ELECTION 99
COLUMNISTS
DIARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
ELECTIONS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ARCHIVES

Search Rediff

Treason of the Intellectuals

Okay, somebody pocketed 64 crore rupees in the Bofors deal during the Rajiv Gandhi regime. Half-a-dozen MPs made a lot of money by saving the Narasimha Rao government. And more than a few are alleged to have made a quick pile in the telecom, sugar and wheat scams in the closing days of Atal Bihari Vajpayee's second term.

And then say hello to all those practitioners of the give-and-take gurukul of politics: the Antulays and the Bangarappas, the Laloo Yadavs and the Jayalalithas. And then, of course, to the Harshad Mehtas and the Hiten Dalals, the Lakhubhai Pathaks and the Jain brothers who knew how to tip the pipers, and how much.

So?

Corruption involving cash has been the leit motif -- the mascot -- of Indian politics for a while now, but is it the only form of corruption sapping our vitals that it should occupy our attention so? Does "our" collective obsession with corruption in high places and the crusade against it by the V P Singhs and T N Seshans make any sense when you consider that not one of our VCPs -- Very Corrupt Persons -- has been convicted yet, and none seems likely to be so?

Meanwhile: • Since it has become as predictable as the Congress, does the BJP have the guts to buck the trend and name Sikander Bakht as party president and Sushma Swaraj as working president? • In recommending that terrestrial phone users pay for calls made to cell phones, whose cause is the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India trying to espouse? And why? • If diesel prices were raised to match international prices, shouldn't petrol prices, which have plummeted since the end of the Gulf War, also be lowered to match international prices? • # R K Laxman's latest book is a joint effort with Bal Thackeray, who also released his last book. Has the "common man" gone saffron? • Can the Department of Posts successfully sue Shobha De for copyright infringement for the title of her new book Speed Post?

Yes, "money corruption" matters, is the usual middle class view. In The Black Economy in India (Penguin India, 1999) , economist Arun Kumar talks of how the parallel economy has risen from 3 per cent of the GDP in the mid-'50s to around 40 per cent today; of how the country has lost $ 150 billion in gold imports and another $ 100 billion in capital flight since Independence. And of how pilferage of electricity in Delhi has resulted in a booming Rs 1,250 crore (Rs 12.5 billion) inverter-generator industry.

No, "money corruption" doesn't matter a dime, is the unusual view. In India's Intellectual Desert (Dalit Sahitya Akademy, 1999) the radical Dalit writer-editor-activist V T Rajshekar says our "mind-manipulators" are highlighting only "money corruption" to deliberately hide the other three forms of corruption ripping us apart: moral corruption, caste corruption and intellectual corruption. The last of the four, intellectual corruption, he says, is the king of all corruptions.

"If the intellectual class of India had been free from corruption, we would have succeeded by this time in controlling all the other three forms of corruption.... Any corrupt politician like Jayalalitha or Narasimha Rao could have been simply fried in burning oil if only our intellectuals had been honest. "

The big hoo-ha about who took how much and from whom is a waste, says Rajshekar, because the bribe-giver and the bribe-taker belong to the same class. Ergo: money corruption doesn't mean a thing to the great majority of India that is Bharat, some 85 per cent at last count, and is therefore a non-issue.

"India's sick doctors, its intellectuals, are not only NOT identifying the disease but are also concealing (any knowledge of) it from the patient. Thus by wrongly diagnosing the disease, the remedy they are prescribing is worsening the disease. Such a mental state of the doctors is called intellectual corruption and this corruption is worse than any other form of corruption," says Rajshekar in a searing 50-page critique, which is sure to go unreviewed in our market-driven mainstream press.

"If India is what is today the credit goes entirely to our intellectuals. Not politicians. Blaming everything on our politicians is the mischief of this failed intellectual class."

Rajshekar is editor of Dalit Voice, the oldest and the largest circulated journal of the 'Persecuted Nationalities Denied Human Rights,' otherwise known as the untouchables. For 20 years and more, he has been the voice of the country's oppressed. It is because of this reason -- and because our media blacks out everything that doesn't titillate the masses and the market -- that one needs to give his views on corruption a patient hearing. He may be wrong, but then he may also be dead right.

"Indian intellectuals -- boisterous, bombastic, boastful and bogus -- have become a band of counter-revolutionaries. And today, they are the chief obstacle for any social change."

To define an "intellectual", Rajshekar leans on Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar: "In every country the intellectual class is the most influential class, if not the governing class. It can foresee, advise and lead. In no country does the mass of the people live the life of intelligent thought and action. It is largely imitative and follows the intellectual class. The entire destiny of a country depends upon its intellectual class. If this class is honest, independent and disinterested it can be trusted to take the initiative and give a proper lead when a crisis arises."

Rajshekar's case is that Indian intellectual class has been so consistently corrupt and dishonest that it is, in fact, the crisis.

"Our intellectuals have not learnt anything new nor forgotten anything old. Our deaf and dumb intellectual class has never played the role of a disturber of the status quo.... Our intellectuals always worship the rising sun, their public posture can be always predicted and easily persuaded into some slogan. The only art it has mastered is to never, ever give publicity to any dissenter."

Rajshekar admits that the ruling class in every country hides its crimes. America's whites are silent on their crimes against the blacks. Yet, he says, western intellectuals have the courage to question their country's rulers. Which is why, he says, the American white intellectual class could produce a Noam Chomsky. That inability to speak our mind fearlessly, truthfully, honestly is also exactly why, he says, we haven't produced a Jean Paul-Sartre or a Bertrand Russel or a Voltaire?

"In the US, the president consults academicians and top journalists. Here, the influence of intellectuals is minimal if not non-existent. No one bothers about our intellectuals because they have turned careerists."

In Treason of the Intellectuals (Norton, 1980), Julien Benda identifies intellectuals as those "who denounce corruption, defend the weak, defy imperfect or oppressive authority" and who must be willing to face the risk of being burnt alive, ostracised or crucified. Such a tribe, says Rajshekar, vanished with Ambedkar. As the country's first law minister, the doyen of dalits introduced the Hindu Code Bill and resigned when Brahmins and other upper castes led by Pandit Nehru opposed it. "Though he was a bitter critic of Hindus and Hinduism, he suffered for Hindus and resigned as a Union minister for their sake," says Rajshekar.

"An honest intellectual is one whose spirit cannot be extinguished by threats. Nor torture alter his conviction. His goals are clear and he is prepared to sacrifice, suffer and die to achieve them. For him, suffering itself turns into joy."

Today's intellectuals don't fit into this definition because when their caste interests come into clash with reality, they sulk, shirk or slip into silence. The common reply of such intellectuals in times of crises is: "Why should we enter into this controversy?" An honest intellectual cannot afford to be neutral or silent, says Rajshekar, and cites the stand of M N Srinivas, Andre Beteille and others during the anti-Mandal Commission agitation. The intellectual dishonesty of these social scientists, he says, stood exposed.

"In India an intellectual cannot but be a prostitute. The system makes him a prostitute. This highly stratified Hindu society arranged on an ascending order of reverence and descending degree of contempt is a fertile breeding ground for such prostitutes."

Likewise, says Rajshekar, authorities on ancient Indian history like Romila Thapar and Sarvepalli Gopal failed to speak out and much less act as the scourge and scavenger of society during the Babri Masjid episode. "Both knew the facts of history but surrendered and allowed themselves to be silenced. They played safe and allowed Hindu Nazis to run riot because to them their jati interests became more important than the interests of the society and the country. They failed to speak out the truth for the sake of private gains."

Rajshekar confronts Gopal on his weak-kneed response on the very issue. Obviously irritated, Gopal retorts: "What more did you expect from me? Did you think I should have committed suicide?" Rajshekar's response: The Babri Masjid was a cause worth suffering, sacrificing and dying for. At least Gopal should have threatened self-immolation. That would have averted the death of thousands of innocent Muslims later. "The Babri Masjid was the greatest tragedy that the ruling class of India inflicted upon innocent Muslims after Operation Bluestar was launched to ensure the "Hinduisation" of Sikhs."

"This is an intellectual wasteland with only a few cases dotting the arid expanse."

Be it the extraordinary spectacle of presidents and prime ministers doing their salaams to Sai Baba or the more recent spectacle of premier scientific institutions specialising in vaastu shastra, or the support of intellectuals like Ramakrishna Hegde for playwright B V Karanth when Vibha Mishra lay dying of burns in Bhopal, Rajshekar exposes the duplicity of our intellectual class with a candour that at times hinges on the libelous. But who said truth didn't hurt?

Rajshekar reserves his best for "intellectual taxidermists" aka scientists. "How can such people like Raja Ramanna and S Bhagwantam be called scientists when they consider themselves the Sai Baba's devotees?" And then there is M S Swaminathan (rated one of the most influential Asians by Time magazine!) "who was caught redhanded for bagging the Magsaysay Award by making a false claim that a dwarf wheat produced by him contained more protein than milk."

"It is no wonder that the youth is fed up with India. Its idealism is set on fire. And that is why hundreds of our talented youngsters do not even return after getting foreign education."

Rajshekar is also especially scathing in his criticism of the Press. "Phoolan Devi, a poor backward class woman, who was raped non-stop by dozens of upper caste Thakurs in her village, is continuously described as a dacoit by the press because she joined a gang of dacoits to wreak vengeance on these Thakurs. The same press people do not apply the same description to a bigger dacoit, Jayalalitha, because she is their jatwali.... To speak up and fight for the cause of the wretched of the earth like Phoolan, it needs steady realism, tremendous rational energy. And above all that courage that comes out of conviction. Indian upper castes lack it because caste blinds their thinking. They are a set of dead wood."

"It is an all-round conspiracy in Indian to undercut the truth and continue the exploitative game."

Rajshekar also quotes his favourite author on his pet peeve: "Journalism in India was once a profession. It has now become a trade. It has no more function than the manufacture of soap. It does not regard itself as the responsible adviser of the public. To give the news uncoloured by any motive, to present a certain view of public policy which it believes to be for the good of the community, to correct and chastise without fear all those, no matter how high, who have chosen a wrong or barren path, is not regarded by journalism in India its first or foremost duty. To accept a hero and worship him has become its principal duty. Under it, news gives place to sensation, reasoned opinion to unreasoning passion, appeal to the minds of responsible people to appeal to the emotions of the irresponsible."

The author? Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar. The year? 1943.

Copies of India's Intellectual Desert, pp 50, Rs 50, can be had from Dalit Voice, C-4/4032, V.I.P. Sector, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi-110070. Rajshekar's email: vtr@ndf.vsnl.net.in

Krishna Prasad