This refers to the article, “Please, think before you protest” (February 16) by Priyadarshi Dutta. Samuel P Huntington, in his book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, wrote about left liberalism in American university campuses. He wrote, “The prevalence of anti-patriotic attitudes among liberal intellectuals led some of them to warn their fellow liberals of the consequences of such attitudes for the future of not America, but of American liberalism.”
The problem with left intellectuals in India is that they are unpatriotic. They repudiate the very idea of national identity and the emotion of national pride. If the left is to retain influence, it must recognise that a sense of shared national identity is an essential component of citizenship.