The Argumentative Indian (Abridged) by Amartya Sen

 

The Argumentative Indian

Answer the following questions in 15-20 words each:

1. Who was Krishna Menon and how long did he deliver his speech at the UN?

Answer: Krishna Menon was India’s Defence Minister and led the Indian delegation to the UN. He delivered an unprecedented 9 hour long speech defending India’s stand on Kashmir.

2. Name the foreign commentators who endorsed Krishna’s moral position.

Answer: Christopher Isherwood and T.S.Eliot are two foreign commentators who endorsed Krishna’s moral position.

3. Can we achieve immortality through wealth, according to Yajnavalkya?

Answer: No, immortality can be achieved through wealth, according to Yajnavalkya. He clearly declared that if we have excessive wealth, our life will be like the life of rich people but there is no scope of immortality by it.

Answer the following questions in 30-40 words each:

1. Discuss the topic of debate between Arjuna and Krishna in the Bhagwad Gita?

Answer: The famous Bhagwad Gita presents a debate between two contrary positions- Krishna’s emphasis on doing one’s duty, on one side, and Arjuna’s focus on avoiding bad consequences(and generating good ones), on the other hand.

2. In which poem does T. S. Eliot summarise Krishna’s views and how?

Answer: In a poem in Four Quarters, T. S. Eliot summarises Krishna’s view in the form of an admonishment: “And do not think of the fruit of action! Fare Forward’. He explains: ‘Not fare well/But fare forward, voyagers’.

3. Discuss the role of women in political leadership and intellectual pursuits in India.

Answer: Many women in India have participated prominently in argumentative tradition. In ancient India Gargi and Maitreyi had significant debate over the questions of their times. Many of our political parties are led by the women.

Answer the following questions in about 150 words each:

1. Do you agree that ‘fare forward’ is better than ‘fare well’? Give your views.

Answer: Two prominent families are on the battlefield, ready to fight over the throne. On one side, is the archer Arjuna and his army; on the other side, the enemy, the Kauravas. Before giving the command for the battle to start, Arjuna looks across the battlefield, sees his relatives, people he has grown up with, on both sides of the war, and begins to wonder if the battle (if the fight for power and glory) makes any sense: What good can come out of brothers killing brothers? Krishna, disguised as Arjuna’s chariot driver, sees the archer is in a moment of doubt and begins giving him advice.

Krishna points out the Arjuna is a soldier and so it is his job, his karma, to fight. Not to fight is to go against his nature, his duty to his nature. Krishna also points out that Arjuna must act. He is in the world, and world demands action.

I think Lord Krishna’s arguments are unprecedented and we all know have been guiding since ages.

Arjuna was right to hesitate and recognize the waste of human life that his command would cause. His hesitation was human hesitation—only a considerate human could recognize the seriousness of the situation and provide it with serious thought. Arjuna was thinking forward, thinking about what matters most to the present, the future. In that moment of doubt, Arjuna was pro-life, pro-human.

I think I will value Arjuna’s arguments also. Gita needs to be read in the context of the Mahabharata. If one reads the Mahabharata closely, it will become evident that the Kauravas’ bad behavior made the war unavoidable and eminently justified. That is, it was a ‘just war’.

2. Socially disadvantaged groups or classes voiced against the Brahmanical orthodoxy in ancient India. Give arguments citing examples from Buddhism and Jainism.

Answer: It is necessary to understand that the use of argumentative encounters has frequently crossed the barriers of class and caste. Indeed, the challenge to religious orthodoxy has often come from spokesman of socially disadvantages groups. Disadvantage is, of course, a comparative concept. When Brahminical orthodoxy was disputed in ancient India by members of other groups (including merchants and craftsmen), the fact that the protesters were often quite affluent should not distract attention from the fact that, in the context of Brahmin-dominated orthodoxy, they were indeed distinctly underprivileged. This may be particularly significant in understanding the class basis of the rapid spread of Buddhism, in particular, in India. The undermining of the superiority of the priestly caste played quite a big part in these initially rebellious religious movements, which include Jainism as well as Buddhism. It included a ‘levelling’ feature that is not only reflected in the message of human equality for which these movements stood, but is also captured in the nature of the arguments used to undermine the claim to superiority of those occupying exalted positions. Substantial parts of early Buddhist and Jain literatures contain expositions of protest and resistance.

3. What is the importance of public debate and intellectual pluralism in the Indian tradition? Answer: It is in this broad context that one can see the importance of the contributions made by India’s argumentative tradition to its intellectual and social history, and why they remain relevant today. Despite the complexity of the processes of social change, traditions have their own interactive influence, and it is necessary to avoid being imprisoned in formulaic interpretations that are constantly, but often uncritically, repeated in intellectual as well as political discussions on historical traditions. For example, seeing Indian traditions as overwhelmingly religious, or deeply anti-scientific, or exclusively hierarchical, or fundamentally unsceptical (to consider a set of diagnoses that have received some championing in cultural categorizations) involves significant oversimplification of India’s past and present. And in so far as traditions are important, these mischaracterizations tend to have a seriously diverting effect on the analysis of contemporary India as well as of its complex history. It is in that broad context that the corrective on which this essay concentrates comes particularly into its own. The claim is that the chosen focus here is useful and instructive, not that it is uniquely enlightening. It is in this broad context that it becomes particularly important to note that heterodoxy has been championed in many different ways throughout Indian history, and the argumentative tradition remains very much alive today. This tradition has received understanding and support from many of the modern leaders of India – not only political leaders such as Mohandas Gandhi, but also people in other walks of life, such as Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore, who was proud of the fact that his family background reflected ‘a confluence of three cultures, Hindu, Mohammedan and British’, emphasized the need to be vigilant in defence of this open-minded tradition and to help it to flower more fully.

4. The essay discusses India’s history and tradition. Explain.

Answer: "seeing Indian traditions as overwhelmingly religious, or deeply anti-scientific, or exclusively hierarchical, or fundamentally unsceptical involves significant oversimplifications of India's past and present".- Amartya Sen

By highlighting Indian achievements in mathematics, astronomy, linguistics, medicine and political economy, Sen also wishes to challenge the commonplace prejudice that the west has "exclusive access to the values that lie at the foundation of rationality and reasoning, science and evidence, liberty and tolerance, and of course rights and justice".

Sen wishes to undermine the "dominance of contemporary western culture over our perceptions and readings".

But Sen believes in an idea of India that, he writes, quoting Tagore, "against the intense consciousness of the separateness of one's people from others".

He is at his best examining over-used concepts such as democracy, which recently has appeared to consist almost entirely of elections. Sen points out how public debate and discussion and decision-making as much as balloting lie at the core of democracy.

Sen has repeatedly pointed out how the "very poor" in India get a small - and basically indirect - share of the cake that information technology and related developments generate. He wants to see how the argumentative tradition in India can be deployed against "societal inequity and asymmetry" and what actual use can be "made of the opportunities of democratic articulation and of political engagement".