THE ERUDITE MEDIOCRE AND HIS MASSIVE FAN FOLLOWING, A DUAL SYNDROME IN MASS MEDIOCRITY

THE ERUDITE MEDIOCRE AND HIS MASSIVE FAN FOLLOWING, A DUAL SYNDROME IN MASS MEDIOCRITY 

Scholarly mediocrity devoid of originality in thinking often passes off as intellectual excellence in our country. A more discerning polity would have been able to pick the grain from the chaff and prevented this. There are many famous examples of this but I shall desist from naming them for the sake of propriety. Originality, nonetheless, is the prime necessity in our average thinking as well if we are to build a future civilisation of our own in the mould of our predecessors who were eminently capable of such thinking. Too much of sterility has passed off as creativity in many a famous case in the past decades and the culture of increasing mediocrity continues to its detrimental effect on India's mass thinking. We need a scientific temper in the truest sense and not in its cosmetic manifestation as is the case generally with us. A rational bent of mind with a sense of statistical proportion in our conversational estimates of events must replace wild, unfounded assertions that bear hardly any semblance to factual reality. Furthermore, there must be creative interpretation and analysis of events, and beauty in expression of results thereof as opposed to routine lines of expected observations. Intellectual pretence is not welcome. We must learn to be truly intellectual and that too with an ever-broadening heart that feels for the nation and conceives ways and means to advance its civilisational cause. So, start thinking in real earnest and acknowledge talent wherever it is there rather than going by the name that authors it. Let this decadent feudal culture with all its inertial trappings in tradition and thinking go and let real democracy emerge which shall be the hallmark of our future civilisation. As Swamiji said, "Let men be thinkers."

Written by Sugata Bose 

Photo : A case with a difference. Bankimchandra Chatterjee, a sharp thinker, original interpreter of tradition and culture, and a brilliant writer who revolutionised emerging Indian sociopolitical consciousness that ushered in active resistance to British colonial rule in India.