BJP does not have Intellectuals!
As I see it, the issue is not whether Arun Shourie is an intellectual (or whether Prakash Karat and EMS Namboodaripad represent intellectuals). The point I was trying to make is the one between a social movement and intellectuals. Any movement that captures the imagination of a people (or even of a cross-section of a people) has to have some or another kind of narrative. Normally, the crafting of such a narrative involves the labor of intellectuals. Congress had one such when it was a mass movement; however, it lost that narrative in the course of the last decades. In the process of losing its own narrative, it has also accommodated multiple voices and narrators: the so-called ‘radical’ intellectuals in India have prospered under the congress rule. The Communist Parties have their intellectuals, both native and foreign and from yesterday and today. The BJP did find resonance in a cross-section of the people in India and yet it does not appear to possess a distinct narrative of its own. The fact that BJP gets characterized in different ways (‘Hindu Fundamentalist’, ‘Fascist’, ‘Nationalist’, etc) by different people indicates that these characterizations have more to do with the theory that one accepts about these phenomena (‘religious fundamentalism’, ‘fascism’, ‘nationalism’, etc) than they have to do with the ‘story’ that BJP tells. Furthermore, the BJP is also hostile to intellectuals: in fact, it is very typical to hear them identify ‘intellectuals’ with ‘secular thinkers’. It is almost as though they think that this social layer, which the intellectuals are, is an ‘alien growth’ in the Indian culture, something that the British created. While it is undoubtedly true that the kind of academic intellectuals we have today are outgrowths of colonial and post-colonial developments, this situation does not quite explain the hostility of the BJP. Hostility towards knowledge is not ‘native’ to the Indian culture. At the same time, BJP is not hostile to something that is really ‘alien’ to Indian culture: Nationalism. Instead, the ‘ideologues’ of the BJP try to spin a deeply ‘nationalist’ story.
The relationship between the BJP and intellectuals is only one side of the puzzle. The other side has to do with the Indian society. What kind of resonance is/was there between the Indian society and the BJP? Why is there no new crop of intellectuals trying to theorize what BJP has only dimply sensed? Is there some relationship between the absence of such intellectuals and what I call ‘colonial consciousness’?
When I say that it is not clear to me why BJP has not produced intellectuals and knows only of ideologues, I have something like the above situation in my mind.
- Is laukika-adhyatimika distinction same as secular-sacred distinction?
- Hindering the emergence of alternative explanations: Colonialism
It is not thst the BJP lacks a narrative:it has not taken the trouble of putting it together. The charge that BJP did not participate in the do called National Movement is rasiky answered when we draw attention to the fact that tge contradictions within tgeovement led to Partition and tge Congress generated mass movement was the start point of Partition. The so called communsl’ tag that is given can be answered by pointing out that the Hindu Mahasabha was founded by the Congress Party and thst jokers in tight pyjamas started talking about communalism only as a factional shield to ward off attack from the real nationalists.
BJPn the right has not taken the trouble of encouraging academics.
BJP is run by boy scout type of naivety, do good for all without any charisma or philosophy. BJP and RSS hard core have never been able to rise above school book anti-history to evolve into a Hindu based national vision without which Abrahamic despots will end their own Vedic roots.
BJP is actually run as a one man theocracy where PM Modi can rise no farther than his tea seller roots. No wonder he has concentrated all his efforts on economic development and woos those sections of the society that have never been BJP electorate. Modi is trying to outshine Gandhi in appeasement to quell outcry from media and seculars. He has no historical vision to develop a charisma whose roots can only be nourished by Vedic Hindu ideation, not Abrahamic despotism. Blind bhakts are dreaming of a change in course in 2017 which has never been in the making as yet another U-turn will be suicidal. BJP can still retain power in 2019 with reduced majority on the ashes of Hindu aspirations. It is too naïve to think that Abrahamics will vote for BJP precisely because BJP has NO intellectual base to tackle social issues.