm. Of course, this is possible when intellectualism, free from right and
left propaganda, is practised only for the purpose of the growth of a society
and a nation because when an intellectual works for a political agenda, a false
narrative is repeated many times only to make it a true fact.
This will be possible
when both the left and right intellectuals stop calling the shots and allow the
society to develop ideas on its own. Society has to be alerted as dissent is an
essential feature of intellectualism but when it is politicised for wrong
reasons, it is harmful too. That’s why today’s society needs intellectualism
free from all these left and right agenda. Otherwise, dissent will continue to
be misused merely as a political weapon for gain by both the ideologies through
fostering of catchy political narratives, ultimately erasing the space for true
intellectualism and pushing the society towards darkness.---INFA
(Copyright, India
News & Feature Alliance)
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