The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity [Hardcover]

Amartya Sen (Author)

Book Description

Release date: October 5, 2005

A Nobel Laureate offers a dazzling new book about his native country
India is a country with many distinct traditions, widely divergent customs, vastly different convictions, and a veritable feast of viewpoints. In The Argumentative Indian, Amartya Sen draws on a lifetime study of his country’s history and culture to suggest the ways we must understand India today in the light of its rich, long argumentative tradition.
The millenia-old texts and interpretations of Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Muslim, agnostic, and atheistic Indian thought demonstrate, Sen reminds us, ancient and well-respected rules for conducting debates and disputations, and for appreciating not only the richness of India’s diversity but its need for toleration.
Though Westerners have often perceived India as a place of endless spirituality and unreasoning mysticism, he underlines its long tradition of skepticism and reasoning, not to mention its secular contributions to mathematics, astronomy, linguistics, medicine, and political economy.
Sen discusses many aspects of India’s rich intellectual and political heritage, including philosophies of governance from Kautilya’s and Ashoka’s in the fourth and third centuries BCE to Akbar’s in the 1590s; the history and continuing relevance of India’s relations with China more than a millennium ago; its old and well-organized calendars; the films of Satyajit Ray and the debates between Gandhi and the visionary poet Tagore about India's past, present, and future.
The success of India’s democracy and defense of its secular politics depend, Sen argues, on understanding and using this rich argumentative tradition. It is also essential to removing the inequalities (whether of caste, gender, class, or community) that mar Indian life, to stabilizing the now precarious conditions of a nuclear-armed subcontinent, and to correcting what Sen calls the politics of deprivation. His invaluable book concludes with his meditations on pluralism, on dialogue and dialectics in the pursuit of social justice, and on the nature of the Indian identity.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

As India's multicultural society confronts violent sectarianism at home and a range of destabilizing forces internationally, these illuminating essays from Nobel Prize–winning economist Sen (most of which began as articles or lectures over the past decade) offer a timely and cogent examination of the country's long history of heterodoxy and public discourse. With sparkling erudition and crisp prose, Sen reminds readers of a capacious cultural legacy that has nourished a plethora of religious communities (including Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Parsee, Sikh and Baha'i), as well as a venerable line of atheist and materialist thought, while fostering ancient advances in science and mathematics, and inclusive theories of governance. Challenging the notion of the West as sole originator of liberal values, the book—which ranges over subjects as diverse as India's ancient calendars, nuclear arms policy, relationship with China, gender and class inequality, representations in the Western imagination and the competing national visions of Tagore and Gandhi—bears forcefully on contemporary debates over multiculturalism, secularism and postcolonial identity. Sen's lucid reasoning and thoroughgoing humanism, meanwhile, ensure a lively and commanding defense of diversity and dialogue. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

"India, going back for generations, has offered us masterful political, philosophic and economic commentary. That grace endures, and Amartya Sen is now its leading contributor. Nothing, whether from India or from the world at large, could surpass the essays in The Argumentative Indian. As will many others, I endorse this book for all." --John Kenneth Galbraith
"Sen denounces--and indeed disproves--the bigoted view that reason is essentially Western or European. India, he makes plain, has a long tradition of civil debate, of secular thought and of contributions to math and science. The opening essays are broadly historical, but Sen moves on to issues of greater relevance and urgency...Collections of previously published essays often prove uneven; this one is remarkably uniform in theme and quality...ultimately revelatory." --Kirkus Reviews

"Of the stream of eloquent Indians who have enlivened modern intellectual life...Amartya Sen is perhaps the most versatile and most determinedly argumentative...His present collection is a bracing sweep through aspects of Indian history and culture, and a tempered analysis of the highly charged disputes surrounding these subjects - the nature of Hindu traditions, Indian identity, the country's huge social and economic disparities, and its current place in the world ...If ever there was a global intellectual, it is Sen...his true distinctiveness becomes clear when seen against the background of two [rich] historical traditions: ...of classical political economy, and of social criticism and reform: the call and response of British liberal imperialism and Indian cosmopolitan nationalism... Sen wants us to notice the strong individuality of [Indian] culture...but his view of India is also critical. His essays take unsparing measure of India's social and economic problems...Although Sen is free with his judgments, his writing maintains a coolly embattled tone, as well as an unfailing, old-style courtesy...[He] is a distinguished inheritor of the tradition of public philosophy and reasoning - Roy, Tagore, Gandhi, Nehru." --Sunil Khilnani, Financial Times

"Mr. Sen's interests...extend far beyond the work that won him the Nobel...The 16 chapters range from an appreciation of Rabindranath Tagore, a great poet of Mr. Sen's native Bengal, to an examination of the historic intellectual links between India and China, to a discussion of India's wealth of sophisticated calendars... Mr. Sen shows that the argumentative gene is not just a part of India's make-up that cannot be wished away. It is an essential part of its survival - and an advantage."
--The Economist

"Sen is unquestionably one of the most distinguished minds of our time . . . Yet while the pieces here are, as one would expect, enjoyably erudite and full of intriguing insights, they are not written in acadamese...Instead, the book is formed from a series of elegantly written historical and philosophical essays which cohere to form a single argument: that the sheer diversity of views and faiths and competing ideas that have always coexisted in India has naturally led to a fecund and tolerant argumentative tradition.
… profound and stimulating . . . erudite and sophisticated . . . engaging and thought-provoking. The product of such a great mind at the peak of its power, it is one of the most stimulating books about India to be written for years, and it deserves the widest possible readership." --William Dalrymple, The Sunday Times (London)

"EP Thompson once wrote that since 'all the convergent influences of the world'...run through India, 'there is not a thought that is being thought in the west or east that is not active in some Indian mind'...It is certainly rare to see them as elegantly synthesised as they are in the cosmopolitan mind of Amartya Sen...His prose is benignly professorial, always measured, and occasionally rises to dry irony...He wants to see how the argumentative tradition in India can be deployed against 'societal inequity and asymmetry' and what actual use can be 'made of the opportunities of democratic articulation and of political engagement'...'Silence is a powerful enemy of social justice,' Sen writes."--Pankaj Mishra, The Guardian

"In this superb collection of essays, Sen smashes quite a few stereotypes and places the idea of India and Indianness in its rightful, deserved context. Central to his notion of India...is the long tradition of argument and public debate, of intellectual pluralism and generosity that informs India's history.
One of the book's many triumphs is its tone. Sen does not indulge in triumphalism about his country's past...he propounds a view of Hinduism as an inclusive philosophy rather than an exclusionist, divisive religion. This view of Hinduism is mature enough and magnanimous enough to accommodate dissenting views and 'even profound skepticism.'...This is a book that needed to have been written. The perception of India in the West and, indeed, among Indians themselves has never been more amorphous as it is now. The Argumentative Indian will provide a new dimension and perspective to that perception. It would be no surprise if it were to become as defining and influential a work as Edward Said's Orientalism." --Soumya Bhattacharya, The Observer (London)

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First Edition edition (October 5, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374105839
• ISBN-13: 978-0374105839
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #849,862 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

97 of 110 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars The Argumentative Intellectual July 8, 2007

By Sanjay Agarwal

Format:Hardcover

According to Indian tradition, a dialogue can be of three types: 'vaad', or a discussion, which seeks to understand the opponent's point of view and explain one's own in order to reach the truth; 'vivaad' or an argument, which seeks to impose one's own point of view over that of the other; and the third, 'vitandavaad', which merely seeks to demolish the other person's views, without really offering any alternative system. Mr. Sen has, therefore, titled the book quite accurately, except that unwittingly he has thus revealed his own self-perception. An argumentative intellectual - not seeking the truth, but merely propagating his own views.

Mr. Sen seeks to demonstrate that India is a multi-hued society of many shades and composite cultures. It is also wrongly seen as primarily a spiritual culture, as it has many other talents as well. This is quite elementary. In order to do so, he ranges over a vast number of topics, and offers extremely interesting information about a number of them. He has a typically wry sense of humor, which is rather appreciable. He also has an axe to grind, which keeps making a screeching distraction throughout.

That axe is his grudge against the hard-line Hindu politics, particularly the BJP, RSS and its assorted allies. This keeps getting in his way, and he keeps making short raids to take pot shots at them. This becomes irritating after a little while. In reality, BJP / RSS do not influence or define Indian culture to the extent that we must become obsessed with them to the point of distraction. One also finds that this grudge leads him to constantly twist arguments and facts, in order to enable him to take a better shot at his arch-enemies: BJP/RSS....

Coming back to his argumentativeness, we find that he repeatedly mentions Javali, and his advice to Lord Rama in Valmiki's Ramayana. On page xi-xii, he mentions that Javali, who was critical of Lord Rama, has been given a lot of space in Ramayana. Then again on page 26, he gives him a full para, describing Javali's advice in great detail. We meet Javali again on page 47, and are told that he called Lord Rama's actions as 'foolish'. Javali pops up again on page 159, with the same advice.

Two issues arise out of Mr. Sen's treatment of Javali: 1. He does not mention the context in which Javali made these statements. Javali has come to the forest to persuade Lord Rama to return to Ayodhya and assume Kingship after his father's death. 2. He does not mention Lord Rama's subsequent reasoned rebuttal of Javali's arguments, and Javali's hasty and abject turn-around (in his anger, Rama concludes by suggesting that atheists such as Javali should be put to death).

Javali then says that he was merely making up these arguments, in order to persuade Lord Rama to return to Ayodhya - he goes on to mention that this is permitted as a tactic to achieve a desirable end, and Rama should not think poorly of him.

To continue: Mr. Sen approvingly emphasizes that Ramayana gives a lot of space to Javali, who is propounding a counterview to the main argument of Ramayana. Mr. Sen's thesis also is that India is a land of many cultures, and all people have a right to voice their views and be heard. However, Mr. Sen himself is unable to hold up this great tradition of `poorva paksh' and `uttara paksh' (roughly prior-view and post-view). He does not present or reproduce the arguments of his opponents at all. And when he mentions these, he does it in such disparaging and value-loaded terms that you do not at all get an idea of what their argument was.

This, in my view, is a definite demonstration of his approach and objective: to impose his own views over that of others. This is the objective of an argument - where the other person is not convinced, he merely shuts up, unable to counter it properly, in the face of superior intellect or argumentative skills.

Let us now look at his facts, as presented in 'India through Its Calendars'. He tells us that the Saka era is the most widely used indigenous calendar in India: it is not. It is used mainly in some Southern parts of India and Maharashtra. Northern and Central states, as also Gujarat, use the Vikram era, which is also used in Nepal. Bengal uses the Bangla era.

Then he goes on to set up a straw man of the Kaliyuga calendar dating based on Whitaker's almanac. Mr. Sen states that according to Whitaker's Alamanac, Gregorian year 2000 corresponded with Year 6001 in the Kaliyuga calendar. Actually, according to Whitaker's, it corresponded with Year 5101 (see Hindu_calendar - Regional_variants at Wikipedia.org). He then devotes considerable space to first proving that this was right, as this is the 'official date of the Kaliyuga calendar'. Here he makes an elementary arithmetical error referring to Calendar Reform Committee and making it sound as if 5055+46 is rightly equal to 6001! Then he goes on to prove that the calendar is off - it should actually be Kaliyuga 5101 !! This, I suspect, was done in order to hurriedly get into position to take a pot-shot at `Indian chauvinists' (p.322, 323, last para). Unfortunately, he seems to have shot himself in the foot (or put his foot in the mouth, to mix the metaphors a little).

We are also told that the Indian calendars were mainly secular calendar systems, which were used for all purposes, including religious ones. This is quite a confusing statement. In the Indian tradition, secularism had no place or need. The king also had religious advisers, who guided him on all political as well as religious affairs. Secondly, these calendars were designed and maintained mainly by Brahmin priests, who used them to identify correct times for various religious rituals, as well as to predict auspicious moments for important business and state matters.

Then we are told that the `mala masa' (extra month) is added to correct the calendar shifting that creeps in due to error in value of days in a solar year (365.25875 days instead of the correct 365.24220 days). Actually, the mala masa is added every three years to reconcile the lunar calendar with the solar calendar.

He is also under the impression (p.331) that Indian calendars are solar calendars - actually mostly these are composite calendars, where the lunar and the solar passage is tracked side by side. In fact, there are five aspects in all, which are tracked and reconciled simultaneously, hence the name 'panchang' (having five parts) is used for Indian calendars.

Mr. Sen offers copious notes and references. Some of these are themselves quite interesting, though a great many tend to be from Left-oriented perspective, or commentators. This is acceptable and discountable, once we know and accept Mr. Sen's own political preferences. Quite a few of the references tend to be to his own writings or to that of his own family members, which sounds a bit like plugging.

For page references, I have used the hardcover Penguin edition published under the Allen Lane banner. The book has been bound nicely, has a beautifully illustrated cover and is printed well. However, the paper is rather like newsprint, and tends to absorb ink, if you like making notes in the margins. The book is also quite large - you can't carry it with you on trips, so it may be a good idea to go for the paperback.

After reading both 'Identity and Violence' (Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny (Issues of Our Time)), and 'Argumentative Indian', it is reasonably clear that the political animal in Mr. Sen is more wily than the intellectual in him. Treat his historical, cultural books as engaging, interesting but carefully disguised polemic, and you will be quite fine. Read more ›

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Argumentative Bengali? July 13, 2007

By Vivek Sood

Format:Paperback

How do you encapsulate nearly 5000 years of known/spoken/written history of a billion people into nearly 360 pages and still come up with some coherent conclusions? Amartya Sen has managed to do that brilliantly.

This is an excellent book, and the only reason I will focus on the minor quibbles is that I cannot add any more to the positive praise this book has received from so many other quarters - most of which I agree with.

Sen does seem to have strong political views - which at times distract from his otherwise even handed approach to most of the material he presents.

All generalisations are no more than 50%-70% accurate(including this one). At times Sen does appear to draw a long bow. Given that only people profiled in the book at two Bengalis (Tagore and Satyajit Ray), and most of the examples are also based on thought and discourse in Bengal - this book could be more appropriately named The Argumentative Bengali.

37 of 49 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Different India January 2, 2006

By Arch Llewellyn

Format:Hardcover

Amartya Sen's dispassionate, closely reasoned and utterly convincing essays reveal an India that should be much better known: a civilization with a long history of public debate and vibrant heterodoxy that goes back at least to the Vedas, and that informs many aspects of civic life today in the world's largest democracy.

Sen's Argumentative Indian argues against Western interpretations of India as a land of airy mysticism and religious speculation whose democratic traditions were imposed by the British; at the same time, with a firm but even hand he corrects the more recent Hindu fundamentalist view that wants to impose a narrow, `miniaturized' version of the nation that excludes the contributions of Buddhists, Muslims, Christians, Jews, and thinkers of no particular religious persuasion at all.

Sen addresses the fact that this cultural predilection for argument and debate (along with a healthy respect for opposing points of view) has done little to change the vast social inequalities in India. But his book isn't so much about looking backward as it is about finding a usable past that Indians can take pride in as they look forward to a more global future. Along the way, Sen makes a lucid and compelling case for pluralism in all its forms in a century where fundamentalisms, East and West, are sadly on the rise. Sen's India is one I think the rest of the world could learn a lot from.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Sen has done better January 1, 2011

By A. Terrazas

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I'm typically a huge fan on anything Amartya Sen writes, but I found this collection disappointing. It seems to be a rather haphazard collection of otherwise unconnected musings. While there are certainly some gems, it seems more driven by a desire to pull random pieces together rather than the usual intellectual dynamism that drives Sen's other writing.

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Great book loses cohesion December 21, 2006

By lakeqi

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

This book starts off with fascinating chapters detailing how India is the world's great example of a truly functioning mulitcultural society. Sen shows that many commonly accepted ideas on India are simply the result of right wing Hindu and Western colonial propaganda. His chapters on Tagore and his exploration of Buddhist and Muslim contributions to Indian civilization should be required reading for anyone interstes in Indian history.

But what starts off as a potential classic, loses all cohesion as Sen starts throwing in revised essays and lectures, some dating back from as 10 years ago. A good read becomes a textbook, dreary, pedantic, and even tedious. A disjointed effort, but worth a look nontheless. Check it out at the library, or wait a few years for the price of a used copy to come down just a bit more.