The intellectual organisation of political hatreds

The brain is connected to the body in a crisscross fashion. The left side of the brain controls the right side of the body and the right side controls the left. For example, what the left eye sees is sent to the right side of the brain for interpretation; the images captured by the right eye are sent to the left. God knows that should have been an ideal relationship between intellectuals and politicians.

If we compare national politics to the human body, that's how intellectuals should have been connected to it. They should have sat like the opposition inside their own party, ready to flay the party leadership for its failures, mistakes and mischief. They also should have been able to see the looming complexities and convince their parties to address them ahead of time. That's how intellectuals could help political parties in advance before conflicts escalated to crises.

That, however, hasn't been the case for us. Our partisan intellectuals behave like courtesans. They are too eager to please their party bosses instead of following their own conscience. In their exuberance or flattery they even abandon their professional standard. Instead of being guided by intellect, they are guided by experience and emotion.

French philosopher Julien Benda describes this phenomenon in the beginning of his book The Treason of the Intellectuals. He writes: "Our age indeed is the age of intellectual organisation of political hatreds." Written in 1927, almost hundred years later those words prove uncannily prophetic as our intellectuals are negotiating provocations when they should be provoking negotiations.

Thus the intellectuals have degraded themselves, their role as the brainpower of the nation reduced to blind and impulsive subservience. Many of them act like talking machines using their talents for articulate thinking and eloquent speaking to obediently and punctually dispense volleys of partisan shibboleths. Intellectuals on either side of our political divide are to politicians what amplifier is to transistor.

These intellectuals in their submissive role have subverted their own reputation. People don't have much confidence in them, because their minds are predictable even before they open their mouths. Sherlock Holmes tells his assistant John Watson in Arthur Conan Doyle's The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone: "I am a brain Watson. The rest of me is a mere appendix." That statement is conversely true when it comes to linking intellectuals to politicians in this country. Brains bound to political slavery, our intellectuals have become a mere appendix.

It has given rise to the class of mercenary intellectuals, who are motivated by their desire for private gain to take part in political hostilities. They are the hired hands of politicians, who are employed to play the same role in the realm of ideas that musclemen play in physical showdowns. These thought terrorists use half-baked truths and distorted facts as weapons of mass delusion.

The real intellectuals would have done otherwise. They would have simplified things, extricating fat from meat so that politicians couldn't bluff the people. Quite the contrary, the intellectuals are making things complicated in this country, creating smokescreens for politicians to hide their intentions. They pretend to defend the people but portend harm for them.

In many countries of the world intellectuals have been persecuted. The Khmer Rouge in Cambodia killed academics or anybody wearing glasses because it suggested literacy. During the Spanish Civil War General Francisco Franco targeted writers, artists, teachers and professors because they were seen as probable enemies fostering the cultural and economic changes. China's Mao Zedong hated intellectuals and his Red Guards were particularly brutal in attacking their teachers and professors, causing most schools and universities to be shut down once the Cultural Revolution began.

There are scores of examples also from the ancient world when intellectuals suffered for their disagreement with the politicians. When Nero became tyrannical, Seneca disagreed and the emperor thought the philosopher was plotting to kill him. Before Nero's soldiers reached his home to kill him, Seneca had already taken his own life.

It's not just their intellect that makes intellectuals who they are. It's their commitment to live by that intellect and not to negotiate its precepts for material benefits that are the crowning glories of their avocation. It's for the same reason valour is extolled as the highest order for heroes, and piety for holy men.

Intellectuals shouldn't be politically biased as yardsticks shouldn't be crooked. They should be watchdogs of politics not its lapdogs, because it goes against their grain when living in the highest organ of the body they stoop so low. The brain submits to the body when it should be the other way around.

The writer is Editor, First News and an opinion writer for The Daily Star. Email: badrul151@yahoo.com