Obsessions of Indian Intellectuals - Part II - Dr. Kapil Kapoor - India Inspires Talks

In this talk, Dr. Kapil Kapoor shed light on psychology of Indian Intellectuals with especial focus on their obsessions. Few things that these intellectuals are perennially worries about are: caste, sati, superstition, minorities, gender and about the environment especially about whatever Hindus do, is polluting.

These intellectuals are to be distinguished from Hinduism's traditional men of knowledge, or Rishi-s. The Rishi-s were devoted to the welfare of society, and they encouraged responsibility, self-reliance and cheerfulness. By contrast, our present "intellectuals" are only Buddhi-Jivi-s, those who "use their intellect to make a living".

They have certain typical characteristics:

• They are worried, with a perennially worried look on their carefully careless-looking faces.

• They have a sense of bad luck. Thus, why did they have to be born in a poor "developing country" rather than in America?

• They bemoan everything. They are like Rudali-s, professional mourners; these intellectuals mourn all the time.

• They suffer from a Hanuman complex. Hanuman was so strong that the gods were afraid of him and cursed him to forget his strength until someone would remind him. So, they forget about the past glories of their own civilization.

• They have a Tittiri complex. The Tittiri is an Indian bird that sleeps on its back with its feet skywards, as if supporting the heavens so that they don't fall. Likewise, the intellectuals think that their enduring concern is needed to save India.

• And a little extra to cap it all: intellectuals are good at talking about a book without having read it. This they call "meta-study". (Or as their hero Ayatollah Khomeini said about Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses: "You don't need to jump into a dungheap to know that it stinks.")
Thanks to Dr. Koernaad Elst for this apt summary of Kapil Kapoor’s talk.
Full text is available here - http://koenraadelst.blogspot.in/2015/03/indias-intellectuals.html

About Dr. Kapil Kapoor:
Dr. Kapil Kapoor is an Indian scholar of linguistics and literature and an authority on Indian intellectual traditions. He is former Pro-Vice Chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and served as professor at Centre for Linguistics

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