IN THE grand arena of democracy, intellectuals were meant to be a chorus — offering commentary, warning of hubris, and speaking uncomfortable truths to both audience and actors alike. Edward Said captured this essential function by describing intellectuals as those who ‘represent, embody, and articulate a message, a view, an attitude, a philosophy, or an opinion to...a public’ and who ‘cannot easily be co-opted by governments or corporations; their raison d’être is to represent all the people and issues that are routinely forgotten or swept under the rug.’ The intellectuals were democracy’s immune system, designed to identify and combat the pathogens of authoritarianism, corruption, and dogma before these features could permeate.
Yet today, this immune system has not only weakened across the world, but it has also turned against the very body it was meant to protect, with perhaps nowhere being more starkly affected than in Bangladesh, in particular, or South Asia, in general. The ‘guardians’ of truth have become its gatekeepers, controlling access to knowledge not for the public good, but for the preservation of their own proximity to power. This transformation represents more than institutional failure; it constitutes what French philosopher Julien Benda termed ‘la trahison des clercs’ — a fundamental betrayal of the intellectual vocation that strikes at democracy’s heart.
The crisis manifests not as a sudden collapse but as a slow-motion surrender, built on foundations of fear, opportunism, and institutional capture. Like a fortress whose walls appear intact while its defenders have long since abandoned their posts, the external structures of intellectual life—universities, research institutions, and media organisations — remain standing while their essential purpose has been hollowed out.
This erosion follows a predictable pattern. First comes the subtle pressure: research funding tied to political priorities, academic appointments influenced by ideological or political conformity, and media platforms rewarding partisan loyalty over analytical rigour. Then arrives the rationalisation: intellectuals convince themselves that compromise is pragmatic, that ‘working within the system’ is more effective than being external critics, and that local conditions require special understanding unavailable to outsiders.
The final stage is perhaps the most insidious — the transformation of intellectual discourse itself. Complex social phenomena are reduced to tribal slogans. Predetermined conclusions replace detailed analysis. Only certain currencies of thought are accepted in the marketplace of ideas, and the exchange rate heavily favours those already in power.
Bangladesh’s intellectual landscape offers a particularly stark illustration of this decay, shaped by historical trauma that created unique vulnerabilities to authoritarian capture. The 1971 genocide that systematically targeted the country’s intellectual elite left more than a demographic void; it created a psychological scar that fundamentally altered the risk calculus for subsequent generations of thinkers.
Ahmed Sofa’s prophetic 1972 warning in his Buddhibrittir Natun Binyas about intellectual timidity proved tragically accurate. The decimation of courage became self-perpetuating: those who survived and learned the lessons of silence passed them to protégés who internalised caution as wisdom. The result was an intellectual class, which resembled a forest after a wildfire that apparently regenerated but was fundamentally altered in character, with survival strategies that prioritised adaptation to harsh conditions over the pursuit of truth.
This adaptive cowardice was systematised through institutional mechanisms. Politicians discovered that they could neutralise intellectuals, unlike other opposition forces, not through direct suppression alone, but through co-optation. Academic positions, media platforms, and cultural honours became the currency through which intellectual independence was purchased. The Digital Security Act and similar repressive tools provided the stick, but the carrot of institutional privilege proved equally effective.
The July 2024 uprising served as a brutal diagnostic test, revealing the extent of this intellectual paralysis. While students — traditionally society’s most vulnerable demographic — faced bullets and batons to challenge authoritarianism, many established intellectuals within the country’s borders remained conspicuously absent from the front lines. Some maintained hostile silence, others actively delegitimised the movement, and many opportunistically repositioned themselves only after the regime’s weakness became apparent.
This pattern revealed what could potentially be the most detrimental element of intellectual capture: the conversion of knowledge workers into political manipulators, continually shifting their stances in response to power fluctuations instead of adhering to principled analysis. They had become, in essence, intellectual mercenaries, retaining the technical skills of their profession while abandoning their ethical foundation.
The Bangladeshi experience reflects a global phenomenon where intellectual institutions have become vectors for the very authoritarianism they should resist. Like a computer virus that corrupts the antivirus software designed to protect the system, authoritarian logic infiltrates intellectual discourse by exploiting its own mechanisms of legitimacy.
This corruption operates through several interconnected pathways. Relativism becomes a tool for avoiding moral judgment, as strangers have no idea what it’s like to live in our complex culture. False balance creates the illusion of objectivity while actually serving power by neutralising legitimate criticism — when every condemnation must be accompanied by justification, the net effect is to normalise what should be condemned. ÌýAcademic specialisation enables wilful blindness, such as ignoring the political implications of economic analysis.
Perhaps most perniciously, the language of intellectual sophistication itself becomes weaponized. Complex theoretical frameworks are deployed not to illuminate reality but to obscure it. Jargon creates barriers between expert knowledge and public understanding, allowing intellectuals to maintain their status as interpreters while ensuring that their interpretations serve elite interests rather than democratic accountability.
The result is what might be labelled performative intellectualism or the maintenance of intellectual rituals and credentials without their substantive content. Conferences continue, papers are published, and degrees are awarded, but the essential function of intellectual work, such as challenging power and expanding human understanding, degenerates like an unused muscle.
When intellectuals abandon their role as independent critics, democracy loses one of its most crucial protective mechanisms. The consequences ripple outward in expanding circles of dysfunction that ultimately threaten the entire system’s viability.
At the most immediate level, policymaking suffers from intellectual malnutrition. Without independent analysis and critique, decision-makers operate within ever-narrowing feedback loops that reinforce existing prejudices while filtering out inconvenient realities. Evidence-based governance becomes impossible when political considerations contaminate the evidence itself.
The epistemological damage proves even more severe. Public trust in knowledge itself erodes when people perceive intellectuals as partisan actors instead of neutral arbiters of truth. Citizens begin treating facts as mere opinions, expertise as propaganda, and complex analysis as an elaborate justification for predetermined positions. The shared epistemic foundation necessary for democratic deliberation crumbles, replaced by competing realities that cannot be reconciled through rational discourse.
Authoritarian manipulation thrives on this fragmentation. When people can no longer distinguish between truth and falsehood, they become susceptible to believing everything or nothing — a state of mind that makes them easy prey for demagogues who promise simple answers to complex questions.
Recovering intellectual integrity requires more than individual moral awakening; it demands systematic reconstruction of the institutions and incentives that shape intellectual work. This reconstruction must operate simultaneously on multiple levels, addressing both the structural conditions that enable capture and the cultural norms that normalise compromise.
Institutional reform begins with radical transparency. Universities, think tanks, and research organisations must disclose not merely their funding sources but the specific mechanisms through which those sources might influence research priorities and conclusions. Academic appointments should be subject to external review processes that prioritise scholarly merit over political connections. Tenure systems, where they exist, must be strengthened to protect intellectual independence even when it proves inconvenient to institutional leadership.
Beyond structural changes, intellectual communities must cultivate ingrained habits of resistance to political pressure that become automatic responses rather than conscious choices. This requires regular practice in small acts of intellectual courage that build capacity for larger stands when circumstances demand them.
Professional associations bear particular responsibility for establishing and enforcing ethical standards. Just as medical associations can revoke licenses for malpractice, intellectual organisations should develop mechanisms for holding their members accountable when they abuse their platforms to serve power rather than truth. The rehabilitation of intellectuals who collaborated with authoritarian regimes should not be automatic but should require genuine acknowledgement of their failures and commitment to different standards going forward.
Perhaps most importantly, the definition of intellectual work itself must expand beyond traditional elite institutions to embrace the full spectrum of knowledge production in society. Students, activists, independent journalists, and citizen scholars often demonstrate greater intellectual courage than their credentialed counterparts. Recognising and supporting these alternative voices can help break the monopoly that established institutions hold over intellectual discourse.
The stakes of this intellectual renewal extend far beyond academic or professional concerns. Democracy’s survival depends on citizens’ capacity to make informed judgments about complex issues — a capacity that requires trustworthy sources of independent analysis and critique. When intellectuals abandon this function, they don’t merely betray their professional obligations; they undermine democracy’s foundational premise that ordinary people can govern themselves wisely when provided with adequate information and analysis.
The alternative to intellectual independence is not merely intellectual servitude but the gradual transformation of democracy into a managed consensus that maintains democratic forms while gutting democratic substance. Elections continue, but voters choose between pre-approved options. Debates occur, but within carefully circumscribed boundaries. Knowledge is produced, but only knowledge that serves existing power arrangements.
Breaking free from this trajectory requires recognising that intellectual work is inherently political — not in the sense of serving particular parties or ideologies, but in its fundamental commitment to expanding human freedom through the fearless pursuit of truth. This pursuit inevitably brings intellectuals into conflict with power, because power always prefers comfortable lies to inconvenient truths.
The crisis of intellectualism represents both a symptom and a cause of democracy’s current struggles. By abandoning their role as independent critics of power, intellectuals have weakened one of democracy’s most important protective mechanisms while simultaneously legitimising the very authoritarianism they should oppose.
Recovery requires more than just individual courage, although that remains essential. It demands systematic reconstruction of the institutions, incentives, and cultural norms that shape intellectual work. Most fundamentally, it requires intellectuals to remember that their highest loyalty should be not to parties, institutions, or even careers, but to the truth itself, however inconvenient, dangerous, or professionally costly that truth might be.
The choice facing intellectuals today is stark but simple: will they serve as democracy’s immune system, identifying and fighting the infections that threaten its health? Or will they continue functioning as democracy’s autoimmune disorder, attacking the very truth-seeking processes that democracy requires for survival? The answer to this question may well determine whether democratic societies can cope with the complicated problems of the twenty-first century or will succumb to the authoritarian alternatives that promise simpler, more ‘acceptable’ lies.
In the end, the intellectual’s highest calling remains what it has always been: to serve not power but truth, not comfort but clarity, not the expedient but the essential. This vocation carries risks that may be professional, personal, and sometimes even physical. But it also carries the promise of something more valuable than safety: the possibility of human societies governed by reason rather than force, by evidence rather than ideology, by the patient pursuit of truth rather than the quick satisfaction of power.
The July 2024 uprising in Bangladesh serves as both a painful reminder of this failure and an opportunity for change. The students’ bravery — many of whom died for speaking out against power—is a stark contrast to the silence of those whose job it was to lead such resistance. As Bangladesh rebuilds its democratic institutions, it has a unique opportunity to also reconstruct its intellectual ecosystem, learning from the failures that allowed authoritarianism to flourish unchallenged for so long.
To conclude, the martyrs of July 2024 have shown that the spirit of 1971’s intellectual courage is not dead; it simply migrated from the universities to the streets, from the established elite to a new generation willing to risk everything for freedom. It remains an open question whether Bangladesh’s formal intellectual institutions can reclaim this legacy or will continue to serve as warnings of democratic decay. Whether intellectuals dare to reclaim their historic role as democracy’s most essential guardians will determine the fulfilment of that promise.
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Dr Habib Zafarullah is an adjunct professor of public policy at the University of New England, Australia, and former professor of public administration at the University of Dhaka. He is the founding president of the South Asian Network for Public Administration.
