Intellectual's Plight
Intellectuals envy common man for being a common man. Confused? then you are a common man.
Intellectuals have a problem. They have to be hated by common man. If you are an intellectual and you are not drawing hatred from enough people then you cannot be part of that group. I should not be telling you this, we intellectuals maintain secret hatred score card. If you don't cross a cut-off then you are not considered part of our pride.
Why would one become an intellectual? This is a question that you should not be asking. Nobody has an answer to this question. I firmly believe that intellectuals are born with some kind of compulsion to be recognized as an intellectual. There can be no other reason for this. You can't become one, unless you have that compulsion. If you have that compulsion, then you will keep trying to get into our group. So go you got your answer. Now, you know if you would become one. Funny thing is, you cannot get inspired to become an intellectual. Have you heard any of your classmates in school sayiing "I want to be an intellectual when I grow up."? It is simply congenital my friend.
We agree to disagree and disagree just to disagree. When everybody likes a movie, I cannot say that I like that movie even if I like it. Reason - How can I? Intellectuals and common man cannot have same opinion on anything. Everything is fine as long as common man does not give any opinion. The moment some opinion comes from them, immediately we have to take an opposite view. We generally tend to reserve our opinion until we don't hear from them. Just in case they tend to agree with us, we will out of habit immediately say the opposite. We don't like to be called hypocrites.
Come to think of it, ours is the only group which believes in a democracy where minority vote wins. For us majority is always wrong.
To prove the above point, I can give you an example - Taslima Nasreen, a well known writer and problem creator. She wrote a book in which she criticized the social practices and the autrocities commited by the majority over minority community. Now that earned her the hatred from the entire community that she criticized. She also earned death threat as bonus. Now she is a celebrated intellectual. But, then none of us wan to die as an intellectual, we want to live as an intellectual. She fled her country and landed in our country which she for some strange reason thought is an intellectual friendly country. In India she could be an intellectual only by taking an exactly opposite view of what she had expressed in Bangladesh. Who were majority in her country are minority here. We respected her when she was in Bangladesh, in India we identify her as a threat to secularism. She can be an intellectual here only by following her painter couterpart in India.
M.F.Hussain is an intellectual here for the famous paintings that he drew. There were so many protests and again the enivous death threat. You may ask me if what he did was right. My answer would depend on what stand you take. If majority says what he did was wrong, we would question where is the freedom of expression. If majority says that its no big deal, then we would say "How can a civilized country be insensitve to someone painting naked picture of gods. He is sick and needs medical attention."
Now you know why we envy common man. Common man does not have peer pressure. He is not scrutinized by anyone. No pressure of being recognized as an intellectual.
I hope even I will get an opportunity to do something which will get me death threat to boast of.....
