The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity

by Amartya K. Sen

book data

260 ratings, 3.68 average rating, 36 reviews (more data...)

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5		18%
4		42%
3		30%
2		6%
1		2%

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published

September 5th 2006 (first published 2005) by Picador

binding

Paperback, 432 pages

isbn

031242602X (isbn13: 9780312426026)

description

In sixteen linked essays, Nobel Prize--winning economist Amartya Sen discusses India's intellectual and political heritage and how its argumentative t...more

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03/18/09

Yugaljoshi rated it:

Read in June, 2009

As expected this book was below expectation. I believe the hype which surrounded the book was kind of a kill joy. Amartaya Sen has put a decent historical and cultural perspective into a compact format and the book is a good source of information. It shows that Indian culture and history is not only "spiritualism or religion" what the Western world is obsessed with but also a deep reason and heterodoxy based integrative culture. He talk about how a person Javali is given so much import...more

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08/14/08

David rated it:

Read in September, 2008

recommends it for: Revaz Ardesher

After all my dramatic agony and breathless complaining, I am glad I endured. The Argumentative Indian is neither easy nor fun to read. The first three pages of every chapter and sub-chapter are essentially wordy justifications of why the topic is deserving of discussion in the first place.

Throughout the book I was constantly thinking, Amartya, homeboy, stop talking about what you're going to talk about and just get to it. Sen himself is quite the argumentative Indian and sometimes th...more After all my dramatic agony and breathless complaining, I am glad I endured. The Argumentative Indian is neither easy nor fun to read. The first three pages of every chapter and sub-chapter are essentially wordy justifications of why the topic is deserving of discussion in the first place.

Throughout the book I was constantly thinking, Amartya, homeboy, stop talking about what you're going to talk about and just get to it. Sen himself is quite the argumentative Indian and sometimes the book reads as if you walked in on a one man debate competition in which Sen, the convincing devil's advocate, faces off with Sen, the impassioned and patient defender of peace and tolerance.

Whichever literary framework you prefer, it must be said that Professor Sen is not an effortless writer. Cautious yes (footnotes, endnotes, and asterisks are abundant), but often at the expense of clarity.

Despite all of this, The Argumentative Indian is a book I recommend to everyone with an interest not just in India, but also the slippery relationship between cultural uniqueness and so-called universal values. The book is a collection of wide-ranging essays - most of which were previously published elsewhere - that are difficult to encapsulate in a single thesis, but maybe it would be something along these lines: Just how Western are so-called Western values? Democracy, individual liberty, multi-cultural tolerance, secularism, reasoned debate. Are these values unique to Western culture or have they been excluded from shallow historical readings of other civilizations. Like India, for example.

Sen is critical of two interpretations of modern India - internal separatism and global isolation. India is often portrayed as a mishmash of separate religions, languages, ethnicities, and castes which are only loosely held together by the legacy of European colonialism. He rejects that claim completely and spends much of the book reviewing the history of two major Indian leaders - Ashoka and Akbar - as examples of India's pre-colonial embrace of pluralism and multiculturalism. Sen is equally critical of those who try to promote a sense of Indian national identity by rejecting any economic, social, or intellectual engagement with the West. In fact, he keenly observes that most anti-Western thought in India is, in fact, rooted in European intellectual circles.

It was the first essay - responsible for the name of the book - that I found most interesting. Why has India become such a strong democracy (the one blemish to India's post-colonial democracy was Indira Ghandi's "Emergency" which was strongly rejected by Indian voters) compared to most other British colonies-turned-nation-states? Sen seemingly argues that India was democractic before it was ever a democracy. That is, India despite it's endless history of being invaded by foreign powers, has always embraced skepticism, reasoned public debate, and multicultural tolerance - all of which are key ingredients of modern democracy.

It is his idea of "democracy as public reasoning" that intrigued me the most because that is one of my main arguments for why I go around passionately promoting participatory media. I'm a sucker for the idea that the more we discuss and debate - and especially the more we listen - the more tolerant and empathetic we become. Sometimes I worry that in aggressively promoting discussion, I am promoting a particularly Western way of interacting with the world around us. Amartya Sen doesn't seem to think so. Discussion, he argues, is as universal as love.(less)

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05/15/08

Divya rated it:

(review of isbn 0141012110)

Read in January, 2007

The Argumentative Indian: It's a largely good read and apart from being a sort of very well researched and insightful history lesson, it's a feel-good book as well: I mean, it is quite nice to see evidence for there not having been much paucity here of -what is most widely regarded as a hallmark (and sometimes exclusive?) achievement of the 'West'*:P. As well-argued as it is, I must admit to a considerable lack of any sort of critical thinking on my part while reading it; I was happy to raise no...more

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04/26/08

Khalid rated it:

Read in April, 2008

Really it's an excellent work. Most of the people know that the advancement and civilization of present world was born in Europe. Also we knew that all modern philosophical, astronomical, mathematical, and scientific basic works were initiated by westerners.

Amartya Sen upholds the ancient ground works of mathematics, philosophy, economics, astronomy, science and technology, democracy initiated and nurtured in India and China. He noted the works of Arya Bhatta, Kautilya, Buddha, Asho...more

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12/16/07

Espen rated it:

bookshelves: india

Read in May, 2007

recommends it for: anyone interested in India, history and globalization

I picked this up in India, after having read Gurcharan Das' India Unbound and wanting to learn more about the history and society of a country that holds a fifth of the world's population and now, finally, is beginning to pull its weight in the international economy. Sen's collection of essays is the intellectual complement to Das' rather easier and less multifaceted account of the economic liberation of India, focusing on the central aspects of deliberation ("argumentativeness") and r...more

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12/15/07

Adam rated it:

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 fr...more 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.
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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06/15/07

Malini rated it:

I think this collection is pretty fantastic. It deals with a lot of important issues facing Indians but also makes the discussions relevant to people of all nationalities. Examples are drawn from all throughout India's history to illustrate and explore current economic, political, and personal struggles within India and between India and the rest of the world. I found the essay on Buddhist exchanges with CHina and the discussion of the BJP's politics to be the most interesting.

The ma...more

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05/04/08

Stuart rated it:

bookshelves: history

Read in June, 2008

In this collection of essays, Amartya Sen argues that India shouldn't be judged as strictly a religious Hindu society, but instead a multicultural, multi-religious society. One that has made many contributions science and mathematics. He is arguing against the right wing Hindu party's claim that India is a Hindu nation (much like the argument against the US as a Christian Nation), just because a majority of Indian's identify as Hindu. He is also arguing against the portrayal by many Westerne...more

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11/06/08

Shikha rated it:

Read in January, 2009

Brilliant. Amartya Sen may not be the greatest public speaker, but he clearly demonstrates his incredible breadth and depth of knowledge about India, its history, discourse, pluralism, perception, and economics in these series of essays. I was pleasantly surprised that although he was discussing some highly complex topics and debates, his language and writing style made them digestable (although I did have to read a bit slower for it all to sink in). A must read for anyone who wants a greater...more

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03/03/09

Erica rated it:

He is a noble prize winner for a reason, this gives an intellectual understanding of many of the issues in India from the ancient, to independence and after. Very good for anyone who is remotely interested in India.

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12/30/08

Nikhil rated it:

bookshelves: currently-reading

This is a great insight into one the writings and essays of one of the brightest economists of this century, Amartya Sen. The book offers a great commentary into the great contradiction that is personified by India.

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11/21/08

epistemology is currently reading it

bookshelves: currently-reading

this books takes serious focus. but - SO interesting!

...beware of political advocates of smallness...

a great lesson from this book!

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12/04/08

Ayesha Pande is currently reading it

bookshelves: currently-reading

Unbelievably insightful. I'm learning so much. This man is brilliant.

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05/05/09

Soodaroo rated it:

Read in January, 2009

Intresting topic about culture and life in india and so more...

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03/05/09

Raghavan added it

Read in January, 2008

many things about indian and chinese cultures and tradition

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01/07/08

Ellorashree Maitrra rated it:

bookshelves: unfinished

Haven't had time to read all the essays, but on the whole liked the ones I did read. I enjoyed the discussion of the ways in which Indian secularism departs from the Western model, and thought that Sen did a good job of placing its particular features vis-a-vis the history of the subcontinent. Wondered why Nirad C. Chaudhuri doesn't figure as an "argumentative" Indian, though. Perhaps because Chaudhuri's views aren't particularly congenial to the liberal humanist mindset Sen is interes...more

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04/22/08

Omar Khan rated it:

Really well-argued, intelligent book. A welcome antidote to narrow nationalisms and myopic cultural insularity. Everything is shared, and it is in this interaction that much of the amazing richness of Indian culture has arisen. Amartya Sen is certainly a true Renaissance thinker, the likes of which are few and far between today. He also has the right expansive, inclusive mind-set.

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11/18/08

Komal added it

Interesting reading so far, this is one of those books I've saved for a free day on my Lazyboy. It isn't one of those books that compels a cover-to-cover reading in one sitting, and I like that. Besides, there are too many ideas in here for it to be well suited to a one-sitting read. Books ought to be savoured and this is one of them.

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03/13/08

Gina rated it:

Read in June, 2009

Call this partly read. I couldn't make it through this, partly I think because it is really a collection of essays trying to be a book. Sen says he attempted to weave the essays together, but there is too much repetition and no real narrative arc, and though I admire his thought, this foray into it led me to temporary defeat.

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08/06/07

Sandhya rated it:

(review of isbn 0141012110)

Read in January, 2005

This makes for heavy reading....I personally lost patience after reading 3/4th of the book...I felt the Amartya Sen had nothing to say further after a point.
Yet, i wouldn't discourage anyone from reading it. Its makes some wonderfully perceptive points and is a relevant work for our times.

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