There was a moment during Anupam Kher’s speech at the recently-held The Telegraph National Debate when I must confess, a single tear slid down my face. It was when he described the 21^st century, Indian intellectual. Kher presented a few key characteristics of this creature:

“Toh woh jo five star hotels mein, joh woh culture hai, joh diamond ke studs pehentay hain, I don’t hold that against them. Woh log baithkay, champagne ka gilaas sip kartey huey baat karte hain, ‘India has become such an intolerant country.’”

(“Those who frequent five-stars, those of that culture, who wear diamond studs. I don’t hold that against them. They sit around, sipping champagne, and observe, ‘India has become such an intolerant country.’”)

Considering how for decades, intellectuals have been shown as jhola-carrying, somewhat scruffy and usually penniless freeloaders, this poshed up, diamond-wearing, champagne-sipping, five-star-frequenting image of the Leftie is quite an upgrade. Kher’s description may sound more like Nita Ambani than (insert the name of your preferred intellectual here. My current favourite is Professor Ayesha Kidwai), but that’s not really the point. The imagery Kher uses tells us two things. One, that his powers of observation are severely limited. You’d think all these videos from various Indian universities would alert him to the absence of diamond studs and champagne flutes, but no.

More importantly, Kher makes it clear that intellectuals are now being seen differently. Instead of being mocked and dismissed as poor, fringe elements who live in ivory towers of theory and polysyllables, this tribe is now being equated with the rich and powerful. Usually, intellectuals stand opposed to the moneyed elite, but Kher clubs them together. Is he trying to fabricate a new super villain? Does Kher fear that the intellectuals influence people around them with the currency of their words the way the rich do with their money? To quote Mad Max: Fury Road, what a lovely day!

However, Kher’s biggest grouse against intellectuals isn’t their elitism. It is their imagination. Kher stated that intolerance is a scare that’s been conjured by the privileged. The average man on the street is so unfamiliar with the idea that he can’t even pronounce the word, apparently. And of course if you can’t pronounce it, it doesn’t exist. For instance, I’m not sure how to pronounce “praline” and “psoriasis”. Ergo, as per Kher’s logic, I will have neither nutty confectionery nor diseased skin in my life. A double-edged sword, if there ever was one.

All that matters to regular people is making their “do waqt ki roti” (their daily bread), Kher insisted in his speech. One could waggle one’s eyebrows and ask if this was an admission that the present government hasn’t yet been able to fulfil its promises of “achchhe din”. But let’s not be difficult. Let’s just note that Kher is making a credible point: the bulk of the country is concerned with survival, and has little time to ponder whether India used to be more tolerant in the past. Consequently, Kher concludes, intolerance is a figment of the intellectuals’ imagination.

The claim that some people notice that which may not be visible to others is meant to be a criticism by Kher. Unwittingly though, he’s honed in on the most important part of being an intellectual: to see beyond the obvious, to notice what others don’t because they’re distracted by the humdrum, to understand the fine print as well as the subtext. The whole point of the reading and research that academics, thinkers and the idealistic creative set do is to see beyond the obvious.

The intellectuals are society’s code-breakers. They spot patterns and find connections between apparently unrelated details. Their imagination isn’t simply a tool; it’s a survival skill for a society’s culture. It is what lies at the root of inventions that envision new possibilities for the future. It’s also what allows us to understand the importance of stories and histories.

This is particularly true in India where so much of the recent past is shrouded in denials, blackouts and propaganda. Repeatedly, evidence is destroyed, reports are fudged, investigations are compromised and people are silenced. Pages with official seals and signatures mean nothing. They’re waved in parliament and in television news studios as symbols of reliability even if what’s written on them is untrue. By the power of printouts, people look credible, particularly when what they’re saying is anything but.

So how do you trust what is paraded as fact when the facts keep changing?

Take, for instance, the two girls who were hanged alive in Badaun, in 2014. When their bodies were found, it was said they had also been gang-raped. By the time the Central Bureau of Investigation had concluded its investigation a few months later, the fact that caste played a key role in this horrific crime became a minor detail to be ignored. The Yadav men who were initially suspects became innocent. The two Dalit girls were no longer raped and instead of being hanged, they had committed suicide, according to the CBI report.

Or Operation Bluestar, which may have had 575 casualties (the official figure) or 3,000. Were the post-Godhra riots premeditated? What does it mean to have disappeared in Kashmir? Why were there riots in Muzaffarnagar? Were 10 women gang-raped in Murthal or is the whole story just a rumour and an unreliable complainant? We don’t have the facts that suitably and credibly answer any of these questions. Too often, the stated facts are actually fiction.

Where history is rewritten the moment it slips past the present, how do you trust what you’re told?

This is why the intellectuals — particularly the ones who see things others don’t — are more important today than ever before. Facts are unreliable in modern India because they can be easily manufactured. They don’t necessarily reflect reality as much as project the image that a government would like to popularise. Sometimes, facts are ignored into non-existence. Too often, if one really wants to know what happened, they have to use their imagination because the facts have either mutated or been destroyed.

So Kher may not be too far off the mark when he says intellectuals make things up. However, in today’s India, if some thing is made up, that doesn’t necessarily make it untrue. With facts changing colour and reality taking refuge in memories as well as fiction, the imagination is a survival skill for the intellect. Most political parties recognise this and the enormous impact the imagination can have upon people. It’s the reason they woo thinkers from other fields to be their champions — like the Bharatiya Janata Party has with Kher, for instance.

To be imaginative and decode the ways in which society works is a choice that is usually exercised by those who can afford to do so — the intellectuals. They can afford to because some have scaled back their needs, others have patrons and there must be a few who are diamond-studded as in Kher’s description. Nothing’s impossible, especially in India. Writer Venkatesh Rao concludes in this fascinating essay about the importance of the imagination, “The experience of being imaginative is simply the experience of being alive to possibilities, in an open-ended way. The experience of seeing many possible meanings and futures in any given fragment of external reality.”

Society relies upon intellectuals to do this. Most people can’t afford to be imaginative because they are, as Kher pointed out, focused on more basic requirements. Often, as in the case of Dalits, they’re not heard or acknowledged until the privileged join in their chorus. This is why it’s so important that intellectuals be idealistic and even political, but not partisan. The moment you’ve sworn allegiance to a party, loyalty will demand you become blind to certain aspects.

The role of intellectuals is to disrupt, but politely and eruditely. The moment they become part of an establishment, they’re blinkering themselves to one set of options. It falls upon other intellectuals to redress that balance. Otherwise, society wouldn’t know what it isn’t being told and what stratagems are unfurling out of plain sight.

It’s a system of checks and balances that appears to be working. The popularity of the Hindutva peanut gallery that Kher belongs to, comes from these faux intellectuals having chipped away at the façade of neutrality that the Congress-leaning cultural establishment had stood behind for decades. The hot-aired zealousness of BJP’s cheerleading brigade is being punctured by the Left-wing. One shines the light on what the other would prefer to ignore.

That’s why, especially because the everyman doesn’t notice intolerance in India, it is the intellectuals’ responsibility to sense its presence. While Kher imagines diamond-studded champagne liberals, Professor Romila Thapar can draw an unexpectedly clear line between today’s chest-thumping nationalism and the vision of Hindu India as the colonial British imagined it when writing a history that was bewilderingly diverse to them.

Whom will you believe?