In an article in a national daily, Rakesh Sinha, a former member of the Rajya Sabha from the Bharatiya Janata Party, has contended that the country’s intellectual classes — Mr Sinha probably has the Left-liberal fraternity in mind — did not condescend to engage with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh after Independence. The reason, Mr Sinha argued, was their compulsion to bolster their secular credentials. He cited the dialogues that M.K. Gandhi and B.R. Ambedkar had with the RSS’s founder, K.B. Hedgewar, as proof of a different intellectual milieu that had prevailed in pre-independent India. Mr Sinha has described this lack of engagement of the intellectual fraternity with the RSS post-Independence as a deficiency in the nation’s intellectual fabric. This is because unlike the West, where exchanges of seemingly conflicting ideas are common, the Indian intellectual tradition has been found wanting when it comes to gaining from such critical, cerebral dialogue between ideologies that are polar opposites.

What needs to be pointed out though is that the dissemination of the RSS’s ideology as part of the republic’s intellectual contours cannot be seen in isolation of the political fortunes of the BJP. The recent electoral ascendancy of the Right in India has given the RSS the opportunity to claim, indeed occupy, pole position in the nation’s intellectual edifice. A supine media thus serves as a willing mouthpiece of its views — contentious or otherwise. Popular culture — books and cinema — in recent years, have also been toeing the line favoured by India’s ruling regime. The accruement of political power has led to the streamlining of attempts on the sangh parivar’s part to distort — saffron-wash — not only India’s history but also contemporary knowledge production and scholarly research. In other words, the goal of attaining intellectual hegemony that spokespersons from the Right — Mr Sinha is one of these voices — accuse the Left of harbouring is a shared dream of the two warring camps. Moreover, the RSS seems to be replicating the intellectual distancing that it accuses its ideological adversaries of practising. Has it, for instance, reached out to its intellectual competitors for sustained dialogue? The outcome is troubling. The country’s intellectual ecosystem — from university campuses to the intelligentsia to sites of cultural production — remains divided, polarised, between voices from an ascendant Right and a cornered Left. What get squeezed out in the course of this intellectual turf war are the views of liberals and moderates — a truly endangered species. Could the resurrection of an inclusive India be contingent upon the latter’s resuscitation?