Today we have specialists in various professions, but many among them are unconcerned with the work on their own specialisation. It is sometimes said that they are replacing the public intellectuals, but the two are not identical.
There are many more academics, for instance, than ever existed before, but it seems that most prefer not to confront authority, even if it devours the path of free thought. Is this because they wish to pursue knowledge undisturbed, or because they are ready to discard knowledge should authority require them to do so? Much has been written on trying to define the public intellectual. Such a person, it is assumed, should take a position independent of those in power, enabling him or her to question debatable ideas, irrespective of who propagates them.
Reasoned critiques are often the essential starting point. The public intellectual has to see herself or himself as a person who is as close to being autonomous as is possible, and more than that, to be seen by others as such. An acknowledged professional status makes it somewhat easier to be autonomous.
The public intellectual today, in addition to being of such a status, has at the same time a concern for what constitutes the rights of citizens, and particularly in issues of social justice. And further, there is a readiness to raise these matters as public policy. A justification for the critique is the claim to speak for society and to claim a degree of moral authority.
The combination of drawing upon wide professional respect, together with a concern for society, can sometimes establish the moral authority of a person and ensure public support. This is a conceded qualification and not a tangible one. In the past, it was those who had distanced themselves somewhat from society that were believed not to have ulterior motives in the changes that they suggested.
But this was not always so. Today, formal affiliation to a political party in our times can inhibit free thinking and prescriptions for action, even if it has the advantage of providing for support. As an attitude of mind, autonomy is more readily expected of the professional specialist or the academic.
Such persons, and they are not the only ones, can suggest alternative ways of thought and even action regarding problems of the larger society. Such thinking can lay claim to rational logical analysis. Yet academics today are hesitant to defend what might be broadly called rational interpretations, however sensitively they may be expressed.
This is evident from the ease with which books are banned and pulped, or demands made that they be burnt, and syllabuses changed under religious and political pressure, or the intervention of the state. Why do such actions provoke so little reaction among academics, professionals, and others of us who are interested in the outcome of these actions? The obvious answer is the fear of the instigators who are persons with the backing of political authority. But is this the only answer? Many today comment on the narrowing of the liberal space in the last couple of decades.
It was fought back, and now it is upon us again. To question those that represent conventional authority, and to demand responsible action, needs constant repetition, especially where it involves a negation of justice. The ordinary citizen hesitates to share criticism of religious activities or of contemporary politics on social media, although social media today has become the area of much doing and throwing.
More specifically, when it comes to religious identities and their politics, we witness hate campaigns based on absurd fantasies about specific religions, and we no longer confront them frankly. Such questioning means being critical of organisations and institutions that claim a religious intention, but use their authority for non-religious purposes. They invoke the rules and regulations of former religion, sometimes recently invented, in order to legitimise their actions.
Their actions may bring murder, rape, and mayhem. Those outside the organisation maintain that the values of religion do not preach violence. But that is not the issue.
Of course, all religions endorse the same virtuous values. But it is not the values that are under question, it is the beliefs and actions of organisations that act in the name of religion. Can the law be brought to bear against those that disrupt our societies, even as they speak in the name of religion? There are many reasons for the decline of the public intellectual, and I can only mention some.
The most obvious, but least conceived, are insecurities generated by the neoliberal culture. What do I mean by this? These have arisen out of the economic boom it was supposed to bring for everybody. But which boom has misfired for most? Jobs have become far more competitive.
This adds to existing aggressions and erodes the reliance on human relationships. Almost obscene disparities in wealth further the aggressions. Values are being turned to tinsel with the endorsing of ostentatious activity.
The ready acceptance of corruption has become normal. Money is the new deity lavishly worshipped among the rich. The rest wait anxiously for the so-called trickle-down.
There is a catch between the excitement of having the right to demand equality, but of its being denied because of new versions of caste and money power. The neoliberal culture and economy cannot be easily changed, but its ill effects can be reduced, provided we are clear that society must be rooted in the rights of the citizens to resources, to welfare, and to social justice. This, after all, was the issue at the time of independence, when the nation-state was created.
And I remember in the early years of my life the amount of discussion that went into precisely these issues. If such discussions are to continue, as they should in a vibrant society, and questions be raised, then we have to turn to public intellectuals to bring them to the fore. But beyond that, it also needs a public that would regard the asking of these questions as appropriate.
How can we create a public that is aware of what needs to be discussed and why? A public that would respond to questions drawing from critical reasoning. The response does not invariably have to be in the affirmative, but at least the issues for discussion can be put forward and discussed. This assumes, for a start, an educated public.
How should we be educating ourselves? This involves both professionals in various disciplines and many public intellectuals who, in part, draw their alternative authority from their professional standing. Today, there are effectively two sources of educating ourselves. One is the informal, indirect visual media as an oral form, and the second is the formal category of educational institutions.
The intermediary here is, of course, the famous, infamous internet. And like the other two, at present, its catchment area does not include the entire society. TV channels imitate each other with panellists playing musical chairs.
And certain new programmes investigate the reality beyond the statements that they are making. And everything, but everything, has to be seen in terms of current politics. Is it possible, I am beginning to think, is it possible to have an alternate channel on TV, or even a broadcasting station on radio, not geared to profit? One that encourages exploring alternate solutions that go well beyond the single byte.
Such solutions going well beyond the single byte would really draw on inspirations from a critique of society, economy, politics, and the world around us. How do we finance the voice of those that have more than an immediate interest in society, and who are thoughtful about its future? The other source, that of formal education, has to be seen at two levels. The content of education and the autonomy of educational institutions, which is what we should be concerned with today.
Education is moving out of the hands of educationalists, it would seem, and into those politics, politicians, political organisations, pretending to be cultural and religious institutions. This makes it crucial to be aware of how politicians today relate to intellectuals, if at all they do. Ideally, the essence of learning lies in enabling a person to think in forms that are analytical, logical, autonomous, not to mention creative.
The first step is to provide information of existing knowledge. The next step is to assess whether there is a need for replacing existing knowledge with new, improved knowledge through the process of learning. The educational system as it works today does not even reach to the first step in most schools.
Some suspect that the acute shortage of schools, and the poor condition of those that do exist, may be deliberate policy, arising from the fear of a citizenry that is not merely literate, but educated in thinking. Hence the striking neglect of school education in the last half century. We have an absurd situation where there is virtually no preparation, even for secondary school, leave alone university, in terms of how to handle knowledge.
Yet we are rushing to open more universities, IITs, IIMs and what have you. Inevitably this situation leads to diluting education to the point of being almost meaningless. In fact to reduce it to what I call LCD education, the lowest common denominator.
For most young people, the methods of thinking that are essential to the nurturing of inquiring minds, and those that might resonate with public intellectuals, are in fact stymied by the very system of education. One is thankful though that there are some who do manage to think independently and creatively despite the system, but they don’t add up to the critical mass that we require. One might ask what are the issues that could be raised by contemporary public intellectuals.
For the unprivileged citizen, in fact the majority of our citizens, governance continues to be survival in an anachronistic system, clinging to its colonial rules. The unjust distribution of national wealth keeps the poverty line high. Caste and religious priorities still prevail using the same categories that date to colonial times.
Colonial administration invented majority and minority communities and encouraged the identity politics of religion. As permanent categories, these disallow democratic functioning because in democracy, those that make up a majority change from issue to issue. Reservation in education and employment retained on a permanent basis reiterates these religious and caste identities, whatever the marginal benefits may be.
The solution actually lies in a different and altogether different ordering of society and economy. The ultimate success of democracy requires that the society be secular. By this I mean a society that goes beyond the coexistence of all religions, a society whose members have equal social and economic rights as citizens and can exercise these rights irrespective of their religion.
A society that is free from control by religious organisations in the activities related to these rights. A society where there is freedom to belong to any or no religion. Public intellectuals would be involved in explaining where secularisation lies and why it is inevitable in a democracy and in defending the secularising process.
Public intellectuals are not absent in our society, nor are they alien imports. They do have a lineage. Historical change requires us to recognise that their role, although similar to earlier intellectuals, needs to be extended in our times.
Their predecessors added new dimensions to understanding our society. Were they nurtured subconsciously by earlier heterodoxies that explained the human condition through reason and logical argument? Were they also nurtured by exercising a secular moral authority over those that controlled society? And closer to us in time by negating colonial dominance. Public intellectuals drawing on critical reasoning are the inheritors of this bequest.
The title of my talk is full of questions and let me end therefore with a conclusion that will be one of very many, one at least very long question. I would like to conclude with a long question. It is not that we are bereft of people who think autonomously and can ask relevant questions, but frequently where there should be voices there is silence.
Are we all being co-opted too easily by the comforts of conforming? Are we fearful of the retribution that questioning may and often does bring? Do we need an independent space that would encourage us to think and to think together?
