This obiter dicta of my esteemed class-mate came to mind when I began pondering the case of Rana Dasgupta- whose imminent tome on Globalisation promises to enthrone him as the Pankaj Mishra of the rising generation.
However, before putting down my thoughts on this rising young prodigy, I will need to clarify some terminology.
To start with- 'Buddhijivi' means one who lives by and for the Mind. It is the Bengali term for that type of intellectual we instinctively refer to as gobshites and, as such, is a proper subject for socio-proctological investigation.
However, the term Buddhijivi is by no means unproblematic for Bengali Geist which differs from the Pan-Indian variety because of the greater salience of Tantric (esoteric) thought followed by a superior development of Navya-Nyaya (Logicism).
Briefly, this suggests that, the Rationalist Bengali's epistemic 'unthought known' features
1) reliance on 'yantra' type' physicalist explanations- i.e. more autism type hyper-mechanistic thinking and less schizoid type 'action at a distance' hyper-mentalism.
2) a substantivist notion of property as opposed to the Pan-Indian conception of it as a 'samskar'- i.e. something hysteresis ridden, relational and unconnected with Reality save in a Coasian, intentional, sense.
North Indian Kayasthas share the latter but not the former characteristic because of Islamic influence confirming an indigenous occasionalist onomatodoxy. Thus 'Title' is real, though Realty isn't. I shall return to this point later on when I will suggest that it was not Bengali Buddhijivis who buggered up Bengal but rather the Bakhtinian dialogic, or language common to Kayasthas across regions, which, stands condemned to obloquy by the presence of Bengal's shit upon its dick's tip.
No one doubts or cast aspersions upon the wholly salutary vanguard role of the Bengali buddhijivis till the 1920's when Science had progressed to a point where both 'Mentalistic' and 'Mechanistic' ontologies ceased to make 'distinctions without a difference'- i.e. a point had been reached where they either had to shit or get off the pot.
The trajectory of Kurt Lewin's concept of 'genidentity' may be invoked in this context. The question he is addressing is how an identity propagates through time. The Buddhist solution was that it did it in the bardo, or antharabhava which was a lot like the Muslim barzakh or even the Socratic methexu. In other words, though Identity, being complex, had no genidentity, there was some liminal capacitance diversity type phantom zone where its elements got stored up and transmitted. The Kayastha, knowing both Sanskrit and Persian, identified the Gandharvas who rule the antarabhava with Sufi 'boo' (smell) which represents essence. Thus, though form (rupa) and colour (rang) pass away, smell is conserved- rather like what happens when Prof A.K Chaudhri farts silently and flits from our Symposium on the excuse that his Uber has arrived and, anyway, he has classes tomorrow.
The Tantric turn of the Buddhist Wheel associated tantra and yantra with the production of this genidentity- which however was concerned with the delicate musk of Eros, not Chaudhri Sahib's malodorous anal eructations. As Bengal- or parts of it- were developing into cash economies with maritime emporia- this emphasis on production was internalised by the rising Bengali comprador class which in turn dowered a large bildungsburgertum of an essentially Nationalist stripe.
One reason even the stupidest availability cascade of the Bengali comprador- I am speaking, of course of the Unitittyarianism represented by the Brahmo Samaj- was welcomed by Hindus elsewhere was because the Bengali Buddhijivi elided or otherwise depassed the Vaishav/Shaivite divide over the possibility of a 'jivanmukta'. Essentially an 'amsha' theory- homologic to Kurt Lewin's distinction between partial and total genidentity- relegates the scandal to the same closet of 'don't ask, don't tell' as permits Iyengars to inter-dine with Iyers though they suspect us of putting garlic in the sambar.
Had Bengal been an island, the Bengali buddhijivi would have raised up Bengal by choosing to remain a Pratyeka, alone or hidden, Buddha. He or she would have concentrated on getting local Mechanism Design right rather than relying upon Tardean mimetic effects to broadcast their Noble and National vision to far off parts of India. One reason they did so, at least initially, was because they knew of Nawadwip's importance in broadcasting Navya Nyaya nuances which had a regenerative effect across the breadth of Hindu India.
Still, I think it worthwhile to remark the piquant reversal of fortune here, illustrative of the ironies of Bakhinian dialogic, whereby non Bengali 'Reception pressure' creates the Bengali buddhijivi par excellence, whom we later loved to mock. Hindu Humanism, it seems, turned out to be a futile passion. The Bengali buddhijivi crucified himself in vain. Hafiz may have sped his 'one night's song' to the sugar loving parrots of far Bengal, but the Brahmo Paraclete was a bombastic bore.
Was this inevitable?
Philosophy says yes- but Socio-proctology is about more than just shitting higher than one's arsehole. Let us now consider the least noisome manner in which we can put our finger on the fundament of the problem.
Notice
1) If Hypo-mentalism commits to a notion of Samskar as Gestalt- i.e., if Property is substantive and carries meaningful Hohfeldian rights- then 'Social' bosons, including a Higgs particle, must exist in duck-rabbit type perpetual Perceptional super-imposition. The brahmanda is in free fall for its nest is the sky and is that jivanmukta we know as Mom, or that vatsalya which is life more abundant, but whom we jealously kill as the sautan, or more lovable co-wife, of our own ego.
The point about bosons is that many can occupy the same space- indeed must do so because the cells of a phase space are at best antarabhavas or barzakhs because... but let S.N Bose tell it in his own words-
I have tried to deduce the coefficient 8π ν2/c3 in Planck's Law independent of classical electrodynamics, only assuming that the ultimate elementary region in the phase-space has the content h3In other words, if there is a hashing table for Reality, or Language, or anything else, it must be either arbitrary and idiographic, and thus proof against both state space explosion and any exclusion principle, or else violate Navya-Nyaya notions of genidentity as substantive. Why? Because of non-commutative conjugacy- i.e. hysteresis.
Notice this is a scandal not just for a substantivist hypo-mentalism- it seems identities really are indiscernable- but also 'Sufficient Reason' type hyper-mechanistic relationism- which is how come Madam Wu's experiment fucked Patriarchy in the ass ten years before Maoist nymphets started beating the shite out of learned Mandarins. Phusis, it seems, does have a bourgeois strategy but it must be sinister and Shakta provided it has a Fourier analysable spectral density. But, if so, Nomos is constrained to 'Natural Reason' despite the fact that Nature is idiographic, not nomothetic at all.
The Begali-wog's refusal to go down the Marwari route (i.e. limited arbitrage rather than global Social Choice) is what makes the former a favourite stuffed toy of our intellectual adolescence whereas our professional career is financially underpinned only by the latter.
2) If hypo-mentalism cashes out as what Chomsky calls Mysterianism- i.e. if it utterly denies strong A.I even if fuzzy set based and stochastic- then Identity and Property are non commutatively conjugate in a manner that can't be juristically 'buck-stopped'.
The Buddhijivi now faces a hard choice. Either return to Pan Indian hyper-mentalism- i.e. turn into an Aurobindo- or concentrate on useful, but idiographic, work and thus give up the navya-nyaya claim to universal, nomothetic, significance.
As a matter of fact, Bengalis have in the main taken this route and precisely because they have been so useful to humanity, the true Bengali Buddhijivi, whose exile is more often 'external' than 'internal', remains a Pratyeka Buddha rather than a shameless self-publicist. No doubt, their own children, may- like Jhumpa Lahiri- picture them as brain damaged hebephrenics staggering around mindlessly saying 'Gogol!'- but that is the price Buddhi must pay to be useful in a world composed of only unsublateable, wholly idiographic, jivas whose own redemption arises from a globally coordinating oikonomia of a Muth Rational, mentalistic, type.
Does this mean Rana Dasgupta can't be the Christ to Pankaj Mishra's John the Baptist, on the issue of Globalisation?
Not at all. But he must grow a more impressive beard. Mishra's is at best be a pale shadow of Aurobindo's. Dasgupta must intensively cultivate a facial fungus of Tagorean proportions. Since he is a young man, it would look odd if the beard were white. Furthermore, as Bedil pointed out, such beards naturally invite the suspicion that they have been dyed in semen. Not being Bengali, I don't know the proper Buddhijivi resolution to this quandary. However, I may point out that Amartya Sen used Martha Nassbaum as his beard when he tried to bugger Manmohan Singh. Needless to say that sly Sardar got the last laugh by saddling Sen with Nalanda.
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