General
Book Review: The Argumentative Indian
Its been over a week since I finished this book by Amartya Sen but the review had to wait till the Mumbai blasts. It is, in brief, an excellent book with but a few weaknesses. Yet, the appeal of this book is at many levels.
It is, first and foremost, a fresh perspective on India. In over 300 pages, Sen brings to light India’s past and present, refering to every name of note - from 3000 year old Mahabharata to Tagore, Gandhi, and contemporary historians and writers. And the topics of discussion are equally broad - India’s self-identity, equality, gender and discrimination, and religion - are treated to illustrate how heterodoxy has impacted the many spheres of life in India.
Necessarily, the book emphasizes - repeatedly - the complexity and multiplicity of issues that make up India. So it is not for those looking for a simplistic understanding of the country. Indeed, sometimes, the vastness of the subject takes away from its focus, especially in essays on social welfare or gender. Equally, there is repetition and I fear a dependence on a limited set of examples. Yet, the book saves itself by exceptional reasoned analysis. It is careful not to ascribe too much to this country, yet careful not to take credit away where it is due.
For that reason, especially, it should be read by Indians. Why is it that India has always been viewed in the popular western mind as a mythical and religious source? And why is it that Indians themselves choose this categorization, ignoring a long tradition of rationality, science, and liberalism?
This tradition in India has been inclusive, the current gender and caste inequalities notwithstanding. It has allowed women to lead in politics well before they could in Europe, or ever will in the USA. It has resulted in a Muslim President, Sikh Prime Minister, and Christian leader of the majority party, in a majority ‘Hindu’ country. India never had the Inquisition, nor slaves. On the same topic, another defence of Indian multi-culturalism from The Globalist.
Yet, India is viewed as a primarily religious, largely Hindu civilization. Sen brings out many such examples of Western ’scholarship’, such as James Mills. Even the great Max Weber, however, was not beyond it. For you open The Protestant Ethic to read:
Only in the West does science exist at a stage of development which we recognized today as valid…
Sen explains this due to the prevailing ideas of colonial superiority in Britain in the 1800s that discarded anything of note from a ’subject’ country’s history. And Indians themselves chose mysticism as a value unique to their culture, and something non-British.
The book, then, is a wakeup call to understand, respect, and defend our traditions of heterodoxy, argument, and skepticism. As Sen quotes from Ram Mohan Roy:
Just consider how terrible the day of your death will be.
Others will go on speaking, and you will not be able to argue back.
Discussion
2 comments for “Book Review: The Argumentative Indian”
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[...] Why is it that Indian contributions to science are undervalued? I find the answer in Amartya Sen’s The Argumentative Indian. His prognosis is that ideas of colonial superiority prevented a full recognition of Eastern contributions in areas where Europe considered itself advanced. This explains, for instance, how Lord Macaulay could exclaim: I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. [...]
You have done a good job in writing a review of Amartya Sen’s book. I would like to include in here my criticism. In my own way, I concentrated on certain aspect of his without writing much about his book. It is titled “Argumentative Bengali” and be found at:
http://sujaiblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/argumentative-bengali.html
Thank you,
Sujai