The Intellectuals

                

In recent times, the dictionary definition of the word ‘intellectual’ has proved to be completely wrong. Literally, this word means a person who uses his mind to think rationally. But the society’s definition is the exact opposite of the literal meaning. In India, persons who use the most illogical arguments, endorse anything but the rational, propagate absurd theories, write ludicrous articles and senseless books are labelled as intellectuals.

The society’s intellectuals hardly have any idea of the ground realities, rarely provide solutions to problems and never speak the truth. Spreading lies, distorting facts are the key traits of Indian intellectuals. They live in a self-induced ambience where they believe that anyone or anything rational is their enemy. They scare the public by talking about the dangers of imaginary threats but ignore the real ones.

Think about the last time you saw the word intellectual written with a person’s name (it might be a newspaper article or a debate on TV). Now google that person’s profile. In all likelihood, you will find that they support Naxals, oppose any kind of development, sign mercy petitions for terrorists, hate a particular religion, and believe in hate-anything-that-is-Indian. But above all, you will find that they are shameless hypocrites who don’t have any morals and have lost all self-respect. If you don’t remember any such name, google search for “Indian intellectuals”. ‘Anti-India’, ‘hate’, ‘fear’, and ‘intolerance’ are some of the key words on the first page.

This behaviour of the so-called intellectuals is not limited to India. This breed of humans is found everywhere. The below paragraph is quoted from Atlas Shrugged. Here, some fraudsters who have expropriated governmental powers via trickery are contemplating the implementation of a national emergency to escalate their loot. One of them wonders whether the intellectuals would pose any problems. Someone answers: 

"They won't, your kind of intellectuals are the first to scream when it's safe—and the first to shut their traps at the first sign of danger. They spend years spitting at the man who feeds them—and they lick the hand of the man who slaps their drooling faces. Didn't they deliver every country of Europe, one after another, to committees of goons, just like this one here? Didn't they scream their heads off to shut out every burglar alarm and to break every padlock open for the goons? Have you heard a peep out of them since? Didn't they scream that they were the friends of labor? Do you hear them raising their voices about the chain gangs, the slave camps, the fourteen-hour workday and the mortality from scurvy in the People's States of Europe? No, but you do hear them telling the whip-beaten wretches that starvation is prosperity, that slavery is freedom, that torture chambers are brother-love and that if the wretches don't understand it, then it's their own fault that they suffer, and it's the mangled corpses in the jail cellars who're to blame for all their troubles, not the benevolent leaders! Intellectuals? You might have to worry about any other breed of men, but not about the modern intellectuals: they'll swallow anything. I don't feel so safe about the lousiest wharf rat in the longshoremen's union: he's liable to remember suddenly that he is a man—and then I won't be able to keep him in line. But the intellectuals? That's the one thing they've forgotten long ago. I guess it's the one thing that all their education was aimed to make them forget. Do anything you please to the intellectuals. They'll take it.”

Two entirely different cultures of different time periods have the same description of intellectuals: hypocrites who hate anything that is rational. The original meaning has been distorted to such an extent that it would be better to change its dictionary definition so as to eliminate any confusion regarding the type of person intellectuals are.