This was a rare occurrence in India considering the bitter divisiveness that permeates its rapidly shrinking space for intellectual pursuits. From Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, who stood at the opposite end of his political beliefs, to his comrades in the CPI(ML), Arvind received fulsome praise for his achievements as a social scientist, journalist, activist, documentary film-maker and Editor of Biblio.
While he was still around, Arvind’s critics, like his friends, would say much the same thing about him, though for entirely different reasons: “He refuses to grow up.” Arvind’s folly, in the eyes of the critics, was that late into his adult years, he continued to believe in causes he had embraced as an exceptionally gifted student at St. Stephen’s College in Delhi: class struggle, the emancipation of the peasantry from feudal oppression, rights of workers, the awakening of the Dalits and so forth. In an India where the buzz words are economic reforms, globalisation and market forces, Arvind’s advocacy of the wretched of the earth sounded odd to his critics: dogmatic, extremist, rhetorical, impractical or out of sync with the ‘real’ world.
For his friends, however, Arvind’s “refusal to grow up” was precisely what was so endearing about his personality. Not for him the double-speak of the politician, the smooth phrases of the diplomat, the opinionated babble of the scribe or the pedestrian outpourings of the academic. He said whatever he had to say clearly, forcefully and eloquently, taking care to lend a wider perspective to each issue, a historical perspective, or a perspective of political economy.
Indeed, he was so deeply attached to a vibrant debate that he would sometimes willfully exaggerate a point, introduce a note of vehemence in his tone or throw in a dash of irony or sarcasm just to keep the argument going. He thrived on dissent and prospered on polemics. His favourite question was: “Forget the facts for the moment. What is the theory?” And once he had stumped his interlocutor, he would proceed to advance a hypothesis with a conspiratorial hint that he was privy to some information not available to others which would prove him right.
More to the point, Arvind’s way of engaging in a debate was to challenge conventional wisdom, shift the dominant paradigm or alter the perspective in vogue from end to end. Though he was firmly located on the extreme fringe of the Left, he refused to be trapped in any ideological straightjacket. He appeared to cultivate his own anarchic streak—but to call him an anarchist wouldn’t be quite fair. Indeed, what held Arvind in thrall were scholars, politicians, artists, businessmen and others who chose to swim against the tide. Those who knew him well were aware of the intense curiosity with which he followed the words and actions of V.P. Singh—Arvind was an early adherent of Mandalism but later grew