"Pride and Prejudice" is one of the most loved novels. Let me play on the title, and talk about an interesting issue. Ah, better to clarify right in the beginning that it is interesting to me because otherwise, or to be honest, actually anyways, there would be excessive and eternally continuing hair splitting on "interesting to whom" which obviously would lead to the entire, and by now typical, 'identity' debate, the favourite and final 'resort', in all senses of this term, of many!
Well, more and more one gets the feel that scholarly debates believe in ghettoisation. One has to be a 'resident scholar', to quote another favourite title, of this or that camp. Such echo chambers absolutely avoid any intellectual fluidity, forget self-reflexivity. Such is the binary division that Bush of the Saddam fame would blush when confronted with such "with us or with them" injunctions! Why not even an ounce of self-analysis, is your befuddled response!
You have to be by definition "with us". Otherwise, you would be accused of being a fascist, "right wing", a Sanghi, et al. Mind you, these accusations are hurled as if they are cuss words! What one finds most interesting about such intellectual mafiosi is that actually they are themselves fascists in suppressing any alternative opinion! Most often, moreover, they are absolutely unaware of the positions assumed by the giants whose names they quote as if it were some 'mantra' chanting which changes everything to their liking.
Most amongst them would not have read either Marx or Ambedkar, for instance, in any detail or depth, however much the empty rhetoric may use such names conveniently. Would they really have read "Manusmriti" or the different Commission reports about the Three Language Formula? One wonders, given the rigid positioning!
Well, I sincerely believe that scholarship, like science does, first and foremost teaches you humility. You have to accept that a new paradigm may develop, new textual proofs, not explored so far, may emerge, and you need to understand, appreciate and negotiate with these. After Einstein, for example, none can continue with Newton's model, however much loved, and cast aspersions on those who would like to explore alternative ways of knowing or understanding the world.
Similarly, it is downright dangerous to retrospectively impose current structures on the past. Hindsight is easy, but hollow. Every individual, each school of thought is defined/defied/deified by the contemporaneous contexts. Even geniuses cannot escape their immediate realities. When re-interpreting them from the twenty-first century contexts, for example, one cannot hence tarnish them according to today's terms (and condition(ing)s)!!!
The worst sin, however, is to be on a high horse, and be extremely condescending which actually makes such a person appear ridiculous. Equally funny it is to oppose for the sake of opposition, to keep on arguing for the sake of arguing, even when the truth is staring you in the face, and hard! Why consider everyone else beyond one's own gang as suspect every which way? Such unspoken but clearly obvious prejudices stink of a superiority complex, which every primary psychology text tells us, is actually a hidden inferiority complex!
Another fun episode in such series is excessive relativism as and when/how it suits or to prove one's own position. Cherry-picking references is yet another method. Oh, yes, the easiest mode is to accuse everyone beyond your own gang of every possible sin. Indirect character assassination rumours are a great weapon to annihilate a person you consider a competitor who cannot confront you because the indirect rumouring leaves no "proof"!
I suppose, high-pitched t.v. debates kind of din cannot be the style of scholarship. The best way to deal with high decibel fighting would be to absolutely avoid it. Anyways, such people are never going to think beyond what Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and others of their ilk called "intellectual blinds". Why waste your energy, while giving them the satisfaction of ganging up to reduce any alternative thinking to pulp?!? Intellectual terrorism is best avoided!
Pratima@ Silence, the best reply to the opinionated and prejudiced, is the route to glimpses of truth.
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