Indian Realities In Bits and Pieces by Sham Lal

Author:Sham Lal [Lal, Sham]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mobilism
Publisher: Rupa & Co
Published: 2007-03-30T00:00:00+00:00

Ideologies and Intellectuals

A man who deals with large political or social themes in his writings lays his character on a line. For he reveals his own fears and inhibitions to the degree in which he fails to pursue his inquiry to the bitter end or apply its logic to the ills of his own society. It must be said for Andre Beteille that he comes clean in his two essays on ideologies and intellectuals, now published in the form of a pamphlet. This is not because in the fifty pages at his disposal he has been able to assess the relevance of the various ideologies in vogue at home or the role of the intellectuals in having brought matters to the present sorry pass. But he at least provides the kind of perspective which makes such assessment possible. That is no small gain for those who want to clear the air of the cynicism which saps the national will and makes sterile all public debate on issues of urgent concern to millions.

By a quirk of ironies ideologies themselves have become a potent means in our day for the spread of cynicism. Beteille does not deal with this question in any detail. Even a capsule history of the hard knocks taken by the communist ideology as a result of the Stalinist terror, the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia, the current convulsion in Poland and the blowing up of the Maoist myth in China, and by liberal ideology as a result of the devastating war in Vietnam, US subversion of several popular governments and support of despotic regimes in many countries, would have taken him beyond the scope of his essay.

These beatings taken by the two main rival ideologies nonetheless become easy to understand once we grasp, as Beteille explains, that "they seek to change the world through the pursuit not only of ideas but also of power. The pursuit of power has its own demands which "sooner or later transform the concern for truth as such into a concern for rectitude, for party reasons, or for reasons of state." As he goes on to point out, "an ideology is not an outcome of a disinterested pursuit of ideas...ideologies view such pursuit with hostility, which is often a disguise for fear."

Unluckily for most ideologies, the disguise has been wearing thin for many years. It is true that since ideologies appeal to emotion as much as to reason and make use of myth and symbol as much as argument, they have an irrational side to them. Once they are victorious they try to keep themselves in power either through force or through manipulation of public opinion. This is why Beteille is as critical of the view which accepts an ideology at its face value as of the notion which regards it invariably as false consciousness. As he explains, the two very often coexist in the mind of the same person. "The ideology of the other person is false consciousness, hence it has to be

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.