The Bengal Intellectuals
Sanjay K. Roy
Professor, Department of Sociology, North Bengal University Email: [email protected]
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
“Where The Mind Is Without Fear” – Rabindranath Tagore
I
If everybody is homo politicus and if power or domination concerns every
single individual and relation, how do the intellectuals, the intellectually
advanced section of society, respond to it? Being the embodiment of desires,
interests, purposes, or aspirations, the intellectuals of society often take a
calculated stand vis-à-vis power, make value compromises, and, thus, offer
themselves as objects of domination. Foucault argued that “there must be
elements of fraud, illusion, pretences involved in this” trade-off. The other
side of the dialectics is that there is no power without “resistances”, since
desires and interests drive us to make compromises, the “will to freedom”
also constitutes an integral part of our relation with power since nobody
likes to live in perpetual unfreedom. Therefore, “truth” and “freedom” cannot
be excluded from power and domination. The core argument in Foucault’s
interpretation of power and domination is that notwithstanding our desire
for freedom, there can be no liberation from the given set of practices of
power. In modern time, Foucault argues, power operates on the subjects
by false promises of “liberty” and “truth” and make us collaborate in the
process of our “subjectivation” or self-formation. Subjugation proceeds by
disguises and masks, and the subjects (the intellectuals in specific) are
made the partners in the techniques of truth production. As Foucault says:
There can only be possible exercise of power with a certain
economy of discourses of truth which operates through and on the
basis of this association. We are subjected to the production of
truth through power, and we cannot exercise power except through
the production of truth. This is the case of every society, but I
believe that in ours the relationship between power, right and truth
is organized in a highly specific fashion…. I would say that we are
forced to produce the truth of power that our society demands, of
which it has need, in order to function: we must speak the truth;
we are constrained or condemned to confess to or discover the
truth. Power never ceases its interrogation, its inquisition, its
registration of truth; it institutionalizes, professionalizes and rewards
its pursuit. In the last analysis, we must produce truth as we must
produce wealth (Foucault 1980: 39).
The exercise of truth production thus happens within the bounds of the
truth or discourse of the regime of the time. Foucault thus suggests that we
can only raise the banner of truth outside the regime’s limits if we do it for
another regime and are ready to take some risks. Hence, liberation in the
name of “truth” could only be substituting another power system. According
to Foucault (1980), thus, the intellectuals of the time either work for the
reproduction of truth within the limits of the existing power/knowledge
discourse or, with some risk, work for the production of an alternative
discourse outside the existing power/knowledge frame.
Bengal has a long and glorious tradition of producing great intellectuals
with influential critical minds who have left their mark on the modern Indian
history of social and political transformation. In the recent past, the Bengal
intellectuals displayed an unprecedented show of unity in their protest against
the Left Front Government’s efforts to acquire land for the capitalists to set up industries in Singur and Nandigram. The high point of their protest
was a massive public rally organized in Kolkata following the killing of 14
(including two women) protesting farmers in Nandigram on March 14,
2007. In 2011, the Bengal intellectuals, although not an ideologically
homogenous group in any sense, displayed their emotive unity in public,
which helped bring about the fall of an otherwise indomitable Left Front
regime that firmly occupied the seat of power for three and a half decades,
from 1977 to 2011.
The Bengal intellectuals had placed a high hope on the new political formation
led by Trinamool Congress (TMC), which, they thought, would do sane
politics, free Bengal of the “vices of Left rule,” and work for setting Bengal
on the path of progress and development; they hoped that the democratic
ideals would be restored and Bengal would soon move forward in political,
economic, social and cultural fronts with guaranteed democratic, creative
and aesthetic freedom. However, right within the first term (2011-2016) of
the rule of the new regime, the same Bengal intellectuals, who had played
a significant part in influencing public opinion for the change, became
primarily disillusioned with the “governmentality”1 of the new regime and
had them split into multiple groups and factions while taking multiple and
conflicting political positions vis-à-vis the ruling party. The purpose of the
present paper is to examine the fast-changing political discourses of the
Bengal intellectuals post-2011.
II
For Antonio Gramsci, ‘anyone whose function in society is primarily that of
organizing, administering, directing, educating or leading others’ is an
intellectual (Gramsci 1988: 300). These intellectuals include teachers,
clergies, philosophers, scientists, industrial engineers, and managers, all
constituents of the middle-class. In modern industrial or capitalist societies
of the West, Gramsci identified two types of intellectuals: “traditional
intellectuals” and “organic intellectuals” The traditional intellectuals are
composed of the managerial class, the media persons and the bourgeois
intellectuals, and the group of artists and writers, and philosophers who are
detached from the masses or the subaltern classes and indifferent to their
problems and antagonistic towards their struggle; the traditional intellectuals
operate through different routes of culture, education, and media and are
active in consolidating the bourgeois hegemony; they help to generate
ideological support for the ruling classes and, thus, help the reproduction of
the capitalist order. Gramsci (1988: 300-322) argued2 that in order to win
the class struggle, the subaltern classes have to win the ideological war,
and in this task, they need their intellectuals, the organic intellectuals, who
would share the sufferings of the subaltern classes and connect to them
with a great deal of empathy and educate them about the modus operandi
of the capitalist social, economic and cultural order. As members allied to
the subaltern classes, these intellectuals would educate and guide the
proletariat during class struggle; they would lead them to draw an objective
consciousness of their lives and educate them with a philosophical
understanding of the social order. Organic intellectuals are not the exterior
mover of feelings and passions but active participants in particular life as
constructors, organizers, and permanent persuaders. Their organic
leadership makes the masses aware of their situations, unite them in a
coherent moral awareness, and injects a political will for the class revolution.
They play a lead role in waging a cultural battle against the oppressors.
According to Gramsci, traditional intellectuals could also be a part of the
struggle but must first be oriented with the proletarian consciousness. They
have to be ready to enter into the world of the oppressed and ready to
accept the socialist setup, dedicate himself or themselves totally to the
cause and be ready to renounce all elements of bourgeois ideology.
Gramsci, being a revolutionary, gave the intellectuals a unidirectional role,
i.e., the historical role in the class struggle to elevate the working class
from the stage of “class in itself” to “class for itself,” following Marx, to
provide intellectual leadership in winning the ideological war in the class
struggle. However, in post-modern neo-liberal times, this expectation about
the role of the intellectuals is challenging to meet primarily for three reasons.
First, with the rise of Fascism and Nazism in post-World War 1 Europe, we
have seen how the intellectuals sided with the reactionaries and helped
legitimize such inhuman oppressive ideologies intellectually. Later, we saw
a group of intellectuals in the Stalinist USSR was used, often against their
will, to legitimize the State oppression; a large body of White intellectuals
in South Africa actively contributed to the construction and legitimation of
Apartheid; in present-day India, a group of Indian scientists, educationists,
social scientists accord legitimacy to Hindutva discourse. These concrete
historical instances prove that at least a section of intellectuals can play a
reactionary role while siding with the power of the time, either willingly for
rewards or unwillingly to save their lives. Second, the “intellectuals “are
often not known for their high moral standards as they are often seen
acting as self-seekers while making serious moral compromises in their
role as “active citizens” (to use the Habermasean phrase3) in reproducing
the oppressive ruling regimes. Third, in post-modern times, the essence of
Enlightenment or Marxism as a means to the liberation of the masses from
all kinds of oppression has been seriously questioned by Michel Foucault
and many scholars after him; for them, adherence to a particular discourse
or to be an organic part of any political formation is equivalent to living in
perpetual unfreedom, which, by implication, leads to intellectual slavery.
For him, living without intellectual freedom amounts to the death of the
intellectual and her/his creativity.
Notwithstanding all these decentring effects of post-modernism and growing
acceptance of the ideals of pluralism and tolerance, there is always a social
expectation that the intellectuals of the time will take a moral, reasoned,
selfless, and objective position vis-à-vis the forces in power, especially when
the powerful political forces are out to oppress, repress, deceive and colonize
the masses, the powerless. Since the “intellectuals” represent the
enlightened section of society, there will always be an expectation that
they would help the ordinary people, who are less educated and more
vulnerable, and would lead them by setting high moral standards; the masses
would always look up to the intellectuals to set examples and help them to
draw an objective understanding of the social, economic and political forces
that destabilize the life and livelihood of the ordinary people. In sum, the
intellectuals of the time did not have to agree in their assessment of the
political issues. However, they have a bounden responsibility to examine
everything analytically, objectively, and critically, which would have an
educative impact on the masses.
III
In India, in modern times, the British rule, the spread of Western education,
the legacy of social reform movements, class movements, movements for
India’s freedom, the spread of Marxism and other streams of Western
philosophy and rich world literature together contributed to the formation
of Bengal intellectuals, who, in turn, helped the formation of urban civil
society. Historically, Bengal intellectuals have taken a close interest in politics,
both in the freedom struggle in the colonial period and post-Independence
“democratic” politics. However, their interest in politics found expression
in different, at times conflicting, discourses and directions, namely, Hindu
nationalism, Islamic nationalism, liberalism, and Marxism. In post-
Independence West Bengal, the two dominant groups were the liberal
intellectuals having a link with the Indian National Congress. This party
ruled Bengal until 1977 (with a brief interruption in the late 1960s), and the
Left intellectuals associated with the constituent parties of the Left Front
ruled Bengal from 1977 to 2011.
Notwithstanding the “vices of Left rule”, the misadventures in Singur and
Nandigram, which, in my opinion, should and could have been avoided, a
large part of the Bengal intellectuals who grew up with orientation in Left
politics remained faithful to the leftist (not necessarily Marxist) ideology
and the Left Front. They were either demure or critical about the “signs of
decay of left politics” in the hands of the Left Front but preserved, rightly
or wrongly, the conviction that the left leaders were essentially honest and
“left politics” is the only option; they were, by and large, convinced that the
future of Bengal is not safe in the hands of the “non-left” political formations
made up of politicians with “suspect” political lineage, credibility, moral
standard, and intention. Within this broad category of intellectuals, there
were two distinct sub-categories: (1) a large section of educationists, writers,
painters, reporters, play writers and actors, doctors, officers, and the
organized-sector employees continued as the organic intellectuals of the
left parties, particularly the CPI(M); many of course surrendered their
party membership to register their protest against its vices, and (2) an even
greater section of intellectuals never became the party members but were
ideologically propped towards left politics and a wide range of left parties.
Although over the years, particularly after 2011, when the Left Front lost
the State Assembly election to TMC, the left intellectuals lost much of their
visibility and influence on the ordinary people. Some of them have even
switched camps, a large majority of the left intellectuals remained
ideologically Left and connected to different left political formations. They
are active in the media, intellectual writings, and the Left parties’ frontal
mass organizations. Their space of operation, however, has dramatically
shrunk with the shrinking of the democratic space and with the growing
and nude attack on Constitutional rights, especially the Right to freedom of
speech and the Right to organization. The critical and rebellious voices, the
movement of the working classes, and other depressed classes have lost
much of their sting while facing the brutality of the repressive state
apparatuses. The fast erosion of democratic space is happening alongside
the popularization of the neo-liberal selfish hedonism and the combined
threat of an autocratic State and Hindutva nationalism. The crony capitalists
have joined hands with power to unsettle the life, livelihood, and free and
creative space of the masses and critical minds.
Carrying forward a solid Marxist intellectual tradition, a large section of
Bengal intellectuals had sided with the Left Front in its three and half decades in power, and until the end of the last century, they used to draw a
great deal of pride for their association with Left politics. The Left-leaning
intellectuals were idealists per se, and they, along with the great national
leaders of the first half of the last century, understood politics as a noble
social responsibility where an individual has to rise above self-interest and
stand by the ideology and work for social transformation for the better in
tune with the famous Marxist dictum ‘The philosophers have only interpreted
the world, in various ways; the point is to change it’ (Marx 1949: 15) .
However, in the later part of the Left rule, post-2006 to be specific, during
the last term of the Left rule, these intellectuals, or at least some of them,
started expressing open dissent against the policies and actions of the Left
Front rule. There is nothing unusual for enlightened Leftist intellectuals to
criticize the party in power; instead, intellectual freedom and criticism are
the hallmarks of the intellectuals, the civil society, in any social-political
order since they are the ones who have the ability and responsibility to be
fearless in pointing out the right thing in the right time and take the society
in the right direction through their creative writings and art. It is quite logical
and natural for these intellectuals to be angry to see how the ideal of socialism
took a pounding at the hands of the Left parties, which ruled Bengal for
three and a half decades. It would also have been painful for these
intellectuals to see an overall decline in the moral standards of many of the
Left leaders. Hence came the alienation and disillusionment among a section
of the Left-leaning intellectuals.
Let us now have a look at the shifting positions of the so-called “independent”
liberal as well as Left intellectuals who worked actively for the fall of the
Left Front from power and directly sided with the political combination led
by Trinamool Congress between 2006 and 2011. Even some of the ultra-
Left intellectuals had sympathy for the Naxalites and the SUCI, and a
section of the Hindutva nationalist intellectuals joined hands in their mission
to oust the Left Front from power. However, most of these intellectuals –
from liberal, reactionary to Left – got disillusioned with the new ruling
party in the post-2011 period and soon revised their positions. The ultra-left
intellectuals got disillusioned with the TMC-led government soon after the
brutal killing of their leader Kishanji, who favoured TMC over the Left
Front in the 2011 election; the intellectuals associated with SUCI also
withdrew support from the government as the party withdrew support.
Some of the intellectuals, who were big names in their respective fields
(and some of them were known for their sympathy for Leftist ideology),
namely, writer Mahasweta Devi (who is no more), singers Pratul
Mukhopadhyay, Kabir Suman and Nachiketa Chakraborty, poets Joy Goswami and Subodh Sarkar, writer Abul Basar, Sirsendu Mukhopadhyay,
filmmaker Gautam Ghosh, painters Jogen Choudhury and Suvaprosanna,
actor Saonli Mitra (who is no more) and some others remained loyal to
TMC as they were rewarded with awards and government positions; these
intellectuals are undeterred by the growing criticism of the misadventures
of the ruling party as they are visible in TMC party programmes and active
in justifying all actions of the ruling regime. After coming into power in the
State, the TMC has mastered the “art of cooption” of the educationists and
the members of the civil society by giving them periodic awards, rewards,
and positions.
However, a larger group of intellectuals, who were consistent in their
criticism of the Left Front rule and who supported the TMC in the years
leading to the 2011 State Assembly election, soon got disillusioned with the
ruling regime post-2011 and were back to their critical role. These
intellectuals had extended their active support to the Singur and Nandigram
farmers’ agitations, which were later hijacked by the TMC. The prominent
among this group were Aparna Sen, Kaushik Sen, Miratun Nahar, Sankhyo
Ghosh, Bolan Gagopadhyay, and Samir Aich. They were relentless in their
criticism of the earlier Left Front rule, even after the earlier Chief Minister,
Mr. Buddhadeb Bhattacharya declared that no land would be acquired in
Nandigram against the farmers’ will. Kabir Suman criticized the TMC-led
government for a brief spell and offered resignation from Lok Sabha
membership (which he did not do) but soon got back into the TMC fold.
The members of this group aired their voice of criticism of the TMC regime
in TV debates, newspaper essays, individual television interviews, and open
letters addressed to the Chief Minister. Some other prominent persons who
are very critical of the TMC regime are the retired top police officers
Nazrul Islam and Pankaj Datta and prominent doctor Kunal Sarkar. They,
however, need to join hands with the intellectual group led by Aparna Sen
and Kaushik Sen.
Protesting unprecedented violence and loss of more than 50 lives before
and after the panchayat election held on July 8, 2023, some intellectuals
released an open letter, which they had written to the Chief Minister of
West Bengal, articulating their political stand in no uncertain terms. The
letter, which was released at an event in Mahabodhi Society on July 20,
reads:
In the last 37 days, 52 people have died due to the panchayat polls.
Many people are missing. As Chief Minister and Home Minister
of West Bengal, you (CM Mamata Banerjee) cannot deny this responsibility in any way. Without denying the constitutional
responsibility of the Election Commission, it can be said that the
responsibility for the current anarchy lies mainly with the West
Bengal government and you. The central forces and the Election
Commission must depend on the local administration.
The letter further said:
Let the government elected by the people take the responsibility of
protecting the State’s lives, livelihood, and property by immediately
introducing an impartial administrative system in this blood-bathed
West Bengal
At the event, Aparna Sen also hit out at other political parties, calling them
“corrupt.” She said:
There is no democracy left in this country. After a few days, it
may not even be possible to talk like this. I am talking about all the
political parties, including the ruling party of our State. Furthermore,
those who are not corrupt do not win any seats.
In the last sentence of her speech, ‘And those who are not corrupt, they do
not win any seats,’ she probably hinted to the Left parties, which she
considered “not corrupt.”
The most notable point about these intellectuals is that they do not side with
any political party or alliance. However, they are also critical of the Hindutva
politics of the BJP. In order to justify their support for TMC and change in
the 2011 election, they argue that the CPI(M) did enough wrong to be
ousted from power, but we never wanted the kind of change that the TMC
regime has brought about. They also argue that ‘we cannot support the
CPIM-led alliance of Left parties since the memory of their misrule and
the atrocities perpetrated by them are still fresh in the memory of the people
of Bengal .’Participating in a TV debate, Kunal Sarkar and Kaushik took a
critical dig at the misrule of the present ruling regime, but they limited their
role to “criticism only” and refused to outline how to bring about a political
change now; their stanch looked “cynical, confusing, misleading and
narcissist”; they seemed to take pride of their critical and moral role and
were evasive about taking responsibility. If they were serious about their
will to change, they should have outlined how to bring about the change,
which they refused to do even after being asked by one in the audience to
clarify their political position. They rather state that all existing political
parties are equally bad. In the 2021 State Assembly election, these
intellectuals again became active with the “no vote to BJP” slogan, which,
in effect, helped polarization of Bengal voters in TMC and BJP camps and helped the eclipse of the Left-Congress alliance in the State Assembly.
These intellectuals are thus the masters in hiding their political face to help
TMC sustain power in the State.
On July 26, 2023, a few TMC intellectuals, namely, the singer Kabir Suman,
the writer Abul Basar, painter Jogen Choudhury and dramatist-politician
Arpita Ghosh, met in a press conference to counter another group of
intellectuals, led by filmmaker Aparna Sen, writer Miratun Nahar, activist
Bolan Gongopadhyay, actor Kaushik Sen and many others, who openly
supported Mamata during the Nandigram and Singur resistance movements
but had now turned into fierce critics of Mamata. All these Bengal
intellectuals, who are big names in their respective fields and icons of
contemporary urbanite Bengali culture, along with many others, namely,
painter Subhaprasanna, poet Joy Goswami and Subodh Sarkar, singer
Naciketa Chakraborty, singer Pratul Mukhopadhyay seem to be solidly in
support of the TMC regime. The intellectuals who support the TMC regime
are the ones who (1) occupy different salaried positions offered by the
Government of West Bengal, (2) receive occasional awards, honour, and
privileges from the State Government, and (3) occupy seats alongside the
Chief Minister on the Government and TMC party programmes and (4)
deliver statements glorifying the “development initiatives” of the State
Government and counter the critics in public, in media. On TV debates,
they justify their support for the TMC regime in the name of “massive
development,” which was absent in the earlier Left regime. They make
efforts to justify their political stand morally, which appear like acts of selfdeception
and deception of the ordinary people. The members of civil society,
the intellectuals, thus, devalue their moral standards in their fake acts of
justification of a brand of politics that is otherwise indefensible; they probably
cease to be an integral part of civil society by forsaking their critical stanch
vis-à-vis the State power. In Foucault’s terms, they allow themselves to be
dominated by power and collaborate with the latter to produce truth. These
intellectuals may be unsure about their creative writings and art and live in
some livelihood crises and identity crises. They agree to collaborate in the
power/knowledge project of reproduction of the ruling class discourse as a
way out.
There is another group among the Bengal intellectuals, constituted of the
university and college teachers, scientists, and media persons, which has
been growing in the recent decades alongside the rise of Hindutva forces
in power at the Centre and in different States. These intellectuals are
actively collaborating in the “power/knowledge project” while reproducing and consolidating Hindutva discourse by propagating pre-science and
rewriting Indian history. This section of Bengal intellectuals attends the
meetings of the BJP and RSS and pledge to propagate the Hindutva ideology
and help the BJP by rationalizing its policies like the repletion of Article
3704, the implementation of the Uniform Civil Code, the construction of the
Ram temple at Ayodhya, the place of birth of lord Rama, and so on and the
“scientists” among the group would write “research papers” glorifying the
“great scientific tradition” in ancient India (one example being the significant
surgery on the head of lord Ganesh). This group of intellectuals is inspired
by the idea that they would have “a share of the cake” since the BJP is in
power at the Centre and if the same party comes to power in the State.
Lastly, the most dangerous constituent of the Bengal intellectuals are the
ones who claim to be “apolitical”; they are the masters in hiding their political
face because they are essentially manipulative; they are calculative and
“play safe” in not making political enemies and keep their options open in
striking “secret deals” with the powerful in exchange of short-term favours
and positions. It is difficult to believe these intellectuals claim to be
“apolitical” despite growing up in a multi-party democracy. They, in essence,
are the self-seekers as they are adamant about avoiding their more significant
social responsibility; they forget about their more significant educative role
and remain silent when the moral standards of the politicians and the
democratic values wither. In Foucault’s terms, by not choosing to be critical,
this category of intellectuals accord legitimacy to the ruling class power/
knowledge project.
IV
The bipolar and conflicting roles of the traditional and organic intellectuals,
either supporting or opposing the bourgeois interests, which Antonio Gramsci
envisaged, now look simplistic as the intellectuals in the neo-liberal social
order seem to work with conflicting and multiple interests. The Left
intellectuals are unsure about their ideological and political vision because
they have not put in enough effort to update themselves theoretically and
philosophically since they take the party and its assessment of the situation
as sacrosanct. They must show boldness and clarity in framing and
propagating their discourse for an alternative regime. The second group of
intellectuals, who display their extraordinary talents in different fields of
creative art, are personally honest but suffer from narcissism and are in
the habit of attacking all political parties; they are genuine in their criticism of the ruling party but are masters in creating confusions in the common
public, and thus indirectly work for production of truth which helps the
same political party in power which they criticize. They need to understand
that if they do not have a party, they can side with a political formation that
could bring about political and social changes. They do not understand that
in a multi-party democracy, only a political party or alliance of political
parties can trigger political changes; they do not understand that every
political party can potentially accumulate the elements of alienation.
The other two groups of intellectuals are rank opportunists as they do not
adhere to any political ideology, and they lack a critical, philosophical, or
objective understanding of the neo-liberal governmentality; they put their
selfish interests over all other things and prowl for an expedient and
rewarding political position as they shift their political allegiance from extreme
Left to extreme Right at will; they make wilful compromises with the political
parties in State power or Central government for a position or reward.
They are undeterred by what the ordinary people think about them.
What we do observe about the Bengal intellectuals is that they fail in their
educative role (which Gramsci expected of the intellectuals), they fail in
their role of enlightened philosophers, and they fail in their role as the
precursors of progressive social transformation; they do not need to join
political parties, but they must take a clear political stand not driven by
narcissism or self-interest but for making the social order better; else, they
will be held responsible for the falling standards of democratic politics.
Following Foucauldian discourse on power/knowledge, we cannot expect
the intellectuals to be free of their instinctive desires and interests and their
collaborative role in the production of the truth of the regime; however, we
cannot give up on the expectation that at least they would keep alive their
“will to freedom” in the mode of “self-care” and would work for the
production of truth for an alternative regime, thus keeping the dialectics of
democratic politics alive. Let us recall that Jurgen Habermas has never
given up on “the critical role” of the intellectuals and their role in keeping
debates alive in their efforts to the production of truth counter to the “truth
of the neo-liberal regime” (Habermas 1989; Kellner 1987: 152-183).
Notes
- “Governmentality” is a term popularized by Michel Foucault,
meaning “the art of governance” of a political regime; it also means
xii
the way the power-knowledge combines practice “subjectivation”
or formation of the subjects. (See Michel Foucault, Security,
Territory and Population, 2007: 87-134).
- See ‘Intellectuals and Education,’ Chapter X, in Gramsci Reader
1988: 300-322.
- In the Habermasian perspective, active citizens are ‘integrated
into the political community like parts in a whole; that is, in such a
manner that they can only form their personal and social identity in
this horizon of shared traditions and intersubjectively recognized
institutions.’ (See, Helen Lawson, ‘Active Citizenship in Schools
and the Community,’ The Curriculum Journal 12.2 (2001): 166;
Also see, Habermas’s The New Conservatism: Cultural Criticism
and the Historian’s Debate (Cambridge: Polity, 1994). In the present
Indian context, Indian history is being rewritten as the history of an
“imagined Hindu nation.” The young minds in schools are being
taught to be active citizens of the “imagined nation,” as Anderson
construed the discourse (See Giroux 1998: 181-182; Taylor 1984:
152-183).
- On August 6, 2019, Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which
granted special status to the Stte of Kashmir and some special
rights to the Kashmiris, was effectively repealed through a
Presidential order on the recommendation of both Houses of
Parliament.
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Prof. Sanjay K. Roy