Mobilenews24x7 Bureau
‘Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely’ but in this piece we are to focus on what is beyond corruption that is tactfully papered down in the middle of political tug-of-war. That is the power of thinking by people.
When people in general stop thinking or are made to think the system chooses then, the majority which fall prey is the common mass or less lettered. Then comes the lettered people who can think but they are somehow are convinced or cajoled to think the way the powerful thinks. May be through manipulation or otherwise.
Such attempts require that people must not think for themselves, which explains ‘Big brother’ mind set and an antipathy towards intellectual activity.
So, may be the invention of a terminology Left Liberals or urban Naxals and the renowned educationist Prof Pravat Patnaik was quoted by a national English daily to have said that “is the destruction of thought. And a society where thought has been destroyed not only vegetates but cannot even survive as an independent entity. It has to live on borrowed ideas” .
This in another way lays the road for intellectual servility. Miles away from any sense of socialistic ideology which had been campaigned by the great scribe and author George Orwell, who was ultimately given a tag of a Leftist by the imperialists of England.
Any legitimate reactions against the government is dissent and is necessary. Even Chief Justice of India, Chandrachud recently said that, dissent is the ‘safety valve’ of democracy. Else it would appear as if there is no difference between so called Urban Naxals and the legitimate dissent.
Patnaik further said that “ terrorisation of intellectuals is not just meant to silence them and to force other intellectuals into eschewing dissidence”.
