Why Don't Indian Men Leave Behind An 'Intellectual Legacy'?

"An intellectual is someone who has found something more interesting than sex."

-- Aldous Huxley

To be honest, what I really feel bad about is that I don't feel worse. That is the intellectual'sproblem in a nutshell.

-- Michael Frayan

To the man-in-the-street, who, I'm sorry to say, is a keen observer of life, the word 'Intellectual' suggests straight away a man who's untrue to his wife. 

--W.H.Auden

Raji Pillai: They don't?

Shivaani Chakravarti: They can give us what they've got when they get it.

Aman Gill: Where is the intellectual climate in India? The academic campus is as petty as the commercial sector. TheUniversities are stagnant institutions. Intellectual legacy is the last thing on anyone’s mind!

Kalyan Raman: Because the bar is set too low and the petty compensations too thick and fast to result in more than a fewlacklustre obits when the intellectual is dead. Intellectuals, entre nous soit dit, are thin on the groundanyway. What we have is a clutch of honest (and more frequently, lazy and dishonest) brokers for otherpeople's ideas.

Reeta Sinha: They don't? The world knows they have. If the question is "Will the tradition continue?" time willtell. But, if we find that Indian men don't leave as much to future generations, I daresay it's not aphenomenon limited to Indian men, rather, just the general decline in intellectual activities altogether.After all, even for a topic as complex as the Indian male, Outlook asked for 'sound bytes', didn't it? Notintellectual discourse.

Pauline Chitra Vellaichamy: Intellectual legacy presumes the existence of an "intellect"...? ! What with saving tobuild/renovate the ancestral home or acquire new property (What will the neighbours/community say if I didnot? Esp. how can I not repay my parents for their contributions to my education? And anyway, the wife mustknow something about it. I don’t have time for such pursuits. The wife? Yeah, she’s VP of operations at atelecom company. No no I don’t have time for these things…ask her.)

Abraham Eraly: Strangely, our land of 'primordial passivity and conservatism' was once, till about the sixth century AD, theland of idealists and radical thinkers, who challenged traditions and advanced knowledge. Then we slid intothe Dark Ages, and knowledge became fossilised. We grew intellectually timid, even cowardly. Conformed blindlyto the given values, lost all sense of individualism and idealism.

We are yet to emerge from that bog. We need intellectual rebels today to carry us forward, but we don'thave them. We don't have them because only mediocrities can thrive in our present social environment. It's nosurprise that nearly every Indian who has made any world class contribution in science or culture, has done sooutside India.

Anasuya Mohanti: On the contrary Indian men do bequeath intellectual legacies. Scientists, poets, artists, writers, politicalcommentators do leave their mark on the society at large though a lot of women would like to think otherwise.The truth is that some of the best professionals are mostly men. A lot of it has to do with the fact thatwomen in India till recently had little or no say in most things intellectual. In fact, a look at the literacyrates will show how skewed the system still is against females in India. But women have come out the kitchen(and bedroom) to take on roles earlier earmarked for the male of the species.

P.V. Subramanian: I don't think most men, anywhere, leave behind an intellectual legacy. Only a few men and women get to beintellectuals anyway. And sure enough, a few Indians have left behind an intellectual legacy, sometimes ontheir way out
of the country!

After our Eastern friends were so callously treated in the "macho" discussion, I would like topoint out that a disproportionate amount of intellectual legacy seems to come from Bongland.

Farrukh Dhondy: This is a deep calumny against our great intellectual heritage. One only has to think of poets such as C.CMahalingam, or of the great Bengali copywriter Laptop Das Gupta or indeed of the Dingle prize-winninggynaecologist U. Kanth to realise that their memory and names will live forever.

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