The Argumentative Indian

[Maral Mende]

TheArgumentative Indian has brought together a selection of writings from Sen that outline the need to understand contemporary India in the light of its long argumentative tradition. The understanding and use of this argumentative tradition are critically important, Sen argues, for the success of India's democracy, the defence of its secular politics, the removal of inequalities related to class, caste, gender and community, and the pursuit of sub-continental peace.

The book takes the form of four sections containing linked essays: "Voice and Heterodoxy", "Culture and Communication", "Politics and Protest", "Reason and Identity". The first section looks at the general culture of pluralistic debate within India, dating back to Buddha and kings such as Ashoka. The second section seeks to restore the reputation of Rabindranath Tagore as an intellectual polymath, combining spiritual and political ideas, and explores India's relationship to other cultures, including the West and China, especially the peaceful and intellectually rewarding cross-fertilising relationship between the two great Asian cultures. The third section looks at conflicts of class and criticises inequalities in Indian society and arguments that have been used to justify them. Finally, the book explores modern cultures of secularism and liberalism in an Indian context.[2]

When Amartya Sen titles a book The Argumentative Indian,the reader naturally assumes something by way of an autobiography.(Or, as a friend teased, perhaps it was about me.) The joke is nodoubt intentional, but Sen's goal is something much grander. As manyIndians have watched in horror, over the past decade the term“secular” has successfully turned into a curse in Indianpolitics. It is this taboo that Sen tries to combat, by demonstratingtwo things: that Indian culture is richer than only Hindu culture, andthat Indian culture—including Hindu culture—has along and rich argumentative tradition. For Sen believes thatwhere argument lives, skepticism thrives, and fundamentalism mustinevitably fail.

There is the goal, and then there is its execution. Here, Sen fallsdisturbingly flat. He retreads the same tiny argumentsrepeatedly—a quote from the Rig Veda here, an excerpt from theRamayana there—driving the reader first to frustration and thento outright concern. Is this the best we can do as an argument? WasSen simply lazy, or is the evidence really that thin on the ground?His euphoric embrace of Ashoka and Akbar are bound to mislead aWestern reader who is unlikely to realize that they were significantoutliers to an at least tepid, and sometimes disturbing, mean. It is,ultimately, a very unfulfilling, and therefore worrying, fare.

The book's other major undoing is its format. This is a collection ofessays from over a decade, which have since been annotated by Sen.His scholarly touch in this process is evident: the number of forwardand backward references, and the substantial indices, demonstrate thatthis was no mere stapling together of pages. But that superficialthoroughness cannot mask a deep problem: there is somethingembarassing about seeing effectively the same essay rewritten abouteight different times in slightly different contexts, and the degreeof repetition of a small number of facts could be used as acounter-argument by his foes who would argue that it lays bare howthin his argument is.

This series of essays on Indian culture and identity by a Nobel laureate in economics is both intellectually challenging and a pleasure to read, an exceptional study by a wise scholar who has given careful thought to the complexities of India. Moving beyond the standard depictions of "Spiritual India" in mainstream sociology and anthropology, Sen delights in exploring paradoxes, in which Indian cultural attributes usually seen as problems and liabilities are made into virtues. With wit and insight, he turns conventional views on their heads: the "argumentative Indian" has produced a highly secular, heterodox culture that is comfortable with diversity and thus open to the pluralism fundamental to democracy. Sen advances his views in relaxed, undogmatic prose (providing support for his thesis that India's cultural tradition makes Indians exceptionally tolerant of diversity and contradictions). The reader may have some trouble keeping up with Sen as he shifts among ancient Indian history, theological debates, modern science, postindependence politics, and numerous other lively topics. Yet the reader can also be thankful that Sen spares him the theoretical jargon popular in contemporary social science.

Abstract: The Argumentative Indian brings together a selection of writings from Nobel prize-winning economist Amartya Sen that outline the need to understand contemporary India, including its thriving democracy, in the light of its long argumentative tradition." "Understanding the political, social, cultural and economic challenges that contemporary India faces demands an adequate appreciation of its pluralist, interactive and dynamic heritage. Sen argues that external views also affect the national perception of identity through an interactive process, especially in the post-colonial world. The West has often perceived India as a place of endless spirituality and unreasoning mysticism. Yet it has a long tradition of scepticism and reasoning, with perhaps, of all ancient civilizations, the largest body of agnostic and atheistic literature, in addition to secular contributions in mathematics, astronomy, linguistics, medicine and political economy.

India is a very diverse country with many distinct pursuits, vastly different convictions, widely divergent customs, and a veritable feast of viewpoints. The Argumentative Indian brings together an illuminating selection of writings from Nobel prize-winning economist Amartya Sen that outline the need to understand contemporary India in the light of its long argumentative tradition.

The understanding and use of this rich argumentative tradition are critically important, Sen argues, for the success of India's democracy, the defence of its secular politics, the removal of inequalities related to class, caste, gender and community, and the pursuit of sub-continental peace.

A Washington Post Book World Best Book of the Year

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 millennia-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 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.

Amartya Sen was born in 1933 and grew up in Santiniketan and in Dhaka (now the capital of Bangladesh). As a student in India and then at Trinity College, Cambridge, he "seriously flirted, in turn, with Sanskrit, mathematics and physics before settling for the eccentric charms of economics," as he has written. Now Lamont University Professor at Harvard, he was Master of Trinity College from 1998 to 2004, and has taught at many other universities in Britain, the United States, and India. When Professor Sen was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1998, he was the first Asian to be so honored.

Sen treats argumentation as a positive value. Argumentation sparked dissent and shaped Indian politics to a large extent. He even claimed that argumentation was an important contribution to the development of democracy in India. Argumentation supports the opinions of ordinary people, which helps maintain democracy in our country. Therefore, Sen believes that argumentation is extremely important for the normal operation of democracy.

This essay is an example of argumentative writing. Supporting statements with evidence is a feature of this kind of writing. For each of the statements given below, state the supportive evidence provided in the essay.

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