Mumbai De-Intellectualised: Rise and Decline of a Culture of Thinking

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Mumbai in the first decade of the 21st century is evidently on the threshold of a new and prosperous era. Having understood the city's strategic importance, economists are predicting greater international role for it, while town-planners are working overnight for its make over, expecting in-flow of unforeseen wealth. Paradoxically, however, intellectualism that this progressive, multi-cultural city had inherited is conspicuously on decline. Whether in social reform or in cultural renaissance, in literature or in performing arts, Mumbai had enjoyed an undisputed position of leadership for well over a century. Today it suffers from intellectual insolvency and cultural slide down. Once known as the most progressive city of India, Mumbai appears to have abandoned the path of enlightenment. The author, in a severe indictment of academicians, media persons, writers and culture bearers, holds failure of intellectuals responsible for this malaise.

Dr. Aroon Tikekar is a renowned journalist and writer and is presently President of the Asiatic Society of Mumbai, a premier institution of higher learning in Western India.

This small book is largely a compilation with necessary revision and enlargement of four lectures delivered by me between 1997 and 2007 on a theme of intellectualism in Bombay, or Mumbai as it is officially renamed since 1995. Although all the lectures appeared to have a sort of continuity in them, they were not exactly connected as they were written at different times. They were neither delivered chronologically, nor were the audiences same. Each lecture, moreover, was titled differently. Chronologically arranged their titles would have read as:

1. An intellectual in today's society, the 11th death anniversary of Madame Sophia Wadia Lecture, delivered on 26th April 1997 at the Theosophy Hall, Mumbai;

2. The writer and society, the 30th Lala Lajpatrai Memorial Lecture delivered on 28th January 2003 at the Lala Lajpatai College, Mumbai;

3. Intellectualising of Bombay: formation of some early literary and scientific societies, SpecialBicentennial Lecture, delivered on 25th April 2004 at the Asiatic Society of Mumbai; and

4. The Minimum City: how and why Mumbai lost its intellectual leadership, the Justice Mahadev Govind Ranade Oration, delivered on 13th March 2007, at the Convocation Hall, University of Mumbai.

It will be evident that the word Bombay or Mumbai, although used in the text for the city of Bombay or Mumbai in particular, applies on a general level to the entire area that was called the Bombay Presidency during the British rule, and which today constitutes the major area of the State of Maharashtra.

I had intended to present these lectures individually in thematic sequence rather than in the order they were delivered. However the gaps in the argument were wide and evident, and therefore required to be filled up. Some parts needed revision while a few ideas were found to be repetitive. I had therefore to rework on the texts of all the four lectures to bring cogency in the argument. The book did not consequently remain a collection of the 'four lectures'.

There are numerous books on modern Maharashtra that deal with one or many aspects of its history after 1818 when power was ceded to the British in this part of the country, yet there are not many that trace its intellectual history, with the exception of Rev.