The recent debate on the Uniform Civil Code has exposed the intellectual poverty in our public discussions. Pro-Bharatiya Janata Party intellectuals and journalists have not bothered to produce any set of explanatory arguments in favour of the legal entity. The BJP’s opponents, especially self-declared liberals, are equally confused. They support gender justice and egalitarian social order without compromising with their rather unpersuasive and elitist critique of Hindutva. As a result, a highly polarised and, in a way, ill-informed public debate has emerged wherein participants are thoughtlessly committing to take a well-defined position in favour of the camp they belong to.

The UCC debate actually underlines a contempt for intellectualism in public life. There is an assumption that public discussions are only meant for simple, straightforward and ready-to-use answers. A dividing line is often created between a nuanced, jargon oriented, academic discourse and easy-to-understand journalistic type of writing. This dividing line has been one of the main reasons behind the deteriorating standards of intellectual engagement. A section of public commentators — those who frequently contribute to newspapers and web portals — remains indifferent towards serious academic works. This apathy makes their explanations shallow and superficial. The academics, on the other hand, fail to understand the significance of contemporary questions. They are always late in responding to the social issues that set the contours of our public life.

I find three problematic aspects in this regard which need to be examined carefully: a fixed and rigid understanding of political institutions (especially the legal-constitutional framework); indifference towards the actualities of politics; and, finally, the lack of a futuristic political imagination.

There is a belief that the Constitution is a permanent reference point for determining the everyday business of our political life. This belief is not entirely incorrect. It is true that there are certain normative ideals that have been established by the Constitution for providing guiding principles to the government. It does not, however, mean that the practicalities of politics are always determined by these principles. The political class interprets these principles as per its own requirements and produces effective meanings. For example, the Constitution was interpreted as a source to justify the State’s intervention in the economic life of the country. ‘Public sector’, ‘planning’, and ‘socialistic pattern’ had been key words in our public discourse in the 1960s and the 1970s. The Constitution was given a completely different interpretation after economic liberalisation. The State now claims that the market is capable of regulating itself; hence, there is no need to intervene in the economic domain.

In a way, market-driven economic policies have restructured the political institutions in a radical manner in the last three decades. The establishment of special economic zones and the introduction of the Goods and Services Tax are not merely simple economic initiatives. They have far-reaching impacts on local-level institutions as well as on federal relations. Our public debates, unfortunately, do not recognise such complex and direct interconnections between the economy and the polity. Consequently, a rigid interpretation of political institutions continues to survive.

This brings us to the second — related — problem. It is now fashionable to claim that there is no place for ideology in our politics. The Aam Aadmi Party was instrumental in propagating the claim that ideology is a 20th-century phenomenon and has no role to play in Indian politics. It is also argued that good practices would generate good ideas, which might form the basis for new political values and standards. In the post-ideological world, this formulation was deeply attractive, especially in the early 2010s. However, it had a very different practical implication.

Political parties no longer need to offer any ideological justification for electoral manoeuvrings and manipulations. They defend their practical moves in the name of winnability. Even the BJP, which proudly celebrates its association with the ideology of Hindutva, does not hesitate to make context-specific compromises.

Interestingly, our public debates do not recognise the actual implications of this new form of politics. For instance, dominant sections of liberal intellectuals adhere to the view that Hindutva politics is simply a form of fascism in India. They are not interested in studying the changing positions of the sangh parivar on the caste system, the internal contradictions/debates among Hindutva groups on economic liberalisation, and, for that matter, on the UCC. This lack of engagement with changing political realities does not allow them to question their own assumptions and beliefs.

Finally, there is no space for serious, future-oriented political imaginations in our public discourse. The political parties have already started behaving like political firms: they address voters as consumers, offer welfare packages to attract them, and treat elections as a competitive market. This election-centric framework is built upon two conflicting impulses — the desirability of the package for attracting a set of voters and, at the same time, the creation of an enemy, an Other, who could be projected as a threat. The United Progressive Alliance’s politics of secularism and inclusion, for instance, envisaged the inclusion of marginalised groups as a welfare package while projecting BJP’s Hindutva as a threat to the nation. The BJP, interestingly, also follows a similar logic. It talks of the labharthis to reach out to marginalised households. At the same time, Muslim identity is problematised to describe anti-BJP electoral politics as a form of minority appeasement. This shows that political parties do not need to invest in the idea of comprehensive social transformation.

There are no such compulsions for the intellectual class. It can certainly go beyond the limits set out by the political parties. Gandhi, Ambedkar, Bhagat Singh, Lohia, Jayaprakash Narayan, Savarkar, Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, Maulana Azad and Nehru have been seriously discussed and criticised in public debates in recent years. This engagement with modern Indian political thought is very valuable. However, one also finds a strange over-reliance on these figures. They are often evoked to find answers to contemporary questions. This reductionist approach is deeply problematic. The great thinkers of the past can certainly be our reference points for making sense of our political realities. But we have to discover other intellectual resources as well to explore our political universe in its entirety.

Hilal Ahmed is Associate Professor, CSDS, New Delhi