01-18-2006, 08:23 AM
The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and
Identity
by Amartya Sen
Hardcover: 432 pages
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (October 12, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN: 0374105839
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4491662.stm
BBC News
Monday, 5 December 2005, 19:24 GMT
Asserting a new vision of India
By Kaushik Basu
Professor of economics, Cornell University
For scientists and economists, the Nobel Prize is often an intellectual death
sentence.
The honour for some deep, scientific research done (usually) in a person's youth
can easily create a hankering for more. Great scientists, with egos boosted by
the prize, have tried to go back to their early research.
But that is almost always futile. By the time the honour comes the magic touch
is typically gone.
With his new book, The Argumentative Indian, Amartya Sen, winner of the
1998 Nobel Prize in economics, has achieved something, which is rare in science
and academe - he has re-invented himself.
Multicultural vision
With this book of magnificent reach and moral vision-spanning history, cultural
studies and political economy, Amartya Sen has illumined a vision of India that
echoes the ideas of Ashoka, Akbar and, most emphatically, Nehru.
This is a vision that emphasises the multiple and criss-crossing identities of
Indians, and the shared global interests of all human beings.
Sen points out how Hindu fundamentalism hurts Hinduism and the idea of India,
because it is openness and the lack of stridency that has been the hallmark of
Hinduism and has given it the resilience that it has shown through its long
history.
The book documents carefully how Hinduism has been home to a whole range of
diverse schools of thought - including some agnostic traditions.
In this age of national hubris, wanton violation of basic human rights and
religious narrow-mindedness, the message of the book should be of value well
beyond India.
Make no mistake. The Argumentative Indian is not the kind of work that can earn
anybody the Nobel Prize.
Its scientific content is too slim for that. Viewed as history it breaks little
new ground and does not surprise us with any new archival discovery.
Seminal work
Amartya Sen's early work, for which he won the Nobel Prize, was on welfare
economics and the logic of preferences.
That work, founded in formal mathematical methods and beautiful chains of
deductive reasoning, took the form of using axioms to prove theorems on how we
may aggregate individual preferences into collective choices.
What is remarkable about this new book is that it breaks away so effortlessly
from that past. And in terms of practical importance for the world this may well
be the most significant book of his.
One important question that arises from this book is the following: If racism,
religious intolerance, and sexism are wrong, can nationalism and patriotism,
which are so often upheld as noble, be right?
An implication (he never says this explicitly) of Sen's argument is that, even
though in contemporary society nationalism plays an important role, we should
view this as interim and strive towards its ultimate banishment.
Nehru and nationalism
Reading Nehru's collected works, I discovered that Nehru was categorical on
this.
For a prime minister to openly vent his unease about nationalism is an act of
extraordinary courage.
I quote here from a letter he wrote to the Indian chief ministers on 20
September, 1953:
"When a country is under foreign domination, nationalism is a strengthening and
unifying force. But a stage arrives when it might well have a narrowing
influence.
Should India and others strive for a nuclear-free world?
"Sometimes, as in Europe, it becomes aggressive and chauvinistic and wants to
impose itself on other countries and other people. Every people suffers from the
strange delusion that they are the elect and better than all others.
"When they become strong and powerful, they try to impose themselves and their
ways on others. In their attempt to do so, sometime or other, they overreach
themselves, stumble and fall."
The philosophical subtext of this letter and much else of what Nehru wrote has a
lot in common with Amartya Sen's new book.
It is not as though I find myself in agreement with all of Sen's arguments. He
takes India to task for developing the nuclear bomb.
There is no doubt that the bomb has plenty of negative fall-outs and causes
instabilities in the region.
But one has to keep in mind the stance of the existing nuclear nations that,
having got there, they will not allow anybody else to clamber up; and, more
insidiously refuse to ever give up nuclear weapons themselves.
I am not naively expecting nuclear nations to give up their weapons overnight
but believe that they must declare a plan to do so in the future if they wish
others not to develop the weapon.
Dividing the world into haves and have-nots and insisting that it will be kept
that way forever is simply not sustainable. This is what gives an impetus and
even a sense of right to not just India but all poorer nations to challenge the
status quo.
That right will be lost the day the nuclear nations declare their aim to have a
nuclear-free world.
Now that India is a nuclear nation it has a responsibility to strive towards
such a future.
Identity
by Amartya Sen
Hardcover: 432 pages
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (October 12, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN: 0374105839
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4491662.stm
BBC News
Monday, 5 December 2005, 19:24 GMT
Asserting a new vision of India
By Kaushik Basu
Professor of economics, Cornell University
For scientists and economists, the Nobel Prize is often an intellectual death
sentence.
The honour for some deep, scientific research done (usually) in a person's youth
can easily create a hankering for more. Great scientists, with egos boosted by
the prize, have tried to go back to their early research.
But that is almost always futile. By the time the honour comes the magic touch
is typically gone.
With his new book, The Argumentative Indian, Amartya Sen, winner of the
1998 Nobel Prize in economics, has achieved something, which is rare in science
and academe - he has re-invented himself.
Multicultural vision
With this book of magnificent reach and moral vision-spanning history, cultural
studies and political economy, Amartya Sen has illumined a vision of India that
echoes the ideas of Ashoka, Akbar and, most emphatically, Nehru.
This is a vision that emphasises the multiple and criss-crossing identities of
Indians, and the shared global interests of all human beings.
Sen points out how Hindu fundamentalism hurts Hinduism and the idea of India,
because it is openness and the lack of stridency that has been the hallmark of
Hinduism and has given it the resilience that it has shown through its long
history.
The book documents carefully how Hinduism has been home to a whole range of
diverse schools of thought - including some agnostic traditions.
In this age of national hubris, wanton violation of basic human rights and
religious narrow-mindedness, the message of the book should be of value well
beyond India.
Make no mistake. The Argumentative Indian is not the kind of work that can earn
anybody the Nobel Prize.
Its scientific content is too slim for that. Viewed as history it breaks little
new ground and does not surprise us with any new archival discovery.
Seminal work
Amartya Sen's early work, for which he won the Nobel Prize, was on welfare
economics and the logic of preferences.
That work, founded in formal mathematical methods and beautiful chains of
deductive reasoning, took the form of using axioms to prove theorems on how we
may aggregate individual preferences into collective choices.
What is remarkable about this new book is that it breaks away so effortlessly
from that past. And in terms of practical importance for the world this may well
be the most significant book of his.
One important question that arises from this book is the following: If racism,
religious intolerance, and sexism are wrong, can nationalism and patriotism,
which are so often upheld as noble, be right?
An implication (he never says this explicitly) of Sen's argument is that, even
though in contemporary society nationalism plays an important role, we should
view this as interim and strive towards its ultimate banishment.
Nehru and nationalism
Reading Nehru's collected works, I discovered that Nehru was categorical on
this.
For a prime minister to openly vent his unease about nationalism is an act of
extraordinary courage.
I quote here from a letter he wrote to the Indian chief ministers on 20
September, 1953:
"When a country is under foreign domination, nationalism is a strengthening and
unifying force. But a stage arrives when it might well have a narrowing
influence.
Should India and others strive for a nuclear-free world?
"Sometimes, as in Europe, it becomes aggressive and chauvinistic and wants to
impose itself on other countries and other people. Every people suffers from the
strange delusion that they are the elect and better than all others.
"When they become strong and powerful, they try to impose themselves and their
ways on others. In their attempt to do so, sometime or other, they overreach
themselves, stumble and fall."
The philosophical subtext of this letter and much else of what Nehru wrote has a
lot in common with Amartya Sen's new book.
It is not as though I find myself in agreement with all of Sen's arguments. He
takes India to task for developing the nuclear bomb.
There is no doubt that the bomb has plenty of negative fall-outs and causes
instabilities in the region.
But one has to keep in mind the stance of the existing nuclear nations that,
having got there, they will not allow anybody else to clamber up; and, more
insidiously refuse to ever give up nuclear weapons themselves.
I am not naively expecting nuclear nations to give up their weapons overnight
but believe that they must declare a plan to do so in the future if they wish
others not to develop the weapon.
Dividing the world into haves and have-nots and insisting that it will be kept
that way forever is simply not sustainable. This is what gives an impetus and
even a sense of right to not just India but all poorer nations to challenge the
status quo.
That right will be lost the day the nuclear nations declare their aim to have a
nuclear-free world.
Now that India is a nuclear nation it has a responsibility to strive towards
such a future.