[Reader-list] FW: Missing Public Intellectual by S Srinivasaraju

[TaraPrakash]

"The simple fact about the just concluded polls is that there was no big 
point
made, no big idea discussed. No political leader or party took the risk
of espousing a big cause. We still do not know what ideas we defeated
and what we accepted.
One would assume that the elections in India are otherwise about ideas. Was 
Karnataka election an exception?

"what can be seen as a symbolic decapitation of a public
> intellectual, a man who once actively filled up the 'letters to the
> editor' column on issues of public concern in Karnataka, Mumtaz Ali
> Khan, is now a cabinet minister in the new BJP government. He has
> submitted himself to BJP's tokenism of representing a minority person
> in the cabinet. This, after BJP did not give a single ticket to a
> person from any minority community to contest the elections."
That seems very correct. However, the author would look like practicing what 
he seems to be preaching if he had not singled out a supposed intellectual 
who joined BJP. It appears that Srinivasaraju is unhappy as BJP is the 
gainer. Many others have left the "intellectual" sphere to join the 
"pragmatic" sphere for the obvious perks. People previously known as 
"intellectuals" like Prabhat Patnaik were hellbent to defend all the 
brutal/"pragmatic" steps taken by CPI(M) Even though previously they had 
been lauded for opposing the "right wing" Congress for the similar 
"pragmatism".
Sanjay Nirupam, whom the Sangh Parivar thought an "intellectual" for writing 
in Shiv Sena's mouthpiece Samna, lost his untouchability status once he 
joined Congress. Srinivasaraju would appear more "intellectual" if he had 
named such parties who are always open to anyone who renounces his/her party 
for the perks from different ones. Now BJP is not the only one, 
intellectuals have renounced their ideology to join other parties too.
The question whether one should consider individual trees or the entire wood 
is very pertinent. In the context of the political parties, I think many 
trees stand out in the woods. It is not the wood that shapes them, it is the 
tree/s which shape the wood. Remember that the woods called Shiv Sena and 
BJP were not involved in the recent attacks on the North Indians, attack on 
Loksatta journalist or on Samna office in Maharashtra. Even though the trees 
that were involved were part of those woods.
If one likes to join the woods and all the woods have same kind of trees in 
the available woods, one would look for the maximum perks that a particular 
wood can offer.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "lalitha kamath" <elkamath at yahoo.com>
To: "reader-list" <reader-list at sarai.net>
Sent: Saturday, June 14, 2008 1:54 AM
Subject: [Reader-list] FW: Missing Public Intellectual by S Srinivasaraju


> FYI
>
>
> http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20080611&fname=sugata&sid=1
>
>
> Print This Page
> Web| Jun 11, 2008
>
> Bangalore Byte
>
> Missing: Public Intellectual
>
> The simple
> fact about the just concluded polls is that there was no big point
> made, no big idea discussed. No political leader or party took the risk
> of espousing a big cause. We still do not know what ideas we defeated
> and what we accepted.
>
> SUGATA SRINIVASARAJU  The election dust has settled down in Karnataka. The 
> BJP government
> is safe, at least for the time being. Even as I recover from the
> fatigue of closely watching the polls, I have been asking myself: What
> is it that we debated during these elections? Did we vote for a fresh
> perspective or was there any perspective at all?
> Surprisingly, the debate that obsessively took place about
> money-spent by candidates to buy votes, caste combinations, the various
> lobbies at play and the stability factor which, in the final reckoning,
> are segmented issues on the fringe. They are lazy stereotypes of any
> election season that simply devours newsprint and scatters attention.
> Surely, they are not the larger purpose of elections or a democracy.
> The simple fact about the just concluded polls is that there was no
> big point made, no big idea discussed. No political leader or party
> took the risk of espousing a big cause. With all the statistics and
> analyses of results before us we still do not know what ideas we
> defeated and what we accepted.
>
> I somehow get a feeling that imagining 'public interest' has itself
> been outmoded in recent years. It appears that for political parties
> there is no public, there are only caste or class groups; there are
> urban elite or rural masses. The latest addition to this are the
> various corporate entities vying for attention. A simplistic slotting
> of almost everything has taken place.
> Each caste, class or corporate entity represents only its interests,
> conveniently assuming that the whole is made up of such disparate
> interests. But we have often seen that this is not true. The truth is
> that the different parts of a whole are not equally sized or similarly
> endowed. When such is the case, isn't there a need to reconstruct,
> reimagine a whole, a larger public? Are we mistaking the trees for the
> woods? Do we need to allow elections to merely become an exercise in
> winning or should we ensure that big issues and grand ideas take the
> lead?
> Manifestos that political parties put out are shabby and dull
> documents that have no currency beyond the day of their release.
> Neither idealism nor ideology governs our political parties anymore.
> They are gripped by the bug of pragmatism. With our economic
> orientation placing a heavy accent on individual growth the resulting
> alteration that has taken place in our social outlook is reflected in
> the general attitude of our political parties during elections. The
> emphasis within parties is on the 'winnability' of candidates, not on
> the winnability of ideas. I am not saying that there was a lot of
> idealism in the past and it has now vanished, what I am trying to say
> is that there is not even a pretence of it anymore.
>
> Even as we try to resurrect the dream of a greater common good, a
> question that trails us is who should ensure that big issues are raised
> and brought to focus? It is here that we feel the absence of public
> intellectuals. This is a tribe that has diminished in the recent past.
> We are surrounded by academicians, professionals, experts, strategists,
> lobbyists, but one rarely comes across a public intellectual these
> days. An independent, non-aligned, amateur hell-raiser, dutiful letter
> writer and conscience-keeper has gone missing from our midst -- and
> hence the steep fall in public discourse.
> To borrow the words of Italian political philosopher Antonio Gramsci
> we are only left with "organic intellectuals." By which he means people
> who are used by 'classes' or 'enterprises' to organise interests, gain
> more power and get more control.Eminent thinker and activist Edward
> Said interpreting Gramsci's phrase in his Reith Lectures (on BBC in
> 1993) says that today's "advertising and public relations expert, who
> devises techniques for winning a detergent or airline company a larger
> share of the market, would (also) be considered an organic intellectual
> by Gramsci, someone who in a democratic society tries to gain the
> consent of potential customers, win approval, marshal consumer or voter
> opinion."
>
> In what can be seen as a symbolic decapitation of a public
> intellectual, a man who once actively filled up the 'letters to the
> editor' column on issues of public concern in Karnataka, Mumtaz Ali
> Khan, is now a cabinet minister in the new BJP government. He has
> submitted himself to BJP's tokenism of representing a minority person
> in the cabinet. This, after BJP did not give a single ticket to a
> person from any minority community to contest the elections. Very soon
> more intellectuals, irrespective of their professed ideological hues,
> will line up outside ministerial chambers in the Vidhana Soudha to
> corner positions in the various academies of arts and literature that
> are now up for grabs. The scene is such that every thinking man or
> woman is waiting for his or her turn to be co-opted by the state.
>
> Watching television during elections further confirmed my fears of
> the missing public intellectual. One heard spokespersons after
> spokespersons in different garbs, but nobody who spoke for the common
> man and a common good. Spokespersons have taken up the space vacated by
> public intellectuals. Similarly so in the print media, if one newspaper
> promotes a set of intellectuals 'close' to a party, the rival newspaper
> allows intellectuals from another party to cultivate the space. The
> game is so entrenched that pontiffs of powerful caste seminaries too
> have come to alternatively share space in the op-ed pages of
> newspapers. As a result, the space that a public intellectual once
> occupied is no longer a non-aligned, neutral space, but is a space that
> is cleverly shared by political parties and interest groups. As a
> result of all this, where we need to have a multiplicity of views, we
> have just two views in the public domain.
>
> I will conclude by quoting from Edward Said's Reith Lectures again:
> "...The intellectual is an individual with a specific public role in
> society that cannot be reduced simply to being a faceless professional,
> a competent member of a class just going about her/his business. The
> central fact for me is, I think, that an intellectual is an individual
> endowed with a faculty for representing, embodying, articulating a
> message, a view, an attitude, philosophy or opinion to, as well as for,
> a public. And this role has an edge to it, and cannot be played without
> a sense of being someone whose place it is publically to raise
> embarrassing questions, to confront orthodoxy and dogma (rather than
> produce them), to be someone who cannot be easily co-opted by
> governments or corporations, and whose raison d'etre is to represent
> all those people and issues that are routinely forgotten or swept under
> the rug..."
>
> So, isn't it time to recover the big idea and rescue the public 
> intellectual?
>
>
>
>
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