The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity (Hardcover)

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Key Phrases: natality inequality, exoticist approaches, magisterial approaches, New York, Rabindranath Tagore, Oxford University Press (more...)

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.)
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From The Washington Post

If you laid all the economists in the world end to end, the old joke goes, you would never reach a conclusion. So it's all the more remarkable that it is as a practitioner of the "dismal science" that Amartya Sen won the Nobel Prize in 1998. Sen is a man of conclusions; he is also brilliant at marshalling, with both extensive research and empirical evidence, the arguments that justify his conclusions. The Argumentative Indian -- a collection of 16 essays, many reworked and expanded from lectures and previously published articles -- is an intellectual tour de force from an economist who can lay equal claim to the designations of sociologist, historian, political analyst and moral philosopher. It is a magisterial work, except that the adjective is not one of which Sen would approve.

That is because Sen uses it, along with "exoticist" and "curatorial," to describe the three perspectives from which the West has tended to view India (each of which he dissects and discredits with precision and finesse). He is particularly critical of the Western overemphasis on India's religiosity at the expense of any recognition of the country's equally impressive rationalist, scientific, mathematical and secular heritage, fields treated by Orientalists as "Western spheres of success."

"There is certainly a need for some emendation here," Sen adds dryly. Emendation he provides, in capacious detail. Sen convincingly demonstrates that Asian (and specifically Indian) traditions of rationality and scientific liberalism go further back than Western ones and have been just as important as the religious or mystical strains in shaping India's heritage. There is none of the economist's propensity to theorize on the basis of airy assumptions here; Sen's arguments are grounded in a keenly felt, deeply empathetic reading of Indian history and culture, augmented by a breadth and depth of research (extensively footnoted) that is breathtaking in its range and scholarly eclecticism. The essays are also informed by Sen's passionate concern for the impoverished, undernourished and marginalized, especially women. The Nobel citation lauded him for restoring "an ethical dimension to the discussion of vital economic problems," and a strong moral sense is never absent from his prose.

To reduce such a richly diverse book to a couple of main themes is a disservice, for there is much here to reward the careful reader (notably two startlingly educative essays on the ancient roots of relations between India and China). Particularly pleasurable is Sen's masterly reclaiming of Rabindranath Tagore's reputation from the unjust misjudgment of him in the West as a mediocre mystic poet rather than the rationalist and humanist genius and polymath Sen convincingly depicts. But -- disservice aside -- two principal arguments emerge from this collection: an affirmation of India's political and cultural heterogeneity, and of the "reach of reason" in India's intellectual traditions. Even an essay on the films of Satyajit Ray (the only Indian director to win an Oscar for lifetime achievement) affirms Sen's case for India's absorptive culture. "In our heterogeneity and in our openness lies our pride, not our disgrace," Sen writes. "Satyajit Ray taught us this, and that lesson is profoundly important for India. And for Asia, and for the world."

Sen's argument for his idea of India is constructed not just in opposition to Western stereotyping but also to the homegrown Hindutva ("Hindu-ness") movement, which in recent years has sought power on a platform asserting that India is a Hindu nation that ought to be a Hindu state, while defining Hinduism in crudely sectarian terms, both as a religion and as a badge of cultural and political identity. In several of the essays in this collection, Sen demolishes each of these "narrow and bellicose" premises of Hindutva, along with Western religious reductionism. Sen reminds us that even the sacred epic the Ramayana, much beloved of today's Hindu revivalists, features the skeptic Javali, who advises the god-king Ram that "there is no after-world, nor any religious practice for attaining that. . . . [Religious] injunctions . . . have been laid down in the [scriptures] by clever people, just to rule over [other] people." India's skeptical tradition is as old as the Rigveda, composed around 1500 B.C., when most Europeans were clad in animal skins. "Who really knows?" it asks about creation. "Who will here proclaim it? Whence was it produced?. . . perhaps it formed itself, or perhaps it did not -- the one who looks down on it, in the highest heaven, only he knows -- or perhaps he does not know."

I love that final "or perhaps he does not know." The reach of rationality in Indian thinking goes far; Hinduism is the only major religion with an explicit tradition of agnosticism within it. Equally important is the tradition of secular tolerance practiced by such rulers as the Buddhist Emperor Ashoka and the Muslim Emperor Akbar some 1,800 years apart.

Sen points out that Ashoka's edicts promoted the human rights of all in the 3rd century before Christ, a time when Aristotle's writings on freedom explicitly excluded women and slaves, an exception the Indian monarch did not make. At a time when the Catholics of Europe were tyrannizing each other, persecuting Jews with the Inquisition and burning heretics at the stake, Akbar was proclaiming in Delhi that "no man should be interfered with on account of religion, and anyone is to be allowed to go over to a religion that pleases him." Unlike in the West, Indian secularism has tended not to be about the separation of church from state and the prohibition of religious activities but about tolerance of a profusion of religions, none of which is privileged or favored by the state. To Sen, "the Hindutva movement has entered into a confrontation with the idea of India itself."

The essays are not merely celebratory of Sen's "capacious idea of India." In hailing the Indian argumentative tradition, Sen does not overlook the need for discourse to be politically effective, and his chapter on Indian democracy is both reasoned and critical, calling for "broadening the force and range of political arguments and social demands." While hailing Indian democracy's success in preventing the famines that occurred with depressing regularity under British colonial rule, he stresses that this does not mean the problem of chronic and endemic hunger ("a much more complex task") has been solved. His demolition job on the Indian nuclear tests of 1998 is all the more effective for being couched in the language of reasoned discourse.

Sen is a cosmopolitan and an Indian -- and he, of course, would see no contradiction in those terms. Educated at Rabindranath Tagore's experimental school, Shantiniketan (where the earlier Bengali Nobelist prophetically dubbed Sen "Amartya," or "immortal"), and at Cambridge University, the first non-English Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, the holder of two named professorships at Harvard, film buff, cricket fan and voracious reader, Sen embodies the yearning for heterodox learning.

There is only one problem with his rich and instructive book: He constructs his essays with such meticulous reasoning and expresses his point of view in so courteous a tone that this Indian found it difficult to pick an argument with him. A future edition will need a less contentious title.

Reviewed by Shashi Tharoor
Copyright 2005, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First. 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: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #412,854 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

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

By	Sanjay Agarwal (India) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

32 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

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

By	Arch Llewellyn "arch-l" - See all my reviews

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.

20 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent arguments!, December 27, 2005

By	PRADIPTA PRASUN SAHA (Singapore) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Brilliant discourse on a range of topics connected to India and Indians. More Indians should read this to appreciate how inclusive India has historically been, to understand how Tagore was much more than a poet, and to be amazed by the level of intercourse of ideas over two millenia between India and China. More westerners should read this to shatter their illusions, fed in great measure by the "simplicist" Samuel Huntington, about India being some sort of homogeneous "Hindu" civilization, and to appreciate that science, tolerance and democracy are not creations of the west. Sen is bound to make many enemies among his compatriots, though, with his implicit support for the "Aryan Invasion Theory" and his staunch secularism - but then as he points out himself - less than 25% of Indians over the last few general elections have voted for a certain political party.