07-07-2015
He is exactly the kind of intellectual democrat they should have on their team.
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All right, we know he is the world's foremost argumentative Indian, perhaps our most playful public intellectual, and a Nobel laureate who hasn't given up his Indian passport. That is clearly not enough to make the right wingers proud of Amartya Sen. So I would urge them to read his remarkable and very timely collection of essays, The Country of First Boys - and Other Essays, edited by Antara Dev Sen and Pratik Kanjilal, just out from The Little Magazine and Oxford University Press. It will remind them - or reveal to them - why he is exactly the kind of intellectual democrat (to quote from Gopalkrishna Gandhi's lovely preface to the book) they should have on their team. If indeed Team India needs to have two teams.
1) He is perhaps the greatest champion and the best ambassador Sanskrit can have: Read about his love for Sanskrit here. During his school days in Santiniketan, he says Sanskrit captivated him and was his second language after Bengali. As he notes in the book's remarkable introduction, he learnt so much from reading Sanskrit literature that he is all for teaching it in schools, a demand this government is very keen on and which should gladden Smriti Irani's heart. But, of course, those who oppose him will find it easy to quibble with him when he says: "The advocacy of Sanskrit often comes from champions who see Sanskrit as the language of priesthood. That, of course, it also is, but Sanskrit has so much — indeed so very much — else.'' He goes on to point out how the epics are primarily religious texts which alone will get the Dinanath Batras of the world hot under the collar. He says while Sanskrit is celebrated as a priestly language, it also has a larger body of firmly agnostic and atheistic literature (in the works of Lokayata and of the Charvaka schools, among others), than any other classical language in the world. And this is not just talk. He is one of the prime motivators for Rohan Murty's Classical Library of India, which is undertaking the translation of great works of Indian literature. Indeed as he was one of the prime motivators for the revival of Nalanda University, instead of being just one among many who worships India's proud academic heritage.
2) He is an even greater champion of the Vedas: Not just for their hymns and religious adulation but also for the power of folly that they highlight. The Vedas show us what it is to be human, to have weaknesses, but it does it through fun and games, he says. As he points out, the word "Veda" has the same Indo-European root as the contemporary source of much diversion called the "video" - this should delight those who like to ascribe every modern invention to ancient India.
3) He is the greatest proponent of doing away with subsidies to the rich: This is something that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has embraced in his appeal to the rich to give up their subsidised LPG. As he says, contrary to his pro-subsidy image, he has consistently argued that subsidies to the better off should be altogether scrapped and even the food subsidies and employment guarantees need to be managed much better (in fact better organisation and elimination of corruption are in the interest of the poor themselves).
4) He has good things to say about Gujarat: He believes the inattention to physical infrastructure is receiving long overdue critical attention recently, largely driven by Gujarat’s success. It's with a caveat, but surely that is logical? As he points out, if the importance of physical infrastructure is indeed an important recognition, should not some wisdom be obtained also from the experience of another state which has lifted itself from being among the poorest in India to being the richest in per capita income?
5) He is as sceptical of media bias as most of the BJP is: Though it has to be said, his language is from a totally different universe from the one favoured by Sangh civilians and generals alike. Consider this: "The Indian media not only tends to have a coverage bias, it often is also simply inaccurate. Bewildering misreporting is so common now that I have to confess that I am not surprised to read in the papers that I am a steadfast supporter of the Congress party, or that I was an architect of the economic policies of the previous — United Progressive Alliance or UPA — government, policies that I had explicitly criticised in my writings. In fact, many of the criticisms of the neglect of health and education under the previous government (and governments previous to that), and of the inaction in confronting deep-rooted inequality that I have been attacking for a long time (they figure prominently also in the joint book with Jean Drèze, An Uncertain Glory: India and Its Contradictions), apply today under National Democratic Alliance or NDA government as well. To some extent the rhetoric has changed, but a real change would require much greater social radicalism in public reasoning than has been the norm in India — today, yesterday, and the day before."
6) His loan to the Nobel Museum could not be more "Indian" and may well be something Prime Minister Modi may want to emulate in his world tours: A copy of Aryabhatiya (one of the great Sanskrit classics on mathematics from AD 499) from which he says he benefited so much, and his old bicycle which was with him from his school days and using which he gathered data on the Bengal famine.
But of course, the haters will hate and they will focus on his dire warning on the miniaturisation of India - what he calls the smallness thrust upon us - to hate Sen even more.
As he writes: "The propagation of a singular identity, based — respectively — on nationality, or religion, or race, or caste, has been responsible for a great deal of violence in different parts of the world, including massive bloodshed. The importance of a clear-headed understanding of the stakes involved is no less at this time in India than it has ever been. We have reason to be proud of all significant achievements in India, whether they came from the Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs, Parsees, Jews, agnostics, or atheists. It is also important to appreciate that a culture — no matter what its religious accompaniments are (if any) — tends to involve many endeavours and pursuits other than religion. The richness of India’s calendrical history, or the major contributions made in India in developing new and exciting games (of which the now-global game of chess is perhaps the best known), should be objects of attention and enquiry, even to understand the nature of India and its culture."
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