The Great Liberal Fallacy

[24 Hours]

their religious belief doesnot make them any better scientists, or give them crazy mental superpowers/scientific insights compared to the non-religious ones....their beliefs just donot get in the way of their science as they tightly lock it up when in the lab, Richard Dawkins spoke about it at length...the day we see religious scientists claiming they have access to special scientific knowledge on account of being religious (which is inaccessible to irreligious scientists) is the day we have to take religion seriously

But it certainly doesn't make them more terrible ones does it? Even so, what makes Dawkins a better scientists than them?

 

[Juggernaut_Flat_Plane_V8]

But it certainly doesn't make them more terrible ones does it? Even so, what makes Dawkins a better scientists than them?

The Usefulness of religion in a scientist's life is being questioned..A religious scientist can end the debate on God's existence by designing experiments that produce results that show miracles are possible or events that completely defy our understanding of physics at the human-scale level are possible

as long as religious scientists cannot prove God's existence with such extra-ordinary experiments, their belief is just an irrelevant part of their intellect...much like Junk DNA

 

[Indika]

Dada...produce the Brahma astras and amritas ----and I will piss on the Scientific Revolution--Promise

Agreed.

 

[24 Hours]

The Usefulness of religion in a scientist's life is being questioned..A religious scientist can end the debate on God's existence by designing experiments that produce results that show miracles are possible or events that completely defy our understanding of physics at the human-scale level are possible

as long as religious scientists cannot prove God's existence with such extra-ordinary experiments, their belief is just an irrelevant part of their intellect...much like Junk DNA

Why would scientists need to be forced to do such a thing? God's existence is outside the debate of science and more towards philosophy. Any argument for God exists on a philosophical field, not scientific. God's existence is up to the philosophers, not the scientists.

 

[Juggernaut_Flat_Plane_V8]

Why would scientists need to be forced to do such a thing? God's existence is outside the debate of science and more towards philosophy. Any argument for God exists on a philosophical field, not scientific. God's existence is up to the philosophers, not the scientists.

If its a question posed by the Human Intellect..It will also be answered by the strength of the Human Intellect..this makes it a Scientific question and pursuit..Philosophy can never provide evidence..Science provides repeatable evidence and can make predictions that come true

Religious scientists should vociferously argue and produce evidence for their respective Gods be it Ram,Laxman,Allah,Thor,Wotan,Asatru,Amitabha Buddha,Yahweh,Jesus

When religious scientists make breakthroughs in the fields of physics, chemistry, maths non-religious scientists are forced to accept those findings even if the non-religious scientists have no interest in religion

similarly religious-scientists should make breakthroughs and provide evidence for the existence of God so that non-religious scientists are forced to accept their findings regarding the existence of God/s/Thor

That religious scientists donot make much noise about God in academic circles shows you that they themselves know that their belief in God/s is not scientifically defensible OR their religious conviction is weak to the point of being non-existent


religious scientists are doing the world a great disservice by not producing overwhelming evidence for the existence of their God/s, and thereby consigning billions of people to life in eternal fiery pits of hell


This is the 21st century..People won't want to hear about God/s from soothsayers, fakirs,pirs,Babas,swamis,prohets,godmen,ascetics,monks,philosophers,authors....................they want evidence from scientists before they start to believe

and religious scientists are best place to provide that evidence but are wilfully denying that to the public

Woe be unto such two-faced religious scientists!!!!

 

[24 Hours]

If its a question posed by the Human Intellect..It will also be answered by the strength of the Human Intellect..this makes it a Scientific question and pursuit..Philosophy can never provide evidence..Science provides repeatable evidence and can make predictions that come true

Religious scientists should vociferously argue and produce evidence for their respective Gods be it Ram,Laxman,Allah,Thor,Wotan,Asatru,Amitabha Buddha,Yahweh,Jesus

When religious scientists make breakthroughs in the fields of physics, chemistry, maths non-religious scientists are forced to accept those findings even if the non-religious scientists have no interest in religion

similarly religious-scientists should make breakthroughs and provide evidence for the existence of God so that non-religious scientists are forced to accept their findings regarding the existence of God/s/Thor

That religious scientists donot make much noise about God in academic circles shows you that they themselves know that their belief in God/s is not scientifically defensible OR their religious conviction is weak to the point of being non-existent


religious scientists are doing the world a great disservice by not producing overwhelming evidence for the existence of their God/s, and thereby consigning billions of people to life in eternal fiery pits of hell


This is the 21st century..People won't want to hear about God/s from soothsayers, fakirs,pirs,Babas,swamis,prohets,godmen,ascetics,monks,philosophers,authors....................they want evidence from scientists before they start to believe

and religious scientists are best place to provide that evidence but are wilfully denying that to the public

Woe be unto such two-faced religious scientists!!!!

I think you're falling too much into scientism. Science tells us a lot about the world around us. But science can't tell us about morality, aesthetics, and what to do with the scientific knowledge we have.

Science can't tell us whether euthanasia is right or wrong. Science can't tell us which writer is better, Robert Frost or Edgar Allen Poe? Science can't tell us whether we should use genetic recombination to a new bacterium or a bruise resistant apple?

Science tells us about a lot of the world, but not what we should do with it.

 

[Juggernaut_Flat_Plane_V8]

I think you're falling too much into scientism. Science tells us a lot about the world around us. But science can't tell us about morality, aesthetics, and what to do with the scientific knowledge we have.

Science can't tell us whether euthanasia is right or wrong. Science can't tell us which writer is better, Robert Frost or Edgar Allen Poe? Science can't tell us whether we should use genetic recombination to a new bacterium or a bruise resistant apple?

Science tells us about a lot of the world, but not what we should do with it.

Morality is something that is reached through evolution and consensus..there is , never was and never will be an absolute morality..it was moral in some countries to stone adulterers to death or stone blasphemers to death...but not so in other countries...this shows that even religionists cannot answer satisfactorily questions about morality...which writer is better or worse is for individual minds to decide as the question is not of scientific nature...........Science can answer how the world came about and thus whether the world has a creator or not

You failed to answer my previous questions..my argument stands..religious scientists have failed to produce clinching evidence for God/s, which makes them either bad religionists or bad scientists

 

[24 Hours]

Morality is something that is reached through evolution and consensus..there is , never was and never will be an absolute morality..it was moral in some countries to stone adulterers to death or stone blasphemers to death...but not so in other countries...this shows that even religionists cannot answer satisfactorily questions about morality...which writer is better or worse is for individual minds to decide as the question is not of scientific nature...........Science can answer how the world came about and thus whether the world has a creator or not

You failed to answer my previous questions..my argument stands..religious scientists have failed to produce clinching evidence for God/s, which makes them either bad religionists or bad scientists

I agree that there is no such thing as absolute morality but how does that exactly tell us whether religious people don't answer questions of morality? Ethics are one of the top discussions among modern day religious philosophers. And even so why should the concept of God fall under a scientific question? God is a being of the supernatural. Supernatural implies beyond nature. Science sticks to the natural world.

 

[Juggernaut_Flat_Plane_V8]

I agree that there is no such thing as absolute morality but how does that exactly tell us whether religious people don't answer questions of morality? Ethics are one of the top discussions among modern day religious philosophers. And even so why should the concept of God fall under a scientific question? God is a being of the supernatural. Supernatural implies beyond nature. Science sticks to the natural world.

If something supernatural means it is beyond natural..then it also means that the supernatural cannot create the Natural..as there is no way supernatural can interact with the Natural, cuz if the supernatural interacted with the Natural world , it would be or would have been detected by the Natural world---but by your definition Supernatural implies beyond nature

And if something is supernatural and beyond proof, then why do people believe in it? your definition makes God beyond proof



religion doesnot answer questions rgeading morality cuz people with different religions on different continents devise different punishments for different "supposed" crimes such as blasphemy

whereas scientists from different continents with wildly different religions always exactly reproduce the same results for the same experiments

This shows Science is Universal and Religion is not...and by being contradictory in different continents and different kinds of religion , Religious belief shows it can never come up with Universal answers ..even when it pertains to morality

Why is Blasphemy such a huge crime in Islam but not a huge crime in Siberian Shamanism?
Blasphemy invites death in Islamic Jurisprudence but not in Siberian Shamanism

this shows how religion from different continents oppose eachother....But scientific findings are exactly the same , be in Arabia or Siberia

 

[24 Hours]

If something supernatural means it is beyond natural..then it also means that the supernatural cannot create the Natural..as there is no way supernatural can interact with the Natural, cuz if the supernatural interacted with the Natural world , it would be or would have been detected by the Natural world---but by your definition Supernatural implies beyond nature

And if something is supernatural and beyond proof, then why do people believe in it? your definition makes God beyond proof



religion doesnot answer questions rgeading morality cuz people with different religions on different continents devise different punishments for different "supposed" crimes such as blasphemy

whereas scientists from different continents with wildly different religions always exactly reproduce the same results for the same experiments

This shows Science is Universal and Religion is not...and by being contradictory in different continents and different kinds of religion , Religious belief shows it can never come up with Universal answers ..even when it pertains to morality

Why is Blasphemy such a huge crime in Islam but not a huge crime in Siberian Shamanism?
Blasphemy invites death in Islamic Jurisprudence but not in Siberian Shamanism

this shows how religion from different continents oppose eachother....But scientific findings are exactly the same , be in Arabia or Siberia

I don't think we can know for sure whether or not the supernatural cannot create the natural. That's a philosophical question. In the same way morality is. I mean you said it yourself that morality isn't absolute. I already agreed with that, it's up for debate and religious philosophers contribute to that debate. You and I both agree that killing for blasphemy is wrong but neither of us can scientifically prove that it is wrong.

Even then science is universal but that still doesn't tell us what we should do with the universal results of the science.

Anyway, this is pretty off topic. Just PM if you wish to continue this debate.

 

[Soumitra]

THE APPEAL OF liberalism lies in its capacity to accommodate difference, to resist the instinctive urge to reduce the ‘other’ to fit the prisms of the ‘self’, and to recognise their independent and distinct agency. This lends it the unique capacity to account for the ambivalent nature of truth, to recognise and accept the many greys of reality and allow for the creation of assimilative and syncretic spaces.

Liberal, pluralist approaches have formed the basis for modern societies, where diverse opinions, preferences and choices make up a grand social and political canvas.

Ideologies, however, possess a fundamental contradiction: they are seldom ever practised as idealised. Participation in the liberal public sphere was compromised by the inability to widen access and agency beyond a select few with economic means and social ‘status’. The poor, racial and ethnic minorities and even women remained excluded from its ambit.

Key conversations that organised politics, economics and social norms thus largely remained an elite discussion, which despite their apparent differences, shared common class interests and presumptions around morality. This convergence of interests shaped the public discourse. It trickled down to the society through one-way, mass-oriented technologies of print and broadcast media, owned and controlled by this class, informed by their thinking and influenced by their sensibilities. The discourse thus remained incestuous and public consensus often imaginary and contrived.

The inherent flaw in this model was its contrariness to the liberal dictum. It left out large swathes of people who were constrained by the economics of access and politics of acceptance. The liberal public sphere has thus always remained contested and illiberal in its practice.

The domination of a Western cultural-technological narrative, mostly at the cost of indigenous ethos in non-Western settings, meant that it soon became an ideal that was either imposed upon or embraced by societies with sometimes-different social evolutions. This then became another reason of discord in many localities, where existing socio-economic exclusions were reinforced through elite discourse. The marginalised were now also voiceless.

Then came the internet and social media, which dramatically altered the social canvas. It mainstreamed the marginal.

The ever-reducing cost of the internet sees more users getting online each day, increasing the reach of the medium and the consequent amplification of multiple messages. The ease and simplicity of engagement afforded by social media’s two-way communication architecture has proven the most disruptive.

Breaking from the past, where power simply came to be concentrated with a new elite, and subjugating those not fortunate enough to be a part of it, the new order has dispersed discursive power

Without the shackles of previous structures, the internet has allowed large sections of society, hitherto outside the public sphere, to organise themselves, script their own narratives and shape their own democracy. The significant lowering of the barriers of entry, allowed, for the first time, meaningful mass participation in public discourse. Attempts to control and regulate access have had limited impact at best, as the medium forever brings forth new methods to circumvent control, and new pathways to agitate, constantly altering ways to propagate and receive ideas.

While the dominant and the marginal have constantly renegotiated their power equations throughout history, what distinguishes the new dynamic is its participative nature. It has levelled class differences. That too at an unprecedented pace. Breaking from the past, where power simply came to be concentrated with a new elite, and subjugating those not fortunate enough to be a part of it, the new order has dispersed discursive power.

The newcomers with digital ‘mega-phones’ are not bound by old class structures. Instead, deeply aggrieved by their long exclusion, they have set about recasting the public sphere by challenging class presumptions and breaching the boundaries that define it. For their anger is deeper, their hate more potent, and their victimhood more tragic.

Their revenge and redemption lies in dismantling old structures and antiquated arenas that set the rules of social behaviour and public debate. They have successfully challenged, and in several cases, even usurped established political systems, catapulting into power the marginal, whose project now is to legitimise their world-view and consolidate their new-found power and authority. They sought to recast institutions of state and society in the mould of their truths and beliefs. In many instances, these truths and beliefs were defined not by substantive new ethics but being in contest with the normative.

The new wave was responsible for several populist mass movements in the last decade. The Tunisian Revolution, Arab Spring or the 2011 pro-democracy protests in China constitute resistance at the bleeding edge of this change. On the other hand, the coming to power of populist governments on a fierce anti-establishment plank in the US, India, Indonesia, the Philippines and elsewhere through a process of democratic transition constitutes resistance at the soft edge. Nevertheless, at their core, they share similar objectives and use similar approaches, which combine aggressive street dissent and internet activism. Arising from their disillusionment, the objective of the new stakeholders has mostly gravitated to dismantle what existed while seldom possessing a meaningful alternate blueprint.

The newcomers with digital ‘mega-phones’ are not bound by old class structures. Instead, deeply aggrieved by their long exclusion, they have set about recasting the public sphere

In How the Mind Works, Steven Pinker says that binary logic helps one to quickly choose: between fight or flight, between one moral position and another. This lends it a near hypnotic capacity in public discourses where attention spans are notoriously short and competitive appeal relies more on rhetoric than meaning. Diminished in influence and capacity to influence political change, the old elite’s response has situated itself in exploiting this pernicious blindside of mass psyche.

They have sought to oversimplify the discourse by obfuscating inherent subtleties and ambiguities that inform reality, reducing the conversation to binary labels built around reciprocal determination: ‘fake news’; our liberalism versus their illiberalism; our accommodativeness versus their intolerance, our goodness versus their evil. This simplistic binary logic is easier to perpetuate as it does not ensnare the ‘plebs’ in complex subtleties.

Their project relies on reducing newcomers through selective representations made up of half-truths, lumpenising, and denial of agency, in a colonial intellectualism redux. In the manifest, their new narrative is built upon the twin pillars of condescension and fear.

They seek to entangle the newcomers in discussions alien to them, using a mix of provocation and patronage. Their anxiety and uncertain response in new settings is used to contrast this seemingly inferior agency with superior experiences of the ‘self’. The ‘different’ approach of the ‘other’ then becomes the rationale of the politics of disdain, of their boorishness, and lesser agency.

This is captured by the new energy infused into and fear perpetuated through the ‘fake news’ narrative. Framed as a novelty, the liberal elites accuse the newcomers of resorting to it, thereby diminishing the quality of debate and political response. This approach is reductive as it dismisses the real and perceived grievances attached to these narratives. Belittling them as ‘fake’ provides the perfect alibi to ignore accumulated hurt and anger.

And then the hypocrisy. Is ‘fake news’ new? Can we discount its historical role in political and public discourse, and its use by elites who hitherto dominated the public sphere, in furthering their interests and sustaining class dominance? From that standpoint, it at best constitutes a borrowed institutional practice by the new stakeholders.

William Hazlitt once said: ‘Just as much as we see in others we have in ourselves.’ In resorting to labels and framing their discourse through a narrow binary logic, in resorting to the politics of fear and denial of the other’s ‘otherness’, the old elite reveal their Janus face. In seeking to create a counter narrative which is morally absolutist, where the only just choice on offer is theirs, they have become the same as the abhorred other of their imagination— fundamentalist, polarising and dangerous, and every bit as regressive and illiberal.

This clash between the old and the new is for the crown jewels of acquisition, ownership and retention of public influence and space. The ethic at the core of this struggle is power.

Liberal fundamentalism is now at war with unbridled street anger, whose revisionist purpose and impatience have exhibited a dangerous capacity to self-destruct.

Away from this contest for the zeitpolitik, then, participants in the new public sphere, old and new alike, need to arrive at an entente cordiale built upon the vast grounds they share. The only fair redemption is in moving away from binaries, to adopting a syncretic approach that is above the politics of difference; in charting new pathways that are inclusive and representative of mainstream and marginal interests. Such space exists, but between arrogance of the ‘self’ and anger for the ‘other’.

http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/essay/the-great-liberal-fallacy

Why the ‘intellectuals’ of India have failed to understand the ‘lower classes’

Bychaiwallah
Posted on April 20, 2017


India, that is Bharat, has always baffled her enemies. Winston Churchill used to say that India is a mere geographical region, as much a nation as the Equator. Post 1947, the British always looked forward eagerly to the collapse of India under the weight of its own diversity. The disintegration of India was supposed to serve as a historical justification for the British Raj.

Further, India’s “intellectual classes”, who had mostly collaborated with the Empire and been socialized into the colonial mode of thinking, mostly shared in this aspiration. Today this frustrated ambition is mostly communicated in desperate cries of “Bharat tere tukde honge”. If only wishes were horses…

However, baffled by reality, our enemies have always sought to invent fantastic explanations for India’s continued unity. For obvious reasons, the British saw Nehru as an extension of themselves and speculated that his personality might be the only thing keeping India together. The venerable Times famously predicted that the 1967 general elections were going to be the last elections in India. My command over the English language isn’t as good as theirs, so I will just say LOL!

India’s intellectual classes, however, weren’t thrown off so easily. They thought harder. But these classes were both handicapped by their extreme sense of awe towards the British and plagued by a general lack of ability. Thus these classes were reduced to stretching out tired old race theories they had been spoon-fed by their colonial masters.

They zeroed in on caste. They convinced themselves that the oneness of Bharat was an “upper caste construct”. Once this veneer was peeled off, the demons of divisive caste forces would tear India apart. In 70 years, these classes have merely progressed from calling Bharat an “upper caste construct” to calling it an “upper caste male heterosexual construct”. No imagination whatsoever. No originality. Such intellectual impotence is the curse that comes with state patronage for the undeserving.

The intellectual classes have spent 70 years digging under this tree of caste. The British told them that the secret to destroying India was buried under this tree. Every voice that speaks for division of Hindu society was thus amplified by the intellectuals. From language to food habits, everything was denounced as “upper caste imposition”.

I’ll give you a simple example. Pick up any article on beef eating written by a liberal and you will find a compulsory mention of Dalits and tribals who are apparently being forced to give up their beef eating habits.

Is this really true? NSSO data says that 80 million Indians eat beef, of whom 63 million are Muslims. There are 12.5 million Hindus who eat beef, of whom around 9 million are Dalits and tribals. As per census 2011 figures, India has around 25% of Dalits and tribals, which works out to 300 million people. Out of these 300 million Dalits and tribals, a mere 9 million or around 3% actually consume beef! 3%! That’s it!

Just 3%! For ease of comparison, saying that India’s Dalits and tribals eat beef is actually less true than saying India’s Muslims are voting for BJP!

Now, if a liberal wants to make a point about beef and personal freedom, there is solid merit in the argument and I am willing to take it seriously. But you will see that this argument about beef is always buttressed with this fake talking point about Dalits and tribals.

Why? Because the liberals think that by bringing in caste into the beef issue, they have a way to break India into pieces. Bharat ke tukde and all that…

Unfortunately for the intellectual classes, digging under the tree of caste has yielded a very different crop. Far from discovering a simmering magma of hatred towards Bharat, the liberals have dug up a much more vocal, muscular majority of nationalists. The joke really is on them.

I will tell you what happened and it’s hilarious. These so called “lower” castes were actually the farthest removed from colonial influences. They didn’t collaborate with the Empire and they were never socialized into public schools of England or their derivatives in India. They were actually much closer to their Bharatiya roots than the so called “upper castes”. They actually embrace a simple, uncomplicated form of nationalism.

Unlike the intellectual classes, they never got to go to Oxbridge to discuss the perils of American imperialism in Guatemala. They haven’t been to any cocktail parties with Pakistani friends either in Lahore or in Delhi. Now, why would a “lower” caste youth whose family has always lived in say Bahraich in Uttar Pradesh feel some deep connection with intellectuals of Karachi?

What did the liberals think was going to happen? Once the “lower” castes found their voice in politics, they spoke in the only language they knew : the language of being an Indian. It’s a language that is not fashionable in Lutyens’ Delhi.

They tried everything : Rohith Vemula to Una. The end result was one big egg on their faces. The so called “lower” classes stood rock solid with the narrative of nationalism. For the classes, the nightmare is only just beginning.

They are desperate. Any Dalit or a person of so-called lower caste who doesn’t agree with their contrived worldview is declared heretic. They prescribe only their own version of history and worldview to a Dalit, and no other view is allowed. They talk about “alternative history” while denying any alternatives to those on whose behalf they claim to speak. But there is life beyond JNU and such campuses they control, and things are changing there.

Varanasi is perhaps the capital of Hindu civilization. If you are a clueless Western intellectual with little more than an agenda, you might look at the harsh exterior of burning corpses and think it’s the city of death. But it’s the city where life, death and renewal embrace each other in the uniquely sublime Hindu way of seeking harmony with the ultimate truth of our human existence.

And when in 2014, Narendra Modi came to this city and displaced the ‘Brahmin’ Murli Manohar Joshi, something changed. The so called “lower castes” were taking their place at the heart of Hindu civilization.

The intellectuals thought they were witnessing our death. But they were really looking a civilization being reborn. It’s okay. They won’t understand. They never did.

 

[Juggernaut_Flat_Plane_V8]

I don't think we can know for sure whether or not the supernatural cannot create the natural. That's a philosophical question. In the same way morality is. I mean you said it yourself that morality isn't absolute. I already agreed with that, it's up for debate and religious philosophers contribute to that debate. You and I both agree that killing for blasphemy is wrong but neither of us can scientifically prove that it is wrong.

Even then science is universal but that still doesn't tell us what we should do with the universal results of the science.

Anyway, this is pretty off topic. Just PM if you wish to continue this debate.

thanks for being a good sport..I think both of us adequately elucidated our points and its upto the readers to make their minds up on whose arguments carried greater weight...have a nice time

 

[Soumitra]

Why the Science Students of JNU Voted For ABVP
BY SIMANTINI KRISHNAN ON 20/09/2016 • 11 COMMENTS

The Hindutva ideology propagated by the organisation represents a unitary vision of politics and development, which can be more easily aligned with the scientific rather than humanistic mode of thinking.

ABVP candidates in JNU elections. Credit: ABVP JNU/Facebook

The recently concluded polls in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) have brought to light an interesting phenomenon: The victorious Left alliance dominated the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) in the social science and language schools, but the trend was reversed when it came to the science school.

Social media reacted to this trend with a righteousness of sorts. The idea seemed to be that the political disposition of science students is more valid by virtue of being more scientific and therefore correct. At the same time, another set of reactions on social media questioned the curious affinity of the science school with an ideology that is anything but scientific. Why did the science students of JNU vote for an ideology that propagates myths in defiance of modern science?

The answer to this question is not simple, as it rests on the complex relationship of academic disciplines with broader social and political milieus.

The scientific enterprise is typically understood as a value-free and neutral inquiry to uncover truths about the world we inhabit. The knowledge derived from such scientific inquiry is deemed universal. Yet, its relationship with the human civilisation has not been free of contradictions.

On one hand, the advancement of science in the western world went hand-in-hand with the industrial revolution, secularism and democracy. On the other hand, the universality of science became the justification for colonialism. What began as a search for new markets gradually gave way to the white man’s civilising mission across the rest of the world. One of the most influential thinkers in the liberal tradition, John Stuart Mill, has been guilty of justifying colonialism on these lines.

The social sciences identified with the scientific enterprise as they set out to understand patterns of human behaviour which would aid efficient administration. However, by the middle of the 20th century, many such disciplines were spurred by black and feminist movements in the West, and anti-imperialist movements in Asia and Africa.

The notion of universal truth that was directly linked with the victory of science over religion came to be challenged in this new political context. As hitherto unheard voices highlighted their distinctive experiences, humanistic disciplines became more and more amenable to the idea of multiple or subjective truths. It became important to distinguish the domain of the physical sciences from the realm of human experience. A single objective truth could not account for human conditions shaped by oppression, indignity, exploitation and servitude. Empathy and understanding were deemed far more potent in the pursuit of such knowledge.

In the context of Indian politics, the Hindutva ideology propagated by the Sangh parivar represents a unitary vision of the country. Even a benign interpretation of Hindutva suggests that a unifying Hindu identity supersedes differences based on religion, sect, caste, region or language. Such a unitary vision is consistent with the language of development employed by the BJP government.

The current discourse on development rests on the monolithic narrative of a bright, shining, prosperous and powerful nation, but one that does not accommodate the voices of weaker sections of the population. For example, the Swachh Bharat campaign speaks of a clean India, but without making any references to the sanitary and scavenging occupations of the Dalit population. The concept of digital India has now merged seamlessly with India’s most powerful business house. Yet, the discourse seems to be that Reliance is fulfilling the prime minister’s dream of digital connectivity. The means by which Reliance may have procured its resources, and how that may have come at a significant cost to the society, is irrelevant.

A unitary vision of politics and development can be more easily aligned with the scientific rather than humanistic mode of thinking. This explains the intuitive affinity of JNU’s science students with the ABVP, while the students of social sciences and languages were less enamored by such politics. The occurrences of February 9, 2016 and subsequent developments deepened the divide in JNU. The sedition charges slapped on students for defying a unitary vision of India would have been nothing short of abhorrent to students trained to value multiple perspectives of reality. Science students tend to be less amenable to such a position, and therefore more susceptible to the dominant mode of thinking on the issue.

Left politics has traditionally offered a broad platform to the diversity of students at JNU. An admission policy that gives special consideration to women, as well as students from backward regions, has amplified the impact of reservation on the student demographic in the university. Besides, the university is host to a vibrant queer movement. Such a student body is incompatible with the ABVP, which remains male, upper caste and Hindi speaking at its core.

The rise of the Birsa Ambedkar Phule Students Association as principal opposition to the Left alliance is further testimony to the inability of ABVP to accommodate voices that may have been marginalised in Left discourses.

As far as the larger discourse on social media is concerned, the denigration of humanistic disciplines reflects a much larger problem in India’s education system. In western democracies, humanistic knowledge played a considerable role in shaping education systems, especially in the post-war period. The perils of science that did not operate within ethical bounds led to a premium on teaching ethics and humanism through history and language curricula in schools. Further, universities ensured exposure to various subjects, enabling conversations across disciplines and ideologies.

Indian education, on the other hand, came to be characterised by a disconnect between the sciences and the humanities. More specifically, technical education took precedence, as it was a better guarantor of employability and socioeconomic mobility in a developing country. Over time, this has come to reflect in school education as well, which gears students for competitive exams based on science curriculum. Further, colleges and universities dedicated exclusively to technical education have precluded the scope of broader conversations.

The original vision for scientific and technical education in India was deeply embedded in a larger socioeconomic milieu. It was meant to propel industrialisation and lift the Indian society out of poverty, superstition and backwardness and thus create the conditions for democratic government. This link between science and society was even written into the charters of institutions such as the IITs, resulting in the inclusion of humanities departments. While the premium on scientific and technical education has remained, the social and political context has gotten lost along the way. In its absence, science at the service of the nation, can scarcely exceed political rhetoric.

Simantini Krishnan is an independent researcher and columnist based in London.

 

[24 Hours]

thanks for being a good sport..I think both of us adequately elucidated our points and its upto the readers to make their minds up on whose arguments carried greater weight...have a nice time

I enjoyed the debate myself. Far better than debating the Islamists in this forum.

 

[Soumitra]

How to break the back of India’s Left-wing ecosystem
The most effective way to ensure long-term impairment of India’s entrenched Left-wing ecosystem is to throw open the education market to competition
Rajeev Mantri
Not only does the Indian Left enjoy state patronage and a pervasive grip on academia, it has a long history of being viciously intolerant towards contrary viewpoints.

The fracas surrounding the events at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) has once again ignited debates about freedom of expression, India’s education system and the exercise of state power.

Economist Sanjeev Sanyal wrote recently about the inescapable sway of Left-wing ideology across intellectual life in India. Not only does the Indian Left enjoy state patronage and a pervasive grip on academia, it has a long history of being viciously intolerant towards contrary viewpoints. Economist and member of Niti Aayog Bibek Debroy had recounted recently how renowned Columbia University trade economist Jagdish Bhagwati was forced out of Delhi School of Economics in the 1950s. As Sanyal writes, “The Left dominance over the intellectual establishment has its roots in the systematic ‘ethnic cleansing’ of all non-Left thinkers since the 1950s…the result of the systematic cleansing was that there were no non-Left academics remaining in the social sciences field in India by the early 1990s.” Sanyal closes his article by saying that “there needs to be a wider national debate about bringing greater plurality of thought in India’s intellectual establishment”.

The intolerance of the Left is nothing new. Such is the hypocrisy of those who wail about freedom of expression that while JNU’s student activists demand tolerance when they call for more individuals like convicted terrorist Mohammed Afzal to emerge from every home—something eminent jurist and former attorney general Soli Sorabjee said would qualify as “incitement” and “was not a borderline case” under current Indian law—the supposedly open-minded and freedom-loving student community railed against Baba Ramdev when he was to address a gathering at the JNU campus.

In the political sphere, Left parties have employed incredible violence to achieve their ends. According to an article in the Mainstream Weekly published in 2010, the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Front coalition that governed West Bengal from 1977-2009 committed over 55,000 political murders.

Centre for Policy Research president Pratap Bhanu Mehta, routinely feted as India’s finest public intellectual, waxed eloquent on constitutional patriotism and liberal democracy in a column castigating the government for its actions at JNU, charging the government with threatening democracy itself. For all the frothy, highfalutin prose about freedom of speech, Mehta failed to muster the courage to speak for the free speech rights of firebrand politician Kamlesh Tiwari, who enraged members of the Muslim community because of his comments about their prophet, and was promptly jailed. Celebrity TV anchors and the liberal intelligentsia bleating today about press freedom also looked the other way when Shirin Dalvi, an editor of Urdu newspaper Avadhnama, was arrested for re-printing the Charlie Hebdo cartoons. Dalvi subsequently lost her job and the newspaper had to be shut down.



Constitutional patriotism isn’t an absolute moral philosophy that lives in a vacuum—it exists in the context of India’s Constitution. Try as they may, the reality is that our Constitution is far less liberal than our “liberals” would like to pretend. It expressly does not allow for unrestricted, absolute freedom of speech. Yet, it is the norm for Indian liberals to outrage when it is convenient to them—and pretend they are being constitutionally patriotic—even as they never dare make the case for injecting greater liberalism into constitutional statute.

Those who advocate for freedom of speech cannot be selective. Selective outrage in the JNU case signals that it is acceptable to suppress free speech to appease members of the Muslim community, but speech cannot be suppressed to assuage those against the organized advocacy of India’s disintegration. What does that say about the biases of India’s “liberals”, and their commitment to principle?

But it is tiresome to repeat the charge of hypocrisy against the “liberal” clique. The greater project for the Indian right remains how to impair and cripple the entrenched Left-wing ecosystem. Such impairment is a worthy pursuit, for a panoply of Left-wing ideas in society and the economy have been tried for over six decades since India’s independence, with unsatisfactory results to put it mildly: on a per capita basis, India remains among the poorest countries in the world, despite its wealth of human and natural resources.

As Sanyal was careful to point out, it is not that “the overwhelming dominance of the Left should be replaced by a similar dominance of the Right”—what India needs is a marketplace of ideas, and like for any market, one certainly cannot expect the incumbent force (that is, the Indian Left-wing) to willingly cede space to new entrants.

This is where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), as the political vehicle for the Indian right-wing, is screwing up monumentally. Its approach so far has been to use the agency of state power to replace left-wingers with right-wingers. This was the same approach that the previous BJP-led government under Atal Bihari Vajpayee had adopted. It failed then, and will fail this time too.

The truth is this isn’t even a strategy—it is a reaction. BJP needs to move from reactionary, knee-jerk responses precipitated by random events to putting in place a strategy that systematically undermines the power of this decades-old ecosystem. The solution is straightforward—this task is better executed by society’s initiative rather than state fiat. If the education market is opened to competition, the castles built by the Left which require state patronage for sustenance will collapse on their own for they have no real moats—government protection is the moat that is keeping them in business.

This would entail, for instance, transferring responsibility for the management and administration of all central universities to boards of trustees composed of the institution’s alumni, requiring institutions to raise funds on their own, pushing them to create and manage their own endowments, enabling institutions to define their own academic curriculum and personnel compensation strategies, allowing foreign universities to set up campuses in India, permitting for-profit schools and universities, and reallocating government funding to individuals rather than institutions in the form of scholarships and student vouchers.

Such reforms would invite massive pushback from the special interest groups that would be hurt by the changes. These groups may include teacher unions, left-wing activist organizations and sponsors of minority-run institutions, who enjoy much more freedom already thanks to their minority status. But taking on the pushback has both short-term and long-term payoffs—the neo-middle class, to use Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s coinage, is a far bigger group that would benefit from competition in the education sector. The growth and prosperity of this group is incontestably in the national interest. This neo-middle class pays a heavy price from the protection afforded to special interest groups in education

Inarguably, nothing matters more to Indian parents from any strata of society than providing a good education to their children. Whether it is admission for kindergarten, school or college, practically every middle class Indian family—and every Indian family that aspires to join the ranks of the neo-middle class—suffers severe stress to obtain access to education for their children. On the back of the demographic dividend, demand for quality education far outstrips supply. Corruption and bribery is rampant, and even reputable private institutions (including those run by the minority community under special rules) frequently extort under-the-table money from hapless, helpless parents in exchange for admission to their wards. Once again, it is not the rich that are hurt the most, but the poor and middle classes. Those who can afford it send their children to study abroad.

As there is increased competition with liberalization, left-wing citadels will be forced to adapt or they will fail. Moreover, there is little reason to fear the pushback inevitable when pursuing the liberalization agenda because the pushback is happening in any case, as BJP governments at the Centre and in states clumsily attempt to appoint right-wing individuals in place of left-wing individuals. The difference is while short-term political costs are incurred by the current approach, no long-term benefits are accruing.

The most effective way to ensure the long-term impairment of India’s entrenched Left-wing ecosystem is to throw open the education market to competition. It is also the cheapest, for it would not require expending government revenue, which can be invested to improve India’s national defence and security, alongside providing for the welfare of the poorest through direct benefit transfers. The economic rationale and political calculus for liberalizing higher education is self-evident—it is the will to drive structural changes that has been absent from the Narendra Modi government.