K MAT HEW KURIAN Role of the Marxist Intellectuals in India Today ONE of the agonising facts of the Indian situation is the slow, but steady, intellectual death of many "intellectuals55 who once claimed to be leftists and progressives but who now tread the reformist and revisionist path. Many of the so-called "leftists55 of yesterday are today fully entrenched in important positions as experts and advisers in the bourgeois-landlord Establishment. They are not mere passive spectators. They are, in fact, blowing the trumpet of "Congress socialist pattern55 and "progressive politics55, thus, concealing the rottenness of the capitalist-feudal system in India. The Establishment has recruited a large and respectable army of intellectuals and technocrats who are engaged in an incessant (and sometimes insane) process of constructing and reconstructing theoretical "models55 of the status quo. They even "prove55 the validity of their "models55 and their inherent predictive capabilities based on value-charged "empirical55 research. This is not surprising; for, the intellectuals of the Establishment are handsomely paid to be theoretically and empirically "sound55 to the extent of concealing their apologetic and servile relationships with the Establishment. They, naturally, claim to be "above55 politics, mere technocrats and experts whose services are available to any reasonable socio-