Dhirubhai L. Seth 1936-2021: Commemorating Intellectual Politics

Abstract

Writing a conventional obituary for Prof Dhirubhai L. Seth (or Dhirubhai!)—the former Director and one of the founding members of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies and member of advisory board of this journal—is a difficult task. Dhirubhai was a theorist of the present. He would always respond to the challenges, issues and anxieties posed by the contemporary moment. The past in Dhirubhai’s framework is always seen in relation to contemporary concerns. For him, ‘historicization of an event, or an object...or an institution of a distant past becomes credible, and makes good historical sense, only when it is done in terms of contemporary concerns and sensibilities’ (DLS, p. 25). Dhrubhai’s intellectual adherence to here and now forces us to always engage with him as our contemporary. His lively, assertive and interventionist intellectual quest cannot be treated as history. For this reason, the colourful intellectual personality of Dhirubhai cannot be commemorated in an orthodox unadventurous mode. The vastness of Dhirubhai’s work poses a challenge of a different kind. He used to describe himself as a writer of short stories to justify his faithfulness for writing long essays instead of books. These essays address a number issues such as nationalism, democracy, caste, religion, backwardness, institutional development, non-party political processes, grassroots movements, intellectualism and so on. Although there are two edited volumes based on his various writings —Satta Aur Samaj: Dhirubhai Sheth (edited by Abhay Kumar Dubey, 2009) and At Home with Democracy: A Theory of India Politics (edited by Peter R. deSouza, 2018)—it is very difficult to provide a thematic label to Dhirubhai’s intellectual universe. Any conventional tribute, especially in strict professional academic sense, is almost meaningless, if not entirely futile. To avoid such explanatory difficulties, we must engage with Dhirubhai’s notion of intellectualism: How did he conceptualize the role of intellectuals in a postcolonial society like India? Dhirubhai makes a crucial distinction between academic work and intellectual pursuit. For him, academic work refers to the formal, professional engagement with a particular subject matter. On the other hand, intellectual work is seen as a creative devotion to an idea simply to nurture a process of constructive thinking. Dhirubhai introduces an innovative dimension to this conceptual distinction. He emphasises the decisive role of language in the realm of ideas. He writes: