I remain immature

Things have changed over the years. Look back, and you see that laws are enacted, structures are designed to protect the less privileged. And yet, I look around and I find the world remains an arena of hostile formations, and most of intellectual wherewithal we keep piling up is directed against the marginalized. It comes in the garb of working for a better future and yet it is pathetically flawed.


How do we decide when to take sides and with whom? With time, as we get better in understanding identities and the politics of identities, we develop a mind engrossed in polemic, a tongue equipped with quick-wit responses and even when parochial to the core, we pretend to be fair and secular.

And no one can beat the proverbial Brahmin in this art of pretense. The parochial mind will argue in its defense that suppressing identities is the worst kind of violence and hence a casteless society is not in the interest of the non-Brahmin castes. As if someone had sought such an advice from the expert. Yes, the fellow traveler is on the wrong side, but you must empathize and find why they are refusing to correct their mistakes. In the mean time, forget all the damage done to you. And the adviser is a rebel, born of higher privileges, but has been through the red flag and what not.

And with the most exclusive social formation deciding on what should be our values, call it human values. How can a group mostly consisting of members from privileged sections claim to know what human values are?

Sometimes I wonder if the idea, the concept, of subaltern is subverted and usurped by the privileged. The approach of the liberal intellectual has somehow always seemed to be one of deception rather than of a purpose that it claims to have. Thirty years ago, with my immature vocabulary, I wrote in anger against the liberals. A friend, a true liberal, read it and with great sympathy praised the article. And today I remain equally immature not finding appropriate words to comprehend the liberals, the revivalists, the identity theoreticians, constituting the privileged. Somehow I feel great comfort in being with the less cultivated.