The impossibility of not communicating
One of the postulates of the pragmatic of human communication is "the impossibility of not communicating". There is no context wherein there is no communication. If, for example, you enter into a train and sit next to other people, these people can react either by saying something like "where are you from?", or they can keep silent and sit in a way that means: "please don’t disturb me". But this way of sitting is also communication! So, you cannot avoid communicating. You can only choose to tell the other "I’m interested in communicating to you", "I’m not interested" and "I’m somehow interested". But you cannot avoid it. If you don’t communicate your interest, the other will act accordingly: you’ve communicated that you’re not communicating.
Let’s move to the political level. If intellectuals don’t participate in politics, it means that people want the country to be ruled without the intellectuals taking a role in political life. So we’ll probably have the industrialists or the bankers appointing the leaders. It is impossible to try to shake off one’s responsibilities with an attitude of indifference. The others will play on. Indifference is not neutral; nor is it without consequences: it is the attitude of submission; and it carries wih it, the loss of freedom.