In his Pulitzer-winning Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1963), Richard Hofstadter traced suspicion of expert to populism that equated plain speech with virtue. Paromita Chakrabarti argues India today lives that resentment more intensely.
This dimag - the mind, or what is born of it, intellect - is resented because since Enlightenment, rationalist elites hoarded fruits of modernity. In India, that resentment travels through stratified hierarchies of caste, language, privilege, worsened by elite gatekeeping. Over last decade, confrontational majoritarian politics, compliant echo chamber and digital public square recast expert as nebulous, adversarial to national mood of vikas.
Damage is profound - hollowing of institutions mediating knowledge and power. But institutional erosion alone doesn't explain why people willingly accommodate it. Paradox: a country that adores degrees - IIT rank, medical seat, government exam - resents independent thought.
Answer lies in what degree respects and resents. Degree's original purpose - independent thought - is lost. We are at home with intellect that is institutionalised, monetised, obedient, not unruly, curious, that says no.
Consider competitive exams. Defining feature is not hardness, but specific hardness - speed and retention under time and pressure. Students are not trained to weigh conflicting evidence or unresolved questions. They are trained to eliminate ambiguity as fast as possible. Ambiguity costs marks and thousand others also want seat. Degree is mobility instrument - moves family across caste line, class line, marriageability threshold. Ability to shoehorn oneself into requirements is useful, especially in uncertain job market. It is not same skill as independent thought. After years of selecting for first, there is no obvious reason society would reward second once exam is over, especially if costs are disproportionately high.
When inquiry is treated as obstacle to advancement, citizens mistake confidence for truth and doubt for weakness. Dimag becomes subservient to jugaadu in republic of glib and obsequious. Jonathan White in In the Long Run (2024) argues democracies survive on conviction that alternatives exist and can be reasoned towards rather than simply awaited or feared. Take away work of thinking, what remains is politics of pure reaction - 'now or never' urgency that treats every problem as emergency to be solved through directives.
A nation that cannot argue about its future - economist's dissent, historian's revision, comic's satire as noise - loses capacity to correct itself.