The Organic Intellectual, Mystical Poetry, and the Rationalist Tradition in India Today

This essay looks at India after the National Democratic Alliance returned to power in 2019. It focuses on the NDA’s second term, when vast changes to the country’s democratic framework were initiated and the Citizenship Amendment Act was passed, making xenophobia official. The dissenting role of what Gramsci termed the “organic intellectual”—a figure not of the intelligentsia, but in blue- or white-collar employment—is of special interest; so are the anti-CAA mass protests. The essay explores the cultural resources that allowed such expressions of resistance, going back to poetry, the Bhakti movement, and the importance given to rationality in protest by Indian religious and philosophical thinking.