Continued from: Textbook Laundry
Most of all the progressives were able to work their mischief because of the control they came to acquire over institutions like the Indian Council of Historical Research and the unfettered influence they exercised over the rulers. The real crime of these eminences lies in the condition to which they have reduced these institutions. It lies even more in the use to which they have put those institutions.
Arun Shourie opines, “They have used these institutions to have a comfortable time of course. They have used them to puff up each other’s reputation… Their crime lies in their derelictions – because of this projects that were important for our country have languished… But the worst of it is that they have used their control of these institutions to prevent public discourse and thereby derail public policy… (they) have completely diverted public view from the activities in our own day.”
He minces no words as he proceeds honestly with proven records, “These intellectuals and their patrons have worked a diabolic inversion: the inclusive religion, the pluralist spiritual search of our people and land, they have projected as intolerant, narrow-minded obscurantist; and the exclusivist, totalitarian, revelatory religions and ideologies – Islam, Christianity, Marxism, Leninism – they have made out to be epitomes of tolerance, open-mindedness, democracy, secularism.”
The theory that the progressives premeditated about – which they insisted was in accord with the temper of time – had been shown decades ago to be without basis. Most importantly, it has floundered in practice – the one test the progressives had said, alone mattered. It has disastrously failed in the erstwhile Soviet Union, in Eastern Europe, and lately also in China – its ardent followers in theory and in practice.
Now fashions are changing. The patronage of rulers is evaporating. The guillotine has already claimed its creator. Their Holy Books have been repudiated in their Mecca. The masses cannot be fooled today by swaying certificates from the progressives. Times have really changed. The committed progressive of yesterday is the unthinking conservative today. All that remains is their hold over certain governmental institutions. The camphor has sublimated, and only the wrapper remains.
