Liberal Intellectual Terrorism… Explained

Vivek Agnihotri has launched a personal crusade of sorts against the ‘intolerant intellectual terrorists’ populating our colleges and universities, which happens to include yours truly. I’m not going to bother with a blow-by-blow account of what happened, although he’s far from being close to truthful. Here‘s a report via Shoaib Daniyal for Scroll.

Soon after, of course, he took to Twitter to talk about the ‘violence’ and ‘intolerance’.

And of course, this fine display of classiness:

Disappointingly, both Taslima Nasreen and Tanmay Bhat of the AIB jumped the gun here:

I’m really not going into the specifics of what happened here, but the reactions generally involved the words ‘liberals’, ‘leftists’, ‘intellectual terrorists’ etc. Time to liberalsplain:

Who are the liberal intellectual terrorists?

Actually, a lot of people who might have ideologically very little in common. Yours truly, for instance, is a progressive liberal. But this group also includes 50 Shades of Marxism, Anarchists, Ambedkarites, Feminists, Centrists and the various intersections of all these groups. Broadly speaking, anyone who is part of academia and civil society, and not explicitly Right Wing. They may or may not be liberals, but evidently, nuanced judgements are too ‘Leftist’ these days…

What do these liberal intellectual terrorists do and believe in?

Essentially, the common thread among all of these liberal intellectual terrorists is that they are allergic to Hindutva. They keep protesting against things like the portrayal of the complete awesomeness of Hinduism, the caste system, cultural hegemony, the supremacy of Hindi over other languages, the lack of comprehensive and accessible social welfare and educational facilities in India, painting Muslims and other minority religions as the ‘bad guys’, severe human rights violations in Kashmir and Manipur, tribal rights, racism, gender discrimination and violence, discrimination against the LGBTQ and various other issues pertaining to a lack of social justice and welfare. It’s also marked by a rejection of pseudoscience and pseudohistorical narratives. None of these issues are singular to ‘Naxalism’ or ‘Naxal sympathisers’- although, once you start taking human rights seriously, you do understand why Naxalism is a phenomenon and how decades of deprivation, discrimination, marginalisation and complete and utter disrespect for the rights of communities in such regions leads to people siding with Naxalite insurgent groups.

There are actually pretty diverse political philosophies here, from the Far Left to Liberalism. Some happen to think free markets are generally good. Others are intensely sceptical and antagonistic towards globalisation and any form of capitalism in general.

Mostly the activism is limited to discussions and peaceful protest rallies. In reality, ‘liberal intellectual terrorists’ are actually a tiny minority who don’t really exert much influence beyond certain sections of the upper middle-class and especially in academia, but certainly not nationally: Yes, I’m being honest here- if it weren’t so, there would be major progressive parties in Indian politics, which don’t exist as of today.

Wait. So Liberal Intellectual Terrorists aren’t all Naxalites?

Nope. Not at all. In fact, very few people openly endorse violence.

They must all be CPI(M) supporters.

NO.

Congi Chamchas?

NO. What even…?

AAPtards then.

NO.
Why do party allegiances keep coming up repeatedly?

And what of ‘Bharat Ke Barbadi’?

Not really a call for violence. It is actually true that the Left and Liberals value people’s rights and liberties over the idea of a nation. Most of us think the Kashmir issue should be resolved via a plebiscite/referendum in the Valley itself, as set out in the UN resolution. Many of us also think that Ladakh, Jammu and the concerns of Kashmiri Pandits should be considered here. However, even a plebiscite is a challenge to the idea of Indian territorial integrity and that is the exact context of ‘Bharat ke Barbadi’.

So why is academia full of Liberal Intellectual Terrorists?

Actually, academia is full of extremely diverse views, the lack of Right Wing consensus views isn’t because academia doesn’t accommodate a diversity of opinions, but because Right Wing views are so off the rails. I’m not even kidding, and I sincerely wish I were. Right Wing consensus views assert the presence of a homogenous cultural and political identity, advanced science in 2000 B.C., lays the blame on India’s relative backwardness solely on Muslims and the British, the primacy of Hinduism, treating Hindu texts as describing actual historical events verbatim, the idea that caste discrimination wasn’t fundamentally bad, assertion of homosexuality as a ‘Western’ influence, an idea of an Indian ‘race’ etc. etc. -none of which are supported by historical, anthropological and scientific evidence. Even if you are largely sympathetic to the Right in terms of economic conservatism, it is very difficult to treat these ‘Right wing academic’ views as anything but bullshit.

Then there’s the thing about academia as a whole advocating inclusiveness- an idea that is fundamentally opposed to cultural nationalism and the exclusionary politics of the Right.

Why are Liberal Intellectual Terrorists so intolerant of the Right?

Mainly because as it stands today, it’s batshit crazy and promotes jingoistic attitudes, hence. Also, refusing to give a platform or refusing to listen to this kind of Right Wing politics that is racist, sexist, casteist and Hindu supremacist isn’t really intolerance, just as it isn’t intolerance if you refuse to watch a ‘Hate Story’ marathon. Nobody is obligated to let an oppressive narrative have a voice or listen to them, especially when this narrative is a majoritarian discourse.

Notice how liberals and leftists aren’t asking for Right Wingers to be rounded up, beaten up and imprisoned en masse whereas Right Wingers routinely advocate that for ‘anti national’ intellectual terrorists. Also, black flagging and shouting slogans =/= arresting people or lynching them. This should really be obvious to people, but it somehow isn’t.

Questioning the ‘integrity of the nation’ in favour of putting the people first isn’t quite the same as putting the integrity of the nation first and asserting how any measure to maintaining national integrity is justifiable, no matter how brutal that measure may be.

B...but freedom of expression?

Here’s why this isn’t actually a violation of your freedom of expression, courtesy xkcd:

In more detail:
Nobody thinks freedom of expression is an absolute right- not even John Stuart Mill, especially when that freedom of expression is used to condone prejudice, discrimination and violence. People tend to get this very, very wrong in general, presuming that the liberal critique of sedition laws etc. is grounded in the idea that freedom of expression is absolute and liberals are being hypocritical when they oppose bigotry and calls for violence.

Or to paraphrase Karl Popper:

“Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.”

It’s not the same as criticising the integrity of India- that in itself is an ideological construct. There are fine lines here- it’s alright to criticise Islam philosophically and theologically, or terrorists who use Islam as a justification; but when the insinuation or implication is that Muslims are de facto more violent than other communities, it’s straight-out Islamophobia and leads to the persecution of Muslims in general.

Criticism of the idea of the Indian nation state, on the other hand, doesn’t actually harm any community and by extension, the exercise of rights, liberties and the safety of individuals making up that community; although it might be offensive to a lot of people. This nuance is very important. Offensive speech is not a sufficient condition for restriction of freedom of expression in a liberal political paradigm, harm is. There really is no hypocrisy here.

I don’t agree…

Of course you don’t. But the point is, the charge of hypocrisy doesn’t stand.

But why do you people hate Hinduism?

Again, not really. Liberal Intellectual Terrorists don’t hate Hinduism- they realise that it’s a conglomeration of very diverse religious practices and theologies with a great diversity of beliefs and innumerable variations, but they do hate its political manifestation.

People should be able to follow whatever religion they want in their personal spaces, but it becomes problematic when you want beef bans, people to behave in a ‘sanskaari’ way, condemn people for their sexualities and ways of life etc. Or for instance, pretend Muslims are in some way inferior or more savage than Hindus, trying to bring about laws to prevent religious conversions, xenophobia by pretending ‘Hindus are native, Muslims are outsiders’, denying how the caste system still persists till date and was always a horrible thing, changing the syllabus to include a false historical narrative based on myths where Indians are the master race, pretending someone in 1000 B.C. understood quantum field theory etc.

If we’re easier on Islam and Christianity in India, it’s because Islamism and Dominion Theology aren’t major forces in Indian politics. Our counterparts in Bangladesh or in the USA, for instance, are far more critical of these trends than they are of Hindutva.

So what’s with the brouhaha over Vivek Agnihotri’s movie?

To be fair, ‘Buddha in a Traffic Jam’ by all accounts also took a negative view of corporate exploitation of tribal populations. What is extremely problematic is how he’s basically generalised every left leaning academic, intellectual and advocates for social justice and human rights, as fundamentally corrupt and out to destroy the country and its people. This is not just patently false, but has very damaging repercussions in general.

He comes in a long line of Right leaning intellectuals from Chetan Bhagat and Anupam Kher(who incidentally stars in his movie) who’ve derided advocates for social justice as a hindrance to development and progress, instead of focusing on the issues these social justice advocates are trying hard to highlight- issues that haven’t been, and possibly cannot be addressed by technology or naive invocations of economic growth. By portraying these left leaning academics and intellectuals as anti-national ‘libertards’, they’re effectively silencing any discussion of these issues since these issues are almost exclusively brought up by the political Left. Neither are these issues comfortable topics in general, but need more public discussion.

Lastly, as the incidents of the murders of Narendra Dabholkar and M.N. Kalburgi, Rohit Vemulla’s suicide and the fracas at JNU illustrated, such characterisations of left leaning academics and intellectuals in the public domain have contributed to a culture of violence against individuals holding such views. Considering that, it shouldn’t be surprising that Leftist and Liberals have been outraged by such a characterisation of their politics.

So why are you then called ‘Liberal Intellectual Terrorists’?

Your words, not ours.