Intelligentsia in Pakistan and the world

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By Prof Khwaja Masud - Dawn - 20-10-07

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‘WHICH side of the barricade are you on’ This was the question posed to the intelligentsia by Maxim Gorky, during the mid-thirties of the last century, when fascism was on the rampage in Europe. This query is as relevant today as it was 70 years ago in as much as the threats facing humanity due to conflicts, ecological disasters, mass illiteracy, poverty, disease and an ever-deepening economic crisis are the breeding grounds for fascism.

Each one of us, especially those whose duty is to do intellectual work, must stand up and be counted. There can be no spectators in the titanic struggle that goes on between the forces of democracy, social justice, enlightenment and tolerance on the one hand and the forces of fanaticism, dogmatism and exploitation on the other.

The war on the ‘intelligentsia’ is Russian in origin - the intelligentsia being a class of intellectuals possessing culture and political initiative. According to Isaiah Berlin, ‘The phenomena of intelligentsia with its historical and literary revolutionary consequences is the largest single Russian contribution to social change in the world.’ During the 19th century, the members of the Russian intelligentsia thought of themselves as united by something more than mere interest in ideas. They considered themselves as being a dedicated order, devoted to the spreading of a specific attitude to life.

The Russian intelligentsia had accepted the doctrine that everyone was called upon to perform a mission beyond the selfish purpose of material existence. Since they had an education superior to their oppressed brethren, they had a direct duty to help them towards the light.

Intellect is always on the move against something: some oppression, injustice, fraud, illusion, vested interest or dogma is constantly falling under the scrutiny of the intellectual class. Intellect is the critical, creative, contemplative side of the mind. It examines, ponders, wonders, criticises, imagines and theorises.

Intellect looks for the meaning of a situation as a whole. It has a grasp on historic perspective and the interplay of the dialectic. Marx proclaimed: ‘Philosophers have only interpreted the world so far; the point, however, is how to change it.’

Every thinker puts some portion of an apparently stable world in peril, and no one can wholly predict what will emerge in its place. Is this true of all ideas’ Ideas can be reactionary, conservative and defenders of the status quo. Not all men of ideas are progressive and innovators. Quite a number of them are dyed-in-the-wool opportunists and time-servers. An intellectual is one who does not live off ideas but for ideas ‘ and even dies for them. Socrates epitomises such an intellectual.

The intellectuals emerged as a force to be reckoned with in modern history during the 18th century when the Encyclopaedists tolled the bell for the French Revolution (1789) by awakening the people from the dogmatic slumber of the mediaeval ages. They broke the stranglehold of the priests on the hearts and the minds of the people by spreading the ideas of liberty, equity, fraternity, rationalism, tolerance and humanism.

The term ‘intellectual’ first came to be used in France. It came into vogue during the Dreyfus case, when numerous writers were aroused to protest against the conspiracy. It was used by the Left as a loud banner and by the right as an insult. ‘Let us use this word,’ said one leftist writer, ’since it has received high consecration.’

When McCarthyism was on the rampage in the US, it was Eisenhower who ridiculed an intellectual as a man who takes more words than are necessary to tell more than he knows.

Anti-intellectualism is an inevitable concomitant of fascism, fanaticism, and obscurantism, which can flourish only in an atmosphere surcharged with irrationalism, fanaticism and dogmatism. Ideas are the means by which a society comes to terms with changing reality. Our volatile and tempestuous society stands in need of ideas which comprehend the present, draw lessons from the past and anticipate the future.

Comprehension of the present is impossible without perception, and anticipation of the future demands vision. Herein lies the importance of men of ideas and vision i.e. the intelligentsia.The crisis of confidence in our society comes in part from a growing sense of the dissociation between idea and power. On the one hand, the spread of corruption challenges the belief in the efficacy of reason; on the other, authoritarianism in every walk of life intensifies the feeling of individual impotence. The accelerating pace of social change heightens the impression of the times being out of joint.

We find ourselves the helpless victims of the velocity of history and of the endless machinations of unscrupulous leaders. The fear that ideas have failed as a means of social control haunts the intelligentsia. However, this predicament of the intelligentsia in a world of power is not new. The Greeks made an attempt to find ways of associating the intellect with the state: the philosopher as the critic of the power as exemplified by Socrates; the philosopher as the tutor of the prince as represented by Aristotle; the philosopher as king as pronounced by Plato.Right from the dawn of history, ideas have often been part of the world of power. The Brahmins in India, the Mandarins in China and the ulema in Islamic history wielded power as advisers, civil servants and dispensers of justice.

Carlyle wrote ‘The hero as a man of letters’ and eulogised him in his unique way: ‘This hero is altogether a product of these new ages. He is new, I say: he has hardly lasted about a century. Yet, never till about a hundred years ago, was there seen any figure of a great soul, living apart in that anomalous manner: endeavouring to speak forth the inspiration that was in him by printed books.’

The intellectuals in Pakistan are beholden to the teeming millions of poverty-stricken masses who are shackled economically and spiritually by the chains of feudalism, comprador bourgeoisie and the obscurantist priests. Basically the task of the Pakistani intellectuals is the same as that of the Encyclopaedists during the 18th century, who dealt a fatal blow to mediaevalism. They have not only to interpret our society in a new way but they are committed to changing it.

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