The Intolerance of Tolerance.

                                                 The Intolerance of Tolerance.

The Times of India is to be complimented for publishing two contrasting articles today in its Monday issue of Nov2, 2015 –one abusive of the liberals and intellectuals , the other a balanced and objective understanding of their protest which has in turn provoked a loud and vociferous reaction , full of anger and hate from the ruling party. This juxtaposition of an article that spews venom on intellectuals and liberals with an article that advocates tolerance in place of intemperance without the editorial comment is the Times’ news neutrality and its silent endorsement of the need to have a balance in the art of governance .

Chetan Bhagat  in his anti-liberal attack has castigated all the protesters who comprise intellectuals, writers, artists, scientists, academics and also a couple of  industrialists – all those whom he labels as the liberals(with the exception of ‘yours truly, Chetan Bhagat,’ -the IIT graduate, the fiction writer in English, the judge of  dance reality shows, the screenplay writer of Kick and  Kai Po Che) -as pseudo secular, pseudo –intellectual, pseudo-liberals  who have a single point agenda to remain illiberal and look down on the unfortunate classes that do not have university education, cannot speak English with English( or European accent), who do not possess global cultural understanding.- in short ,lacking in knowledge, in English skills and in catholicity and breadth of understanding.  This article( and his  earlier twitter on Historians: “What do historians do? I am genuinely curious. This happened. Then this happened. Then this. Ok work done for the day.”) seem to be the fourth mistake of Chetan Bhagat, the new convert to anti-liberalism.(I hope he writes a sequel to his Three Mistakes)

And the germ of the fourth mistake of his life is in an article he wrote three years back ‘India on the Streets’.  As a liberal literary writer, the Uncle Cynic in him joined hands with Anna Hazara and attacked the previous government of Man Mohan Singh and expressed his view that   “India is terrible, everyone is corrupt, things don’t work, there is no justice, power talks, equality don’t exist”. He then tarred every elected leader with the same brush to affirm that all leaders “steal, are incompetent and hate accountability”. Hence his clarion call to people to come to the streets to save the country’s future. He chided the government of that day for being arrogant (not realizing that it is weak kneed and takes knee-jerk decisions ) and ended with a quotation from the ubiquitous Gita, “Nothing is permanent”.

This was when Chetan was Anna Bhagat. True to the Gita, the Anna Bhagat has now changed into Modi Bhagat.  He has had a leap of fauth. He is angry with people(whom he sneeringly calls liberals) protesting-not by taking to the streets, but by returning their awards and expressing their apprehension of the rise of a new form of cultural dictatorship. He applauds the government for its arrogant disdain of all intellectuals whose liberalism is suspect because they are not liberal enough to accommodate the rising intolerance and hatred that is being spread by those who have a genuine, visceral dislike and animosity of religions that are not in the Hindutva fold.

Chetan Bhagat who had  been catapulted to the literary sphere for his liberal views expressed in his English fiction, now sneers at English speaking liberals and fails to read the anxiety of the creative writers and artists who strive to show that the great threat to democracy is the enslavement of the majority to political propaganda. This is really the ‘tyranny of the majority’ which shuts out independence of mind. “The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity but the one that removes the awareness of other possibilities that makes it seem inconceivable that other ways are viable”.  The protesters whom I would call the Velvet Revolutionaries (after the Czech writers group under Vaclav Havel which successfully downed the Russian hegemony over Eastern Europe) are making peaceful efforts to free our minds from such tyranny by making us cultivate reasoned thoughts in a spirit of humanity. To discourage the tendency to reject important alternatives, to remove the minds of timid and unreasoned thoughts, to encourage openness and freedom of the mind  is the only solution to free democracy from the stranglehold of  a small group of vested interests who claim to speak for the majority. We need intellectual aristocracy (that sounds anachronistic today) to enable democracy to survive by preserving the freedom of the mind. This can be achieved through protecting reason which is the essence of openness. Instead of joining the chorus of his adopted fraternity of writers who make a plea to the government  to be open to debate and discussions.  Chetan Bhagat dissects the liberal of our times and criticizes them that they do not offer solutions, but they look upon themselves as the privileged class markers , sipping tea out of china cups and visiting Disneyland , but in reality they are lost souls. Thank God, though boastfully claiming his place among the literati, Chetan  shows himself to be the last liberal in the midst of the lost liberals.

In contrast, Santosh Deasi cautions the ‘hate ‘reaction to the intellectuals who seek the intervention of the ruling government to rein in hatemongers. He does not question the rightness or wrongness of the act of award ‘wapsi’ but he says the return of the awards with no specific personal demands in turn except for restoration of freedom of expression, for the enhancement of the Constitutional right to live as one wants and for ending  the eerie fear of what will happen in the future if intolerance is allowed a free run all through the country, citing in particular the Tamilnadu government’s arrest of Kovan who gave poetic expression to anti-liquor campaign. The rising anger against protesters and the personal attacks on them   by different voices from within the government (with a silent and unobtrusive encouragement from all those who matter today ) shows that the government does not and will not tolerate criticism and is not concerned to redress the cause of such criticism.

Chetan Bhagat’s attack on liberals is founded on anti liberalism. Santosh Desai’s defence of intellectuals is founded on liberalism that advocates freedom of the individual and protection of civil liberties and individual rights and peaceful reforms to ensure continued social and individual progress.  

I received this wonderful maxim from one of my close well wishers : " ‘Variety leads to evolution and homogeneity leads to extinction.’ India's greatest asset is the variety it has in virtually every area. We have to learn to respect this variety through action, if we do not want the country to become a religious autocracy.”

I am sure the wise men in the ruling party will be liberal enough to permit liberal intellectuals their say in matters that are vital to the survival and sustenance of democracy.