Vol.10 (March 2023)

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).