And I am aware that I am missing out many who may be working in languages I don’t speak or understand.
Editors publish lists for a reason—we all have a vicarious curiosity to find out who made it to the list and who didn’t, and then debate, tearing our hair out, who should have been and who didn’t deserve to be on the list. There’s comfort while discussing the list among the like-minded, and frustration when others you disagree with make arguments you thought were long-settled.
So ThePrint succeeded in getting many sufficiently riled when it published a list of India’s leading intellectuals of tomorrow, by polling seventeen Indian men, asking them to nominate up to three intellectuals who will make their mark in future. The methodology is, of course, problematic on many fronts: what was the basis of selecting these seventeen people? What defines an intellectual? A thinker? A doer? One who writes?
The poet WH Auden was dismissive of the idea, when he wrote, indeed in jest:
To the man-on-the-street who, I’m sorry to say,
Is a keen observer of life,
The word intellectual suggests right away
A man who’s untrue to his wife.
Levity apart, is an intellectual the one who writes turgid prose that’s inaccessible to many? What about those who are creative in other ways? In the case of ThePrint’s list, we don’t know if any specific criteria were spelt out. Since the editors haven’t clarified it, we have to assume that no other criteria—such as adequate representation of class, caste, religion, language—were given to the nominators, letting the experts decide who they’d nominate, and the result is self-evident: a list largely made up of upper caste, upper class, well-educated people active in the English discourse in India, who are seen frequently on op-ed pages, at literature festivals, on television, and increasingly on social media.
Also read: This is the next generation of Indian intellectuals
This may not be deliberate—unconscious bias is a real thing. And the same experts would probably revise their submissions, subsequent to the uproar in social media. But some issues remain: That there were some in their 60s, and yet called ‘tomorrow’s intellectuals,’ was mildly amusing; it can only happen in a country where a youth leader is someone in his 40s, a promising performer in her 50s—we venerate our elders, yes we do. That at least a few among them are already renowned (for good reasons, I must add) made me wonder if it was back-handed compliment to call individuals like my friends Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Srinath Raghavan, and Pankaj Mishra ‘tomorrow’s intellectuals’. (I think they’re already in any Indian A-List).
But what struck me most was that there were only a handful of women in the list of 51—about a fifth. Even if women experts that ThePrint reached out to did not nominate anyone, it shows how invisible women are for many who did the nominating. Besides, why assume that women would have nominated only women? For that reason, Upendra Baxi, Surjit Bhalla, and Shiv Visvanathan are to be commended for naming more women than men in the lists they made.
This is not about tokenism. To say that standards would get ‘lowered’ if you went out looking for women intellectuals, as if to fill a quota, spectacularly misses the point that intellect is not determined by any person’s physical characteristics. The brain is located quite far from the reproductive organs. Any list (or more broadly any society) that ranks people by intellect and misses half the population, would neither end up being representative, nor would that society benefit fully from the available talent pool, because a large number of people simply won’t be recognised for their talent.
It took me all of fifteen minutes to compile a list of women I’d have liked to see on any list of leading Indian intellectuals, today and tomorrow. Disclosure: some of them are my friends and I’m familiar with their work. Another disclosure: there are many streams of knowledge I simply don’t know enough about to name any experts. And I am aware I am missing out many who may be working in languages I don’t speak or understand. This is not an exhaustive list; indeed, it is likely that I am missing some whose work I do know. My list isn’t definitive; my hope it continues the conversation that the original list has begun.
So this is far from being a complete list.
That said, here’s a list of women who deserve to be in any list of intellectuals who make an impact now and will do so in future, in no particular order (hence alphabetical by first name):
Ajantha Subramanian has focused on the struggle of fishing communities to widen our understanding of the clash between tradition and modernity.
Alankrita Shrivastava, through her film Lipstick Under My Burkha, forces us to reassess our view of women and sexuality.
Ananya Jahanara Kabir enhances our understanding of the relationship between language and history, and I learned a lot from her work on the amnesia that Partition brought in Partition’s Post-Amnesias: 1947, 1971, and Modern South Asia.
Ananya Vajpeyi’s Righteous Republic explored the origins and foundations of the Indian republic.
Angela Saini, who not only makes science accessible to readers, but also, in her most recent book, Inferior, shows how women’s contribution to science has been undermined.
Annie Zaidi is a writer and journalist, but Unbound: 2,000 Years of Indian Women’s Writing, her anthology of women’s writing in India, is a signal contribution in exposing readers to influential writing they miss because of their own unconscious biases.
Anuradha Roy writes lucid fiction that exposes us to the granularity in the world around us.
Arshia Sattar has profoundly influenced our understanding of classics, in particular the Ramayana, bringing a modern, refreshing approach to deal with an enduring work of literature.
Bina Agarwal is a development economist who has made pivotal contribution to gender and land rights.
Chinmayi Arun brings her scholarship of the law to technology and broadens our understanding of the impact of the Internet on our individual freedoms.
Gita Gopinath sits at the pinnacle of economic advisory posts, at the International Monetary Fund, and is a renowned expert on monetary economics and international finance.
Gogu Shyamala has been an agricultural labourer and is now a leading academic and writer on discrimination, gender, and Dalit issues.
Ila Patnaik writes lucidly on macroeconomics and public finance, championing transparency and equity.
Ira Mukhoty is a scientist who has turned to writing about history, focusing on women heroes, shaping our thinking about the way history is written.
Jayati Ghosh questions the economic model and advances ideas that may sound inimical for growth to those who adhere to market-based economics as though it were a religion, but by stressing social justice and equity, she speaks of those whose voices aren’t heard.
Karthika Nair makes us look at literary classics—the Mahabharata in this case—with new eyes, by telling the stories of marginalised female characters in Until the Lions.
Kavita Panjabi is not only an expert on postcolonial studies, but has also examined divisions in society and political movements with clarity and intelligence.
Meena Kandasamy’s feisty poetry shakes conventional thinking about divinities and her prose makes us rethink notions of justice across caste and gender.
Mukulika Banerjee has studied the Indian democratic process and Pathan non-violence, both vital to our understanding of the present time.
Nandini Sundar has examined impatient India’s relationship with the communities that have lived in forests since time immemorial, whose land and resources are under siege.
Nazia Erum has raised significant questions about Muslim identity during these turbulent times in her remarkable book, Mothering a Muslim.
Nilanjana Roy is a first-rate critic, passionate about freedom of expression and women’s rights, and a fine writer who elevates discourse through civility and humour.
Priyamvada Gopal, who unnerves the British establishment, reminding it of its callous racism and lack of awareness of the harm colonialism did to the societies it colonised.
Rita Kothari champions voices from Gujarat, in particular marginalised voices, through her translations, and by focusing on minority languages within Gujarat, she reminds her readers that there are layers of nuances that show that no monolith is really a monolith.
Shubham Shree’s Hindi poetry is provocative and rattles the establishment.
Snigdha Poonam in her book Dreamers takes us to meet young Indians who don’t get on network news but their frustrations and aspirations are shaping a new India.
Sharifa Vijaliwala writes in Gujarati about poverty and dispossession, but also the divisions that the Partition caused.
Shilpa Gupta, through her installations on banned books, communal violence, freedom of expression, and borders, compels the viewer to rethink the politics around us.
Shruti Rajagopalan is a brilliant economist who brings her understanding of law to look at issues of social justice with unique insights that affirm fundamental freedoms—be it about the agency of the survivors of the Bhopal gas disaster or the Indian Constitution.
Sudha Bharadwaj has not only contributed hugely to Indian thinking on human rights through her advocacy, but more important, through her listening and championing of the marginalised, she is forcing India to re-examine its priorities.
Sujatha Gidla has written a memoir that forces Indians with privilege to examine their identity and assumptions about ‘merit’ that they seem to take for granted.
Sumana Roy’s poetry has a quiet passion and sense of urgency that offer unique insights to our time.
Sunetra Gupta brings Virginia Woolf-like discipline to her fiction and is a scientist who explores the mysteries of diseases.
Supriya Nair is an outstanding critic and writer, and her writing on sport (in particular football) is a delight.
Tishani Doshi is a poet, writer, and dancer, and her most recent collection, Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods, is great poetry, but also a passionate call for justice in the #MeToo era (and more).
Usha Ramanathan’s scholarship is unparalleled, and she is inseparable from the human rights struggles of modern India, be they about the rights of those living in extreme poverty, those seeking justice over the Bhopal gas disaster, or the privacy rights of all Indians.
Also read: None of the intellectuals on ThePrint’s list work in Indian languages
As I noted earlier, I am fortunate to know many of these women as friends. It also means this list is not exhaustive and highly subjective. I am glad ThePrint produced its list; it made us think of what such a list should look like.
The lists won’t change anything. But if such a list leads us to step out of our comfort zones and read—or familiarise ourselves with—the works of those we haven’t known, it would have made an interesting contribution.
Salil Tripathi is contributing editor at Mint and The Caravan and author of three works of non-fiction. Based in London, he chairs PEN International’s Writers in Prison Committee.