A WIDE CANVAS
OUR INTELLECTUAL BANKRUPTCY-2
Intellectual effort is largely stimulated by the challenges posed by the environment- physical or mental. In the case of the West, the nations and people have faced one crisis after another in the last 3 centuries- may be beginning with the French Revolution. The US was comparatively isolated till the First World War, but has since become the centre and leader of intellectual activity. Compared to all that, Indians may be said to have been sleeping in a shady park! May be this is one reason why there is so little original intellectual activity in India!
Even if we confine ourselves to the 20th century, the kinds of problems faced by our Western brothers and the amount of suffering endured by them are staggering. Albert Camus addressed the Columbia University in 1946 in the course of which he said:
We were born at the beginning of the First World War. As adolescents, we had the crisis of 1929; at twenty, Hitler. Then came the Ethiopian War, the Civil War in Spain,and Munich. These were the foundations of our education. Next came the Second World War, the defeat and Hitler in our homes and cities. Born and bred in such a world, what did we believe in? Nothing. Nothing except the obstinate negation in which we were forced to clothe ourselves from the very beginning. The world in which we were called to exist was an absurd world, and there was no other in which we could take refuge.......If the problem had been the bankruptcy of a political ideology or a system of government, it would have been simple enough. But what happened came from the very root of man and society. There was no doubt about this, and it was confirmed day after day not so much by the behaviour of the criminals but by that of the average man....
..Now that Hitler has gone we know a certain number of things. The first is that the poison that impregnated Hitlerism has not been eliminated; it is present in each of us..Another thing we have learned is that we cannot accept any optimistic conception of existence, any happy ending whatsoever. But if we believe that optimism is silly, we also know that pessimism about the action of man among his fellows is cowardly.
[From: The Age of Atheists by Peter Watson, chap,17. This is an exceptionally erudite account of the intellectual history of the 20th century. It is massive, but makes very interesting and easy , compelling reading. ]
Albert Camus has reflected the essentially French experience. Now, try to imagine what the English, the Czech, Hungarians, Polish, Germans, Italians, Austrians, and others had undergone in Europe. Can any Indian relate anything comparable?
The Second World War brought about more massive destruction than the First, but it is the First which is still called "the Great War". Europe had known many wars through the centuries, but the First World War was totally different. At one level, it represented the culmination of all the scientific and technological advance made till then, used primarily for destruction of people and nations ie civilisation itself! On a more fundamental level, it represented the very failure of religion- Christianity, nullifying nearly 2000 years of organised church and systematised dogma! To some extent , the War proved what Nietzsche had declared by the turn of the century: God is dead- we have killed him! Bertrand Russell had said that Christianity was a doctrine that "put cruelty into the world and gave the world generations of cruel torture". He pointed out that the First World War "was wholly Christian in origin" and all the politicians involved in it were "applauded as earnest Christians".(See: Bertrand Russell: Why I Am Not A Christian,1927)
Just reflect on one fact: ordinary people in every country, practising Christians then, went to the Church of their respective denominations and prayed, following the same Book, to the same God, mediated by the same messenger of Peace, that their enemies, also Christians, should be killed! When the war erupted, it created euphoria in every country, leaders extolled it, writers and poets eulogised it. It left millions of youth in every country dead, families shattered, economies ruined. And in 20 years, another war started, involving much the same people.But the euphoria was absent. No wonder, people lost faith in religion, Churches lost hold on people, organised Christianity lost its credibility.
Unfortunately, this has not been replaced by any other faith but by total faithlessness- absence of any belief in any faith. Nihilism has taken over- not mere uncertainty, but the very denial of the very possibility of any certainty. Nihilism, Absurdism, Existentialism etc are all words played around, without making any sense other than that we cannot make sense of this world. Nothing is certain here, and nothing is certain hereafter! So, manage as you can, live as you will- this seems to be the final intellectual stance of modern thinkers(!) and writers.
The Indian experience has been wholly different.India as a whole did not experience any traumatic event as the two world wars, or the severe depression of the 30s. Indian society did not face large scale disintegration, or disorientation. The biggest thing that happened in the last century in India is first the freedom struggle, and then the development exercise. Under the influence of Gandhi,the freedom struggle managed to contain some religious and moral elements, however flawed. After Gandhi, Nehru became wholly secular and the focus became one of economic development via socialist planning. It ended in disaster and by 1990s, the experiment with so called privatisation and liberalisation began. But our bureaucrats being soaked in half a century of centralised power, it is not easy, if at all possible, for the control mind-set to disappear, and for true freedom to emerge. In any case, these movements affected just the fringe of the population, and bulk of the people continue to be indifferent and immune to any intellectual influences.We have not had any deeply moving experience so as to stir our mind or shake our faith.
But my point is, neither during the days of planned development, nor during the days of so called liberation, have our intellectuals so called produced anything original. They merely echoed the ideas of foreigners. No Indian economist has ever written one single tract like Rostow's Stages of Economic Growth, or The Process of Economic Growth; nor has any subsequently written one justifying the liberalisation approach. Even today, the great debates on globalisation are carried on by foreign economists. Our best economists are mercenaries of foreign, especially American universities and purveyors of those ideas, taking care not to offend their employers, or their masters, the World Bank, IMF, WTO dispensation! Such is the state of intellectual freedom.In the 50s and 60s, we had some original Indian minds like B.R.Shenoy, A.D.Shroff, Minoo Masani, Rajaji. Today, our economists only know which side the bread is buttered, or only seek to feather their own nest.
Walt Whitman Rostow.Picture from Public domain, via Wikimedia. He advocated a model of economic growth based on free enterprise, in contrast to the Soviet model. It was influential for long, though criticised as being historical, mechanical and centred on the Western experience. The real value of any social theory is not that it is the final word, but is part of the process of finding one! No Indian establishment economist has come up with an answer, or an alternative. The real answers came from Gandhian thinkers like Richard B.Gregg, J.C.Kumarappa or the independent ones like Prof.B.R.Shenoy.
Illustration by Jayachandran from www.livemint. acknowledged with grateful thanks. In the words of Prof.P.T.Bauer, Prof. Shenoy was a hero and a saint. Alas, he remains unsung.
This picture is taken from Tata Archives. Acknowledged gratefully. Copyright status not known.
J.C.Kumarappa, trained accountant turned a Gandhian economist and thinker. His book, "The Economy of Permanence" embodies an authentic Indian view of economic life and development. It can be considered the forerunner of Schumacher's "Small is Beautiful".
This picture is from Gandhiniketan, T.Kallupatti. Gratefully acknowledged.
Men like Prof.B.R.Shenoy, A.D.Shroff, J.C.Kumarappa are our true intellectuals, while the large number of establishment economists can only be considered tin horns.
The real saving grace of India has been that in spite of all the secular-rationalist propaganda, the people have not lost faith in religion. But there is not much of original intellectual activity here by Indians. Intellectual interpretation of our religion and philosophy has been quietly taken over by "phoren" scholars, who are essentially anti-Hindu. Our leading representatives of traditional religion are not even aware of this. There is no strong intellectual movement to oppose this- though some individuals are quite active. This will lead to the raising of a hostile academic wall against Hinduism all over the Western academic world.
I don't care much that we do not have a genuine economic or political intellectual class in India.In the mass culture that prevails, political expediency and short-term gains alone will count, not any ideology or concept.The bureaucrat will continue to rule, not the intellectual or technocrat. In fact, we do not even have good teachers in our schools and colleges- including the engineering colleges. For the peanuts they give, only monkeys will come, as they used to say.
Western intellectualism is an authentic Western reaction to genuine, felt, experienced Western life. It has a shared common ground as the basis. A Marx or a Freud, Nietzsche or Weber, Sartre or Camus, or any of the isms that arose like Feminism could not have risen or found roots or followers elsewhere. They are essentially related to the failure of Judeo-Christian prescription or perception. But all this, together with the advances in the physical and social sciences, has only resulted in a dark agnosticism and destruction of values which formed the basis of Western civilisation, now leading to the destruction of the very springs of life- as evidenced by the nuclear science and genetic engineering experiments. The West is on the brink of destroying not only itself, but the whole of humanity, on account of the West's global reach and control.
The authentic Indian life, thought and experience are so essentially different. In spite of the much publicised poverty, India has not lost its soul. In spite of the so called material progress, India has not lost its roots, yet. A massive uprooting of Indian life is taking place right now, under the impact of globalisation: our lifestyle is changing, our landscape is disappearing, whole habitats are being destroyed in the name of development. Hundreds of thousands are being displaced- as by a Dam like the Narmada, or a project like a new automobile factory. Thousands of hectares of fertile agricultural land are being gobbled up by the greedy industrial goons and their govt benefactors. Yet, we do not have a native Goldsmith or Matthew Arnold or Thomas Gray to record and react to these disasters.
Oliver Goldsmith, portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds.
His poem "The Deserted Village" describes how the English life was destroyed by brutal industrialisation.
Matthew Arnold, poet and prominent social critic of the Victorian Age, whose criticism of mindless industrialisation is still valid. See for instance his poem "Scholar Gipsy".
Thomas Gray, portrait by John Giles Eccardt.
His famous poem "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" celebrates the idylls of a contented rural community, though people there might have lived as strangers to 'fame and fortune'.The very opening lines are:
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
These lines will surely evoke a strong feelings in those who come from rural areas, where they would surely have seen and felt such scenes, which have largely disappeared now due to 'development'- the lowing herd replaced by the noxious automobile, the ploughman replaced by the tractor, the woods replaced by the concrete jungle.
William Blake's illustration of the first stanza!
All four pictures are from Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.
Our education system has made us more sensitive to what happens in London, Paris or New York than what is happening in our own backyard. Our intellectuals are so phoney, they can only echo what foreigners say. Our intellectuals are so remote from the springs of life they can contribute nothing original to enhance the quality of human thought or life, anywhere on earth. They are a breed of cheap imitators, unable even to decide what to absorb. They are just like the blotting paper, or the dust bin of the West.
Our real life is still centred round religion or the spiritual instinct. Nothing has happened in India to make us lose faith- in life or God, our trials and difficulties notwithstanding. Our real intellectuals are still our spiritual masters- Ramakrishna-Vivekananda, Ramana Maharshi, Sri Aurobindo. The last authentic Indian academic intellectual we had was Dr.S.Radhakrishnan who could hold his own anywhere in the world. Our present breed of self-styled intellectuals, thinkers, progressives is a race of cheap, mindless imitators, slaves of the West, purveying dead ideas for money and name.
Absence of intellectuals in the natural or social sciences in India does not really matter. But absence or paucity of modern,serious religious scholars among Hindus is a matter of grave concern. Here Hindus are not just being short-sighted- they are totally without sight!
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