The Argumentative Indian  (English, Paperback, Sen Amartya)

The book is a collection of prize-winning essays on public debate and intellectual pluralism in Indian history.

Summary Of The Book

Basing The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture And Identity in as simple a tradition as Calcutta’s ‘addas’ or a gathering of people at street corners to discuss everything from politics to cricket, Amartya Sen explains that this spirit of discussion is deeply ingrained within the people of India. And it is this healthy expression of opinions, debates and discussions which involves India’s many ethnic groups, opines Sen, that will lead to the success of democracy and the downplaying of India's caste system and inequalities. He goes on to say that this acceptance, personal modification and rejection of another’s views is what makes Indians liberal in contradiction to the general view that it is a product of Western influence. In actuality, he says, Indians have a unique quality where they assimilate ideas from Western culture into their own.

Extensive is what one would say about the The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture And Identity, where Sen talks of Rabindranath Tagore and Satyajit Ray in his essays and how they are examples of liberal Indias. He openly challenges many widely held beliefs about Indians, like the belief that human rights are inherently Western concepts, and he does so with finesse and with a barrage of examples from old and modern India. He expresses many of his own views while politely arguing with the opinions put forth by influential people worldwide. The fact that he takes his readers through a variety of examples to prove his points is one of the book’s most interesting features.
What has to be said about the book is that it breaks away from the usual perceptions that both Westerners and Indian people have and provides readers with a new way of looking at India.

About Amartya Sen

Amartya Sen is a Nobel prize winning economist and philosopher.

Some of his most popular books include Poverty And Famines, On Ethics and Economics, Commodities and Capabilities, On Economic Inequality and Identity and Violence.

Sen is greatly influenced by Rabindranath Tagore and Martha Nussbaum among others. His works also have strong philosophical bases. He was quoted saying that many of his economic theories are closely related to philosophical morals.

He was born in 1933 in Santiniketan, West Bengal. He studied in Dhaka at St Gregory's School and later studied B.A. at Presidency College. He studied at Trinity College at Cambridge. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1998 for his work in social welfare and social choice theory. He is currently the Thomas W.Lamont University Professor at Harvard as well as the Professor of Economics and Philosophy. He also holds numerous distinguished positions in various colleges worldwide, including Chancellor of Nalanda International University and Professor of Economics at Stanford, Cornell and University of Oxford. He is best known for his work on the causes of famine which lead to studies on the cause and effect of food shortage in the country. He also helped develop the United Nations Human Development Index.